The Barbary Pirates

Her response was to snatch up my child. “He’s in this by your blood, and his deed. You’d better think how we can escape that schooner, Ethan, because our son’s life depends on it.”

“My son.”

“I told you in America. We are nowhere near the end.” Her smile was a grimace, clenching my child to her with the determined greed of a child clutching a doll. He squirmed against her body and its thin shift, tired at last of the silly clothes she’d dressed him up in, but her grip was like iron. Outside there was a splash of a cannon ball, and an instant later the report of the American gun that fired it. They were seeking the range.

So I charged her.

I rammed Aurora as if she were a stout oaken door, my head deliberately butting into hers and poor Harry screaming as we collided and went down, silks ripping down with us. The idols of long-forgotten gods toppled and rolled on the deck. Flames ignited as some of the fabric caught from the candles, and men began yelling and beating at the sparks. I grabbed Harry and tried to pull him away from the squirming woman beneath me, but she clung like a cat ready to bite and scratch, hissing hatred.

I’d bloodied her nose, which gave me immense satisfaction.

Then someone was lifting me off her and hurling me across the cabin. I hit the bulkhead with a grunt and went down.

It was Osiris, looking murderous. He wanted to hurt me for running over his leg, and finally had his excuse. I could feel our own ship beginning to move, hoping to get distance from the American schooner.

Dragut appeared in the companionway. “We’ll lure them on the reef!”

Another splash and thud of a ranging cannon ball, and then the roar of one of our own guns. Where was Harry! Aurora had picked herself up and retreated into a corner to hold him like a shield, looking hateful. It was the only honest glance she’d given me all evening.

Suddenly I realized that the collapse of the silk trappings had revealed a rack of arms, including my confiscated rapier. I snatched it up, smiling at its remembered balance. Maybe my fencing lessons would do some good after all!

Osiris grinned as well, evilly, and stepped back to fetch from behind a settee his own sword, a thicker cutlass. It was shorter and more efficient in the tight killing ground of a ship’s cabin. I’d given him an excuse to gut me, and he intended to take full advantage. By the same token, I needed to get through him to save my son.

We sprang and fenced. The blades rang and I let mine slide off to keep it from breaking against the heavier sword, sidestepping in the narrow space and trying to remember what I’d been taught in Paris. It was more formal there, the spacing neatly defined, rules spelled out, and without low ceiling, swinging lanterns, and little fires burning in the corners. I stumbled over a statue of Bastet, the cat goddess, and tried a strike at my opponent’s thighs, but he parried.

Then Osiris came in after me, trying to box me in a corner so his cutlass could do its work. He chopped back and forth, driving me backward, but I was quicker than he and got in a jab toward his eyes that made him recoil. As he arched backward I squeezed away, trying to catch Aurora. She’d picked up a silver knife to hold near my son’s throat.

“Just give me the boy!”

“Only wound him,” she instructed Osiris. “I want to make it last.”

“Papa!” Harry was screeching. Barely weaned and he was in a duel and a naval gunfight? What kind of father was I?

Our waltz continued, only the speed of my fencing keeping the bigger Osiris and his heavier sword at bay. He was beginning to pant and sweat. I feinted, again and again, to force him to swing. He was frustrated, but no less dangerous for that.

So I stooped and threw Baal at him. It banged off the cabin wall near Aurora.

As he ducked, there was an opening to pink his sword arm. He cursed, spitting, and hopped back on his good foot, blood running down to the hilt of his cutlass now. He looked frustrated, the two of us circling while overhead the pirate crew was attempting to claw out of the anchorage. He was tiring—cutlasses are heavy—so he came at me thrusting hard, wanting to end it. The heavier weapon took a moment more to swing, however, so I checked and parried, getting more confident as Aurora began calling for help. Finally I exaggerated his parry of my sword, letting it slip sideways farther than I needed to, and the riddle master who’d taunted me in Paris risked raising up his cutlass for a final blow. It was just enough exposure. As his blade started down I whipped mine back, got underneath his stroke, and took him through the heart. He was a dead man before his cutlass sang past my ear and sank uselessly into the deck.

I leaped over his toppling form with my bloody rapier and rushed Aurora. “Just give me my son!”

The cabin door burst open and Dragut was there with what I realized was Smith’s blunderbuss. I lurched backward and fell flat on the carpets as the big gun went off with a roar, kicking the pirate backward. A ball or more hit my blade and yanked the hilt from my hands, while more bullets shattered the stern windows, glass spraying out over the water. I was stunned by the wind of the shot blowing over me, the bloody heap of Osiris beneath. Now I was weaponless.

Aurora lifted a naval pistol and cocked.

She wanted me alive. She aimed for my head at first, and then shifted to my splayed middle, aiming at that tender spot men prefer to protect at all costs. Then, thinking better of it—well, the girl had experienced me in bed—shifted yet lower to blow off one of my knees and merely leave me shankless, her mouth a cruel curl.

And then she shrieked and danced.

Little Harry had stuck her foot with her own silver knife!

The pistol went off, its ball embedding itself in a bulkhead, and even as she snatched my son by the hair in howling rage, ready to do who knows what, I leaped up with Osiris’s cutlass in hand. I’d run the harridan through!

Then there was a black blur, a snarl and leap, and Sokar the dog from hell was crashing against me to bite, even while a cannon ball blasted through the sidelights and screamed between Aurora and me, crashing into the opposite wall in a spray of splinters. The dog was spun away from the wind of its passage, and I was kicked by the concussion out the shattered stern windows to fall, end over end. Before I understood what had happened, I plunged into the sea.

“Harry!” It was a thought, because I was underwater and couldn’t scream.

I came thrashing up, desperate to get back aboard to learn the fate of my son, but the Zephyr was already going, sails full, gathering momentum, the savage dog up there barking madly at me from the broken stern windows. The American bow chasers were throwing up spouts where the ship had just been. My son, if he was still alive, was sailing away from me. I’d lost the mirror, lost my family, and probably lost what little reputation I had by consorting with a witches’ brew of Barbary pirates and cultists.

And then there was a crunch I could hear from five hundred yards off. I turned, sickened, to watch the pursuing schooner lurch as it slammed into the reef where Dragut had led it. The collision was so hard that men pitched out of the rigging. The foremast snapped at the top and came down in a tangle. There were shouts, curses, and howls of frustration.

The Americans had grounded and Aurora and her acolytes were drawing off into the night, headed for Tripoli.

I hadn’t stopped them from getting the mirror, and I hadn’t saved my own son.

I treaded water, ashamed by my own impotence, and then with no other choice began slowly swimming for the grounded schooner. It took me a full hour to work my way there but it hardly mattered, since the ship wasn’t going anywhere until it worked off in the morning. The wind had died, and the flag that so excited me hung limply, as if in defeat.

I came close enough to shout. The ship had already lowered long-boats to sound the reef, so men hauled me aboard a cutter.

“You a pirate?”

“I escaped them.”

They let me clamber up the ship’s ladder to the deck.