The Guardship

breaking over the rail, pouring down on the deck, sweeping all away before them.

Rakestraw was pushing the men to the sides and others back as reserves, ordering them to take up their small arms, telling them to stand fast. But telling them would not do. This was not the drunken lot at Smith Island. This was the crew of the Vengeance. This was LeRois.

Fifty yards separated the ships when the flag broke out at the mainmast head, the grinning skull and swords and hourglass in sharp relief against the black field, and the rhythmic

vaporing broke down into random screaming and gunshots. Marlowe felt his guts turn liquid.

LeRois is just a man, he thought to himself, but he did not believe that in any way that mattered. He had seen LeRois live despite inhuman wounds, had witnessed him torturing prisoners in ways that could not be countenanced by any creature in possession of a soul. After years in the sweet trade, it remained that Jean-Pierre LeRois was the only man of whom Marlowe was frightened.

He clamped his teeth together, balled his fists.

In his mind he was there again, on the deck of another Vengeance, knowing that he had to best LeRois or die the kind of protracted death that only LeRois could arrange. He was there, face-to-face with that madman, sword against sword.

“Oh, damn me to hell,” he said. They were thirty yards apart and the Vengeance was committed to her course. Marlowe realized he may have left it until it was too late.

“Rakestraw! Rakestraw!” The first officer looked up. “Cut the damned drogue away! Cut it now!”

There was a second’s confusion on the man’s face, enough for a curse to form on Marlowe’s lips, and then he understood and raced aft with all the speed that Marlowe could wish.

The Vengeance was twenty yards away, running downwind, turning slightly to keep her bow pointed at the Plymouth Prize’s side.

And then, through the screaming and the gunfire and the cheering of his own men Marlowe heard the distinct thump of Rakestraw’s ax coming down on the line holding the drogue. He heard it again, and then the Plymouth Prize seemed to leap forward under his feet, bounding away like a wild animal set free from a leash.

The Vengeance, which had been abeam of them, was suddenly astern. She turned hard, trying to keep on her collision course, but the pirates were gathered in the bow, ready to board, not standing to the braces, and the sails that were set for a downwind run began to flog and collapse as the bow came up.

Marlowe could hear the vaporing dying away, could hear a voice, a voice he recognized-heavy, indistinct, the accent thick-calling the hands to trim the sails.

“Come up, come up!” Marlowe shouted to the helmsmen. They pushed the tiller over and the Prize turned further upwind, her bow pointing upriver in the direction from which they had come. “Good, steady as she goes! Make your head to pass Hog Island!” He did not know where he was going, he knew only that he had to get away from that place, away from that ship.

“Permission to fire, sir?” Middleton called from the waist.

Marlowe glanced over at the Vengeance. She was almost abeam of them, and they were passing on opposite tacks. “Yes, yes, fire!”

The guns went off in a ragged order, and each shot told on the pirate just forty yards abeam. The Vengeance was turning hard, and her yards were swinging as the braces were manned at last, but she had lost a great deal of distance. Now she would be in the Plymouth Prize’s wake and catching the guardship would be no mean feat.

Marlowe picked up his telescope from the binnacle box and put it to his eye. He felt a wave of terror and fascination all at once, like watching a pack of wolves from what one hopes is a safe distance.

There were any number of the villains on the Vengeance’s quarterdeck, since a pirate did not observe any of the distinctions of rank found aboard a man-of-war or any other vessel on earth. Some were bare-chested or wore only waistcoats; others were fully dressed in clothes that might have once been fine garments. All were well armed, he could see that, but that was no surprise.

And then he was there, a head taller then the rest, his great mass filling Marlowe’s lens as he screamed orders forward. LeRois’s face was red and contorted with rage. He was stomping around, slashing at the rail with the sword he held in his hand, gesturing wildly.

The Frenchman would be as furious about the drogue as Marlowe was about the mock battle. They were pirates both, brigands and villains, and neither of them liked to be played for a fool.

Marlowe saw LeRois pause in his tirade and look over at the guardship. It seemed as if he was looking right down the tube of Marlowe’s telescope. Then the pirate picked up his own glass, and as their ships drew apart the two men stared at each other across the water.

Marlowe saw LeRois let his glass fall to his side. He looked frightened and confused, quite in contrast to the LeRois of a few seconds before. The pirate put the glass back up to his eye, and then down again, up and down, three times.

And then LeRois staggered back and pointed the glass up and up until it seemed to Marlowe that he must be staring straight into the sun. And then, a second later, it seemed as if something inside the pirate exploded.

He flung the glass over the side of his ship and pulled a pistol from his belt, cocked it, and fired it straight at Marlowe.

Marlowe jumped in surprise-it was startling, magnified as it was by the glass-but he was quite out of pistol range. LeRois flung the gun down, grabbed another, fired that as well. He was waving his arms, shouting at the men around him, gesturing at the guardship.

He has seen me, Marlowe thought. He has seen me and recognized me, and now he knows it is not just a king’s ship he is pursuing, it is Malachias Barrett.

God help me, God help us all, if he runs us down.

Chapter 29

THEY RAN north with the wind abeam and the tide beginning to ebb. The Vengeances continued to shoot their bow chasers, though they had no hope of hitting the guardship since the guns did not point forward enough to bear. The pirates just liked to shoot the guns. Marlowe understood that.

He looked over the taffrail at the big ship in their wake. It was the Wilkenson Brothers. He realized that once he had taken a good look at her, once they had settled into the chase and thus dealt with their more immediate concerns.

He recalled what Finch had said, about rumors of the merchant ship being taken. The big, powerful merchant ship. Bigger, more powerful even than the Plymouth Prize.

He recalled what Finch had said about how she would have been safe from the pirate had it not been for him, Marlowe, taking his revenge on the Wilkensons. Well, that was ironic indeed.

And not only was the Vengeance nee Wilkenson Brothers stronger than the Plymouth Prize, she was faster as well, being a bigger vessel with a longer waterline. This might have been a concern if she was handled better, but as it was her sails were not trimmed quite as perfectly as they might be, nor had her new owners set all the canvas that she would bear.

Marlowe imagined that this was due in part to an unfamiliarity with the ship-LeRois could not have had her for more than a week or so-as well as the high probability that all aboard her were drunk and too taken with the excitement of the whole thing to bother with the effort needed to coax another knot or two out of her.

And the Vengeances would realize there was no need to run the Plymouth Prize down. They were heading upriver, bound to run out of deep water sooner or later. Then, easy pickings. That had certainly occurred to Marlowe, and from the expressions he saw around him, he guessed others had thought on it as well. The old Vengeance was also under way, limping upriver after the two combatants. Two ships on one, with twice the men he had. He did not have a clue as to how he would solve that dilemma.

He was going to lose the Plymouth Prize, one way or another. For his present cowardice, running upriver with his tail between his legs, the governor would take the guardship away from him