paces to Gresham and stop his attacker's blow. Gresham, half on his knees, looked for a brief moment into Mannion's eyes, a moment in which both men said all they needed to say to each other, and thrust up at his exposed attacker. The shock of Mannion's block had sent a stinging blow up the blade and hilt. The cheaper the weapon, the more likely it was to let its user feel every hit in nerve-tingling detail. Slightly off balance, Gresham would have compensated for his awkward position, half kneeling and half falling, had his foot not slipped on a patch of blood and skidded out from under him. The sword thrust he had intended to go up and under the ribcage of his assailant instead went low, the superb steel slicing straight into the man's genitals. The scream was as if someone had rubbed razors across the man's eyes, a screech of pure agony. Almost pityingly, Mannion brought his heavy blade down on the man's head, mercifully cutting short the inhuman noise.
'Bet that hurt,' he said, turning to face the bald-headed man, who was looking nervously from Gresham to Mannion and back again, unsure as to who was his opponent. Gresham leapt to his feet, a throbbing, burning pain in his head, and the man's eyes swivelled to him. Mannion leapt forward and enacted an exact replica of the blow that had just been intended to kill Gresham, a scything, sweeping cut of sheer brute force. There was no one to help bald pate, and the blow half severed the man's neck. Perhaps he wanted to scream but all that emerged from his mouth was a frothy, red, bubbling gurgle.
Jack had been aiming blows at his opponent, swinging them at head height, forcing the man to raise his arms, tiring him even faster. Suddenly and without warning he swung low, breaking the man's knee with the force of his blow. His enemy sank to the deck, gargling, face up, pleading. Jack centred his blade, and pushed it hard into the man's neck. Dick had scrambled out from under the body of the man Gresham had killed, and was standing wild-eyed on the deck, looking for someone to kill. Edward was still dancing around his man, who suddenly looked up and saw that he was alone on the deck, five blood-stained men facing him. He stepped back, dropped his blade, put up his hands palms outwards to his attackers. There was no mercy in their eyes. Before any of them could move, he jumped onto the guard rail, dropping his hands. The Anna gave a sudden lurch, and the two hulls started to pull apart, opening a three-foot gap between the two vessels. The man began to slip, paddling his arms ludicrously to try and keep his balance. He fell between the two hulls just as the wind and the waves forced them together with a grinding crash, mellowed by the sound of something soft being crushed, like eggshells being trodden on.
There was screaming from the other boat. The small bearded man was shouting at the three seamen left on board his vessel, pointing with a sword to one of the two small cannon on his deck. He was yelling at the men to fire the guns, but they were huddled under the forecastle, clearly scared out of their wits and mutinous.
The man stopped yelling, realising it was a lost cause. He turned, and looked at Gresham. Then, remarkably, he gave a brief bow.
It was simply business. A gesture of recognition from one professional to another. He laid his sword blade across the rope of the grappling hook that still tied the two ships together. The blade must have had the sharpness of a razor. With only two or three strokes, the rope was cut, and the enemy vessel veered away, vanishing in seconds into the gloom.
Damn! thought Gresham, not for the first time in the past few hours. There went his last real chance of finding out who had decided to try and take the Anna. Then an awful recollection dawned on him.
'Where's Tom?' asked Gresham. 'Did anyone see what happened to him?'
'Yeah,' said Mannion. ‘I saw. That bald-headed bastard came straight at 'im, and 'e forgot where the rail was, backed into it 'e did, and fell straight over. No point in looking. He caught his 'ead a right crack as he went over. Must 'ave been unconscious as 'e 'it the water. Stupid bugger.'
'God help him,' said Gresham, a part of him starting to die alongside the man he had lost. 'He was my responsibility. He was only here because of me.'
'It's bad,' said Mannion, 'but don't fret yourself too much. We all of us know the odds. Loved a fight, did Tom. Knew what 'e'd signed up to. Best way for man like 'im to go. 'E'd never have made old bones.'
There was the crash of a pistol from below deck. Gresham looked up, the burning pain in his head getting worse by the second, and a shockwave went through his body as he saw that the sailing master was no longer tied up by the wheel, strands of rope suggesting he had somehow found a knife and cut himself free.
Gresham started to run for the door that led into the cabins, but fell back as it was kicked open.
The master was dragging the sailing master on deck. The sailing master's left shoulder was a mass of blood and pulp where the master had clearly fired one of Gresham's pistols at him.
'You bastard! You bastard! Betray me would you? Betray me and my crew? I'll kill you! I'll fuckin' kill you!'
The master kicked the sailing master hard in the groin, his muted groan a measure of the pain overload he was already in. There was a seaman's knife in the sailing master's belt, the one that had cut him free, and the master reached for it, and was about to plunge it into the sailing master's neck when something cold touched his temple.
Jane was holding the second pistol at his head. Her hair was streaming in the wind and she was barefoot. She looked insane, the intensity in her eyes the hallmark of the truly mad. As if to emphasise her insanity and the insanity of life, the bodies of those killed by Gresham and his men littered the deck, surrounded by dark brown pools. The deck of the Anna would never be the same again.
‘I heard him talking to the sailing master,' she hissed, the pistol rock steady. 'There's a hatch from the hold through to the cabin space. You can only unlock it from the cabin side. That man there let the master out, and they started to argue. When there was that terrible noise of fighting.' Some hint of the agony she had undergone from the moment the cannons crashed out came into her voice.
'They were accusing each other. Then the sailing master said they should take me hostage, use me to bargain with you, force you to put them ashore and take the rowing boat. Then they broke into my cabin, and the master here shot his friend. Without warning.'
'Now why would he do that?' asked Gresham softly, starting to edge towards his ward.
'Because he must have thought that if he could blame this man he could pretend to be innocent. Keep himself on a big boat. Not have to trust himself to a rowing boat.'
It was the girl's icy calm that was more frightening than any display of emotion would have been.
'Good thinking,' said Gresham conversationally. 'What do you intend to do now?'
'I think I very much want to pull this trigger,' said Jane, with an intensity that would have cut through ice- hardened rigging. 'I want this man to know that I am no one's property, that I am not owned by anyone, that I am not something to be used.'
'And you think shooting him will let him know that?' asked Gresham. He was nearly by her side now, but if she knew of his approach she was showing nothing of it.
'Perhaps,' she said, 'and perhaps not. But it will help me know that I am a person. It will help me to have fought back. Not to have been passive. Not to have been a… victim. I am so tired' — and there was the faintest crack in her voice now — 'of being… nothing.'
'Please give me my gun,' he said gently.
'Why?' she said calmly, and he saw her finger start to tighten on the trigger.
Because it cannot be good for a young girl to blow a man's head off. Because if you did kill this man it might leave more scars than it healed. Because there is something awful, something terrifying about the cold dedication of your voice. Because girls cried or got the vapours, or came over all feeble. Or spread their legs to the invaders. Girls were defenceless. 'Because I would like you to.'
He put out his hand, very, very slowly, and laid it gently over the barrel. It was cold under his fingers. She had not looked at him at all, and did not do so now. There was the briefest of flickering moments when he felt sure she would pull the trigger. Then, as slowly as he had put his hand out, she started to lower the pistol, looking fixedly all the time into the eyes of the master.
'Know I could have done it,' she said to him, as if they were the only two people left in the world. 'Know that I would have done it.'
No one who heard her doubted her words.
Gresham closed his hand over the barrel, and very carefully removed the pistol from her grasp. The butt was warm where she had held it. It was at full cock.
Gresham swung round, making all the watchers except Jane jump. Suddenly the pistol was jammed against the master's breast.
