Legend of the Gypsy Queen Skull: The Devil's Triangle - Book 1 (6 page)

~*~

Down on one of the lower gunnery decks,
Lieutenant Fairfield called out, “Seaman Barnes, front and
center!”

The sailor, who was swabbing out a cannon
muzzle, immediately stopped and shuffled over to his superior
officer.

“Aye sir,” he responded, snapping to
attention.

“You and Jansen get busy sawdusting the
decks.”

“Aye,” he replied with a quick salute and
then ran off to gather up the sawdust buckets.

Minutes later, he handed a couple of them to
the greenhorn, Seaman Jansen.

“What’s this for?” the newbie asked.

“It’s to soak up the blood when the
splinters are flying.”

“What?” Jansen asked in a sinking voice.

“Spilled blood on the planks gets slippery
and you’ll bust your arse on ‘em,” Barnes replied with an amused
smirk as he slung sawdust around a cannon battery.

Taking a big gulp, all the color soon ran
out of Jansen’s face. He was only 16 years old and new to the
fleet. Aside from a few back alley fist fights, he’d never seen any
real combat, and naval warfare was a nasty business.

Looking all around, he saw most of the
veterans bore the scars to prove it. Some wore eye patches to cover
a missing eyeball, while others hobbled around on pegged legs or
had hooked prosthetics for hands. Most everyone on the crew,
including the officers, had been stabbed, shot, or hit with
shrapnel at one time or another.

Even Captain Darcy bore several combat
scars. Running diagonally across his chest was a thick, healed-over
scar, made when he was slashed with a pirate’s cutlass. On his left
bicep was a circular scar, a puncture wound the size of a Groat
coin. He’d sustained the injury when an enemy sailor charged with
his musket, impaling him with its bayonet. The captain survived
only after bludgeoning the man with his pistol butt.

Like all newbies, Seaman Jansen was assigned
to the initial boarding party, better known as the
fodder
squad
. It was so called because of the unusually high casualty
rate expected when storming an enemy’s ship in the first wave.
Greenhorns like him always bore the brunt of the ship’s most
tedious and dangerous assignments.

Aboard a warship, until a newbie paid his
dues, he wasn’t considered much more than fodder for cannon fire.
Most of the older sailors didn’t even bother to learn their names
until they’d managed to survive at least a handful of battles.

~*~

Another half hour passed before Barnes
tossed his last handful of sawdust down.

“There,” he said, wiping his sweaty
brow.

By then the Lexington was about a quarter
mile behind the pirates’ trail ship and closing in fast.

“Topside,” Captain Darcy said to his
signalman in passing as he headed up the staircase to the main
deck.

Once on the bridge, he turned to the ensign
and said, “Signal flags.”

Snapping to attention the young sailor
nodded to him and awaited his further instructions.

“Follow my lead … Disable … Board … Capture
in series,” Darcy commanded.

“Aye captain,” the ensign confirmed and then
hoisted up a string of flags to the top of a nearby mast.

In turn, each of the trailing convoy ships
fired a green flare up into the air, confirming the flagship’s
orders.

~*~

Minutes later, the Lexington caught up to
the first pirate ship.

“Come about broadside!” Darcy shouted to his
helmsman. “Run over their oars!”

“Aye captain!” Gerhard replied, using his
iron hooked prosthetic to turn the ship’s wheel.

The Lexington’s gun crews eagerly stood by
their cannon batteries poised for action.

The plan was to break the slave ship’s oars
and blast away at her masts and sails in order to disable the
vessel. Then, the next convoy ship, behind them, would actually
raid and capture the ship. The Lexington would sail on to the next
ship and repeat the process until they engaged and boarded the last
pirate galley themselves.

“Steady as she goes,” the captain urged his
helmsman as the two of them stood side by side on the bridge,
firming their grips on the wheel.

The Lexington was swiftly coming up
alongside the pirate ship, and was only a few feet away, when
suddenly they were jolted forward and heard a series of loud
crackling and popping noises. Their heavy hull was smashing through
the first of the pirate’s oars, snapping them in two like
matchsticks.

Then, without warning, the pirate cannons
erupted to life at point blank range. Their deadly fireballs
blasted into the Lexington, sending exploding timbers spraying
across her decks. The screams of the many injured were all but
drowned out by the deafening booms of cannon fire. The ferocious
volume of incoming artillery was much heavier than what Darcy had
expected.

Looking down from the bridge deck, he
watched on in horror as his men were getting torn to pieces.
Leaning over the railing, cupping his hands around his mouth he
shouted, “FIRE!” but no one could hear him over the thunderous
onslaught.

Running over to a set of bridge stairs, he
jumped down the entire flight and hit the main deck running.
Crouching down, covering his head, all around him cannon balls were
exploding, spraying shrapnel everywhere as he headed toward his own
cannon crews.

Halfway across the open deck, a sonic
concussion threw him backwards, off his feet, and landed him hard
on his back. Bloodied and dazed, he groaned and slowly rolled over
as an exploding swarm of splinters blasted over him. Crawling over
to the main mast, a trickle of blood steadily dripped down the side
of his face.

Keep it together Will,
he thought to
himself, while a ringing noise echoed through his head.

Placing one hand in front of the other, the
wobbly captain eventually made it behind the thick-timbered mast,
where he took refuge and shook his head.

As the cobwebs cleared out of his mind, he
slowly regained his bearings and rubbed the side of his throbbing
cheek. It felt as though someone had cracked him in the jaw when
his fingertips rubbed over a patch of embedded splinters.

Wincing, he thought to himself.

Enough is enough!
Time to take
this fight to these savages.

Spitting out a mouthful of blood, Darcy
jumped to his feet and thrust his cutlass into the air.

“FIRE!” he screamed aloud to his battery
crews.

Seeing the captain in the thick of the
battle, his cowering gun crews drew confidence from his audacity
and leapt to their feet too.

“Eat this!” screeched one of the gunners as
he touched his torch to the back of his cannon.

On the other ship, he could see the whites
of the pirates’ eyes as the fiery shrapnel ripped through their
ranks.

In seconds, the Lexington’s cannons roared
to life and relentlessly fired salvo after salvo across the watery
divide. Within moments there wasn’t one pirate left standing as the
slave galley’s shredded sails burned and flapped in the wind.

“Target their masts!” Fairfield barked to
his own gun crews below deck as they too hammered away.

Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh
was all they
heard as their first few cannonballs missed their mark and zoomed
harmlessly over the corsair ship and out to open sea.

“Keep firing!” he ordered.

Looking down the line of gun batteries, the
lieutenant watched as one cannon after the other recoiled backwards
but still none had scored a direct hit.

“Powder boy!” Mr. Burnham called out to a
skinny 12-year-old boy who was heading his way.

“Hurry!” the first mate urged, waving him
on, as the dirty-faced lad bit down on his lip, shuffling his bare
feet ever faster across the deck. In his arms he was cradling a
20-pound cannonball.

“Here sonny,” Burnham said, taking the heavy
shot from him.

Rolling it into the gun’s muzzle, the first
mate quickly packed it down with his plunger and then ran behind
the gun where he knelt down. Squinting his eye, he feverishly
twisted the gun’s rear elevation wheel as he sighted in the
cannon.

“Four … three … two…” he counted down to
himself as the pirate’s main mast slowly moved into his gun
sight.

“One,” he whispered and then touched his
torch to the firing port and jumped to the side. Spewing out a
fiery funnel of flames, it violently recoiled back and narrowly
missed clipping his knee.

Meanwhile, over on the pirate galley the
mast exploded in half as it teetered over and crashed down onto the
deck.

“Nice shot!” the lieutenant hollered down
the line to him as the others cheered.

~*~

“Cease fire! Cease fire!” Captain Darcy
called out across the topside deck.

A few more sporadic shots rang out before
the Lexington’s guns fell silent. The ravaged pirates fired a
couple of more shots back at them, but their ship had been
decimated. They’d make for easy pickings for the next warship in
the convoy.

Whistling up to the bridge, Captain Darcy
shouted, “Helmsman, break contact!”

“Aye-aye captain!” Gerhard replied, cranking
on the ship’s rudder wheel.

~*~

Darcy and his crew watched on, as behind
them the Birmingham pulled up alongside the incapacitated ship. As
planned, the ship’s fodder squad cried out and quickly bound over
onto the pirate ship. A brief gun battle and clash of swords ensued
but then all fell quiet.

A few more minutes passed when they heard a
couple of errant gun shots ring out across the seascape.

One Lexington sailor, looking over to his
shipmate, grinned as they other nodded back to him. They both knew
the Birmingham sailors were commencing with some high seas justice
of their own.

Although naval regulations strictly forbade
the execution of prisoners without due process, no one was going to
stand up for this scum. Pirates were bad enough, but these slavers
were the worst. For them, mercy would be in short supply out
here.

~*~

Soon a pair of flares burst high above the
Birmingham, signaling they’d taken command of the slave ship.

Meanwhile the Lexington sailed on to disable
the next two pirate ships, with neither one putting up much of a
fight. Each of the ships were seemingly only manned by skeleton
crews with their topside decks stacked high with crates. In all
likelihood their lower decks were jammed full of captive slaves,
but the royal navy flagship didn’t have time to stop and check.
There was one more corsair boat to chase down and they were in hot
pursuit.

~*~

As the streams of hemp smoke rose up from
his beard, the last pirate ship’s captain, Hussein Gliv, crossed
his massive arms, and stared off into the distance at the
fast-approaching Lexington.

“What’re we gonna do?” asked one of his
corsairs in a worried tone, but the captain didn’t reply.

“Master Hussein!” the pirate pressed, rudely
raising his voice as he seized ahold of the captain’s forearm.

Turning his attention to him, Gliv frowned
and quickly withdrew his dagger from his belt. Stepping into the
much-smaller corsair, the psychopath plunged his blade into the
man’s gut and sneered at him as he slit open his belly.

Laughing, Gliv then shoved him down to the
deck, as the pirate clenched ahold of his stomach. Staring at his
squirming victim, he tauntingly licked the blood from his
double-edged blade and then spat on him.

“Erosh! Adnon!” Gliv called out over his
shoulder, beckoning two of his dreadlocked pirates.

Running over to him, like Gliv, they too
were shirtless with blackened tiger stripes painted across their
bare chests and had strands of burning hemp in their long
beards.

“Throw this shark bait over the side,” he
ordered with a crazed look in his eye.

The pirates knew better than to argue with
him and picked up their fallen comrade.

“No, please. I beg you!” the bloodied man
pleaded as they lifted him up and tossed him over the side.

Grinning ear-to-ear, Gliv went back to
waving the streams of hemp smoke up into his nostrils.

“Anything else Master Gliv?” one of them
asked him.

Snapping his finger, he pointed at his
henchmen and said, “Bring me up some slaves from the hole.”

Turning to his comrade, the pirate smirked
and then the two of them hastily disappeared down a nearby
hatch.

“We’ll see what this English captain is made
of,” Gliv said to himself, closing his eyes as he drew in a deep
breath.

8th Century BC ~ Mt. Olympus ~ Ancient
Greece

In the Dorian family, their mystical blood
lineage ran only through the female bloodline. The males had no
proclivity for the magic, and no one really had any idea why. It
had just been that way for as long as anyone could remember.

Tradition held it was the matriarch’s
responsibility to mentor her daughters in Dorian witchcraft. And
growing up, Tilda’s mother had done just that, but had also taught
her to use their magic benevolently.

“Just as everything in the universe has two
sides, a yin and a yang, so too does our magic,” she would explain.
She had gone to great lengths to warn Tilda to steer clear of their
magic’s darker, shadowy side. “Though tempting as it may be, grave
consequences await those with a malevolent heart,” her mother would
say.

Tilda heeded her mother’s warning and only
worked in the light of their Dorian magic. And, like her mother
before her, Tilda began teaching her own daughters the magic at an
early age. Just as importantly, she taught them when not to use
it.

“Our magic is to heal mankind, not to become
its scourge,” she often reminded her three girls.

They were all exceptionally talented
witches, each with their own specialty. Erika was an intuitive
fortune teller who could gaze into one’s eyes and read their soul.
The middle girl, Elena, was a passionate romantic and especially
drawn to brewing love and courtship potions. Whereas, Adriana was a
gentle soul, whose calling was to heal the sick.