Blow Me Down (23 page)

“Morning, Bas.” The raven, who stood perched hopefully on the edge of Bas’s earthenware bowl, squawked and flapped his wings at me. “Morning Bran. Bas, don’t let him eat off your spoon. You’ll get worms or something. Porridge again, eh? Well, we have a big day ahead of us. Let’s see if we can’t round up something a little more substantial.”

By the time I’d cooked up some eggs and fried ham and toasted half a loaf of bread while packing the other half in a basket with cheese, fruit, and some dried meat that looked like desiccated drowning victims’ flesh (Bas’s opinion) but tasted just like jerky, the sky was beginning to lighten and the square was coming alive.

“Eat up; then I need you to go round up the crew. Have them get the
Wench
ready for sailing.”

Bas’s eyes lit up as he chewed a huge mouthful of eggs and ham. “We be goin’ into the blockade, then?”

“Yup. Just as soon as I get the ship stocked.” I pulled a small leather pouch open and dug the eight silver coins from it, holding out my palm so Bas could see. “Look, reales! Bart gave them to me to stock my ship for the blockade.”

“Stock it with what?” Bas asked, crumbling up toast and pushing his plate over to where Bran hopped impatiently. The bird had almost as big an appetite as Bas did.

“Shot mostly. Cannonballs and wadding and a couple of kegs of powder. Oh, and Bart said to get some rum, too. I suppose I’d better bring along some ale for those of us who aren’t grog drinkers.”

Bas’s eyes lit up at the mention of cannons, but I left before he could express his hopes concerning cannon fire, with particular regards to its more gruesome aspects.

The square was bustling with people, even at that predawn hour—the women and children holding torches and lanterns and watching with big eyes from the doorways as the men hauled supplies down to the dock to stock the ships being readied for the blockade. I squinted at the harbor but couldn’t see anything in the blackness. Even so, I had a feeling Corbin’s fleet was out there somewhere. I wondered whether Corbin had gone home to Mongoose first or had just sailed his ship into the blockade line. Regardless, they were coming, and I needed to get ready.

“Ahoy, me hearties,” I called out a quarter hour later as I clambered up the wooden plank leading onto my ship. “Pru and Imp, the supplies are on a cart on the dock—please move them onto the ship. Tar, make ready to sail. Bas . . . er . . . do something cabin boyish. I just need to get final orders from Pangloss, and we’ll be on our way.”

The crew didn’t jump to as I had hoped they would, but the twins shambled off with a couple of lanterns to bring the supplies on board, while Tar muttered sourly as he made ready with the lines.

I hurried off to find the first mate. He stood at the far end of the dock, calling orders to the crew preparing his ship. The other officers were doing the same. Supply carts ran back and forth from the town’s shops to the ships, casting odd, twisting shadows in the flickering torchlight, turning the normally quiet dock into a madhouse of activity.

I wound my way through the people, carters’ donkeys, and barrels of gunpowder.

“Reporting for duty,” I said, saluting Pangloss smartly. He nodded to me, signaling he’d be with me in a minute. I used the time to chat up a few carters I hadn’t spoken to before, but none of them struck me at all as anything but computer characters.

“Amy, ye look fit and hale today,” Pangloss said, waving me over to him. “Are ye ready for the action ye’ll see, lass?”

“Absolutely,” I said, meeting his questioning gaze. “Any last-minute instructions?”

“None other than we’ll want ye to be concentratin’ yer efforts on the
Java Guru
.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“
Java Guru
. It be the name of Black Corbin’s flagship. We didn’t know which ship he’d be usin’, but there’s no mistakin’ the
Guru
. She be painted the ungodly colors of red and black.” He handed me a spyglass, pointing toward the opening of the harbor. I opened the glass, squinting through it to look out. There wasn’t much light at all, but beyond the arms of the harbor, a dark silhouette became visible against the slightly lighter horizon. A flash of light high up on the silhouette gave me a moment’s vision of a mast flying a red flag.

“Sounds very distinctive,” I said. “So you want me to shoot her up? She looks big.”

“Aye, she’s a barque.”

“Ugh. That could blow me out of the water.”

“If ye get broadside to her, aye, she could. But ye won’t, now, will ye, lass?” He beetled his eyebrows meaningfully at me.

“I guess not.”

“Ye need to be sailin’ now, before it gets light enough for them to see that ye’re comin’ from the island. Hug the shore until ye get to the harbor entrance, then turn leeward and catch up at the tail of the blockade line.”

“Don’t you think someone will see me?” I asked, hesitant.

“Nay. At the time ye’re joinin’ up to their rear, I’ll be at the head, firin’ off a few shots to keep their attention forward. Anyone who notices ye sailin’ up behind ’em will see ye flyin’ Corbin’s flag and think ye’re a straggler who just caught up. From there, ye can move up to the heart of the blockade—the flagship.”

I handed Pangloss back the glass, worrying my lower lip as I tried to make a decision about what I was going to do. Harming Corbin was out of the question. But if I blithely sailed into the blockade and didn’t do anything, it might gack the scenario up. The key, I decided as I made my way back to my ship, was to fire a lot but miss Corbin’s ships entirely. Bart would just put down my misses to bad aim, yet I would be doing my part to push the game play forward.

And there was the little matter of running supplies back to the town. I had yet to figure out a way to explain how I was able to bring in supplies, but I was confident I’d think of something when the time came.

“Weigh anchor,” I ordered when I returned to my ship, pleased to see that the supplies had been loaded and properly stowed. “We’re going to stay close to the shore, so everyone needs to keep an eye out for problems. Once we clear the harbor, we’ll join up with the blockade.”

Four sets of surprised eyes turned on me.

“We’ll be undercover. Like a nautical version of James Bond,” I told my men. They didn’t even blink, just stared at me with identical blank looks. I sighed to myself and gestured them to their tasks. “Just get us going. We need to be in the blockade before it gets light enough for them to see us clearly. Douse those lanterns. We need to be running silent and dark, like a particularly clever and saucy sort of deadly shark.”

I hummed a bit of the
Jaws
theme as my ship slipped away from the noise and mayhem of the dock. I climbed up to my favorite spot—the crow’s nest—to watch for trouble as we sailed as close to shore as possible without grounding. Pangloss must have been watching for me, for when we started around the far arm of the harbor and I ordered the ship to turn toward the last silhouette in a long line of ships, Pangloss’s ship started firing its guns.

“There’s our distraction,” I said to Bas, who had joined me in the crow’s nest. He had sharp eyes and seemed to see better in the dim light than I did. As we joined the tail of the blockade, I eyed the dark line of ships becoming more and more visible with each minute. “How many ships do you count?”

Bran squawked a protest as Bas scrambled up to the railing and leaned forward out of the crow’s nest, as if a few extra inches would help him see better. I grabbed the back of his shirt to make sure he didn’t tumble to the deck below, relieved when he hopped back down onto the circular platform with me.

“Eleven.”

I sighed. That’s the number I’d counted, as well, which meant Bart’s crew was outnumbered almost three to one.

“If I really wanted to end the blockade quickly, I could just fill Corbin’s ships full of lead, but that would be unforgiveable of me. I’ll just give them a harmless show, instead,” I said to myself. Bas looked at me in surprise. “Yarr! I mean, I would if we weren’t bloodthirsty, gore-lovin’ pirates! Kill! Maim! Destroy! And all that jazz.”

He smiled in utter delight.

The sky was turning to a slate gray now, indicating the sun’s imminent arrival. As my sloop gained speed, it passed the hindmost ship, a blue and white sloop bearing the name
Katrin’s Loss
. I watched nervously as we passed, braced and ready to order the ship to turn around if there was any outcry at our sudden arrival, but evidently my saucy ship’s distinctive—and well-known—appearance coupled with Corbin’s flag was the passport I needed.

“What’s goin’ to be happenin’ now?” Bas asked, scratching his head with the pointy tip of his hook.

“Don’t scratch with that thing—you don’t know where it’s been,” I said absently, watching carefully as we sailed past a huge war frigate, the sides of which positively bristled with guns. “What’s going to happen now is we’re going to mosey up to the flagship all casual-like, and once we get close enough to do some damage, Pangloss and the other officers are going to engage the ships so we can go in with all guns blazing. The first couple of ships should be caught in the cross fire.”

“Ah,” he said, looking as inscrutable as only an eight-year-old could.

As we passed ship after ship, no one gave us a second look. The foremost blockade warships were dropping anchor in a line-of-ship position that kept their broadsides toward the harbor, so they’d be able to fire on any ship approaching from the island. Pangloss and the others were going to have their work cut out for them—even though I’d been told that cannon fire was remarkably inaccurate at long range, they’d have to get in close enough to have their own guns do good, leaving themselves at risk.

Only three ships separated us from the flagship, which I could now see was painted red and black.

“Corbin has a thing for brightly painted ships, it seems,” I said. We were just passing a yellow-and-black sloop—which I was amused to see was named
Bumblebee Tuna
—when all hell broke out.

Bart’s officers, who had massed at the entrance of the harbor just out of the range of the blockade guns, suddenly all came to life and started to move toward the line of ships, directly at us.

“Hey!” I shouted, startled as the ships turned broadsides to us. I could hear the shouts of captains ordering their guns loaded as the blockade ships readied themselves for battle. “They’re not supposed to be doing that yet! I’m not in position!”

I jumped up and down and waved my hand at the foremost of Bart’s ships to try to get the captains’ attention, but either they didn’t notice me or they didn’t care that I was directly in the line of their fire. Their ships started turning so their guns were aimed right at the middle third of the blockade line.

And us.

“Prudence,” I yelled down to the deck where my men were gazing with wary eyes at the action, “fire off one of the guns, but not toward any ship. I don’t want to hit anyone; I just want to warn Pangloss that I’m not in place yet. Maybe he can’t see us.”

Bas looked at me like I was deranged.

I shrugged. “It’s that, or he’s decided to sacrifice us, and much as I love this ship, I have absolutely
no
intention of going down with her.”

The midrange boom of my ship’s cannon firing echoed off the island in the relatively quiet morning air, the splash of the cannonball as it hit the water almost as loud. I swear nature herself held her breath for a moment to see what the response would be.

We didn’t have long to wait. Pangloss’s big ship had completed her turn, and from the height of the crow’s nest I could see the guns being wheeled out to the portholes. I was between two blockade ships—and dead in the aim of his guns.

“Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!” I yelled, waving my arms for a moment before scrambling down to the deck. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” I yelled at my crew. I flung myself at a line that bound one of the sails. “Quickly, we need warp speed.
Right now
!”

A thunderous
boom
blasted through the morning air, a horrible whistling noise accompanying the cannonball as it sailed inches from the bow of my ship. Four other booms sounded as the other officers in Bart’s crew opened fire, immediately followed by deep bass responses from the larger blockade ships.

“Should we fire?” Tar asked, frantically lashing down a line.

I looked out at Pangloss’s ship and hesitated. Had he just made an honest mistake, or had he, for some reason unbeknownst to me, decided I was the enemy? “No. Let’s just get out of the line of fire.”

Before we moved twenty feet, Pangloss opened fire on us, seriously opened fire, blasting my beautiful ship with a volley that left the ship—and me—reeling in horror. My crew shouted conflicting orders to each other as they dodged debris from the blasts.

“Stay out of the way,” I yelled helplessly, ducking as the top of the mast was blown to smithereens, one of the sails dropping to the deck with a loud, wet slap. “Get down flat on the deck.”

“Should we fire?” Tar asked again.

“No time now,” I yelled back. “How badly is she damaged?”

“We’re takin’ in water somethin’ terrible, and there’s a hole ye could crawl through on the port side. We’ve lost part of the mast, but she can sail. Just barely,” he answered. “If they was to stop now, we could limp back to the island.”

“Try to get that sail back up,” I told him. “What else can we do to build speed?”

“Lighten the ship,” he said before scurrying off to help Impulsive with the line.

“Right, everything heavy overboard,” I called out, wrestling with a nearby cask of rum that was used to make grog.

“Not the rum, not the rum!” Prudence yelled, rushing over to wrest the cask out of my arms.

“Too late,” I said, my stomach dropping. On Pangloss’s ship, the cannons had been reloaded and were being shoved out the portholes. “This doesn’t look good.”