Wake of the Bloody Angel

Chapter Twenty-three

I crawled over the rail and fell limp to the deck. No one offered to help me up. I heard shouted orders and acknowledgments, and felt the thudding of urgent feet through the deck’s wood. Finally Greaves knelt beside me and said, “Do you need the doctor?”

“No,” I croaked, and pushed myself up with my good arm.

Greaves helped me to my feet. “Are we going after them?” “Aye, sir. The captain is-”

I shrugged off Greaves’s concern and rushed astern, dodging the sailors hurrying to their tasks. The fake fallen sail had been cut away, and the false crates dumped overboard. Clift stood at the wheel, but instead of watching the departing ship, his eyes were on Estella at the foremast crosstrees. Greaves strode about, directing the lowering and trimming of sails, all of which filled with wind. Yet the Bloody Angel was leaving us behind despite our having every bit of canvas deployed.

“Still under full sail!” Estella called down. “Ten knots, maybe twelve!”

“Steady as she goes,” Clift ordered, and Greaves repeated it. The captain looked at me grimly and said, “That didn’t go as planned, did it?”

“Sometimes it doesn’t,” I agreed. The Bloody Angel ’s wake sparkled in the sun.

“We’ve got seventeen of their men dead or captured below, and by best count, twelve of ours remain on the Bloody Angel.” He nodded at my shoulder. “And you’re hurt.”

“It’s a scratch.” I clenched my fists helplessly. “And correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t they getting away?”

He smiled. “You had your shot, Mr. LaCrosse. Now just sit back and enjoy mine.”

I wanted to punch that smirk from his tanned face, but I reminded myself I wasn’t really angry at him. And besides, he was right. My plan hadn’t worked; hopefully, his would.

Like the Bloody Angel, the Red Cow was soon running under all its canvas, but the other ship rapidly pulled ahead. No one seemed concerned with this, least of all Clift, who serenely steered his ship and frequently checked with Estella above us. The Cow seemed to be straining against something, and even with my limited nautical knowledge, I realized she ought to be going faster.

“How fast are we going?” I asked Greaves.

“About four knots,” he said with no concern.

I said to Clift, “Is something wrong? Shouldn’t we-?”

He nodded brusquely toward the rear of the ship. I looked over the rail and was astounded: the barrels I’d previously seen tied to the stern now dragged behind us, slowing us to a crawl no matter how many sails we deployed. Each barrel was connected by a rope to a central metal ring, which a single thick cable bound to the ship. I started to demand an explanation; then my weary brain comprehended it. It was a hell of a plan if the Angel fell for it.

Greaves asked quietly, “Did you happen to see the situation surrounding Mr. Seaton on the other ship before you disembarked?”

“He was holding his own. I got the feeling he’s done this before.”

“Oh, aye, he was once a madman with a cutlass. But he hasn’t fought in a boarding action in years.”

“Really?” I said in surprise. “Why did he volunteer, then?”

He shrugged. “No way of knowing. He’s a mystery, Mr. Seaton is.”

Before I could pursue this, Jane thunked her way across the deck on her new crutch. One leg of her trousers was cut away to reveal her ban daged thigh. The effort showed in her face, but when she reached me, she acted as if nothing were unusual. “I take it they didn’t roll over and play dead.”

“No. Most of the boarding party is still on the other ship.”

“Was it Marteen?”

“Yeah. And a crew of white-haired old water dogs.”

“What about Black Edward?”

“I didn’t have time to ask.”

She nodded at my shoulder. “You’re cut.”

“I’ve had worse. I’ve had worse on that shoulder, even.”

“Uh-huh. Tomorrow I’m going to remind you that you said that.”

“Ahoy, below!” Estella cried. “She’s trimming sail!” The Bloody Angel didn’t look any different to me, but her words prompted the crew to leap into renewed action and Clift to order, “Right, lads! Run out the flying jib and cut loose the drag!”

He grinned devilishly at us. “I’d hang on to something if I were you, friends.”

Jane laughed, backed up to the mainsail shrouds, and threaded her arm through the netting. I did likewise.

There was a slight jolt as a flying jib billowed out onto the bowsprit. Since both the sail and the bowsprit were extra long, the ship strained even harder against the barrels holding it back. Then I heard a pair of sharp thwock s as someone cut through the rope that bound the barrels to the ship.

Freed of the drag, we surged forward. The change knocked me back against Jane. As she pushed me upright, she said, “Careful, or I’ll tell that redhead of yours that you were all over me.” When I got my balance and could again look ahead, the Bloody Angel was twice as close as she’d been before. We were slicing through the waves, and she didn’t seem to notice.

“Boarding party, ready weapons!” Greaves called. He handed me a sword. “Care to join us, Mr. LaCrosse?”

“I think I can clear my calendar,” I said. I looked back at Jane. “You’ll be okay?”

“Don’t make me smack you,” she fired back.

“Remember, take the captain alive!” Clift yelled to the massing fighters. “If you don’t, I’ll see to it no one gets a shred of prize money for this whole voyage. That’s no bilgewater, lads, see if I don’t!”

It seemed to take no time for the Red Cow to overtake the Bloody Angel. Marteen’s ship frantically tried to get back under way, but the crew wasn’t nearly so sharp or well-trained as ours, and so it became a confused mess of people running through the riggings and scuttling up and down shrouds. The Cow ’s ballistae had been returned to their slots on deck, and we fired grapples as we slowed and pulled alongside. The crews wound the lines, and once again our hulls crunched together. We vaulted the rail and started hacking.

This time it was a rout. Marteen’s crew was panicked, terrified, and exhausted. They barely put up a fight despite his exhortations and threats from the quarterdeck. They no longer seemed like pirates, but tired old men and women exhausted by the day’s battle. If this was the limit of their endurance, it explained why he needed his elaborate ghostship trap.

At last, Marteen gave up and ducked down the passageway toward his cabin. I pursued him, kicked in the door, and found him about to crawl out the stern window, although where he thought he’d go from there, I couldn’t imagine. I leveled my sword at him despite my hurt shoulder and said, “Right there, Marteen. Your crew is worn out and needs a nap. You got nowhere to go.”

He froze, halfway in and out. He looked at the sea below, where some of his men already floated facedown, then back at me. The fight continued on deck, but it was all one-sided and he knew it.

“You’ll get more mercy from me than from the sharks,” I said. “But not if you keep me waiting.”

He pulled in his leg, tossed his sword on the floor at my feet, and said, “I saw you go over the side back there. How did you survive?”

“I can fly. Now, put your hands on your head and sit down.”

He did so, in the chair behind the captain’s desk. I knew that, like me, he probably had a weapon or two hidden on him, but at the moment they did him no good. We could search him more thoroughly once we had him bound and secured on the Cow.

“So Edward Tew’s Bloody Angel didn’t sink after all,” I said.

He laughed. The genuine kind, both mocking and amused. “I didn’t think you had the look of the sea about you, and now I know it for sure. Do you not think more than one ship might bear the same name? Especially if that name is so well known, men still tremble at its mention?”

“Then you were the lone survivor of the original Bloody Angel ’s sinking.”

Again, he threw back his head and laughed.

Through clenched teeth, I said, “I’m trying to find Black Edward for an old girlfriend. She just wants to know what really happened to him. If he’s dead, just tell me.”

Before he could answer, if he was even going to, Clift and three more sailors burst breathlessly through the door. One of them was Duncan Tew, bedraggled but apparently unhurt. They stopped when they saw me and Marteen. Clift put away his sword, smiled, and said, “So this is the fool who thought he could outrun the Red Cow. ”

“I could’ve if you’d played fair,” Marteen said.

“To play fair with your crew, I’d have to wait until I was thirty years older,” Clift said, then saw something. “Now, what in the wide ocean do you need all these for?”

I followed his gaze. Along the wall rose a waist-high stack of small crates and boxes, all of varying sizes but unmistakably of the same purpose: medical kits stolen from the various ghost ships.

“Those?” Marteen sneered. “We fuck so many women, we’re worried our dicks will fall off.”

“If your bunch can get two hard-ons among the lot of them, I’d be surprised,” Clift said. The noise of battle on deck had faded to random sword clashes and groans. “Gentleman, please thoroughly bind Captain Marteen and make sure he doesn’t have anything sharp and nasty hidden about his person. Then take him to my dayroom and secure him to something solid. We’ll be along to question him shortly.”

Duncan and the other two sailors moved to obey. Marteen put up no resistance, but he said, “I don’t care what you do to me, I’ll never give up Black Edward’s treasure. You’re wasting your time and mine.”

“Perhaps my ship’s surgeon just intends to use you for dissection,” Clift said. “Ponder on that.” Marteen was frog-marched out of his cabin. Clift turned to me and said quietly, “Again with the treasure you keep denying you’re after.”

I sighed. I was suddenly so tired, I didn’t care if he believed me or not. “Look, if you want my help with the interrogation, we better get to it before I pass out.”

“Oh, I think I’ll be wanting to keep an even closer eye on you,” he said, then turned and strode from the cabin. It took all my strength to follow.