James Nelson - The Guardship

Thomas regained his balance, shoved the glowing match in the train of powder. The gun was actually touching the side of the Wilkenson Brothers when it smashed its load into the merchantman’s frail bulwark and blew it clean away.

He looked up at his own men standing on the rail. Middleton was there, his sword raised over his head, his face twisted into the most insane mask of rage and bloodlust as he rallied the Prizes to leap across. The fire from the old Vengeance illuminated him as if he were an actor on stage or some savage before a pagan ceremonial fire.

And then there was a smattering of small-arms fire and a pistol ball smashed into the back of Middleton’s skull, blew his forehead apart. The fine mist of blood and bone was perfectly illuminated by the light of the fire. The lieutenant began to topple forward, but before he could hit the deck he was pushed back by the frenzied men of the Plymouth Prize as they stormed over the rail and down onto the pirate’s deck.

Middleton’s body fell from sight. Marlowe hopped up onto the carriage of the number one gun and then stepped up onto the rail, his left hand on the backstay for balance. He was looking down at the deck of the pirate ship, where his wild outnumbered men were surging forward, pushing the pirates back.

A pistol ball struck the backstay. Marlowe felt it quiver in his grip. He drew his sword, picked his spot, and leapt down into the fight.

THE WAIST of the Wilkenson Brothers was in deep shadow, with the bulwarks shielding the deck from the light of the burning ship. Men moved in and out of the night. Swords raised overhead gleamed as they reflected the fire. The flash of pistols, pan and muzzle, lit those dark places for a brilliant second and then the shadows closed in again.

Marlowe felt the burn of a cutlass cutting across his arm even as he tried to recover from his leap to the deck. He twisted instinctively, swung his big sword around, reached for a pistol as he fell. Felt the jar of the blade making contact, but he heard no scream and did not know if he had even struck his attacker.

He hit the deck flat on his back, his sword in his hand. The pirate was standing above him, leering, cutlass raised, ready to deliver the coup de grace. Marlowe brought the pistol up, pulled the lock back with his thumb. The pirate bellowed outrage as he tried to bring his cutlass down before Marlowe fired the gun.

He did not succeed. Marlowe pulled the trigger, tossed the gun aside, giving no more thought to the big man he had just blown to the deck. He scrambled to his feet, his back to the bulwark. In a half-crouch, sword gripped in both hands, he got his bearings.

The Plymouth Prizes and the pirates had smashed into each other like surf across a bar of sand, and now they were fighting it out where they stood. Most of those who were wounded or dead had been shot down by the Plymouth Prize ’s great guns or by pistols in that first wave, but once those guns had been fired there was no time to reload, and now it was steel against steel.

Marlowe looked aft. More dead men there, more wounded crawling away or curled up in the shadows. His firing the great guns had had some effect, made the numbers a little more even, and now the Plymouth Prizes were plunging in with a fury to match the pirate defenders.

If I’ve turned them all into brigands, at least I’ve taught them more than just greed, Thomas thought as he stepped into an open place in the line and matched swords with a wiry, bearded little man with a scarred face and black teeth.

The little man was fast, trying to cut Marlowe down with a quick, darting attack, while Marlowe attempted to overwhelm him with his strength and the weight of his sword. It was an interesting match, and one that might have been more difficult for Marlowe to win just a few years before, before he had learned under Bickerstaff’s careful tutelage the more subtle aspects of fighting with a blade.

He wielded his big sword with two hands, as was his custom, beating back the attack with twice the force needed, throwing the little man off with the sheer momentum of his parry. His left arm was starting to ache where it had been cut; he could feel the blood, warm and liquid, under his shirt. He considered pulling his second pistol and just shooting the man, but he needed that bullet to kill LeRois. He had a higher duty here, and he was just wasting his time with this ugly opponent.

The pirate darted forward, lunged, as Marlowe leaned back. The tip of his blade pierced Marlowe’s coat, and Marlowe brought his own sword straight down on the man’s outstretched hand. The pirate screamed, the sword fell to the deck, and Marlowe lunged himself, running the man through, then

pulled the blade clean, turning to face any new threat on his flank even as he heard the man’s body hit the deck.

LeRois. He could avoid it no longer. He could not continue to pretend that the Prizes needed him here in the waist.

Rakestraw was ten feet away, fighting like an ancient Norseman, rallying the men. At any moment Bickerstaff and his men would come swarming up the other side and fall on the Vengeances from behind. Ten minutes before, there would have been enough pirates to fight both sides of the deck, but that was before he had delivered the blasts of case shot right into the vaporing tribe.

LeRois was not among the men fighting in the waist, which meant either he was among the dead or wounded or that he was holding back, perhaps waiting for Marlowe to come to him.

There were no more excuses. He had to hunt the man down. As much as he did not wish to, he knew that he had to go.

“Oh, Lord, please let him be dead,” Marlowe muttered. He imagined LeRois’s scarred and battered body tossed up against the bulwark, half torn apart after taking a blast of canister right in the chest, those mad eyes open and dead, staring sightless up at the sky. He felt as hypocritical as a man can feel, calling on God at that juncture.

He stepped back from the fight, pressed himself against the bulwark, worked his way aft, toward the quarterdeck. It was the body of the serpent that his men were fighting. It was his job to cut off the head.

A fire was flicking, burning aft. Marlowe thought perhaps the flames from the other ship had blown across and caught in the rig. But it was not the ship that was burning. It was a torch, held aloft, and holding that torch was Jean-Pierre LeRois.

He stood on the quarterdeck ladder, on the other side of the deck. The undulating light illuminated the dirty, powder-burned face, the matted beard, the dark, wild eyes, the red sash under a once-fine coat. Jean-Pierre LeRois. Older than Marlowe had last seen him, dirtier, meaner looking, but there he was.

The pirate was squinting, searching through the crowd, and it was no great difficulty to guess for whom he was looking.

And then their eyes met. LeRois paused, leaned back, leaned forward, glaring, and then he smiled, his big filthy teeth gleaming in the light of the torch.

Marlowe took a step aft. They would meet on the quarterdeck, fight it out in that land of the dead, among the bodies of the men Marlowe had swept away with his broadside.

But LeRois did not go aft. Rather, he stepped down into the waist, standing head and shoulders above the others, and with his eyes still holding Marlowe’s he stepped over to the doorway leading to the aft cabins, pulled it open, stepped through, and shut it behind.

“Goddamn it!” Marlowe shouted. LeRois had gone below. With every last bit of body and soul he wanted to let the pirate go, did not want to follow the snake down its hole. But he could not let LeRois get away, and there was no knowing what he was about. He had to go.

He pushed past the struggling, shouting men, edged around the break of the quarterdeck, worked his way to the door that LeRois had shut behind him. Felt the sting of sweat running into his eyes. He blinked it away and shifted his sword to his left hand and took hold of the handle of the door with his right.