by David Talon
I gave him a short explanation, the sailors around us yelling at the passengers to shut their mouths as they began to listen. I’d barely finished when Smoke said in my ear, “Tomas, they’re back.”
Everyone around us went silent as I held out my forearm. “Star, Tiger, take as much as you need of my strength then tell me about the ship.”
A couple of the passengers began asking questions as the two dragon-ghosts began feeding from my arm, but Mr. Bierson growled at them, and they quieted as the two withdrew their fangs. “Tomas,” Star began, “the ship’s made of grey wood. It’s not painted in any way, it’s just grey.”
“The big sister welcomed us,” Tiger said in an awe-struck voice. “Her name’s Jade.”
“She gave all of the sisters’ sanctuary, including Smoke,” Star said, which gave me a feeling of relief. But her next words chilled me to the bone. “But she also said our ship needs to surrender without a fight.”
Uneasy muttering swept through the sailors as Mr. Bierson said, “Can you describe the figurehead?”
“It’s a mermaid with green scales and white skin,” Star answered. “She’s holding a tankard, like the sailors drink from, up to her lips. It’s got what looks like white foam on top...oh, and her hair’s white too.”
Mr. Bierson’s face was turning white as well. “The tankard, what color is it?”
Tiger answered. “It’s black. The sailors in the wine-shops call it a blackjack, I think.”
“God help us,” Mr. Bierson said, “She’s the ‘Blackjack Davy’.” There were cries of alarm from the sailors around us, and Mr. Bierson’s face grew stern. “We aren’t dead yet, lads. Get yourselves ready then meet me on the main deck with your weapons.”
The sailors began moving as the knot of fear I’d banished three days ago returned with a vengeance. I told the girls to find the captain and report the news to him before asking, “Mr. Bierson, I’ve only heard the name in passing. Are we in trouble?”
“Trouble indeed,” he grimly replied. “She’s one of those not part of the Brotherhood and haunted to boot, which is not a tale but the plain truth. Her captain’s one Harry Hawkins, an Englishman who’s been her captain at least fifteen years, although he still looks to be a man in his late thirties. They say if you step aboard the Davy you never age a day, but pay it back in Purgatory a thousand-fold when you die.”
I barely kept from rolling my eyes. “Mr. Bierson, it sounds like a sailor’s tale.”
Mr. Bierson was pulling on his clothes as we talked. “I’ve seen Captain Hawkins with my own eyes, and he looks younger than I do, for all he was sailing with the English Dragon Francis Drake, back in the days of the English Sea-dogs. I will give him this, though: Captain Hawkins has a reputation for fairness if you surrender.”
“What if you don’t?”
“Captain Hawkins has some of the worst scum in the New World sailing under his command,” Mr. Bierson said with a grimace. “He hoists a red flag called the ‘Jollie Rouge’, which means no mercy shown if you fight back.” He pulled his boots on and got to his feet. “No mercy at all.”
“We should surrender then...but Captain Voorhees won’t.”
“He’s too proud,” Mr. Bierson said with a sigh. “Too proud and too sure of a weapon everyone’s worried about.” His eyes met mine. “Even if it works and the Blackjack Davy has dead men rising on her deck, her crew will take the fight to us regardless. I’ll need you on the main deck.”
Alfonzo had once told me I’d be a man when I made a hard choice without flinching, and I remembered his words as I held out my hand. “My girls will back you up.”
Mr. Bierson clasped hands with me. “You’re a good lad. It may well mean both our deaths, but I’ll be honored to have you fighting beside us. I’ll meet you on the main deck”
I nodded and ran through the hold towards the stairs as Smoke hissed in my ear, “This is madness! I got an image of the ship from Star, and even if the passengers fight they still have double our numbers.”
“I can’t just abandon them,” I hissed back, stopping as a sailor carrying a pike ran past me before continuing. “Besides, there’s no place to run to if I did.”
“Well, if you die here I’m shedding the rest of your strength and challenging Jade.”
“What! Smoke, that’s suicide...well, not really suicide, but it’s the next closest thing.”
“I don’t care,” she said as I climbed the stairs, “If you’re not part of my life then it doesn’t matter anymore.”
I reached the aft deck and strode barefooted toward the main, ignoring the stares of the passengers on deck as Smoke and I argued. “It does too matter, and besides, Captain Voorhees may still surrender.”
“Not likely,” said a curly haired sailor about my age as we passed each other in opposite directions. “I’m on my way to the weapons locker to get the ghost-shell for the mortar.”
I paused as the sailor kept walking toward the stern. “The mortar’s got a crack in it.”
“The captain says the ghost-shell doesn’t put enough stress on the bronze to matter if we only fire it once.” He gave me a gap-toothed grin. “The Davy’s a brigantine, which means we’ve got the height advantage if they try to board...and if they do, they gotta get past Mr. Bierson. We’ll be fine, you’ll see.” He gave me a jaunty wave as he continued.
“I still don’t like it,” Smoke grumbled in my ear as I climbed down the stairs to the main deck.
I held out my arm. “Stop complaining and take as much as you think you’ll need.”
Smoke did so as I heard pounding feet on the deck and looked up. Sailors armed with cutlasses, one-handed axes and long pikes began climbing down to the main deck, where they began assembling. Mr. Bierson had a two-handed axe in his hands as he reached the deck. “Ground your weapons until the mortar fires,” he said to the assembled men. The sailors placed their weapons on the deck and Mr. Bierson began directing a few of them into the rigging before turning to me. “Keep your mermaids out of the sails until the captain gives the word. We don’t want the whoresons to know we can fight back until it’s too late.”
Smoke finished and I rubbed the coldness out of my arm as I felt the ship begin to turn. “Is the captain going to try and run?”
“Pretend to run,” Mr. Bierson answered. “He needs to get in position so he can get a clear shot off with the mortar. Then we’ll see what happens.”
The Queen Anne turned so her port side was facing the pirate ship, and I got my first good look at the Blackjack Davy. She was sleek as any warship I’d ever seen, churning the waves under her bow as she came at us still under full sail: two fore sails in the front and a larger one sweeping back off the mainmast. On her deck and up on the ratlines were men bearing cutlasses or boarding axes, and my heart went to my throat. There were a lot of men on her deck.
The Flyte continued turning and I lost sight of her. But I began hearing catcalls in the wind, faint, but getting steadily louder as the Dutch ship straightened out. “Courage, men,” Mr. Bierson said as an uneasy muttering swept through the sailors. “If we live to see the morrow, we’ll be the envy of every sailor’s lass from here to the port of London.”
Someone called out, “What if we die?”
“Then we find a wine-shop in hell and the first round’s on me.”
I heard laughter as another man called out, “What if it’s all piss and brimstone like the priest’s say?”
“Then the first round’s on me anyway!” This time all the sailors laughed, a few catcalling back to the pirates as Mr. Bierson looked towards the aft ladder. “Mistress Selene, you shouldn’t be here.”
Selene had reached the main deck and was now very purposefully striding towards me. “Tomas has never seen a naval engagement, while I have observed several, all using dragon-ghosts on both sides. I am here to advise him.”
From the aft deck I heard a man yell, “The pirates a
re almost upon us!” Looking up, I saw most of the lower class passengers had assembled on the aft deck, not one with a weapon to hand.
“Useless as teats on a bull,” Mr. Bierson said, following my gaze. Then his voice sharpened. “Tommy, what have you in your hands?”
Standing with the passengers was the curly haired young man with the gap toothed grin, which he showed as he held aloft a tongue of blue fire. “There’s ghostfire playing around the cracks in the shell. But it doesn’t hurt; it feels more like cool air, and almost acts like it’s alive.”
Mr. Bierson gaped at him a moment. “Cracks in...Captain Voorhees,” he yelled, “Cease your actions, sir, cease your...”
But from the stern the captain was already calling out, “Let’s give them a proper Dutch welcome, lads...Piro!”
The stern exploded. The ship rocked wildly and we were thrown off our feet, metal shards and chunks of bronze trailing blue ghostfire shrieking as they passed over our heads and embedded into the wood of the ship or landed in the sea with an evil hiss. The ship steadied and all became quiet a moment before the passengers on the aft deck began shrieking themselves.
I only heard a few cries as I got to my feet, helping Selene to hers as Mr. Bierson and the other sailors regained theirs. “Fool captain’s made a dog’s dinner out of things this time,” he growled, before raising his voice. “Lars, go aloft and tell me what you see.”
But the blond bearded sailor yelled back something at him in Dutch as he pointed upward, and our gazes followed. Tongues of blue ghostfire were crawling around the rigging like exotic snakes searching for prey...which, in a sense, was what they were doing. “I’ll go,” I yelled and ran for the ratline, which was like a rope ladder into the rigging, before Mr. Bierson could think to tell me no. There was ghostfire on the ratlines but it moved away from me as I climbed up high enough to look around.
The rear of the ship was a ruin of smashed wood with torn rigging, but no fire other than the ghostly blue flames, and I realized the dragon-ghost controlling things, whoever she was, had transmuted the explosive quickfire into ghostfire the moment after it had exploded. The dead body of Captain Voorhees lay sprawled against the deck rail, while more torn and broken bodies littered the stern and aft deck too. A few of the men on the aft deck were still alive, screaming as they clutched broken arms, or crawling away from the snakes of blue fire slithering towards the bodies of the dead.
The dragon-ghost wasted no time. I watched in horror as the body of Captain Voorhees lurched to its feet, half his face burnt away with white bone giving him the rictus of partial smile while the other half snarled at the sleek ship coming up on our port side. He pulled out his Artifact pistol then seemed to forget about it as the ship slid into position beside us.
The decks of the grey pirate ship were filled with men, with more in the rigging either furling the sails or catcalling at us like the men were on deck were doing. A bald pirate with a gold hoop in his ear yelled at me, “Better keep climbing, lad, or the dead gonna eat your skinny arse.”
A tall man with long black hair and moustache yelled at the men to be quiet, and to my surprise they did. He was dressed in dark trousers tucked into black boots that rose to his knees, a white shirt with ruffles, and wore a gentleman’s red coat and fancy hat with a purple feather sticking out of it. He stepped onto the deck rail with a hand on the ratline, and doffed his hat to us. “Well met, gentlemen,” he said in a cultured French accent, “but I must say: what an awful turn of events for you.”
Laughter swept through the pirate crew as Mr. Bierson, who’d gone over to stand by the portside deck rail, snarled at him, “And I suppose you whoresons are just going to sit back and watch.”
“Sounds like a reasonable suggestion to me,” the Frenchman said to more laughter, his voice growing more harder edged as he added, “Considering you would have done ze same to us if dead men were rising up on our deck.”
Selene hurried over to the spot where the ratline I stood upon was tied to the deck, and climbed up high enough to be seen. “Jean Le’Vass,” she called out in French, “it has been a long time since I saw you at the court of the duke of Anjou.”
Selene had pulled her grey dress down enough to leave her shoulders bare, and the pirates whistled and catcalled at her as the Frenchman gave her a puzzled look. He raised his hand, and a fat, bald pirate with a moustache like a wooly worm under his nose barked, “Hold your tongues, you pox-ridden mongrels. Let the Quartermaster speak.”
The pirates quieted as the Frenchman replied in English, “You have ze advantage, Madame.”
Selene also switched to English. “I was with Councilor Bartholomew when he came to court. You were a knight in service to one of the duke’s Dragons.”
He stared at her a moment before snapping his fingers. “Ze councilor’s courtesan, I do remember you now. But considering ze number of people at court, I am surprised you remember me at all.”
A bitter edge entered Selene’s voice. “My memory and the intellect it serves are both my blessing and my curse. Bartholomew is dead, there is a new pope in Rome, and I am running from the knives of those who put him on the papal throne.” She raised her hands in supplication. “Good knight, I know you have quarrel with us, which I understand well. But could you find it in your heart to grant sanctuary to those who wish you no ill?”
Before he could respond, a deep voice said, “Sanctuary is given at my pleasure, is it not, Jean?”
A dark look swept through the Frenchman’s face an instant before he schooled it into a sardonic smile. “All is done at your pleasure, Mon Captain.” He jumped off the deck rail as another man came striding up. He was a head shorter than the Frenchman but broad shouldered, with short brown hair and a clean shaven face burnt even browner from the sun. I saw he wore a blue captain’s coat with gold buttons winking in the growing light, as the Frenchman asked, “Will you grant sanctuary to her?”
Instead of answering, the captain looked up to where I was holding onto the ratline. “You’ve got the advantage of height, lad. Tell me what you see.”
I looked toward the stern and gasped. The few wounded men were being strangled by the dead, while snakes of blue ghostfire waited patiently nearby, the remaining dead men stooping down to pick up long pieces of debris from the deck. Part of me felt guilty that Mr. Bierson hadn’t organized a rescue of the wounded, while the other part was glad I was up in the ratlines. “The dead are rising,” I called out to Mr. Bierson, “and they’re looking for weapons.”
A shudder passed through Mr. Bierson’s men as the captain called out in a conversational tone, “So tell me, if you were leading the defense of the ship, what would you do?”
The pirates seemed to find the captain’s words amusing as I tried to keep my wits under my hand. “Knock them into the sea, if I could, or break one of their knees.”
The Frenchman looked up at me. “Why only one knee?”
“Because I’ve been told that even with the dragon-ghost goading them, the dead don’t reason. So if you break one knee, they’ll keep trying to get up and fall over instead. We don’t have to kill them all, only outlast them until the ghostfire burns itself out.”
An enormous pirate, with red hair and a bushy red beard down to his breastbone, roared with laughter. He called out, “Harry, I say give sanctuary to this one: he’s got a full set of wits.”
“I second the idea,” a girl’s voice shouted. A moment later she leaped onto the ratlines directly across from mine. She was as slender as I was, with flaming red hair bound back in a braid, wearing white trousers cropped off at the knee and a man’s ruffled white shirt. Her feet were bare. I stared at her as she called out, “Permission to save him and the lady both, sir.” The girl wasn’t beautiful in the manner Selene was but cute, with a pug nose and freckles. Then she looked at me and grinned...and I realized I’d never seen anyone so beautiful in all my life.
The pirate captain’s voice was l
ike a splash of cold sea water on my face. “Denied. I want to see if this lad has the wits to keep the others alive.” His voice became mocking as he looked at me. “It would seem you now have your first command.”
I did my best to ignore the catcalls coming from the other ship as I looked toward the stern. All of the dead men had picked up weapons: jagged pieces of wood, a length of rope with a pulley attached, a steel spike, and all were now shambling towards the main deck. “What would Alfonzo do right now,” I muttered to myself, looking behind me at the foredeck elevated above the main. Elevated...”Mr. Bierson,” I shouted, “retreat to the foredeck. We’ll have the high ground.”
Hope wrestled with embarrassment on Mr. Bierson’s face. “Lord save me from idiocy,” he said before shouting, “You heard the lad: up the ladder to the foredeck, now!”
“Tomas,” Smoke whispered in my ear, “the sister of the ghost-shell heard. She’s doing something to the dead men.”
Mr. Bierson and his sailors had already turned toward the foredeck as dead men began leaping off the aft deck onto the main. Several snapped their leg bones in the fall, the jagged ends ripping through their skin, and they kept falling as they tried to regain their feet. But the rest landed well, one on the head of a sailor, pulling him down as he screamed. The man next to him braced his pike as another dead man tried to do the same thing to him. The dead man leaped onto the weapon like a wild boar skewered by a spear, the dead man’s weight making the sailor drop the dead man to the deck, but to the sailor’s horror the dead man pulled the pike through himself until he’d reached the sailor, too terrified to let go of his weapon. As the dead man got close he finally dropped the weapon and turned to run. But the dead man used the haft of the pike to trip him, and several other dead men began smashing their makefast weapons on the sailor’s head, smashing it like a melon.
Tongues of blue ghostfire were already slithering up the sailor’s leg. “Smoke,” I said urgently, “can’t you stop your sister from goading the dead men into attacking us?”
