Pirate Wolf Trilogy (94 page)

Then the round
of grapeshot had torn through the wall of Gabriel's crewmen with
horrifying results and she knew the negotiations had met a violent
end. She did not have time to think. She did not have time to
absorb the shock of seeing helpless men blown to pieces. She only
had time to react and trust her instincts.

At less
than three hundred yards, it was not possible to build enough speed
to cut in swiftly under the
Valor’s
guns, deliver a broadside, and peel away again without
coming under heavy fire herself, but no one, not even Nathan Crisp,
balked at the order to do just that. With every scrap of furled
canvas suddenly dropping from the yards, the
Iron Rose
surged forward to close the distance
between the two sister ships and at the last impossible moment,
heeled sharply about, presenting her broadside.

Delivered
at point blank range, every shot smashed into the hull of
the
Valor
with
devastating results, the iron balls tearing through the timbers of
her outer skin and
plowing
through open ports, unseating cannon and obliterating the
Spanish gunners who manned them. Shots that did not rip an exit
through the opposite hull, ricocheted around the lower deck,
turning it into bloody chaos. The Spanish crews, unused to English
gun carriages, fired wild, and while many of the shots tore into
the
Iron
Rose’s
sails and
rigging, a lucky number went wide.

Counting
off every precious second it was taking the gunners on board
the
Iron
Rose
to reload, Juliet
could see the Spanish arquebusiers on board the
Valor
taking to the rails and rigging. Gabriel’s upper
battery, she knew, held five swivel guns, but to her
ever-increasing outrage, she could see that they were not being
mounted on the gunwales to fire at the crew of the swiftly
approaching privateer. They were being fired, one after another, at
the men screaming in the shrouds. Before the fifth gun discharged,
a streak of blue velvet ran across the deck, his sword flashing,
his white neck ruff stark against the tanned face and flying
chestnut hair. He was able to clear a path to the swivel gun, to
cut down the man holding the fuse before it could be lowered to the
touch hole, then to slash his way through three more men before he
was finally brought down under a crush of red and black-clad
soldiers.

Juliet
had no time to ponder Varian’s fate as the
Iron Rose
, moving too fast now to avoid a collision, backed
her topsails and slid beam on through the water so that when she
rammed the
Valor
, it was
broadside to broadside, the impact causing a huge gout of foaming
water to spew up between them. The gunners had reloaded by then and
fired another round of sangrenel and incendiary shot, which blasted
straight into the damaged hull, taking out most of the cannons that
were left on the lower deck and starting fires where ever the
pitch-soaked scraps of flaming canvas settled. Up in the tops,
crewmen with muskets started to answer the deadly fire from the
Spanish sharpshooters, but they were hampered by the human shield
and many died where they stood, unable to make a clear
shot.

Juliet screamed
for grappling hooks to lash the two grinding ships together.

Their
first desperate attempt to board was turned back by volleys of
gunfire. Juliet had mounted all her own falconets on the starboard
rails, but the men who were firing them into the opposing tops were
being picked off with terrible precision. Until they could clear
the yards, the men on the deck of the
Iron Rose
were exposed and helpless.

Juliet was
pinned against the bulwark on the quarterdeck, already bleeding
where a musket ball had nicked her arm. Nathan was crouched beside
her trying to reach the helmsman, who was draped over the tiller, a
red bloom spreading across his back.

A lone figure
appeared in the hatchway below the quarterdeck, and after taking a
deep breath to steady himself, ran through the hail of musket balls
to seek shelter behind the bulkhead.

Johnny Boy set
his quiver of arrows beside him and, using the lip of the deck as
cover, began firing at the Spanish arquebusiers, shooting them out
of the yards with swift and deadly accuracy. He was able to launch
his arrows between, over, and under the writhing shield of human
flesh, where the uncertain aim of muskets had made it impossible to
return the Spaniard’s fire. He loosed one arrow after another until
the first quiver was empty, then reached for the second and began
making a noticeable gap in the Spaniard’s defences.

“Away!” Juliet
shouted. “All hands away!”

The men
of the
Iron
Rose
needed no
prompting. As soon as the muskets were silenced, they were swarming
over the rails, their knives in their teeth, their cutlasses and
pikes raised to meet the sea of soldiers flowing across the
Valor’s
deck toward them. They clawed
their way over the bloody remains of shattered crewmen, cutting
down others who were still alive and screaming to be freed. Those
who had their bonds slashed joined the fray with rage in their
hearts and eyes, joining the charge against the Spaniards with
anything they could grasp to use as weapon, even with bare fists if
nothing else was at hand.

Juliet
emptied the four pistols she wore in her belts, then flung them
aside and fought through the crush of helmeted soldiers with her
sword in her right hand, a dagger in her left. Arrows continued to
fly overhead and bodies fell screaming from the yards into the
melee below. The gunners on board the
Iron Rose
, fired another raking broadside into the
Valor’s
belly, sending chunks of
planking and hot cinders rising on explosive forks of orange flame.
Rigging lines were cut along with the freed crewmen and yards swung
loose, hurling more Spaniards off balance. As soon as the
Valor’s
crewmen were freed from the
rigging, the
Rose’s
bow
chasers began firing up into the tops, earning the alternate name
they bore with bloody justification: murderers.

Water
began to pour through the holes in the
Valor’s
belly. Smoke and steam choked the passageways and
stairwells; seamen who had thought to remain below were forced up
on deck, where they were cut down by privateers or shot by their
own soldiers in the confusion.

Juliet
fought her way to the quarterdeck, where she had seen the greatest
concentration of scarlet doublets and steel breastplates. It was
also where she had last seen her brother, his body jerking and
twisting in outrage against his bonds. He had been shouting
encouragement, cheering on the men of the
Iron Rose
as they attacked his ship, at the same time
screaming for someone to cut him loose so he could join the fight.
Juliet was almost there when she found herself cornered against the
bulkhead below the quarterdeck, fending off attacks from a clutch
of Spaniards armed with heavy cutlasses.

Nathan was on
her left. He lunged at one of the soldiers to block a thrust,
deflecting it with a powerful strike from his own blade. The steel
snapped at the hilt but the Spaniard had a dagger in his other
hand, which he drove forward and plunged hilt-deep in Nathan’s
shoulder. He jerked it back and would have stabbed again but the
intent was deflected as a thin slash of steel came out of seeming
nowhere and sent the Spaniard’s dagger spinning across the deck,
the fist still clenched around the hilt.

“We’re going to
have to stop meeting like this, my love,” Varian said, pausing to
flash a grin before he moved to stand beside her, fighting shoulder
to shoulder, facing their attackers. His face was bloody, his ruff
was gone, a sleeve of his doublet was parted at the shoulder,
revealing a deep gash in his upper arm. He was bleeding from
another cut on his thigh, but it did not seem to hamper his strides
as he helped her clear a path to the ladderway.

With her
back amply defended, Juliet vaulted up the steps to the
quarterdeck. Crewmen from the
Rose
had swung across on cables and were engaging an enormous
giant of a man in one corner, while on the opposite side of the
deck, a Spaniard wearing the steel breastplate of an officer
fumbled with something at the rail. At first she could not see what
he was doing, but then he turned, his hand gripping the long brass
monkey tail of a loaded falconet, swivelling the iron barrel around
to aim the muzzle into the shrouds where Gabriel was
tied.

Juliet saw the
spluttering linstock. She saw his mouth draw back in a grin, heard
something that sounded like a deep, slow distortion of a curse. She
saw the flat black eyes staring out at her from beneath the curved
sweep of his helmet and recognized Cristobal Recalde at once. The
shock halted her a moment, long enough for him to show her the
glowing fuse he was lowering toward the touch hole of the bow
chaser.

Juliet heard
herself scream. She was aware of her feet carrying her forward, but
her steps seemed to drag and her legs were so heavy, it felt as if
she was slogging through waist-deep quicksand. Gabriel turned,
again so slowly the beads of sweat on his brow looked like droplets
of syrup glistening where they fanned through the air. Their gazes
met, for just an instant, but it was an instant that lasted
eternity, filled with broken images of every smile, every laugh,
every childhood prank they had happily suffered at each other’s
hands. His battered lips were moving, he was saying something she
could not hear, but by then she was reaching out, she was leaping
into the air, she was smashing into Recalde’s chest and shoulder
just as he touched the hissing fuse to the powder hole.

Juliet seemed
to hang there in mid-air as the powder sparked and flared. The
delay was just long enough for her to know she had knocked
Recalde’s hands away from the barrel. She heard the louder boom as
the main charge exploded, and she saw the gleaming iron beads of
grapeshot bursting out from the flared maw of the gun, but instead
of spraying the shrouds where Gabriel was tied, they were now aimed
straight at her chest...

~~~

Immediately after the
Iron Rose
opened fire, all three Spanish galleons put on sail and
started forward to join the attack. The first to reach the battling
ships was swinging into position to unleash a full broadside when
Isabeau brought the
Avenger
cutting
across her path. Gunners on both vessels were ready, but the
privateer was lighter, faster, bolder than the Spaniard, and
the
Avenger’s
cannon
made short work of the rails and ports on the larboard side,
blasting great holes in the decking and unseating whole gun
carriages, sending them rearing back on cracked timbers. The
Spaniards retaliated by tearing holes in the
Avenger’s
tops, but she was already trimmed to
fighting sail and merely shook off the affront, coming hard about,
and firing a hot round straight down the bows, blasting the tall
forecastle with a series of broadsides that enveloped both ships in
clouds of smoke.

Breaking
free of the sulphurous yellow fog, Isabeau ordered more sail and
brought the helm about again, closing the circle tighter this time,
knowing the greater threat was not from the galleon’s fixed
batteries, which were ineffective at less than three hundred yards,
but from the scores of marksmen that lined her yards and rails like
fire ants and if allowed to get close enough, would slaughter the
valiant fighters on board the
Iron
Rose
and the
Valor
. With
Lucifer at the helm, she brought the
Avenger
in again on a swath of curling blue water, this
time sweeping the Spaniard’s upper decks and tops with a barrage of
chain and sangrenel.

The remnants of
the tall forecastle were obliterated. Bits of planking and
cartwheeling men flew through the air, blown there by a series of
domino-like explosions that erupted in bursts of orange flame along
the deck. It was a spectacular amount of damage from one cannonade
and while Isabeau knew her husband’s crew was efficient, she did
not think they were capable of striking the galleon on both sides
at once.

It took
nearly half a minute for the second ship to come streaming out of
the smoke and reveal herself, and when she did, Isabeau eyes
widened in surprise again, for it was not the
Dove
as she had expected. It was the bristling and
battle-damaged
Tribute
, with
its red-haired captain standing before the mast, his raised fist
coming down hard as he called for another round of incendiary
shot.

“It’s Master
Jonas,” Lucifer said, grinning ear to ear. “And lookee what he
brought wid him!”

The big
black Cimaroon grinned and stabbed a finger north, pointing through
the haze of smoke. Geoffrey Pitt’s ship, the
Christiana
, with Spit McCutcheon at the helm was
bearing down from the north leading a squad of three privateers,
while a second brace of ships, obviously in Jonas’s company, broke
away from the
Tribute
and
raced after the remaining two Spanish galleons, both of whom were
attempting to turn and retreat back to the fleet.