Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

Red Rodney Radcliffe was up before morning twilight grew very bright. He stood on the Black Hand's deck in the wan dawn light and peered north. For the time being, he didn't see anything. The longer he didn't see anything, the happier he got. Maybe the fleet from Stuart really had had enough. Cutpurse Charlie could take his sovereign and be welcome to it, even if he gloated later.

"Any sails?" Ben Jackson showed up on deck only a few minutes after his skipper.

"Not yet." Rodney sounded as hopeful as he could.

The mate grunted. "Good."

But just as the sun slid up over the eastern horizon, a shout came from the crow's nest: "Sails ho!"

Jackson and Red Rodney swore together, a scatological counterpoint. Radcliffe was dismayed enough to turn loose a question he knew to be foolish: "Are you sure?"

"No doubt, skipper." The answer floated down. "Sails in the north, heading this way. You'll see 'em yourself soon enough. Who else would they be but the buggers we fought yesterday?"

"What do we do now?" Jackson asked.

"We signal the other ships, in case they haven't seen 'em yet," Rodney answered, evading the mate's real meaning. "After that…Well, we have a little while to think." He still couldn't see the sails himself, though he knew he'd be able to before long.

Quint sent signal flags fluttering up the lines. Most of the other freebooters would already know the enemy was coming. Well, so what? You did what you could for everyone on your side. To Red Rodney the idea was new, and worth exploring further. That his cousin took it for granted never crossed his mind.

Some of the pirate ships returned acknowledgments. Others went on with what they were doing. They wouldn't be able to ignore him and the enemy much longer. Maybe they realized that. If they didn't, it wasn't his fault. He'd done what he could.

"There they are, skipper." Ben Jackson pointed to the northern horizon.

"I see 'em," Radcliffe said grimly. "One thing, anyway-we can always outsail 'em."

"The big ones, yes," the mate said. "But if they send their brigs and suchlike after us, maybe they can bring us to battle and delay us till the bloody, stinking, shit-eating men-of-war catch up."

Red Rodney swore. That hadn't occurred to him. Jackson was right-no doubt about it. No doubt they couldn't take another day's hard fighting, either. That meant their best hope-maybe their only hope-was making a stand at Avalon. If they drove the enemy fleet back from their base, they were still in business.

"South!" Radcliffe shouted, his mind made up. "Our course is south down the coast till we're home again. Send up the flags, Quint! We'll still make the foe sorry he ever came against us."

At his bellowed orders, men swarmed aloft to swing the yards and set the sails to help the abrupt change of course the Black Hand was making. She could turn tightly-could and did. One of the enemy ships of the line fired a couple of bow chasers at her, but the balls fell far short. Then she was around, and picking up speed on her new course. The man-of-war fired again. Again, the shot fell short. Before long, the Black Hand showed the foe her heels.

Occasional cannon fire boomed behind her. Maybe some of the enemy's lighter vessels were catching up to pirates and engaging them, as Ben Jackson had suggested. Or maybe some of the pirates didn't have the sense to pull back when the enemy came at them. If they didn't, they didn't have the sense God gave a honker. So Radcliffe thought, anyhow. His fellow captains were not in a good position to argue with him.

Looking north, he saw plumes of smoke rising into the sky. Those came from burning ships-they couldn't very well spring from anything else, not on the sea. Red Rodney swore every time he spotted one. Some of his friends wouldn't make it back to Avalon. They were also his rivals, but he didn't dwell on that, not now.

Ethel would scorn him for turning tail. That was funny, if you looked at it the right-or maybe the wrong-way. He'd laid towns waste. He'd captured merchantmen past counting, and killed and tortured to make sure he wrung every copper's worth of loot from them. The wenching he'd done…His full lips parted in a reminiscent smile. Jenny and her predecessors in Avalon-Ethel's mother among them-were only a tiny part of it. He'd shown fear nowhere and never. You were ruined if you did.

But he feared facing his own daughter when he got home. Ethel didn't understand how things worked in the real world. Her head was full of stories. Most of them had him as the hero, which didn't make him feel any better now.

The Black Hand sailed close enough to the west coast of Atlantis to let him watch it slide past. He knew the look of the coastline as well as he knew the look of the skin on the back of his right hand. If one of the great redwoods that marked it fell, it was as if he'd scratched himself.

A challenge gun boomed from the fort on the north spit shielding Avalon Bay. He answered with one gun of his own. A galley came out to look over his ship. A couple of others from Avalon's fleet were also in sight. "What happened?" a man with leather lungs shouted from the galley.

"We lost. They're after us," Red Rodney shouted back. The men on the closest galley swore. Red Rodney had already done his swearing. Now he needed to fight the enemy…if he could. He cupped his hands in front of his mouth again: "Let me through! Let all of us through-all of us who make it here. We've got to get ready to hold our town!"

"What happens if we don't?" asked the man on the galley.

Radcliffe didn't answer, not with words. He let his head flop onto one shoulder and jerked up with the other fist, pantomiming a hanging. The men on the galley cursed some more. So did some of his own sailors. He wondered why. Hanging, he was sure, was the best the pirates could hope for if Avalon fell and they got caught. Drawing and quartering, the stake…He shuddered. So many nasty possibilities.

"Go on in," the strong-lunged sailor said. "We'll whip those bastards yet."

"Damned right!" Rodney pumped his fist in the air again, this time in defiance of the rest of the world. His men cheered. So did the other corsairs. He waved to them. Keeping their spirits high wasn't the least important part of the role he played here. They would have to fight, and soon.

If they were to make a go of it, somebody had to give them orders. They all had to work together. They couldn't fight crew by crew, as ships did. Red Rodney didn't intend to have anyone tell him what to do. He aimed to do the telling.

He got into Avalon first. The Black Hand had taken a beating, but most of the crew survived. After his ship tied up at the pier, the men swarmed into Avalon. They grabbed anyone who looked as if he could carry a musket or a pike or a sword.

Radcliffe harangued his new recruits from just outside of Black Hand Fort. "The Stuart swine and Dutch dogs and English idiots think they can take our town away from us!" he roared. "Are we going to let 'em?"

"No!" the new soldiers shouted. He suspected not all of them meant it. A barber cared more about cutting whiskers than cutting throats. But, if he got them into the line, he expected they would do well enough. Once somebody started shooting at you, you damn well would shoot back. Otherwise, the bugger on the other side would kill you. No one was keen on that.

"We can fight. We can win," Red Rodney insisted. "Plenty of forts inside Avalon. There's the one across the mouth of the bay, too. Put those together with the galley, and the bastards can't get in. So what'll they do? They'll hang around for a while, and then they'll give it up and go home, that's what!"

His own crewmen cheered. So did the new fish, if less enthusiastically. He went on telling them what a slaughter they'd visit on the enemy. He also warned them what the invaders would do if they won. He wasn't subtle, and he was graphic. He believed what he was saying, too. By the time he got done, he had them believing it with him. They streamed along the muddy, crooked streets of Avalon, ready to give their all for the right to go on freebooting.