As Keelin’s boots hit the wood of the pier he stopped to take in the chaos that was unfolding before him. One ship was a mess of burning debris out in the bay, and by the looks of things it had taken a pier with it. Bloodied bodies had been dragged up out of the surf and now lay upon the beach, draining red back into the lapping waves. Some looked still alive, but just as many looked just as dead. One corpse was missing both legs and an arm; the sight made him sick to his stomach.
Folk were crowding the remaining piers and shouting at the pirates manning the dinghies. Some of those shouts were pleas, some threats, some bribes, and some were simply people begging for their lives. It was hard for even the stoniest of pirate hearts not to be moved by a woman with three young daughters begging for men to ferry them to safety.
Keelin spotted a couple of dinghies in the custody of his own crew, and they didn’t appear to be letting anyone on board. They were moored dangerously close to the smouldering wreckage that had, until very recently, been a ship.
“Cap’n?” Keelin spotted the owner of the voice, and pushed through a few people to find Feather looking paler than the ghost fish that haunted the shores of Brie Isle at night. The lad was barely more than a boy, but in that moment he was looking all his years and a dozen more besides.
“Yanic sent me ta find you, Cap’n,” Feather shouted over the crowd.
“What do we do?” cried one of the folk who had followed Keelin from Sev’relain.
“We need to get on a ship,” shouted another.
“Quiet!” Keelin roared in his best captain’s voice. There were times when a bit of stern discipline was needed, and this seemed like one of them. Blind panic would likely get them nowhere but drinking seawater at this point. Some of the folk moved off to find other boats, though most stayed behind and let Keelin speak. “Where’s Yanic?”
Feather pointed towards one of the piers, but Keelin couldn’t see through the crowd of people. “He’s hurt bad, Cap’n.”
“Shit. Get to the boats, Feather. Tell the boys to start letting folk on but not so many it’ll sink ’em, and nobody that’s causing a panic. We’re taking people on board The Phoenix.”
“Aye, Cap’n,” Feather shouted, and darted away. The lad always seemed to be calmer with orders.
“Captain Stillwater,” the bald guard from Loke’s estate said calmly. He was red in the cheeks from his run through Sev’relain but seemed no worse for it. “I think I can be of use to you.”
Keelin appraised the man quickly. He was tall and wiry and looked like he knew his way around a fight, but kept himself well groomed. “What’s your name?”
“Kebble Salt.”
“You know how to sail?”
“I’m a quick learner.”
“You know how to use that thing?” Keelin gestured at the rifle slung over Kebble’s shoulder.
“Better than any man alive.”
“We’ll see. Follow me and you’ll get a seat.” That prompted a chorus of similar claims from the folk surrounding them. Keelin ignored them all. He started pushing through the crowd towards his crew and his longboats.
Halfway along the pier Keelin found his first mate. Yanic left a bloody mess of a body, trampled and kicked and pushed to the side of the decking. His corpse had got tangled with one of the support posts and he lay half in the water. Keelin stopped and stared down at the thing that had been his oldest and closest friend. Yanic’s left side was riddled with wooden splinters and deep cuts, and he looked as though he was wearing more blood on the outside than in. His face had obviously been kicked by folk trying to get along the pier, and white skull was showing through the skin in more than one place.
Keelin felt the world recede around him. He stood still and silent in the chaos as people jostled against his back to get past.
Drawing in a deep breath and letting it out in a slow sigh, Keelin closed his eyes. He drew in another breath.
“Anyone still between me and my boats when I turn around gets to die!” It wasn’t the most poetic of threats, but he delivered it with enough volume to drive his point home.
When he opened his eyes and turned around, he found the people on the pier had crowded to the sides to create a narrow channel down the middle of the already cramped walkway. Some folk had suffered for the threat and were now taking a dip in the warm waters of the bay. A few stragglers still loitered in the newly created path, so Kebble Salt moved along in front of Keelin to shove them out of the way. Keelin, his face a grim mask of anger, stormed along the pier to his crew and his boats.
The members of Keelin’s crew manning the nearest boat waited quietly while he leapt down from the pier. Even Smithe seemed to think better than to comment. Kebble Salt followed Keelin into the boat, bringing the complement up to sixteen. The boats could hold twenty at a squeeze, and eight of those were required on the oars. They would ferry as many of the townsfolk as they could out to The Phoenix, but there simply wasn’t enough space to save them all.
“Twenty people per boat,” Keelin said loudly to the waiting crowd. He looked back towards the town. Much of it was now on fire, and the screams of the dying made it an eerie picture. “Anyone pushing gets left behind. Anyone refusing to dump their belongings gets left behind. Anyone so much as argues with a member of my crew, they get left behind. We’ll send back as many boats as we can, but we ain’t got time to ferry you all – so any can swim, I suggest you jump in and start paddling.” He pointed towards The Phoenix. “That there is my boat and your salvation. It ain’t big enough for you all, but we’ll take on as many as we can.”
“Is it Sarth?” a woman shouted from the crowd. “Drake said they’d be coming.”
“Aye.” Keelin nodded. “It’s Sarth.” He turned to his crew in the longboat. “Push off and put your backs to it.”
As the boat pushed away from the pier, Keelin witnessed many of those gathered surge forwards towards The Phoenix’s second boat. Some of the rest took his suggestion to heart and dove into the water to swim to his ship.
“Can’t save them all. Can’t feed them all,” Smithe said as he and the other seven pirates started rowing. Keelin hated to admit it, but the man was right about that. The Phoenix had limited supplies, and taking on a bunch of refugees was going to drain them quickly. They’d need to find another port soon, and he doubted he’d receive a warm welcome back at Fango.
“What the fuck is happenin’, Captan?” Morley said before Keelin’s boots had even hit the deck.
Keelin leapt over the port side railing and stepped away for the others to follow him up. “Sarth is attacking…”
“Did they attack your face?” Morley interrupted.
“No. This was… uh… something else. We’re taking on people, as many as can make it. As many as we can fit. Anything not edible or sharp enough to kill a man goes over the side.”
“You want us to dump the loot?” asked one of the nearby pirates. Keelin found himself with quite an audience, and it was growing every moment as more of his crew came to find out what was happening.
“Yes. To make room for those coming aboard.”
There was a grumble from a few of those gathered, but it was Smithe who spoke up as he finished the climb. “That there’s our earnings,” the man all but spat. “Ain’t right to throw it overboard. Ain’t your choice neither.”
Keelin rounded on the man, lamenting the fact that Smithe was a couple of inches taller than him. “Long as this is my ship, it is my choice, and I just made it. Good?”