Gene Wolfe - Pirate Freedom

Michet started ordering Azuka to cut him loose right about then. She did not pay any attention, and neither did I. I was too busy rubbing my hands.

By the time my fingers worked again, she and Jarden were whispering, which made it easy to locate them. I did, slid my hand down her arm quick to locate my dagger, and took it.

"You-you rital!" I suppose she had picked that one up from Lesage, along with the rest of her French.

"That's pronounced wop," I told her. "This is my dagger and I took it back, that's all. You can be mad at me, but I'm not mad at you. I owe you a lot. Everybody here does."

That got the rest of them to begging for somebody to cut them loose, too.

She was quiet for a minute, which gave me time to start wondering what else she might have.

Jarden said, "Give me the knife. I will free my men."

"I'll do it," I told him. I found somebody and started in. It was not Michet, but I am not sure who it was. Louie the Bull, maybe.

Azuka said, "You're going to fight the Spanish?"

"Sure," I said. "How did you get down here, and how did you get my dagger?"

"You will be angry, Chris."

"Try me. I'd still be tied up if it weren't for you. Did one of the Spaniards give it to you?"

"I took it from you when you would not let me go in. I saw how some men were looking at me. You would not be with me. Neither would Paul. I left the sheath in your belt and took the knife. When the Spanish came, you struck me so that I would not cry and I hid here."

"I'm sorry I slapped you," I said.

"Sometime I will slap you. Or slap your child, the child I shall bear. How are we to get out?"

"I don't know. Jarden, are you untying somebody?"

"Aye, Captain. Is Azuka mine or yours?"

"Yours, if you want her. Have you any idea what the cargo is?"

"Chain, what I have seen of it. I had only a moment to look, you understand."

Somebody said, "It is in crates, Captain."

"Marked chain?"

"I broke one open," Jarden said. "It was chain."

Somebody growled, "We can fight with chain."

One of the others said, "We should break open more. There may be other things."

"I'm for that," I told him. Groping in the direction of his voice, I touched his face. He turned, and I put the dagger blade to work on his ropes. That dagger was pretty sharp, but the ropes were tough and tarred. Some people have said since that I am cracked on sharpening knives and cutlasses. Maybe it is true. If it is, I got cracked when I cut the Magdelena's anchor cable and got darn near broken down in Rosa's hold.

It was easy to say we ought to open more crates. But without tools, that was not so easy. After a few crates we found some tools, though. There were saws and hammers and even a couple of hatchets. And brackets and those iron doodads with spikes you stick candles on. It was ironware, in other words. Some of it was useful and some not.

The Spanish had battened down the aft hatch good, but the forward hatch was pretty sloppy. Three men pushing on the hatch cover got it up far enough that we could get at the ropes with saws. The problem was that the boat was on top of it, and we were afraid it would make a racket when we moved the cover. We took it slow and careful, and no one heard us-or if they did, they did not think anything was wrong. It was dark by the time we crawled through the hatch and out from under the boat, and I am pretty sure most of the Spanish prize crew was asleep.

I have never known how many there were, but there were more of them than there were of us, and they had better weapons-ours were hammers and the hatchets, except for me. Mostly I used my dagger, but toward the end I got a handspike. That is a long wooden bar with an iron tip you use for prying. On a lot of ships, handspikes double as capstan bars, too.

When the fight was over, I had the men come up to Jarden and me one at a time. I shook hands with each of them, told them how well they had fought and how much I appreciated everything they had done, and got Antonio to clean out any wounds and bandage them.

Antonio himself was next to last, because he had been busy with a couple of wounded men. I had Simoneau and Yves holding lanterns so he could see what he was doing. I shook his hand like I had everybody else's and told him he was a full member of our crew now, a made man. "If you want or need anything, if you've got any kind of problem, you come to me, capeesh? You'll get a hearing and fair treatment." I was leaning on the handspike when I said that, and to tell the truth I was just about tired enough to fall down without it.

Michet was last. There was a cross of dried blood on his cheek, and that is something I can never forget. I had thought he might give me trouble, but he had his hammer stuck into his belt where he could not get to it with his left hand. I shook hands with him like all the rest, but when I got his I held on. "It's about respect," I told him. "I'm the captain, and to be captain I've got to have respect."

I brought the handspike up and over with my left hand when I said that, and to tell the truth I do not think he even knew it was coming. The first one knocked him down. I think the second one killed him. I used both hands for it.

After that, Jarden took the feet and I took the head, and we threw him over the side. He was not what anybody would call beefy, and weighed down by the hammer in his belt he rode pretty low in the water and was out of sight before long. I would have liked to throw in the handspike, too. It had killed Michet and the Spanish officer, and I felt like it had done enough. But you cannot just pitch things you might need later when you are on a ship, and I did not.

Do I feel bad about offing Michet? Yes, I do, but not as bad as I do about certain other things. To start with he was a pirate. The Spanish would have tried him in about half an hour and hanged him five minutes afterward, and from their standpoint they would have been dead right to do it. At sea, the captain is the only law you have. Sure, Jarden was captain of the Rosa, but he took his orders from me.

I had been hoping the Spanish would settle Michet for me. We lost two or three men to them-I am not sure now exactly how many-but Michet was not one of them. That was just the way the dice came up, and as it turned out he died in the same fight. So what is wrong with that?

But the main thing is that I had to do it. I did not really have a choice. If we had been a regular merchant ship, I could have had him flogged and that would have been plenty. On a pirate ship you cannot get away with flogging people, or much of anything else. I have confessed to erasing Michet and I wish to God it had not been necessary, but He had plucked me out of my own time and plopped me down where He did, and if I were back on the Rosa again, with Michet coming up to shake hands, I would do it over again. I would have to.

Jarden and I flipped a real to see who got to sleep and who had to stand watch, and I won. I told him to wake me up if anything happened, went into the captain's cabin, and sacked out in the bunk the Spanish officer had been sleeping in. It was still warm. Maybe that should have bothered me, and maybe Michet should have. Maybe they did, but I know I was sound asleep almost before I lay down.

Jarden woke me to go on watch. He said, "I did not wish to disturb you, Captain, but there is a large ship to starboard."

"Spanish?"

He shrugged. "Who can say?"

I went up onto the quarterdeck and had a look. It was not as big as the galleon and showed no lights. That was enough to spook me or anybody, and it started bothering me that I had nothing to fight with except my dagger. Then the man at the wheel said, "She has been closing with us since I came on, Captain."

That did it. I grabbed Cicatrice and told him to find all the stuff the Spanish had taken from us. "I want my cutlass," I told him, "and any spare pistols you can round up. Give the rest back to the men who lost them."