Paul Kearney: This Forsaken Earth

“Bring up the prisoners,” Rol ordered.

The master-at-arms darted below. There were muffled shouts and oaths from belowdecks, a cry of pain.

“On deck there!” the lookout bellowed from the foretop. “There she lies, anchored behind the headland dead ahead!”

“Two fathom,” the leadsman called. Twelve feet of water under their keel.

“All hands to take in sail,” Rol said. “Gallico, prepare to back topsails.”

“About bloody time.”

They staggered as the ship touched ground under them, the keel grating on rock with a groan that reverberated through the very soles of their feet.

“Let go the kedge!” Rol shouted, and at once Elias and his party hacked through the cable suspending the anchor aft. The iron kedge fell from the taffrail and plunged into the clear water below with a spout of foam. Seconds later the ship slowed.

“Back topsails!” Gallico called, and the topmen braced the yards right round so that the wind was pressing on the forward face of the sail, pushing theRevenant backward. The ship came to a full stop. Again, that awful grinding under their feet as the keel touched submerged rock. The ship’s company seemed to flinch at the sensation, like a man pricked with a needle.

“Set a spring to the kedge,” Rol said calmly. “Bring us broadside-on to that ship.”

“Deck there!” The lookout again. “She’s unfurled Bionese colors.”

“As if we needed to be told,” Gallico growled, the green gleam of his eyes sharpening with malice. “Think she’ll come out?”

“Probably. In any case, I intend to persuade her.”

“Prisoners, sir,” Quirion, the master-at-arms, said. He and his mates were shoving half a dozen bloodied men in the livery of Bionese marines toward the starboard gangway.

One of them held his head higher than the rest, and he had a ragged frill of lace at his throat. “What are you going to do with us?” he shouted up at the quarterdeck. “That’s one of our vessels out there, a man-of-war. If you harm us it’ll-”

“It’ll do nothing,” Elias Creed snapped at him, joining Rol and Gallico at the quarterdeck rail. “Except meet you in hell.”

“Clear for action,” Rol said quietly.

His command was a thing of habit. TheRevenant was largely prepared for battle. The port-lids were open, tompions out, and the sakers still warm, but inboard. Now the gun-crews began hauling their massive charges up to the bulwark with a deafening thunder of groaning wood and squealing blocks. The ship tilted under their feet as her equilibrium shifted.

“Unfurl the Black Flag.”

It snapped out from the maintopgallant backstay, a long, shot-torn streamer of sable without device. No quarter asked or given, it said. Few had the gall to fly such a flag in this day and age.

“Now lash the prisoners to the muzzles of the guns,” Rol said, still in the same quiet tone.

Quirion and his mates looked blank. “Skipper?”

“You heard me, Quirion.”

There was a short pause before discipline kicked in, but despite that, it took the prisoners a few moments to understand. They did not begin to struggle until they were lowered over the ship’s side by their bound wrists. Then they began to squeal and wriggle. The saker-crews reached through the gunports and attached lengths of cordage to the writhing men’s waists, then pulled them taut so that the round muzzle of every twelve-pounder was snug against the spine of a kicking, screaming human being.

“Deck there!” the lookout called, high above the squalor of the sights below. “She’s clearing for action, eight guns a side. They look like nine-pounders to me.”

Gallico ripped his gaze away from the pinioned men who now lined the side of the ship. “We’re in range,” he said.

“All the better. Gun-crews! Wait for my command, and then fire from number one, a rippling broadside.”

There was a moment of quiet when even the babbling of the prisoners died away. Rol caught the eye of a youngster tied to number four, in the waist on the starboard side. The saker bent his spine like a bow and there were tears and snot streaming down his face. He was fifteen years old if he was a day. All about his eyes there was a line of white.

“Fire!”

The six guns of the starboard broadside thundered out one after another; and as they did, a heavy white smoke spumed up, to be blown away to leeward. In the smoke were darker things, spat out of the muzzles of the sakers, and something like a fine warm spray drifted about the decks of theRevenant. Rol wiped his sticky face and peered landward to see the fall of shot. He saw splinters explode up out of the hull of the enemy man-of-war-good practice, at this range-and the ball from number six smashed plumb into the mizzen-top, bringing a clatter of rigging and timber down onto the enemy ship’s quarterdeck.

“Fire as they bear!” he shouted. “Fire at will!”

The severed limbs of the unfortunate prisoners were cut loose and the gun-crews began to work their pieces in earnest. When the recoil threw the sakers back from the bulwarks they sponged out the barrels to stop any burning remnants within from setting off the next charge prematurely, then rammed home cloth cartridges of black powder, followed by iron twelve-pound balls, and topped off with wads of cloth which would tamp down the explosion and make it more intense. The guns were hauled back up to the ship’s side again and a spike was stabbed through each touch-hole to pierce the cartridge within the barrel. The touch-holes were then filled with loose small-grain powder. The gun was elevated and traversed with wooden wedges and iron crowbars according to the grunted word and gestures of the gun-captain, and when it bore on its target he slapped the touch-hole with a length of burning match. The powder there ignited, in turn setting off the cartridge in the base of the barrel. The explosion, confined by the heavy bronze, propelled the cannonball, wad and all, out of the saker’s muzzle with incredible force-the fall of shot could be followed, a dark blur, no more, if one had quick eyes-and then the process began again. The Revenants were a veteran crew, and could get off three aimed broadsides in six minutes.

The enemy ship was firing back now. Some of her nine-pound balls fell wide, showering the side of the ship with spray. Others passed through the rigging with a low howl, slicing ropes, punching round holes in the sails. One struck the hull somewhere amidships, but with that caliber and at this range theRevenant ’s timbers shrugged off the impact as a bull might twitch his hide under the bite of a gnat.

Six broadsides, with every shot aimed low into the hull of the enemy. Over four hundred pounds of iron hurled across a thousand yards of sea.

“She’s slipped her anchor-she’s making along the coast,” one of the quartermasters shouted.

“Damn her. Keep firing,” Rol spat.

The wind veered in a burgeoning wave of hot air off the land and theRevenant began to swing on her spring-cabled anchor. One moment her broadside was pointed squarely at the enemy vessel, and the next she had yawed under the press of air and was presenting her vulnerable stern, the soft spot of every ship.

“Gallico, get a party to haul on that goddamned spring! Bring us back round!”

“She’s taken the wind,” the lookout shouted, hoarse as a crow, “she’s coming out. Deck there-”

A full broadside lashed up the length of the ship, dismembering men, smashing blocks and tackle to matchwood, slicing rigging, sending wicked chunks of wood flying, as deadly as iron. The carriage of the starboard number-three gun was blown to pieces, her crew scattered in a bloody mess as far aft as the ship’s bell. The party working on the cable to the spring was shattered. Rol saw a forearm travel the length of the ship and disappear over the fo’c’sle. The wind of one ball jerked him aside as it missed him by a hair.