Blue Sea Burning

by Geoff Rodkey

  Looking ahead, I realized for the first time that we were close to shore. I could see the coast of the New Lands off our port side, and straight ahead to starboard was an offshore island, stretching east as far as I could see. A channel no more than a couple of miles wide separated the coast from the island.

  The Red Throat was still half a mile from us, off starboard now and so far aft that I had to crane my neck around the poop deck to find her. A mile or two farther back in the haze were the massive bulks of the two Cartager men-of-war. The only signs of either Frenzy or Blood Lust were two smears of black smoke on the horizon.

  We came out of the turn and the Grift leveled off, our bow pointing straight at the channel between the coast and the long island. The Red Throat’s muzzles flashed again. I hit the deck, but the volley sailed wide of us. When I got back up, my uncle was watching me with an amused smirk.

  “Son, when your number’s up, ducking won’t cheat the reaper. What happened to your wrist?”

  “I, um . . .” I didn’t want to tell him the truth, but my brain got stuck, and I couldn’t come up with anything else. “Fell out of my hammock.”

  Healy’s smirk widened, and I felt my cheeks turn hot. “What happened to your head?” I asked, just to change the subject.

  “Same thing.” He winked at me with his one good eye, and I couldn’t help smiling.

  The cannon roared under our feet. Healy whipped his head around in time to see the Red Throat’s crooked foremast fall still farther off its line before the smoke from our guns blocked the view.

  “Not bad,” Healy murmured. “Pity we can’t finish her here.”

  “Because of the patch failing?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Do you understand what’s happening?”

  “Not really,” I admitted.

  “Our enemies are down to three ships. And if I hadn’t lost the ability to maneuver at speed, we might have settled things right here. But that’s no longer an option. So we’re plotting a course through the Fangs.”

  He pointed at the channel in front of us.

  “When we get closer, you’ll see why they call it that—it’s quite shallow, with a lot of exposed rock sticking up like teeth. Very tricky to navigate, and for all his bluster, the Ripper’s a rather timid sailor. Couple that with him losing a mast, and it’s likely he’ll break off. Take the long way around Finger Island and try to catch us on the other side.” Healy glanced back at the Red Throat, which was coming into view again now that the smoke was clearing.

  Its muzzles flashed a third time. Healy didn’t even blink, and I had to fight the urge to flop onto my belly.

  “But I suspect Li Homaya’s got just the right mix of stupidity and arrogance”—he didn’t bother to pause even as the boom of the Red Throat’s cannon reached us, and its latest round sizzled into the sea not more than ten yards from the ship—“to follow us into the Fangs. If he does, he’ll either sink on the rocks or run aground at the far end, and we can finish him off as we please. And if he’s got brains enough not to follow us, he’ll have to take the long way around with the Ripper. That’ll give us time to position ourselves upwind on the far side before we reengage—which should help compensate for the fact that I can no longer turn to port without punching a hole in my ship. Any questions?”

  I thought back to the ominous looks on Spiggs’s and Pike’s faces. “Just, um . . . the tide?”

  Healy’s mouth turned down at one corner. “That’s the one fly in the ointment. If the tide’s too low, there’s a chance we’ll run aground. In which case . . . the forward cannon on those men-of-war will make rather quick work of us.”

  The voice of a lookout called down from the crow’s nest.

  “Red Throat’s breaking off!”

  Healy looked back at the Ripper’s ship. Her bow was nosing around, turning away from us.

  Healy smiled. “And so he goes.”

  Over the next ten minutes, there were a few final rounds of cannon fire—which kept me sweaty with fear even though they didn’t faze my uncle a bit—but soon enough, the Red Throat was showing us her stern, the cockeyed foremast poking out to starboard like a broken tree branch.

  Healy yawned as he watched her limp off toward the men-of-war, still moving in our direction. “Think I’ll snatch a nap while we find out if the Short-Ears are game. You’re welcome to string a hammock in my cabin if you don’t think it’ll end badly for you,” he said with a glance at my wrist.

  “That’s very kind,” I said. “But if there’s time . . . my friend was injured, and I don’t know if—”

  “Go.”

  I HEADED FOR the surgeon’s room on the lower deck, where the pirates who had pulled Guts from the hold would’ve taken him.

  A few strides from the doorway, I stopped in my tracks, my stomach dropping to somewhere around my knees.

  There was a large canvas bag in front of the surgeon’s door, the size and shape of a small man. In another location, at another time, it could have been any number of things. But right there, just then, there was no question what it was.

  There was a body in there.

  I was staring at it, my eyes filling up, when the door opened and a pirate stepped out, his bloodstained shirt open and his chest wrapped in a fresh bandage. As he strode past me, buttoning his shirt, the surgeon appeared.

  I pointed to the body in the bag. “Is that . . . ?”

  “Fells. He ran messages for the captain.”

  I was so grateful to hear it wasn’t Guts that I barely registered the news that the last man to hold my new job as messenger was dead.

  “Was a boy brought up to you with—”

  “Your mate? With the head wound? Yes, a while ago.”

  “Is he all right?”

  The surgeon frowned. “Hard to say. He’s conscious now. But I think there may be brain damage. He’s got a bad twitch, and he won’t stop cursing.”

  “No, he’s just like that.”

  “Oh . . . Well, in that case, he might just need some time to let the cobwebs clear.” The surgeon jerked his thumb toward a door a short way down the hall. “He’s in the purser’s cabin.”

  I thanked the surgeon and went to the cabin. Guts was lying on a short, narrow bed. The room was so small I could barely stand inside it.

  His eyes fluttered open when I came in, and he looked up at me with unfocused eyes. There was a bandage over his forehead. Underneath it, his face was pale and drawn.

  “Battle over?” he croaked.

  “Not yet,” I said. He looked so awful that for a moment, I worried the doctor had been right about the brain damage.

  Then he snarled, “Get back on the line, ye — porsamora!” and I figured he was going to be okay after all.

  I filled him in on what had happened, and on Healy’s plan to go through the Fangs. He nodded.

  “Be up in a minute,” he said. “Help out.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Just rest. It’s going to be fine.”

  “Nuts to that. Gotta pull my weight. Earn a crew share.”

  He scowled and twitched, but then he closed his eyes. I slipped out, then went down to the hold.

  There was a flurry of activity around the leaking patch. Kira and Quint were in the thick of it, but I managed to catch Kira’s eye and give her a thumbs-up. She nodded and smiled, and I knew she’d understood.

  When I got back to my uncle’s cabin, he was snoring on the bed. Not sure what to do with myself, I took a seat at the table and waited for him to wake up.

  Every few minutes, the enemy cannon thundered, making my heart jump into my throat.

  Healy snored through it all.

  Finally, after what seemed like an hour, Spiggs poked his head in the door.

  “Sssst,” he whispered.

  My uncle sat up in an instant.

  “Five minu
tes,” said Spiggs. Then he left. My uncle yawned and let his head settle back into the pillow.

  “Fetch a handful of coffee beans from the galley,” he told me. “I’m going to grab another five.”

  BY THE TIME my uncle came out of his cabin, the Grift was well into the Fangs. There were so many sharp rocks poking up out of the sea you could practically jump from one to the next, and steering the ship through them took constant, jaw-droppingly complex adjustments to the sails. Those were made by a few dozen pirates manning ropes on the deck and monkey-climbing in the rigging, all under orders from Pike. He had one hand on the wheel and the other on a sheet of parchment with a detailed list of movements scribbled across it. Every few seconds, he either turned the wheel a few degrees or yelled a fresh order to the men.

  Healy appeared at his side, watched in silence for a moment, then turned and strode to the poop deck ladder. I climbed it after him, and when I reached the top, he was at the stern rail, surveying the Cartager men-of-war with a spyglass.

  Li Homaya’s two massive ships were still in the open water, a mile or two behind us on the starboard side. They were moving toward the coast at a right angle to the Grift, their triple decks of cannon unloading a fearsome barrage every few minutes. But the ammunition was wasted—they were out of range, and their cannonballs plunked harmlessly into our wake.

  Which was why it was such a surprise when the ship suddenly shuddered like it had been hit.

  At first, I thought we’d struck a rock. But when Healy turned and ran to the front of the poop, it wasn’t Pike he stared down at for an explanation—it was Spiggs, who was amidships at the starboard deck rail. Next to Spiggs, a pirate was lowering a rope over the side of the ship.

  Healy, Spiggs, and Pike all stared at the pirate with the rope like he was the most important person on the ship. I spent a few seconds staring stupidly at him before I realized he was using the rope to check the depth of the water.

  He was pulling up the rope when the lookout called down from the crow’s nest.

  “She’s following!”

  I followed Healy’s gaze back behind us. The first of the Cartager men-of-war was turning her bow in our direction. Li Homaya had taken the bait and was headed into the Fangs after us.

  Healy didn’t spend more than half a second taking it in before he turned back to Spiggs and the pirate with the rope. It was lying limp across the pirate’s hands, and Spiggs was staring at it like it was a corpse.

  He looked up at Healy.

  “Thirteen,” he called out.

  My uncle sucked in his breath, making a hissing sound through his teeth.

  “Thirteen’s bad?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “It’s quite a bit worse than bad.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Low Tide

  MY UNCLE WAS SHOUTING orders even before he’d reached the bottom of the quarterdeck ladder.

  “Four crews to the deck! Run a kedge! Nonessentials overboard! EGBERT!”

  “Right here.”

  He turned and grabbed me by both shoulders. “Find the third mate. Tell him to ax the barrels. Then—”

  “‘Ask the barrels?’”

  “Ax!” He made a chopping motion with the flat of his hand. “Ax the barrels! Then tell the carpenter I need a hole in the gun deck, starboard at the fore, wide enough to pass a cannon! GO!”

  I ran to find Ismail, repeating the orders to myself as I went and trying not to worry over what they meant.

  I found him on the companionway, helping two pirates haul a replacement sail up from the hold.

  “Captain says to ax the barrels!”

  Ismail’s eyes widened with concern. He left the sail to the others and ran back down into the hold. I followed him.

  Quint was still on Kira’s back, supervising a group of pirates who were hammering planks into the hull to shore up the still-leaking patch. When I relayed Healy’s order about the hole in the gun deck, Quint’s eyes grew even wider than Ismail’s.

  As he opened his mouth, I heard a loud shhhunk! behind me. I turned to see Ismail and a second pirate swinging axes at a pair of water barrels atop the stack. One barrel was already busted open, and a second broke apart as I watched, sending a flood of water to the deck.

  I must have looked stunned, because I heard Quint behind me.

  “Fastest way to dump the weight,” he explained. “Bust the barrels, draw the water out with the pump and the buckets. Now quit gapin’ and fetch two saws to the gun deck.”

  As Kira ran Quint upstairs, I grabbed the saws from the carpenter’s room. By the time I left the hole, half its barrels had been split open, and the water level was a foot higher.

  Five minutes later, two pirates had sawed halfway through a four-foot-wide hole in the forward gun deck, Kira was ferrying Quint back down to the hold, and I was on my way up to Healy for more instructions.

  When I reached the deck, a lifeboat was being lowered over the side, with five men and a massive six-foot anchor inside it. My uncle was leaning over the deck rail, calling orders to the men turning the crank of the davit that lowered the boat.

  “Hold . . . hold . . . wider . . . away!”

  The lifeboat touched the water, and the men in it unhooked themselves from the davit ropes and began to row furiously, moving parallel to the Grift and dodging the sharp outcroppings of the Fangs as they went.

  There was a fat rope running from the giant anchor back into the Grift’s bow. I couldn’t understand the point of rowing away with our anchor, but there was no time to stop someone and ask.

  Healy headed back toward Pike, who was still at the wheel. As I followed him, I passed a line of pirates staggering up the companionway steps, loaded down with heavy chests and kegs to throw over the deck rails and into the sea.

  Nonessentials overboard . . . They were tossing out everything that wasn’t tied down.

  “Short-Ears’ struck! Taking on water!” bellowed a lookout from the crow’s nest.

  Healy sprang up the ladder to the poop deck.

  The two men-of-war were a mile behind us, weaving in single file through the Fangs. The gray sky was beginning to mist, shrouding them both in a haze. But even without the spyglass my uncle held to his good eye, I could tell the second ship was listing badly.

  It wasn’t going to be above water for much longer. The jagged rocks of the Fangs had done their job on at least one of our enemies.

  But the nearer one was still upright and coming at us. I saw muzzle flashes blink from two of her forward ports, and I hit the deck before I could remind myself not to do that.

  A moment later, I heard the boom, followed by my uncle’s voice.

  “No need—they’re a hundred yards out of range. Is the hole cut in the gun deck?”

  “Should be,” I said.

  “Tell the gunner to ready his oars. And have the third mate move six cannon forward and stand by.”

  I ran off again and delivered both messages to the gun deck. Instantly, half the men on the deck began to pull the long, unwieldy oars from their ceiling racks and maneuver them out the gun ports, while the other half started hauling five-thousand-pound cannon on ropes from the middle of the ship to the freshly cut hole in the forward hull.

  Either job alone would have been complicated enough. Trying to do both at once was near madness. As I watched, one pirate caught an oar in the face, shattering his jaw, and two more got knocked head over heels when the back of an oar swung around and hit them from behind. When they fell, they lost their grip on the ropes, and their cannon careened out of control, skidding across the deck and crushing a man’s leg.

  The only men on the whole deck who weren’t tripping over each other were the four sweat-drenched pirates at the chain pump, furiously cranking water up and out of the hold.

  But by the time my uncle descended the steps, his men had somehow managed
to get both jobs done. The oars were in position, six on each side sticking out the middle gun ports, with four men manning each oar. And half a dozen cannon were lined up at the forward hole.

  “Ready!” the gunner called out.

  “When the time comes,” my uncle told him, “dig in and punt.”

  Just then, the ship gave a terrible lurch, hurling everyone forward. I lost my footing and fell to the deck.

  The moment of ominous silence that followed told me exactly what had happened.

  We’d run aground.

  “SEND THE CANNON OVER!” Healy yelled to Ismail’s crews, and the six men closest to the hole rolled their giant weapon over the edge and into the open air, where it vanished in an instant.

  “PREP ANOTHER SIX!” Healy yelled as the second cannon rolled forward.

  “PUNT THE OARS!” the gunner was yelling at his men, who were raising their oar handles at such a sharp angle that several of them struck the ceiling.

  “FIRE THE AFT CANNON!” Healy yelled. A moment later, a pair of cannon thundered from the rear of the ship.

  There was an answering boom as the Cartager cannon returned fire.

  I felt the deck rumble as a third cannon rolled through the forward hole, plummeting out of sight.

  The rowers had gotten their oars dug into the sea bottom and were straining against them, trying to prod the ship forward.

  The chain pump was cranking so fast it was a blur, the faces of the men on it bright red and glistening.

  A fourth cannon went out the side.

  The pirates on the oars were putting all their weight against them, grunting from the effort. There was a loud crack as one oar snapped, sending its rowers sprawling.

  “ALL SPARES ON DECK!” my uncle yelled. Then he grabbed my arm. “Go below and spread the word: all spares on deck for the kedge!”

  He ran up. I ran down.

  I had no idea what a kedge was, but as I spread the word through the lower decks, every man who wasn’t trying to keep seawater out of the hold ran for the weather deck.