In bays swathed by rainforest, they anchored and rested. Vento and Largo had to chase chattering monkeys off the rigging, which they had mistaken for trees. Fahd’s speciality became monkey stew. Each dawn, they had to mop the decks and rails clear of the dew left by the curling dawn fog. Blades rusted quickly in this place, and guns choked and plugged. Roque kept drill after drill running to maintain the battle readiness of Silvaro’s company.
On the fourth day, the Rumour led the Safire down a reef channel and around a bay, beneath overhanging banks of beard-moss and draping bougainvillea, towards a fathomless cove named after angels.
It was early and there was scant wind, so the going was slow. At the head of an inlet that Silvaro said led straight out into Angel’s Bar, they dropped anchor, and Casaudor was sent out in a longboat to spy around the inlet’s turn.
“Why do we wait?” Sesto asked.
“No wind, so tell,” replied Benuto. “If we force a fight, we’ll want the wind with us, to press our advantage of speed.”
On the mid-decks below them, Roque was bringing out the arms-men now, setting pavis and targettes along the rail on the starboard side-rests. On the slopes of the hull, gun ports were being hooked open. Sesto could hear Sheerglas’ command whistle shrilling from the gun deck as he ordered up his pieces. The Rumour was rolling up its sleeves for a fight.
Casaudor returned out of the early morning mist. He stood in the prow of the longboat, the six oars behind him slowly beating the sap-green water, and sprang up the side as soon as he was close enough to take hold of a rope.
“Is it there?” asked Silvaro.
Casaudor nodded. “Like a dream in the mist. It lies at anchor, massively dark of shape and sail. A green fire smokes at its prow.”
“The Butcher Ship?”
“I know not, but it looks the very devil of a thing. And if it is the Butcher, then the Butcher is not the Kymera after all.”
“What do you mean?”
Casaudor looked grim and spat out of the side of his mouth for good fortune. The old churchman was not exaggerating. “This monster is three hundred and fifty paces from stem to stern, and along its double gun decks nest sixty guns.”
The ominous news spread. Many fully expected Silvaro to turn them around and quit such a confrontation, especially if this was not the prize they were after. Indeed, on the Safire, Silke began to make preparations to come about, until Silvaro signalled him otherwise.
“If we get wind, we’ll go in at him,” Silvaro told his senior men. Several muttered oaths. “Oh, he’s a big bastard, by Casaudor’s account, but we are two, and we are quick, and we have surprise on our side. Besides, I have to know. If this is the Butcher Ship, I have to know. And for the soul of Reyno, if no other, I have to strike.”
Roque nodded grimly. Casaudor too assented. The bo’sun in his crimson coat seemed too concerned with the mechanics of the fight to bother over the outcome.
Sesto sensed there was another reason behind Silvaro’s decision. The Reiver lord wanted vengeance for the blood he had been forced to spill on the beach of Santa Bernadette.
A strong easterly rose quite suddenly an hour after Casaudor’s return, and though they were close-reached by it, Silvaro made use of it at once. According to the first mate’s report, the enemy lay with its head to the wind.
The blow lifted the mist away from the inlet like a drawn curtain, and the tree-covered spits were revealed on either side, like barricades of jungle. Half-sheeted, the Rumour stole down the inlet’s sound, and the Safire spurred in, about forty lengths back on the starboard quarter. Both of the Rumour’s armed watches gathered at the starboard rail, pikes ready at the shield wall, and the calivermen took their places. Bottles were handed around and swigs taken.
Unlike some rogue crews, the Reivers would not go into battle drunk and roaring, but it was custom to toast for success and fortify nerves, and drink away the curse of the sea daemon. Sesto accepted a drink from a bottle as it was passed along. His hands were shaking.
Silvaro called for more sheet and more speed. Then he walked down from the poop and approached Sesto, who was preparing his little Arabyan wheel-lock.
“When we get into it, keep your head down. I’ll not have you killed for nothing,” Silvaro ordered.
“I took a life on Santa Bernadette,” Sesto replied bravely, despite his shaking hands. “For that I’ll claim at least one back here.”
Silvaro paused and pursed his lips. Sesto’s words had clearly struck a chord. The Reiver lord nodded and tugged a long-barrelled flintlock out of his belt, handing it off, butt first, to Sesto. The damn thing was monstrously heavy.
“Then take this, sir. It’ll be more use to you than that little, shiny toy.”
Ruefully, Sesto put his little, ornate pocket pistol away and clapped a firm hold of the mighty handgun.
Silvaro was about to offer some other remark when the man up in the topcastle suddenly hallooed. He was pointing to starboard, into the trees that rushed past on their right hand.
Sesto looked, wondering what the matter was. Then he saw it. His heart sank. What he had first taken to be tall treetops he now saw to be the royals and skysails of a most massive ship running east with them on the other side of the spit. The sails were red. Their enemy must have taken the opportunity of the rising blow too, and was now riding his way down out of Angel’s Bar, from anchor. Due to his great size, the tops of his main masts stood up above the jungle trees. And the man in his topcastle had, without doubt, spied the Rumour and the Safire in the inlet.
Their surprise was gone. In another five minutes, they would both run clear of the spit into the open waters of the bar and be clean on, beam to beam. Side on to a sixty-gun leviathan, the Rumour would be rent to matchwood.
“Loose some sheets! Loose some there!” Casaudor yelled, seeing the awful fate that bore down on them.
“Belay that!” Silvaro roared.
Casaudor looked at his captain as if he was mad. “We must turn and run! They have us!”
“No, sir!” Silvaro snarled. “We will not break now! More sheet! Full sheet, you laggards! Full sheet and more besides! We will beat this unholy giant to the spithead!”
Trembling, Sesto realised Luka Silvaro’s intention. The Rumour was a sleek, fast vessel—a “slighter hunting ship”, he had called it. He meant to out-race the enemy barque before the spit was done, and come around across its bows. But the barque was huge. Its plentiful sail cloth could push it ahead at a tremendous speed.
The Rumour raised full running sail and filled its canvas fat with wind. For a moment, it paced ahead of the red topsails behind the trees. Then the red sails began to catch up again. They slid above the tops of the forest, ominously suggestive, like the fin of a great fish cutting the water, hinting at the monster hidden below. The enemy had raised the black flag, showing an hourglass that expressed the fact that time was running out for its intended victim. In response, with a curse, Silvaro hoisted his jolie rouge.
Vento’s ratings monkeyed up and down the ratlines, extending a pack of studdingsails before the main course and main top, and a flying jib before the fore staysail. At once, the additional sheets caused the Rumour to fly and gain water at the expense of its lumbering foe.
A length they had on it, then a length and a half. The end of the forest spit was in sight, and the deep, bottomless open water of the Bar yawned out before them.
With less than a half minute to go before they cleared, Sesto looked back and saw with dismay that the Safire had fallen away far behind down the inlet. Silke, it seemed, had chosen to sit this one out. And that, most as like, spelt doom for the Rumour.
As the Rumour cleared the spit into open water, it had two and a half lengths on the massive barque. They thundered out into the cove and immediately began to gybe to starboard.
Sesto got his first look at the enemy racing up to meet them. He had imagined many things supporting the red tops seen over the trees, but this was worse than any of them. It wa
s a colossal, dark ship, more than three times the size of the Rumour, its tight-yarded sheets red as dried blood.
A lambent green fire burned in a metal lantern affixed to the bow. Dark shapes—daemon bodies, Sesto supposed—swarmed on the decks and up the ratlines.
It was coming at them head-on as they turned about across its front. Their starboard side was flat-on to its racing bows. Did it mean to ram them?
The lurch of the fast-running Rumour was great now they had come into open swell. Sesto was forced to hang on as the deck pitched and rose.
He heard a whistle shrill and then felt the boom-shake of guns firing below him.
A full side let out at the enemy. Sesto couldn’t hear the impacts, but he saw splashes in the sea beside the barque, and puffs of splinters and pieces of rail fly off from its bows. Its inner jib snapped and flapped away like a streamer.
Sheerglas’ gun teams fired again, loosing chain shot this time. They had the range now, despite the rapid, cross-passing movement of the ships. All the enemy’s jibs shredded off, along with the fore starboard ratlines. Dark shapes tumbled away into the rushing sea. The royal staysails ripped aside or were torn into holes, and the top part of the foremast came down like a stricken tree.
White smoke puffed out on either side of the hellish green lantern. The enemy had bow guns, heavy cannon by the look, and it had used them. A water spout leapt up beyond the Rumour’s bows where one shot went wide. The other tore the luff edge out of the Rumours biggest studdingsail and caused the loose canvas to snap and crack wildly in the blow. Severed yards whipped back and forth above the deck, despite Vento’s efforts to team them in and control them. One savagely snapping line decapitated a rigger and sent him tumbling away off the upper ratlines into the sea. His blood fell like rain on all below.
“Again, Sheerglas!” Luka yelled.
Working like devils, sweating in the hot, dark confines of the gun decks, the master gunner’s teams succeeded in rattling off a third salvo as the Rumour came about, broad-reached, around the mighty foe.
This did the most damage yet. Sesto winced as he saw parts of the bow quarters splinter and hole. Pieces of red wood fluttered up into the air, high above the level of the main sails.
Then it was all commotion. Silvaro bellowed orders that Benuto bellowed louder. Tende and Saybee hauled the wheel round together and the ratings mobbed up the lines to bring the sheets to true. Roque gave a piped command that sent the armed watch over from the starboard to the port to re-establish their armoured wall there. The Rumour was turning now, its speed dropping suddenly as they went almost head to the wind. Silvaro was striving to keep the smallest possible profile towards the barque. Now they were all but bow-on as the barque presented its starboard side to them.
The barque fired its starboard guns. It was a huge salvo and, for a moment, the hull of the ship disappeared behind an expanding cloud of firelit smoke. The broadside recoil rolled the barque heavily to its port line, and it began to loose sheets to close into battle.
The sea to either side of the Rumour blossomed with cannon splash, and two heavy culverin balls smashed into the port bow just above the water line. The deck shook.
Silvaro edged the Rumour around just a hint so that Sheerglas had his port guns at a tight present. They flashed and fired. Hull boards and gunport hatches blew out into the water, and smoke laced the space between the two ships. Another thundering broadside came from the devil barque. The Rumour’s foresails exploded into shreds and several men on deck were slaughtered. Sesto could smell blood again. Blood, sea salt, sea wind, powder smoke.
The barque had dropped all speed, and was edging around, trying to out-turn the Rumour.
“In close! In close!” Silvaro ordered.
The call seemed like suicide. As they came in shy of the barque’s starboard side, its cannons flashed once again, and the Rumour shuddered as hull wood burst and rails blew away. The foremast was in tatters. Sesto saw at least one of Vento’s riggers hanging, dismembered, from the foremast’s torn ropes.
The order was not madness. The barque’s gunports, though plentiful, were high up on its waist and, once the sprightly Rumour got in close enough, the enemy couldn’t angle its heaviest guns low enough to target the Rumour’s hull. Still, their shots ripped through the sails. Few were more than shreds now. Sheerglas used the foremost guns to drench the enemy with grape shot. The calivermen on the rails and rigging and the men with the swivel guns began to pink at the closing foe. Cannons barked and flashed sporadically from its dark red sides. They had calivermen up too. Tortoise Schell, a cutlass in his hand as he waited for a chance to board, was killed stone dead by a caliver ball. Rodrigo Sal and Dirty Gabriel were shredded by chain shot that smashed through the pavises. Vento was impaled with splinters from the foremast along his left arm and chest, and fell twenty feet onto the deck. Largo ran aloft with his gold comb morion in place, and spat arrows from his horse bow at anything moving at the enemy’s rail.
They were at close quarters now, both ships almost dead in the water and shrouded by a gagging envelope of gunsmoke. Grapples flew out from the Rumour, and poles reached to their extremities as the vessels, great and small, wrapped one another in a tight embrace of battle.
The Rumour and the Butcher Ship came side to side, stem to stern. Just before their fenders crashed and grated against each other, Sheerglas fired a final retort and stove in the enemy’s hull in six places just above the line of flotation.
Screaming, the Reivers began to mob and charge across onto the barque. They scrambled across boarding planks, clambered over nets, or swung out on yard ends. Ferocious hand-to-hand fighting broke out along the barque’s starboard rail.
Sesto saw Silvaro storm across, and Casaudor and Benuto too. Even Tende had left the tiller and was leaping across the deep gap between the fighting ships, his Ebonian war-axe lofted in his hand. The caliver and swivel gun men, along the Rumour’s battered side, blasted away at the heads of the enemy crewmen.
Sesto grabbed hold of a boarding line in the thick of the mayhem and steeled himself to go over.
Ymgrawl grabbed at him. “Are thee mad? Thou stays here!”
“The devil you say!” Sesto cursed, kicking the lean boucaner’s hands away. “I have a debt to pay!”
Pushing off, Sesto swung over onto the barque.
XVI
The Reivers had made it look so damned easy.
Sesto hadn’t counted for the sheer drop between hulls that yawned below him, or the effort such a swing involved. Nor had he realised how hard it would be to hold on to a rope. When, more by luck than judgement, he landed hard on the barque’s deck, he was almost impressed with himself, and privately swore that he’d never do such a thing again.
Abruptly, he had more pressing matters to deal with. A member of the rival crew—a howling, bearded thug dressed in red leather—charged at him, swinging a cutlass.
Badly balanced after his landing and all but falling over, Sesto tried to pull out the grand flintlock Silvaro had given him.
He got it free, but before he could actually fire it, the enemy cutlass dashed it to the deck.
The brute in the red leather kicked Sesto over and swung up his curved blade to finish him.
Then he fell over, hard, blood bubbling out of a neat little hole in his forehead.
Sesto lowered his ornate Arabyan piece. It had proved its worth, to him, at least.
Silvaro, Roque and Casaudor, with a gang of Reivers, had almost fought their way down the mid-deck to the barque’s wheel when the tide of battle turned, decisively at last.
It had been hard slugging and brute blading all the way along. The decks were plashy with spilled blood, and Roque and Silvaro were both covered in bloody scratches and gashes, their shirts shredded. Casaudor, somehow, was untouched, though his coat was stained with the gore of others.
Then they heard the rolling thunder of guns. They saw the flash and fizz beyond the port rail and felt the wet deck beneath them shudder and
protest.
The Safire had stormed out of the inlet, having deliberately hung back to allow the enemy to pass clear. Now it came in, fast as an arrow, sheets fully fat, giving out cannonade after cannonade from its starboard guns.
It sped up along the barque’s port side, firing and flashing and adding to the smoking fog.
No man could argue with the situation. The great barque was vanquished.
The Reivers had won.
“You pretended?” Luka Silvaro hissed. He was incredulous.
“We did. It seemed to be the thing… I mean to say, it worked.”
“It worked. Did it?”
“Yes, sir…”
They stood in the barque’s master cabin. The air was still filmy with smoke, and blood and water dripped down from between the deck boards above. Luka stood at one end with Roque and Sesto. At the other, under the blown-out window lights, a powder-burned and bleeding man sat in a chair he had been forced into.
“By what name was this barque known?”
“It is the Demiurge, lord.”
“And by what name are you known?”
“I am Pieter Pieters, of Bretonnia born. I was master mate of this craft. My captain was Henri the Little, also known as Bearded John. I saw you kill him in the tiller house, lord. I saw your sword sever his neck not fifteen minutes past.”
“So I did. His blood stains my shirt. And his neck-bone put a dink in my favourite shamshir.” Luka’s voice was full of boiling threat. “Bearded John I know. And the Demiurge, consort to the Kymera, the vessel of Red Henri of Breton.”
“The same, lord.” Pieters coughed up a good deal of blood and fell slackly back in the chair.
Silvaro paced forward and dragged the dying man up by the hair. “And you say this is… pretence?”