Having raided the impossible-to-raid Harshtree Prison and freed Fezzik, the intrepid pirates of the Revenge escape into the night, their legend even greater. Captain Montoya promised them that when Fezzik was safely aboard ship, that they all would learn to swim. It wasn't acceptable that half of them, including the captain himself, didn't know! They just need to escape the Florin navy, hot on their heels, and find a friendly, hidden cove somewhere so that the captain can begin lessons. Read on!
5.
Robbed!
~~*~~
“Talk about being
born on the wrong side of the world!” spat Angus Quaid. “We’re pirates being
raided—by pirates! We’re bloody unarmed!”
“If we have to,
these will become our weapons,” declared Fan Chang, holding up his fists. While
in the cove he and Rynag-tai had taught us some close-action martial skills.
While certainly not skilled as either, we did learn much and did acquire some
proficiency.
The problem was,
muskets and pistols were much deadlier. That’s what the military aboard this
vessel had, and almost certainly what the pirates were packing too.
Regarding muskets
and pistols, they were bulky, slow to load, slower to reload, and often untrue
to their aim. For that reason, we of the Revenge
didn’t bother with gunpowder-aided projectile weapons other than brute cannonry,
much more accurate given their bulk, to protect our intrepid ship. Oh, we had lockers
full of both types, but we believed, and relied upon, stealth, cunning, and
speed.
We heard a quick
series of shots, followed by screams. Men began yelling incoherently; the deck
above sounded like a herd of cattle was scurrying to find cover.
“Captain,” said
Rynag-tai. “Let me and Fan go topside. I think I can pick the lock to the
armory. The military won’t be watching us. They’re probably all on deck!”
Another round of shots. Like before, they
were immediately followed by screams and more thumping about as people sought
cover.
“Something’s
wrong,” said Crissah, glaring up at the ceiling from the wholly inadequate protection
beneath her hammock. “They’re not on deck. Those shots ...”
I had heard what
she did. “They’re directly above us—indoors.
We should have heard the pirates return fire. We haven’t. Why?”
Captain Montoya
glanced at Rynag-tai and his older cousin. “Go. Make no attempt at breaking
into the armory if it’s still being guarded. I agree: something very odd is
happening. Have you noticed how quiet it’s gotten?”
We listened. It
indeed had gone sinisterly silent.
“Duncan ,” he said, grabbing my wrist. “Go with
them. If you can’t get to the armory, get to Hindy and Stacie.”
“Aye, sir. Where
should we meet up with you?”
“I suggest we meet
in third class,” Aledar offered after more noise of people moving hurriedly
about above quietened. We thought we could hear someone yelling. “Third class
is dark. The green sugar is down there. More hiding places. If needed, we could
ambush better down there.”
“Agreed,” the group
murmured.
“Get moving,”
ordered the captain. “Weapons or no weapons, we will be able to protect our own
much better down there—particularly if those pirates make us, which they
probably will.”
Rynag-tai, Fan, and I inched up the stairs to the topdeck on
our hands and knees. I led the way. At the top I glanced around.
The topdeck was eerily
empty. I crawled up another step and glanced to port.
The pirate ship was
angling closer. It would be close enough for the marauders to board in less
than half an hour. It wasn’t using any sort of standard cautionary approach to
lower its profile that any decent scalawag captain would while coming up
against a ship he was thinking of robbing—especially one as large and heavily
armed as this one. Bold as brass, the pirate vessel presented its full
starboard side to the Admiral Rolot,
as though quite confident that the Rolot’s
formidable cannons would not fire on it.
I motioned
Rynag-tai and Fan up. They cautiously glanced at the goings-on.
Fan shook his head
furiously. “It’s a set-up! We hear shots from above, but no return fire from
the pirates? The deck is clear? No cannons? Everyone upstairs is inside? The
pirates are on a parallel approach? It’s a set-up! This boat’s crew is
compromised!”
There was no other
way of interpreting the goings-on. The Rolot
was indeed being robbed—but the pirates were already on board!
“If we go up there,
they’ll either shoot us or herd us with the others,” I said. “Sneaking out onto
that open deck will only endanger us!”
“I wouldn’t doubt
if there are snipers watching it,” grumbled Fan. “They’ll kill anyone from
belowdecks!”
“From the pirate
ship and from above us,” suggested
Rynag-tai.
“Thoughts?” I hissed.
“The galley,” whispered
Fan. “It’s on the topdeck, behind first class, but it has a back entrance for
second- and third-class passengers! They may not have thought of it!”
We passed our comrades on the way back.
“What’s going on?”
they demanded, crowding around. We told them, and also told them of our plan to
get up to first class via the back galley entrance.
“Go,” said Captain
Montoya. “Go!”
Would the pirates
or the traitors among the military contingent have thought of the galley’s back
entrance in their plundering plans? At the stairs up to it, I glanced over my
shoulder to see the rest of the Bandileros making their way down the stairs to
third class. Crissah gave me a worried smile, which I returned. Then she was
gone.
There were eight steps
to the door, which was closed. Fan tried opening it.
Unlocked.
Movement. Men were
suddenly at the stairs we were just at moments earlier as we scoped out the
topdeck and the looming pirate vessel. They were heavily armed, several with
pistols, the rest with drawn cutlasses. We crowded up against the door and the
deeper shadows of the well as they walked quickly towards the stairs that would
take them down to third class. Hopefully our comrades heard their approach and
got out of sight.
As for the men
themselves, it was, unbelievably, the first officer leading the plunderers, two
or three more of the Rolot’s crew,
and the military. I didn’t count them, but it seemed as though all the
so-called military was involved in this nefarious operation.
Fan has a firm grip
on the door handle. “C’mon,” he whispered as the men disappeared down the
stairs—that is, just before the First Officer threatened everyone: “If you know
what’s good for you, you’ll stay exactly where you are! Do that, and no one
else has to die!”
Fan pushed the door
open three or four inches. It creaked. I nodded for him to continue. He pushed
more. The creaking continued, but only for an instant longer. We opened it just
wide enough for us to slip through one at a time.
I was last to go
through. As carefully as I could, I pushed it closed again. The door, oddly
enough, didn’t creak as it clicked closed.
The Rolot’s galley was larger than any I’d
ever seen on a tall ship. It gave us more than enough room to crouch and move
forward without banging into pans or cabinets. We proceeded on our hands and
knees towards what was probably the back entrance to the dining room.
The door that would
admit us was, unsurprisingly, locked. The keyhole was wide enough to peer
through. I put my eye against it.
Women were crying—I
could hear that. Besides that there was nothing—no sounds of movement, no men
talking, no babies or children crying, nothing. Likely everyone was under
guard.
The view through
was sightless. Someone was leaning against the door, but then moved away. He or
she wore scarlet.
Stacie was wearing
scarlet the last time I saw her!
She was no dummy. Positioning
herself next to the door would be, in fact, something she’d do, or at least try
to do. She had a nickname, ol’ Stace: “Viper.” She constantly looked for an
advantage, whether it be swordfighting or card-playing or just bantering back
and forth, and did so often quite sneakily and underhandedly, just like a viper
would.
The guards watching
her wouldn’t particularly care about someone hanging out next to a back door,
especially if that person was a woman. The Rolot
was, after all, miles out at sea. Where would some helpless woman go that the
pirates wouldn’t eventually find? They had heaps of fear and uncertainty on
their side, not to mention a complete lockdown on all weapons!
I turned to my
comrades. “It might be Stacie. She might be right next to the door!”
Neither reacted,
because there really wasn’t anything to react to. It was, at best, a wild guess.
Scarlet was a popular color, especially among women, especially these days. Any
one of a dozen could have been wearing it!
If I got the
person’s attention and it wasn’t
Stacie or Hindy, we could be in big trouble.
At that moment,
very quietly, we heard the lock click.
I jammed my eye
against the keyhole. It was filled again. Then it wasn’t. The person on the
other side withdrew the key, which he or she must have pickpocketed at some
earlier point with the deftness ... of a viper.
When would it be
safe to open the door? The guards would be watching.
Be it Stacie or
Hindy—and it was one of them for sure—she leaned against the door again,
blocking the view through the keyhole. Very softly, she began tapping on the
wood.
Long ago, the Revenge’s crew came up with a code to
communicate with each other called Cummerbund’s Call, or, as we know it, the
Call. All crew were required to know it inside and out in the event we were
captured and needed a way while behind bars to communicate with each other,
should speaking not be possible or advisable, and our compatriots happened to
be close enough to hear. The Call had come to our aid on more occasions than we
could count.
Stacie or Hindy was
using it now. Both Fan and Rynag-tai heard it too.
She tapped the
message:
“Two guarding. Lackeys. Pistols. Respond.”
I rapped as softly
as I could, but hard enough that, hopefully, she heard.
“Three door. Inside job. Gang third class.
Advise.”
The response: “Captain, two bridge dead. Pirates threat. Royals
traitors. Rest dead. Kidnap women slavery. Ship be sunk.”
I rapped back. “Paloni. Order: disarm lackeys.”
“Moment,” came the response.
It was quiet for a
half-minute, and then a very brief burst of sound, like someone was moving large
pieces of furniture. Several women screamed.
The door opened. We
scrambled to our feet.
Stacie’s grin was
momentary. “I’d complain to the captain about the poor service, but ...”
She stepped aside
so we could look. A pile of three bodies lay in a pool of blood in the center
of the floor. The captain’s was one of them.
There were two more
bodies, these by the front entrance, their mortal faces frozen with surprise.
Hindy stood over them, the sword she was gripping dripping almost to the hilt.
Fan and Rynag-tai went to her while Stacie and I hurried to the captain. Two of
his crew had joined him in death. All had been shot in the head execution-style
and for some gruesome reason stacked on each other.
The dining tables
had been moved to the side. Several had been turned over, the fine china
shattered near them on the floor.
“If the pirates
suspect any trouble,” hissed a portly man in a fine dinner jacket, “they will kill us! They told us!”
“I hate to inform
you, my good man,” I murmured, going through the captain’s pockets and finding
a set of keys in a hidden one (experienced captains often had hidden pockets
sewn into their clothing), “but they’re going to kill us anyway as soon as they
finish loading the green sugar onto the scalawag just off port.”
A woman screamed.
Another fainted.
Hindy scowled.
Stacie shook her head.
“Were we not up
here,” she said, “we’d be completely helpless.”
It was the captain
who had thought of putting a couple of Revenge’s
crew in first class. “Just as a precaution,” he had told me.
“Against what?” I
had asked.
“Against our discovery,
for one,” he replied. “And because something is telling me to be careful. Maybe
it’s because I’m finally getting used to this captain business.”
“Merchant ships are
usually well-armed,” I said. “So are some modern passenger ships. Do you suspect
trouble, Captain?”
He gave me a hard
grin. “We’re trouble, Paloni. I don’t
need to suspect any.”
Hindy joined us.
She had the swords from the fallen marauders and handed one to me. I gave it to
Stacie. Fan and Rynag-tai were going through the marauders’ pockets. The crowd
was getting antsy. Several more women were crying. Two were praying. The men
were grumbling. The one I’d addressed earlier groused, “Whoever you people are,
you’re going to get us all killed! We
were told that if we behaved and caused no trouble, we’d not be harmed!”
I stood and got up
against him, nose to nose. “Didn’t you hear what I just said? The pirates are
going to kill all of us as soon as they’ve offloaded the green sugar to the
scalawag!”
The man was clearly
intimidated, but to his credit didn’t waver save to take a step back. “You
don’t know that!”
“Indeed I do,” I
retorted. “It takes great skill to rob a ship like this while harming no one.
In fact, only one pirate ship can pull it off—and that ship out there—” I
pointed—“is not the Revenge. Which means, good sir, that
these brutes have no intentions of leaving this tub intact once they’ve got
their prize. They aren’t skilled enough. Do you understand now?”
He must have been
the president of a big company or some such, because such insolence and bravado
was something that, judging by the prideful anger that flashed in his eyes, he surely
enjoyed crushing in his employees. It certainly wasn’t the anger stoked by the
desire to listen and be a part of the solution, and in fact was confirmed a
moment later with: “And how would you
know it is not the Revenge out there?
Word is out in these parts that the Revenge
is in fact sailing these very waters!”
The crowd had quietened
to listen to our exchange.
I grinned. “I know
that isn’t the Revenge out there, sir,
because I’m the First Mate of the Revenge!”
The same women who
had screamed before screamed again. One of the fainters, having woken, fainted
again. The rest—men and women, all dressed in the finery of the age—all blinked
eyes to their widest and backed away from us as though choreographed, including
the man, who hissed, “More pirate
scum? I knew it!”
Both Hindy and Stacie,
armed now, advanced on him.
“Halt!” I ordered.
They stopped, but didn’t
lower their weapons.
“Someday you’ll
look back on this day and thank God that the rogues of the Revenge were here.” I glanced down his person, back up into his
eyes. “Or not. I can tell you’re going to be trouble. Fan ...”
Fan stepped forward.
“See to it that
this finely dressed captain of industry is properly muted, won’t you?”
I stepped away as
Fan replaced me. The man was sweating now. “Now wait just a ...”
Fan’s fist flashed
into his jaw. The man’s head snapped obliquely to the left, knocking him instantly
unconscious. A collective gasp and more screams sounded out as he crumpled into
a heap. Fan, kneeling next to him, tore his expensive jacket and began using
the strips to bind him.
Stacie: “The armory
is down the hall, second door on the right. There are snipers at the end.
They’re keeping an eye on the topdeck. They aren’t concerned about us.”
Rynag-tai snorted.
He was helping his cousin bind the loudmouth. “You were right, Duncan . Had we gone that way, we would’ve
been shot.”
“It’s hard to rob a
ship when the passengers are in a wild panic,” I grumbled. “Can we get to the
armory without the snipers spotting us?”
“Leave that up to
us,” said Fan, who with Rynag-tai stood.
“We should get a
move on,” urged Hindy. “As soon as that green sugar is offloaded, this boat is
a goner! We need to find the crew and get them involved!”
A couple
well-dressed men approached me.
“We’d like to
help,” said one. He was young, a few years my junior, I reckoned, and dashingly
good-looking and fit, as was his dark friend. His accent was Spanish or
Portuguese, very thick. “We served in His Majesty’s navy. Please.”
I motioned impatiently
for quiet. Fan and Rynag-tai were at the front door. With great care, they
twisted the knob and eased it open. Hindy and Stacie again motioned for
everyone to remain completely quiet.
The door,
thankfully, only creaked a tiny bit, not enough to alert the lookouts, who
faced away as they stood on the landing at the end of the hall, muskets raised
and pointing in a steady, sweeping lookout. They appeared quite intent on doing
their jobs, and indeed probably didn’t hear the commotion in here. If they did,
it was plain they didn’t care. They were royals; or at least were dressed in
the uniforms of royals.
With great stealth,
Fan and his cousin, hugging opposite walls and low to the ground, made their
way towards them.
The one on the
right wheeled around at the last instant. He tried to yell and fire, but
Rynag-tai was instantly there. With a burst of speed too fast to follow, he
grabbed the man’s skull and twisted it violently as Fan reached around and
snapped the windpipe of the other. The men crumpled dead at my comrades’ feet,
who quickly disarmed them and hurried to the armory. Fan had the keys.
I faced the
volunteers. “We need to get everyone armed. Thank you for helping.”
“We’d like to help,
too,” said two more men. “What can we do?”
“The women and
children need to be protected. Would you be willing to do that?”
“Of course ... of
course,” responded one while the other nodded emphatically.
I split the
Bandileros into two teams. Fan and Stacie were with me, along with one of the
first men who had volunteered. Hindy, Rynag-tai, and the other veteran were in
the other team.
I motioned for
quiet and with my team slunk down the hall to the second door on the right. Fan
fit the key into the lock and opened the door. We hurried into the armory.
I was familiar
enough with everyone on the Revenge
to recognize their weapons, all of which were personalized. I snatched the
captain’s last while Fan, Rynag-tai, Hindy, and Stacie grabbed armfuls of
swords, daggers, and even a pistol or two. We scampered as quietly as we could
back to the dining galley and handed weapons out to all who would take one. I
was surprised when half a dozen very high-class-looking women took daggers.
They all had children, and were obviously prepared to fight for their lives.
I gathered all
together. “We retake this tub with cunning and quiet—we use pistols and muskets
only as a last resort. The pirates will be offloading green sugar up to the
topdeck very soon, and then to the scalawag. They’ll also be preparing charges
or cannons or both to sink the Rolot
as soon as they are done. Time is of the essence. We’ve got maybe ten minutes. We
need to free the rest of the crew so that they can man the cannons and canvases
after we make our move. I don’t see any way around a fight. We just need to be
ready when it comes. Now—where are
the rest of the crew?”
“This way,” said
one of the men.
Our teams split up.
Mine hurried down the hall, nearly to its end. The others would go back the way
we had come, weapons bundled, as they worked their way as fast as they could
down to third class—all, somehow, without being seen.
On the left were
two doors, fairly widely spaced apart. I opened them. The doors opened into
what appeared to be a smoking room and a saloon.
The crew of the Rolot stared at us as we entered. They
had all been bound and gagged. Three had been shot dead.
Chapter Six
~~*~~
