The Guardship

upright.

He strode forward more purposefully. His foot hit something soft and he stumbled, and the pile on the deck groaned and rolled over and muttered, “Here, watch it, dumb arse.”

“Cochon!” LeRois shouted, and spit on the man at his feet, but the man was already asleep again. LeRois stared at the pile of human wreckage, barely visible in the gloom. They would all get their reward, each to his own. The voices told him that.

He found the ladder to the weather deck and climbed up into the waist. The night was dark, and the smoke from the destruction he had wrought still hung in the air. He moved around the many sleeping men and climbed up to the quarterdeck, where to his irritation he found even more men passed out and sprawled where they fell, some hugging bags of stolen goods like women.

He spit on the deck and looked forward, upriver. Barrett was coming for him, he knew it. The voices were singing the songs of his enemies’ destruction. He could not see him yet, could not see any sign of dark sails against the dark sky, but still he knew he was there.

His eyes moved from the blackness of the river to the distant shore. The evidence of his wrath and power still burned and glowed in places miles apart. He looked from one to the next to the next, turning aft as he looked upon his works.

And then something caught his eye, something bright. There was one hundred feet of water separating the Vengeance from the old, wasted ship that last bore that name. Light was pouring from the old Vengeance’s aftermost gunports, those that opened onto the great cabin. He took a step forward, rested his hands on the rail, squinted at his former command.

Perhaps there was someone in the cabin, someone with a lantern. But the light was terribly bright, brighter than any dozen lanterns. And just as the terrible thought struck him that the ship might be on fire, one of the great guns went off, a thunderous sound that split the night. The old Vengeance shook with the impact of the recoil.

“Merde!” LeRois shouted, and pounded the rail with his fist. Now he could see flames licking out of the gunports, could hear the crackling of the fire consuming the fabric of the ship. Some idiot had started a fire and now the whole great cabin was blazing. It was already too far gone to stop.

The humps of cloth and hair that had been pirates sleeping on the weather deck of the new Vengeance came to life, leaping to their feet, cutlasses and pistols drawn and ready. They were well used to coming instantly awake and straight into a

fight, and the sound of a great gun was their clarion. They crowded along the rail, shouting obscenities, voicing loud speculations as they watched their old ship being overwhelmed by flames.

“Merde!” LeRois shouted again. He did not care so much about the old ship, but there was the danger that the fire would be blown across onto the new Vengeance. And even that did not worry him so much, as long as it did not happen before Barrett was aboard.

And then from somewhere within the flames he heard the sound of a gun go off. Not a cannon, but something much smaller, a musket or a pistol. He cocked his head toward the flames. More small arms, two shots in rapid succession, and then another, and then a whole volley.

Men were shouting, running about the old Vengeance’s deck. He could not see them- it was too dark and the bright flames had hurt his eyes-but he could hear the commotion clearly enough.

Another of the great guns went off, on the starboard side, like the first, firing its load toward the north shore. LeRois stared at the growing flames, considered helping the men on the burning ship.

No, he decided. To hell with them. They had a boat. If they were too drunk and stupid to get in it and row to safety, then they should burn. They should burn in any event, for being so drunk and stupid as to let their ship catch fire. They should burn, and they would, all of them.

The guns on the old Vengeance’s larboard side went off as the flames consumed them as well, one right after the other with less than a second between. One of them fired straight across the water, slamming its load into the new ship’s side, though LeRois did not reckon it would do much damage. The other must have been upended, for rather than firing out of its gunport it blew a hole in the side of the ship and showered the Nouvelle Vengeance with canister and grape and bits of burning debris.

Someone forward was cursing, loud and vehement, wounded by the old Vengeance’s inadvertent broadside. LeRois did not care about that, but he was concerned about those bits of flaming material that had landed on the deck.

“Allez, allez! The flames! Get them out!”

In the waist the men pulled themselves from the spectacle and stamped the flaming bits that threatened the deck, and one by one the glowing embers flared and died.

When he was satisfied that he would not lose his new ship to the flames, LeRois turned back to the old Vengeance. The long tentacles of the fire were reaching out of the gunports and the hole that the gun had blown in the side, reaching up and grabbing on to the mizzen shrouds and the quarterdeck rail, pulling itself up and out of the great cabin, taking command of the vessel. They were brothers, he and the fire. Together they ruled the night.

And then something else caught his eye, something beyond the burning ship that was throwing back the light of the fire.

“Eh? Qu’est-ce que c’est?” He pushed forward along the rail, shoving those Vengeances out of the way that were standing there stupidly watching the ship burn. He got to the break of the quarterdeck and stared out into the dark.

It was like a ghost, wavering before his eyes, dimly seen, and LeRois felt the panic rising. And then suddenly it seemed to materialize and take form, and he realized that it was not a ghost but a sail, the gaff-headed mainsail of a sloop, coming downriver. He would never have seen it had it not been for the flames rising up from the old Vengeance.

He smiled, and then he laughed out loud. “The devil, he will not let you sneak up on me, eh?” he shouted at the sail, then shook his fist.

He could see the faces of his men turning toward him and then following his gaze. He could hear loud speculation through the crackling of the flames. The voices were singing their warnings, high and clear, almost shrieking, but more lovely than that. The flames danced over the quarterdeck of his old ship, and laughing faces appeared among the brilliant yellows and reds, and LeRois laughed with them.

“Allez, now, they are coming for us!” LeRois shouted. He drew his sword and pointed toward the sloop. “That is the first, but there are more, and last of all will come Malachias Barrett, who is the very devil himself, but I am a bigger devil than he, eh?”

His men looked confused, the stupid sheep, so he tried to make it more clear for them. “The guardship we chase here, she is coming back for us now, and soon they will be aboard us. They will try to come from two sides, the ship and the sloop, but we will be ready for them, no?”

Now heads were nodding as the men began to understand that they would soon be attacked. They scattered, some running, some limping, some walking, to see to the great guns and small arms, to load firelocks and return the edge to swords and to sharpen themselves with whiskey and rum.

They are animals, LeRois thought, they know only living and fucking and killing and dying. He alone knew better, and that was why the voices had put their lives, all of their lives-the Vengeances’, Malachias Barrett’s, the king’s men-all of them into his hands.

“Je suis le seul maitre a bord apres Dieu.” The words came to his lips unbidden, the words the priests had taught him so many, many years before. He had not thought of them in all that time.

Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.

The sound of the great gun blasted Marlowe from his self-indulgent reverie. Brought him up all standing. His first thought was for the Northumberland. She was downriver somewhere, probably right up with the pirate ships. If she had been discovered, the pirate’s heavy guns would rip her apart before she got within two cable lengths of the enemy’s side.

He swung himself up into the mizzen shrouds and scampered up until he was ten feet above the deck and peered forward. He could see nothing beyond the darkness and the few burning buildings ashore. His shoulder ached from the tension. He flexed it, waited for more cannon to fire. Waited