A Calculus of Angels (28 page)

Frisk nodded almost imperceptibly. “And Newton?”

“I will try to fit him into my pocket, too.”

11.

Two Storms

Two days later, they sighted sails. This was at first cause for some celebration, but when the count of unknown ships rose above twenty, the American flotilla fled as fast as it could. At least ten of the ships gave chase; it took them three A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

days to lose the last, using every pirate trick Blackbeard had at his disposal.

One of the ships came close enough to fire at them, though it was an intimidation tactic only; the nearest balls raised waterspouts more than a hundred yards short. Still, it did not settle the mood of the crew or raise their hopes. The device on the nearest ship looked French, but pirates often flew false flags, raising the blood flat only when victory was imminent. Not even Bienville was willing to risk it.

On the second day of the chase a storm swept upon them. Teach had often remarked on their luck in crossing the Atlantic without bad weather. Now, it seemed, their luck had changed. It was as if the western sky had been gashed with some giant knife, as if the black night that lay beyond the edges of the world were bleeding through, boiling toward them. That dark wind threw up remorseless mountains of liquid iron to stoop upon them, tossing them like corks. They drew down the sails, but even so the mainmast cracked, and five men from the
Queen Anne’s Revenge
were swallowed into the white jaws of the waves and never seen again. When the storm finally cleared, it was to a desolate seascape, empty of any ship save their own.

“We should wait here for them,” Nairne said, meeting Blackbeard’s hard gaze.

“If there is anyone left to wait for,” the pirate retorted. “An‘ that we do not know.”

“We can’t be the only ship that survived,” Nairne persisted. “Besides, the compass attuned to the
Dauphin
still points.”

“Aye, an‘ it would point whether the
Dauphin
were on the sea or below it.”

“We can sail to them and discover it,” Nairne replied, “floating or drowned, they can’t be so far from us.”

“We need a port,” Blackbeard growled. “We need food, rum, and sweet water; and most of all, we need to
repair
this hulk. As it is, we’ll run the pumps day and night to keep her afloat. We’re in shape to sail only one direction—landward. Now, Mr. Nairne, you will point me landward, or I shall crack your skull, I promise you.”

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Nairne glared, but raised his finger to indicate the horizon. “It’s there,” he said, “but my calculations show we’ve been blown almost to the Pillars of Hercules.”

“Uh.” leach grunted. “The Barbary coast.”

“Yes, Captain, you see? What port here do you trust well enough to try alone?”

“What port do I trust
anywhere?”
Blackbeard snarled. “And yet we must have one.”

“Can we not sail for the space of a day as the needle points toward the
Dauphin
?”

Blackbeard glared at Nairne, arm twitching strangely, and for an instant, Red Shoes was certain he would draw his pistol and shoot Nairne in the head. But after a moment of chewing his beard, he nodded brusquely. “Very well. One day. But if another storm catches us, we’re done for.”

Up above, the sailor in the crow’s nest hollered something. They all looked up as he repeated, “Sail.”

“There!” Nairne remarked. “Our discussion is moot.”

Blackbeard frowned. “Which direction does your scientific needle put the
Dauphin
?”

“Sou’west.”

“Then why is my man pointing east?”

“It’s probably one of the others, one of the ones we have no compass for—the
Scepter,
the
Lyon,
perhaps.”

“We’ll hope so, then,” Blackbeard snapped. Then he bellowed, “Ready her for a fight, men.”

An hour later, they grimly watched the nearing ships.

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“Take her to full sail,” Blackbeard shouted.

“Damn,” Nairne remarked.

“Not our ships?” Red Shoes asked.

Blackbeard shook his massive head. “No. See there? Those three are
galliots,
I’ll wager. See how they jump in the water? Those are oars doin‘ that. Small ships, fast ships in a flourish. Back behind them are two caravels. No, these are some of those chasing us before the storm.”

“Might they be peaceful?”

Blackbeard shook his head. “Corsairs, I’m damned sure. Merchants go under sail, real war galleys are bigger. No, these are our pursuit. Now they see us cut away from the flotilla and move in for murder.”

“I’ll trust you in that matter,” Nairne said.

“And so y‘ should. It’s what
I
would do, were I them.”

“We can’t outrun ‘em, as we did before?”

“Not with this gut full of brine. No, they’ll catch us sooner or later. But I want to make ‘em work for it, especially the caravels, on account
of they
have the real fire. So if we can engage the
galliots
first, we’ll have the better chance.”

“You really think we can best five ships?” Nairne asked doubtfully.

“If we best only four, then still we die,” Blackbeard said. “Edward Teach has no desire to die this day.”

He stalked off, shouting orders.

“Can we win?” Red Shoes asked Nairne.

“Stranger things have happened, I suppose. Can you use those hands yet?”

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Red Shoes curled his hand’s children. They would not fist, but he could move them.

“Enough to fire a musket, I think.”

“Have you any magical tricks to help us?”

“I will think on it,” he replied.

He did think on it, furiously, as the ships grew nearer, until he could see what Blackbeard meant. The galliots resembled long, wide canoes with sixteen oars on a side, each oar pulled by several men, and were terribly fast The caravels—three-masted vessels—were slower but much larger. Not so large as the
Revenge,
but nearly so.

Blackbeard seemed more worried about the caravels. Was there anything he could do to them?

He still had his wire-melting shadowchild. He supposed he could send it over, but he doubted that the ships were held together by wire, and something more massive—a cannon, say—was too large for his servant, even if it were made of the same metal, which was unlikely. If the storm were still overhead he might call Thunder, but the clouds had fled the sky. He tried sending his shadowchild for a taste of sail, but like wood—or anything which had once been living—it proved too rich for the spirit.

He might boil some small portion of the sea, but did not think that would help very much, since he could boil very little of it.

Blackbeard was forward, shouting orders again, and in response the
Revenge,
creaking and complaining, finally turned to face her opponents.

Most of the crew were Blackbeard’s own, of course, and now they showed it, climbing into the rigging, shrieking curses to tell the corsairs that they had attacked no weak-willed merchant vessel, but the three galliots came on. Red Shoes could see them clearly now, the rippling muscles on the backs of the rowers, the bunched warriors with muskets or naked blades. He propped his A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

own gun on the edge of the ship, checked the prime, and fumbled his clumsy hands to the trigger. He knew tricks for fast healing, for healing things that should not heal, but nothing he knew of could put what he had done to himself right in short order.

“Fire!” He heard Blackbeard bellow, but he held, knowing he would hit nothing at this range, and then realized he had misunderstood anyway as the
Revenge
roared and rocked back as twenty cannon unleashed nearly in unison. Smoke and spray hid the approaching ships for a moment, but when it cleared, they had the satisfaction of seeing one of the small craft spun about in the water and the bloody swath a charge of grapeshot had cut through its gang of rowers. Blackbeard’s pirates redoubled their cries, and a volley of musket shots erupted.

Their attackers, however, suddenly changed tactics. One came on, but the other two swung broadside, each in a different direction, one toward their bow and the other aft. Soon they would be fighting in three different directions.

Both flanking ships unloaded their guns, and the deck quivered from the dull crunch of impact. Nearby, Tug waved his cutlass and whooped. “Six pounders if even that!” he howled. “Darlin‘ baby guns! They’ll have to do better ’n that!”

But Tug was an exception; a lot of the men seemed worried. And beyond the immediate fray, the sails of the caravels were growing by the moment.

Red Shoes sighted carefully at the oncoming ship. After a second’s consideration, he chose the drummer, the fellow whose booming strokes timed the pull of the oars. If any one of these was a sorcerer, it would be that one. He had to move his whole hand to squeeze the trigger; but when the weapon kicked him in the shoulder, it was worth it, for the drummer thrashed to the deck, his rhythm broken forever.

Wood chipped near him, and the air sang with returning fire, but Red Shoes ignored it, methodically reloading his weapon. It was a clumsy business.

“Sweet Jesus,” said the fellow next to him, a straw-haired man named Roberts.

One of his ears was now missing. He sounded surprisingly calm, considering.

For a hundred heartbeats after that, there was no sound audible save the peal of cannon, as all four attacking ships fired at will. Ten paces from Red Shoes, A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

the rail blew apart, and wooden shrapnel stung his cheek. He winced and continued trying to load his musket, but using the ramrod was almost impossible.

The air slapped him, hard, and the eye of the world blinked. He came back to awareness with Tug shaking him.

“… boarding,” the big man was saying. “You stick next to old Tug, y‘ hear?” It sounded as if Tug were a very long way away.

Men were fighting on the deck. Some looked like Fernando, with his almost black skin, but most were the color of cypress, clad in colorful pantaloons and head wraps not unlike his own. They swarmed over the gap in the rail, pushing Blackbeard’s men back, the fighting spreading to the center of the ship.

The caravels were very near, now.

Red Shoes noticed Nairne, not far away, hanger in hand, hacking at the boarders; and he stumbled in that direction, fumbling for his
kraftpistole.
If he could get a clear shot, he could kill many at once, and then perhaps they could stop the rest from boarding. Unfortunately, Nairne and the rest were in the way.

One of the corsairs hurled himself at them, but Tug hammered him into the deck with a blow from his cutlass, swinging twice more to sever an arm; but after that at least ten corsairs came over the rail. Nairne was still in the way, and Red Shoes found himself having to dodge back from a man in ared-and-black-checked turban. He hated to waste a
kraftpistole
shot on a single man, but it seemed he had no choice, as his attacker drew his own sidearm.

And then his opponent faltered, his face become a mask of terror. Red Shoes did not waste the opportunity; as the man stood transfixed, he clubbed the heavy iron point of the
kraftpistole
across his face, wondering what the man had seen to shake him so.

Then Blackbeard swept by him, a pistol in each hand, and he knew. Teach had plaited his beard and hair, tying each braid with black ribbons. His head was wreathed in smoke from perhaps twenty match fuses stuck under his hat brim, A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

and from that cloud stared eyes bereft of sanity, mercy, and humanity.

Blackbeard was death, and any who saw him knew it.

He walked into the crowd of men as if they were not armed at all, firing his pistols point-blank, and two heads exploded like melons. One of the corsairs shot back, but his hand must have been shaking, for the ball merely snapped one of the matches from Teach’s hair. The pirate didn’t even blink, but drew two more pistols from the braces crossing his chest, fired, drew the last two, fired again, and then pulled out his cutlass. The nearest corsair raised his hand in defense and had his forearm splintered into his face. They fell away from Blackbeard, and still he came on.

Red Shoes followed.

At the rail it finally seemed to occur to the men that they were ten, facing a single man, but by then it was too late. Aiming around the pirate captain, Red Shoes finally had a clear shot. Holding his weapon with both hands to keep it steady, he pulled the trigger, and white fire jagged through the corsairs, pitching all but three of them, burning, into the sea.

The surviving three jumped.

Blackbeard swept his lethal gaze about the ship, and his own men, probably from experience, scrambled out of the way. All their attackers had been driven from the ship. For an instant, there was silence, as if the world were drawing a breath, and then a single cannon shot whizzed over the bow.

Both caravels were drawn up close, broadside, thirty guns between them trained on the
Revenge.

Panting like a wounded bear, Blackbeard moved up to the rail. A hundred paces away, on the corsair ship, a man in a bright yellow turban held up a cutlass. He must have had a fine voice, for despite the ringing in his ears, Red Shoes could make out his words.

“Surrender. Surrender and accept our escort, and not another man among you shall die.”

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Red Shoes thought that Teach’s eyes would bug from his head.

“Escort to where?” Nairne called.

Blackbeard moved like lightning, whipping his remaining pistol up to Nairne’s temple.

“Shut up,” he hissed.

Nairne stared into flie muzzle without the slightest indication of fear.

“For the sake of intelligence,” Nairne whispered back. “Not for the sake of surrendering.”

“Shut up,” Blackbeard repeated, and then, deliberately, faced the other captain.

“I will make you a better offer,” he roared. “Give me one of your ships, and I won’t sink the other.”

Even at that distance, Red Shoes saw the other captain’s eyes widen. A sprinkling of laughter traveled around the corsair ship.