The Guardship

by James L. Nelson

  A pistol ball struck the backstay. Marlowe felt it quiver in his grip. He drew his sword, picked his spot, and leapt down into the fight.

  Chapter 36

  THE WAIST of the Wilkenson Brothers was in deep shadow, with the bulwarks shielding the deck from the light of the burning ship. Men moved in and out of the night. Swords raised overhead gleamed as they reflected the fire. The flash of pistols, pan and muzzle, lit those dark places for a brilliant second and then the shadows closed in again.

  Marlowe felt the burn of a cutlass cutting across his arm even as he tried to recover from his leap to the deck. He twisted instinctively, swung his big sword around, reached for a pistol as he fell. Felt the jar of the blade making contact, but he heard no scream and did not know if he had even struck his attacker.

  He hit the deck flat on his back, his sword in his hand. The pirate was standing above him, leering, cutlass raised, ready to deliver the coup de grâce. Marlowe brought the pistol up, pulled the lock back with his thumb. The pirate bellowed outrage as he tried to bring his cutlass down before Marlowe fired the gun.

  He did not succeed. Marlowe pulled the trigger, tossed the gun aside, giving no more thought to the big man he had just blown to the deck. He scrambled to his feet, his back to the bulwark. In a half-crouch, sword gripped in both hands, he got his bearings.

  The Plymouth Prizes and the pirates had smashed into each other like surf across a bar of sand, and now they were fighting it out where they stood. Most of those who were wounded or dead had been shot down by the Plymouth Prize’s great guns or by pistols in that first wave, but once those guns had been fired there was no time to reload, and now it was steel against steel.

  Marlowe looked aft. More dead men there, more wounded crawling away or curled up in the shadows. His firing the great guns had had some effect, made the numbers a little more even, and now the Plymouth Prizes were plunging in with a fury to match the pirate defenders.

  If I’ve turned them all into brigands, at least I’ve taught them more than just greed, Thomas thought as he stepped into an open place in the line and matched swords with a wiry, bearded little man with a scarred face and black teeth.

  The little man was fast, trying to cut Marlowe down with a quick, darting attack, while Marlowe attempted to overwhelm him with his strength and the weight of his sword. It was an interesting match, and one that might have been more difficult for Marlowe to win just a few years before, before he had learned under Bickerstaff’s careful tutelage the more subtle aspects of fighting with a blade.

  He wielded his big sword with two hands, as was his custom, beating back the attack with twice the force needed, throwing the little man off with the sheer momentum of his parry. His left arm was starting to ache where it had been cut; he could feel the blood, warm and liquid, under his shirt. He considered pulling his second pistol and just shooting the man, but he needed that bullet to kill LeRois. He had a higher duty here, and he was just wasting his time with this ugly opponent.

  The pirate darted forward, lunged, as Marlowe leaned back. The tip of his blade pierced Marlowe’s coat, and Marlowe brought his own sword straight down on the man’s outstretched hand. The pirate screamed, the sword fell to the deck, and Marlowe lunged himself, running the man through, then pulled the blade clean, turning to face any new threat on his flank even as he heard the man’s body hit the deck.

  LeRois. He could avoid it no longer. He could not continue to pretend that the Prizes needed him here in the waist.

  Rakestraw was ten feet away, fighting like an ancient Norseman, rallying the men. At any moment Bickerstaff and his men would come swarming up the other side and fall on the Vengeances from behind. Ten minutes before, there would have been enough pirates to fight both sides of the deck, but that was before he had delivered the blasts of case shot right into the vaporing tribe.

  LeRois was not among the men fighting in the waist, which meant either he was among the dead or wounded or that he was holding back, perhaps waiting for Marlowe to come to him.

  There were no more excuses. He had to hunt the man down. As much as he did not wish to, he knew that he had to go.

  “Oh, Lord, please let him be dead,” Marlowe muttered. He imagined LeRois’s scarred and battered body tossed up against the bulwark, half torn apart after taking a blast of canister right in the chest, those mad eyes open and dead, staring sightless up at the sky. He felt as hypocritical as a man can feel, calling on God at that juncture.

  He stepped back from the fight, pressed himself against the bulwark, worked his way aft, toward the quarterdeck. It was the body of the serpent that his men were fighting. It was his job to cut off the head.

  A fire was flicking, burning aft. Marlowe thought perhaps the flames from the other ship had blown across and caught in the rig. But it was not the ship that was burning. It was a torch, held aloft, and holding that torch was Jean-Pierre LeRois.

  He stood on the quarterdeck ladder, on the other side of the deck. The undulating light illuminated the dirty, powder-burned face, the matted beard, the dark, wild eyes, the red sash under a once-fine coat. Jean-Pierre LeRois. Older than Marlowe had last seen him, dirtier, meaner looking, but there he was.

  The pirate was squinting, searching through the crowd, and it was no great difficulty to guess for whom he was looking.

  And then their eyes met. LeRois paused, leaned back, leaned forward, glaring, and then he smiled, his big filthy teeth gleaming in the light of the torch.

  Marlowe took a step aft. They would meet on the quarterdeck, fight it out in that land of the dead, among the bodies of the men Marlowe had swept away with his broadside.

  But LeRois did not go aft. Rather, he stepped down into the waist, standing head and shoulders above the others, and with his eyes still holding Marlowe’s he stepped over to the doorway leading to the aft cabins, pulled it open, stepped through, and shut it behind.

  “Goddamn it!” Marlowe shouted. LeRois had gone below. With every last bit of body and soul he wanted to let the pirate go, did not want to follow the snake down its hole. But he could not let LeRois get away, and there was no knowing what he was about. He had to go.

  He pushed past the struggling, shouting men, edged around the break of the quarterdeck, worked his way to the door that LeRois had shut behind him. Felt the sting of sweat running into his eyes. He blinked it away and shifted his sword to his left hand and took hold of the handle of the door with his right.

  He pulled the door open, quickly, and leapt aside before LeRois could put a bullet into him. But there were no shots fired, no noise of any kind from within.

  He stepped forward, peered through the door and down the alleyway. There was a short hall, lined with small cabins, that terminated at the far end with the master’s great cabin, all in darkness save for a single lantern burning in the aft cabin. It was just as he remembered it from the time that he and Bickerstaff had come aboard to enforce the king’s rules governing trade. It seemed years before.

  Marlowe wiped his slick palm on his coat, pulled his remaining pistol from his cross-belt, cocked the lock with his thumb. He breathed deeply, again and again, as if relishing the very act of breathing, as a man might relish a last meal, then he stepped into the dark alleyway.

  He put a foot down on the deck, carefully, let his weight come on it slowly, and listened. The fighting on the deck had swelled in pitch, and Marlowe guessed that Bickerstaff and his men had come over the side, but he pushed those sounds aside and concentrated on the space around him.

  There was nothing, no sound at all, save for the faint protest of the deck under his foot. He took another step inboard. Nothing. Perhaps LeRois was waiting aft in the great cabin. He ran his eyes over what little part of the place was visible to him, readjusted his grip on the pistol, and stepped forward again.

  Then the door to the small cabin behind him seemed to explode outward, shards of wood showering the deck and light bursting into the dark confines. Marlowe twisted around as the great cudgel
of a torch swung in an arc toward his head, behind it the big, grinning face of Jean-Pierre LeRois. He raised the pistol, and his finger squeezed the trigger as the torch slammed into the side of his head, knocking him against the bulkhead. The alleyway and the flames and the pirate swam in front of him, and his knees buckled from under him.

  LeRois’s laugh filled the space, as loud and sudden as the pistol shot. “Quartermaster, I am the devil himself, your bullets do not harm me! I have waited for you all night and you try to shoot me? No, no, we must go down to hell together!”

  Marlowe slumped to the deck. His right hand grabbed up his sword, moving by instinct alone, but he did not have the strength to raise the blade in his defense. He felt LeRois’s hand on his collar, felt the massive strength of the man’s arm, felt himself being dragged aft along the deck. He clung to his sword as if it alone were keeping him alive.

  His shoulder slammed into the door frame as LeRois pulled him into the great cabin. He was pulling Marlowe as if he were a child, pulling him into the aft cabin with one hand while he held the torch aloft with the other.

  Marlowe tried again to raise the sword, tried to drive it through the pirate, and he managed to get his arm to move when he felt the deck disappear beneath him. He was falling, plunging down into the dark, and before he even realized that he was falling he stopped, slamming into the deck below.

  His sword wrenched from his hand. He heard it clatter away in the dark. He rolled over. Above him was the square hatch through which he had been dropped, and beyond that the white painted deckhead in the great cabin.

  Then the hatch was filled with LeRois’s huge frame. Marlowe rolled out of the way, and the pirate jumped down after him. He heard the man’s boots hit the deck a foot away, and his only thought was to get his sword.

  He rolled again, onto his stomach, and looked up, waiting for LeRois to run him through. They were in the hold, the lowest part of the Wilkenson Brothers, and the black space was now lit with the flames from LeRois’s torch. The pirate was stamping off forward as if he did not know Marlowe was there.

  Thomas pushed himself to his knees. His head was still spinning from the blow, his shoulders and one knee ached from the impact with the deck. The wound he had received when he first leapt aboard was bleeding again, but his thoughts were on nothing but his sword and LeRois’s back.

  He could just see his sword, all but lost in shadow. He clenched his teeth, shuffled over and picked it up, then painfully stood.

  LeRois was at the far end of the hold. He was bending over, holding the torch to a black pot on the deck. It sputtered and lit, like a little bonfire. He turned and lit another and another. Smoke poured from each as it took flame.

  LeRois straightened and turned, squinting into the shadows. Thomas did not move.

  “Barrett? Are you here, Barrett?” LeRois’s voice was pleasant, as if welcoming a guest into his home. “We are in hell now, mon ami, and we will see which of us can last the longer. We will fight to see who rules here, eh?”

  Marlowe crouched, held his sword in front of him. LeRois was a mad dog; he had to be killed. He took a step forward. The hold was filling with smoke, yellow smoke, that made a halo around the pirate’s tórch. Thomas’s eyes were burning and watering, his lungs ached. It was brimstone burning in those pots. LeRois had set brimstone on fire, and now the hold was filling with the sulfur smoke. He had indeed created his own hell, and now they would do battle to see who was prince of the underworld.

  Marlowe knew he could not last long in that yellow fog, but neither could he leave LeRois to his own devices. He had to finish the pirate and go.

  He made his way along the hold, his various aches and wounds all but forgotten in the energy gleaned from the pending battle. He moved toward the flaring light of the torch. He could no longer see LeRois through the smoke, but perhaps the bastard was still holding the thing. He held his hand out, feeling his way, unable to see more than a few feet in any direction.

  “You have been haunting me, Malachias Barrett,” the pirate called out from the fog. “Your spirit has been haunting me, but now the devil has made you flesh so that we can see who is to be capitain, eh? Capitain in hell.”

  The voice seemed to come from the direction of the flames, but Marlowe could not tell for certain. Still he kept moving toward the burning torch, the only reference in the dark and smoke-filled hold. Ten feet away. He paused and listened. He could not see LeRois. The torch did not move; it looked as if it might have been jammed in place. Perhaps LeRois was not there at all.

  And then he heard a flurry behind him, a rustle, sensed a motion at his back. He spun around, sword up, horizontal, and out of the yellow smoke LeRois’s weapon came down with the familiar shock and ring of steel on steel.

  Marlowe twisted his blade aside, knocking LeRois’s sword away, then stepped forward on the attack. He could just see the man now, shadows of a black beard and a swirling coat, the suggestion of wild eyes through the sulfur smoke.

  Marlowe slashed away, but LeRois’s blade was back, fending him off. Marlowe swung again and again, wielding the sword like an ax, driving LeRois back. He could hear the old pirate’s breath coming harder, realized that he was gasping as well, forced to take shallow breaths to avoid choking in that lethal atmosphere.

  Here we are again, Barrett and LeRois, he thought. Both a little older and a little slower, and the Vengeance beneath them might not be the same as that of years before, but it was the same fight.

  He had to kill LeRois and get out. He lunged, but his sword found only air. LeRois was gone.

  Thomas stopped, crouched low, listened. He closed his eyes and was rewarded with a wave of relief from the burning sulfur. Overhead he could hear the muffled sounds of the men still locked in battle. He took a step back and felt his shoulder press against something. It felt like a cask. He could hear LeRois breathing, somewhere off in the smoke.

  “Eh, quartermaster, you are still the devil with a sword, but can you live in hell as I can? Eh? Can you breathe, quartermaster? Can you see?”

  “I can breathe, LeRois,” Marlowe said, which was just barely true. “But you do not sound so good yourself. Perhaps you are not the devil you think you are. Perhaps you are just a drunk old man who is too weak to be a capitain.”

  “Merde!” LeRois roared, and suddenly he emerged from the smoke, sword swinging as if he were trying to cut a swath through the fog, hoping that Marlowe was in the arc of his blade. Marlowe dodged the weapon, leaped across the deck, and this time it was he who lost himself in the smoke.

  He heard LeRois coughing, gasping, and wanted desperately to cough himself, but he held back as long as he could. He shuffled forward, and when he could hold it no longer he doubled over, coughing and gasping and retching.

  “I am coming for you now, quartermaster,” LeRois shouted, croaking the words through his damaged throat. The hold was entirely engulfed. Marlowe could no longer see the burning pots of brimstone, and the torch fire was just a dull yellow light illuminating the thick gloom. He coughed again and held his sword up, and LeRois was on him once more.

  There was less power in the pirate’s strokes, and that was the only thing that saved Thomas’s life, for he barely possessed the breath to defend himself. Thrust and parry, attack and fend off, the two men went back and forth, emerging and disappearing in the yellow smoke, coughing, wheezing.

  Marlowe could hardly see through his watery eyes. He had no sense for what was forward and what was aft. He stumbled on something and almost fell, and as he recovered he waited for LeRois’s blade to come through the smoke and finish him off, but it did not, and Marlowe was alone again in the yellow acrid hell.

  “LeRois!” he croaked, then gagged. “LeRois, you stupid son of a whore, you drunken useless madman! You pathetic wretch!” If he could make him mad, furious, he might make a mistake, and then he could kill him and get back on deck before he passed out. “LeRois!”

  Coughing from somewhere in the smoke, retching, and then LeRoi
s’s voice, slurred, faltering, “The devil, he has brought us here, and he will kill us both.”

  Marlowe blinked hard, looked in the direction from which the voice had seemed to come. There was a dancing light, like a ghost, like a spirit moving through the smoke-filled space. He blinked again. He could no longer tell if he was conscious or not, dead or alive. Perhaps he was already in hell. He was no longer afraid. He did not care.

  And then from some back corner of his mind came the realization that the moving ghost was the torch. LeRois must have picked up the torch. He must be carrying it, and that meant that where the light was, so was LeRois.

  Marlowe panted, coughed, and held his sword in front of him like a lance. He took a faltering step forward, and his foot came down on something soft. He bent at the knee and touched it. It was a hat. LeRois’s hat. He picked it up and took a step toward the bobbing light, then another, stumbling toward the torch, trying to reach it before he passed out, before he fell for the last time.

  The fire burned brighter as he ran, and suddenly he could see flames, actual flames, but LeRois was just a shadow, a dark outline in the yellow smoke. He paused, tensed, and then threw the hat at LeRois.

  “Merde!” the dark shadow screamed, then twisted, and a blade cut through the smoke, the shadow slashing at whatever had hit it.

  Marlowe charged. Two steps, and in the diffused light of the torch he could see the dark face of Jean-Pierre LeRois, his filthy cheeks streaked where the tears ran down. He saw LeRois blink and look up from the hat, confused by what was coming out of the smoke, and then Marlowe felt the point of his sword make contact with flesh and with all the strength remaining in his arms he shoved the blade in.

  LeRois’s eyes shot open, his mouth gaped wide, and he screamed, a long, prolonged howl. The torch fell from his grip, and he staggered back as Marlowe twisted the blade and dragged it free.