Half a cable length. There were not above a dozen men on the victim’s deck. Those working aloft had come back down and, incredibly, were firing at the Vengeance with small arms, as if they wanted to inflame the Brethren more, as if they wanted their own deaths to be as horrible as could be imagined.
Fifty yards and LeRois could feel the excitement like a hot wind sweeping across the Vengeance’s deck. The chanting had crested and broken into disorganized screaming, and the horrible sound rolled toward the victim like surf as the pirates shouted and fired and tensed for the leap across to the dead men’s ship. Halfway up the shrouds men stood on the ratlines,
swinging grappling hooks in small arcs, ready to grab the other vessel in a death grip.
Twenty yards away. LeRois squinted and ran his eyes along the quarterdeck, seeking out the merchantman’s captain, who would be his own to finish off. There was the helmsman, and the quartermaster, and…
LeRois’s scream went up and up in a pitch to a shattering wail of anguish. “Son of a bitch! Son of a bitch!” he screamed. He threw his sword aside and snatched up one of the pistols draped around his neck with a ribbon and fired it blindly at the victim’s quarterdeck. For there, unmistakably, was Malachias Barrett, sword in hand, pacing fore and aft, giving orders with the gestures, the stride, that LeRois knew so well.
He dropped the pistol and snatched up the next, and as he did he waited for the vision to go away, because that was what it was, he knew, a vision, just like those others that had been plaguing him more and more.
But the vision did not go away. It persisted with a tenacity that the others had not shown. LeRois felt the panic rising up in him, burning in his throat, felt the great confidence he had thus far enjoyed draining off. He screamed again and fired off his second gun, willing the specter to disappear.
The puff of smoke from the pistol obscured his view of the quarterdeck, blocking out the unholy vision, and in that instant LeRois realized that the tenor of the Vengeance’s screaming had changed, that the vaporing had turned into something else-anger and fear and defiance.
He shifted his eyes down to the victim’s waist, not fifteen yards off. The gunports were open and the great guns were running out, all at once, run out by what must have been a great many men hiding behind the bulwark.
“Merde…,” LeRois said, and then their prize seemed to explode in a blast of cannon fire. All eight guns erupted at once, blowing columns of flame across the water and filling the air with an unearthly shrieking such that not even the pirates could match.
The big guns fired straight into the densely packed pirates along the rail and the channels, men who had no cover and nowhere to run, and they tore those men to pieces. LeRois saw bodies flung back on the deck and hanging limp in the rigging and draped over the Vengeance’s unmanned cannon.
“God damn you to hell! God damn you!” LeRois screamed, frenzied. A piece of langrage had cut through his sleeve and blood was dripping out of the rent. And more blood, great quantities, was running in red lines down the side of the ship, but that only made him madder still.
“Back in place! Back in place, you sons of whores!” he shouted at his men, and the dazed, stunned pirates, those who could still move, climbed back up on the rail, ready for the leap onto the enemy and the murderous sweep across his decks.
The cloud of smoke rolled away, revealing the unscathed enemy now closer still. The impact of the broadside had slowed the Vengeance’s momentum, but it was building again, sweeping the pirate ship down on her victim.
LeRois could see them desperately reloading the guns, leaning into the gun tackles, hauling them out. Along the rail more men-there seemed to be hundreds of them-took up the curved wooden handles of the falconets and swiveled them around, finding where the Vengeances had bunched together and blasting them with deadly fire.
And Barrett was still there.
“No, no, no! Son of a bastard, no!” LeRois screamed. He felt the hands of despair clasping his throat, choking off his words. He could not be there. He had to go. The vision had to go, to be taken up by the thin air like the times before. He fired on it again, but still it floated in front of him, pale, like a ghost, but moving with that animal intensity that he remembered, could never forget.
“No!”
The big guns fired again, from ten yards away, tearing great sections out of the Vengeance’s rails and rigging, killing more of his men, sending them running, leaping off the rails to the protection of the bulwarks. None of them would run below, for anyone who did would be put to death by the pirate tribe,
but neither would they remain on the rail. Better to die shoulder to shoulder with one’s brethren, and better still not to die at all.
There was no more than five yards between the two ships. Aboard their enemy, the wolf in sheep’s clothing, the men were standing on the rail, screaming, waving cutlasses, ready to board the Vengeance, just as the pirates had been ready to board them a moment before. A grappling hook soared through the air and caught in the shrouds above LeRois’s head. LeRois whipped out his dagger, severed the line.
“Fall off, fall off!” LeRois screamed at the helmsmen who had been shielded from the gunfire by the men on the rails, and without hesitation the helmsmen spun the wheel and the Vengeance’s bow turned away from their intended victim, turned away from the convoy and turned toward the open sea.
LeRois looked down into the waist of his ship. He had seen carnage before, lots of it, but he had never seen anything like that. Men lying in clumps, men crawling uselessly across the deck, men holding their guts to prevent them from spilling out. The vaporing, the triumphant shouts of a conquering tribe, had been replaced with the sobbing and whimpering and pathetic moans of wounded and dying men.
LeRois glanced quickly over his shoulder. The enemy was setting more sail, but it did not matter. The Vengeance had all her canvas already set, and she was a fast ship. She would get away this time. She would be back.
He shifted his gaze back inboard, quickly, blocking all vision of that death ship from his field of view. He glanced around to see that no one was watching him, then closed his eyes and begged God to never allow the vision of Barrett to appear again.
“Stern chase, Captain Marlowe? Captain Marlowe?”
On hearing his name the second time, Marlowe realized he was being addressed. Turned from the sight of the fleeing pirate ship, met the quartermaster’s eye.
“Huh? Beg your pardon?”
“I asked, sir, stern chase? Shall we follow?” The quartermaster jerked his chin in the direction of the battered enemy.
“Oh…” Marlowe looked aloft. The foresail and mainsail were cast off, ready for setting. A gang of men were putting the fore topgallant gear to rights, and another was doing the same to the spritsail topsail. There was no other damage done to the Plymouth Prize beyond that which they had manufactured themselves.
He glanced again at the pirate. The Plymouth Prize could not overhaul them. Nor could they abandon the convoy and go chasing all over the ocean after the bastard. No, they had their duty. They truly did.
“Sir, are you quite all right?” the quartermaster asked with genuine concern.
“Yes, yes, fine, thank you. No, we must rejoin the convoy. Can’t go running off to hell and back after him. I reckon we’ve done for him.”
“Aye, sir,” the quartermaster said, just the faintest note of disappointment in his voice. They were going to let all the plunder that the pirate might have in her hold sail off beyond their reach.
But Marlowe knew, as the quartermaster did not, that the greatest reward of all would be if that ship were to sail off and never return.