A King`s Commander

'Well shot, Mister Rahl!' Lewrie shouted. 'Man the starboard… the lee carronade! Spenser, back on the wind, close-hauled, quickly.'

As Rahl and the forecastle gunners readied the other eighteen-pounder, Jester clawed back up to windward a full point, right on the razor-edge of luffing, to put the tartane almost two points alee of her. To claw Jester inshore of the Chase!

Boom! Another shot soared out, raising a second feather of spray; again, close-aboard the tartane, which ducked back up to windward, this time to escape, weaving an Ess-shaped wake before Jester's bows. Boom! went the larboard carronade once the tartane had ducked upwind enough.

'Jal' Rahl shouted in triumph. 'Eine schцn Gott-damn hit!'

I'm surrounded by fools! Choundas raged; incompetents! Filthy-arsed mongrel defectives! Goddamned… farmers, who haven't a clue to the sea! Forced to remain silent, forced to depend on a leering cretin, who should have known a night wind off the land would fade, and stranded them too far from shore. Failed to tack once they saw that 'Bloody' ship and didn't seem to know that the heights would muffle what breeze there was. Chances for an escape looked rather bleak at the moment, but they had one shot left-to tack at once and run inshore, get into shallows where the 'Bloodies' couldn't go. Brave their guns, and flee.

The impact of the shot took him by surprise, muffled in his boat cloak on the weather deck below the high- pinked quarterdeck. Cold made his ravaged leg throb with agony, but he was about to fight it back, as he'd done for years, mount the quarterdeck and take charge. The aching delayed him a fateful second as he rose to stand, to mount the ladder.

The tartane shuddered, jerked and rolled as if she'd run aground. Men were screaming, even men on the weather deck around him who weren't even in the line of fire! There was a frightful smash of shattered timber, the parroty Rrwawrkl as the taffrail and upper stern transom, and a portion of the larboard rails were ripped away in pieces, and whickerings as foot-long wood splinters of the transom and quarterdeck planks whirled in the air. Choundas forced himself up the first step, to peer over at nose height as the lateen above his head was quilled with splinters- and spattered with gore.

Serves you right, he sneered! That boastful Araby-looking nasty of a captain had been slain, along with the helmsman on the tiller, and the other two on the quarterdeck had been blown off their feet.

'Silence!' he boomed, almost crying out at each step as he went to the quarterdeck. 'Listen to me! I am captain now, and I will save you. Do what I say and you will live. Lose your heads, and you all are dead men! As dead as your fool of a captain is!'

That stopped them in their tracks, as he took hold of the tiller sweep and began to force it leeward again, to hold them close-hauled on the wind.

'Trim us in to beat, then hoist the rowboat over the side. The lee side, where the 'Bloody' ship cannot see it,' Choundas roared. He used his free hand to sweep back his boat cloak to reveal the pistols in his waist belt, the hilt of his sword. 'Once around the island, we are out of its lee. There will be wind. There we will tack, and run into shore. Then we will get in the boat and row in, with this ship as our shield. They will not see us doing this, until it is too late. Do you understand me? Bien. Trиs bien. Now, do it!'

Out of desperation, with no other option they could agree to in their fear of capture and death, they obeyed. Choundas forced himself to smile, which made him look malevolent, but competent enough to save them. Though some made the sign against the 'evil eye' as they crossed themselves for luck. Feral, brutally ugly… but he looked like a real officer who knew what he was doing; they obeyed him.

Too bad I didn't have Hainaut with me, Choundas thought, leaning his hip against the long tiller bar; with four pistols, I'd have killed that idiot, and done this hours ago!

CHAPTER 8

'Helm a'weather, Mister Spenser,' Lewrie was forced to say. 'Ease us two points off the wind.' The shore of the island was coming up fast, and he'd have to bear away to avoid its shoals. The tartane was only a half mile ahead of him now, but she was able to shave closer inshore… still hard on the wind, and brush Jester off, recapturing the windward advantage. He'd have to cede her the inshore route.

'Mister Rahl!' he shouted through cupped hands. 'Grapeshot and scrap, to damage her rigging! Cripple her, sir!'

Rahl tried, firing at extreme elevation, but it was too far for grapeshot, and Jester had no star-shot, bar-shot, or chain-shot for the carronades that could whirl across the half-mile gap. Rahl could hit her, evident by the multiple froths of small hailstorms in the waters around her, but it was too light to do crippling damage. And she wasn't ducking high and low anymore, either, but was being unflinchingly steered as close to the wind's edge as she could be. And beyond the island, there was a narrow channel that led to a deep inlet, winding back west, the tall headland at the western edge of Vado Bay. There was a village at either place, a beach below the headland where fishing boats landed, where the pounding of surf had created a gravelly shingle. More rocky would be the narrow channel, with few places to land safely.

'Herr Kapitanl' Rahl announced in a parade-ground bark. 'I go back to der solit-shot, ja, zir?'

'Aye, Mister Rahl!' Lewrie shouted back.

'We've almost got him,' Mister Peel said. 'If he's aboard, after all, that is, Captain Lewrie.'

'Thankee, Mister Peel, for reminding me what fools we might yet be,' Lewrie groaned, most happily unaware of Peel's existence for the last few hours.

'I borrowed Lieutenant Knolles's telescope, sir,' Peel told him. 'The last few minutes, there's been a fellow steering her who's wearing some sort of uniform. It could be that's part of a deliberate sham but I rather hope not.'

'No more'n me, I assure you, Mister Peel.' Lewrie yawned, badly in need of more coffee, though the galley fires had been extinguished, once they'd opened fire. 'Oh, well shot, sir! Serve her another!'

Rahl's round-shot from the larboard carronade had slammed into the sea so close-aboard the tartane that she reeled leeward, her masts shaking and her deck heeled almost a full forty-five degrees for a moment!

But she came back upright, slowed by the drag of the knockdown but sailing doggedly on. Not turning for the narrow, rocky channel!

'Right, she's for the beach on the headland!' Lewrie exulted as the island came abeam, and he could see the wrinkly cat's paws stirring the waters beyond it, a fluke spiraling off the headland. 'The town, Mister Peel. Know it? Who holds it now?'

'Genoese troops, I think, sir. Don't think the Frogs have come over the heights this near Vado yet.' Peel perked up. 'Inland might be a different story, but…'

'Deck, there! Chase is tacking!'

'Damn him, damn him!' Lewrie groaned. Jester had to sail more than half a mile farther before she had enough clearance from the coast to come about! The tartane was just a little east of the tip of the headland, and could come back to nor'west by north and run in.

'Wind's backin', sir!' Spenser exclaimed, feeding spokes alee to keep Jester on the wind's edge, as he'd been ordered.

'He's tacked right into a shift!' Knolles screeched. 'Headed, again, by God, sir!'