"You trained her well. She was a true warrior, and she will be missed by all." Anne pulled Christina in and embraced her again for a moment.
Jack also offered his apologies, lamenting his weakness. Anne gave him the same words she gave Christina, reassuring him that it was no fault of his. She leaned in and whispered to him, "Now more than ever, the crew and I need your music. Keep their spirits high until this is over."
Jack smiled. "I understand, Captain," he said before stepping back to let others have their chance to speak with her.
After pulling away, Pukuh was standing there with his arms folded. He looked her over, barely glancing at her missing leg, his face inscrutable. "You look like death."
Anne couldn't help but laugh, and it was both joyful and painful in her state. "I feel it."
"Soon, it will become a part of you. This, I know," Pukuh said, touching his right shoulder, the stump that used to be his right arm.
"I shall have to take you at your word," Anne said. "For the time being, I suppose I'll look and feel like death."
"It was praise," Pukuh said. "Death is my namesake. I mean you look ready to end this."
"I was ready eight days ago," Anne replied. "So, let's end it, shall we?"
…
Anne had run through the various scenarios in her head before the battle with her crew. She did the math, and if not for her injury, she would have ordered the use of the secret tunnel long ago. Doing so would have cost them several crewmates, and there was only one way around the problem. It was a cruel method, and before she had only thought of it as a last resort, but now, in the throes of her anger-fuelled mind, she didn't care about the morality.
Others did. William, Alexandre, and some of the crew objected, but their voices were few. William eventually followed her orders as he always did and carried out the first part of the plan. Alexandre realized quickly that there would be no swaying Anne, but he was visibly angry. If Anne had been in the right state of mind, she might have rethought her actions, but she was not.
After William and some of the other crewmates returned from their task, Anne gave the signal.
They removed a large cloth covering one of the golden bells they had taken with them from one of the villages on the island. It, unlike the one Christina had managed to destroy in Silver Eyes' town, was whole and intact. The sound it would produce would have its desired effect.
The crew laid the bell down, so the open bottom was facing the town, then looked at Anne for final confirmation. Anne waved her hand in a striking motion, and the crew lifted the bell's striker and slammed it down.
The sound of the bell was loud in her ears, with the same pull as it had had before. She was able to resist the numbing effect it had, but she did have to close her eyes. She wondered just what the metal was, the same ore that her ring and Edward's cutlass were made of, that could produce such a tone.
After the bell's tone died away, the crew struck it again. This time, Anne forced her eyes open to watch the town. Silver Eyes' men were stationed along the perimeter as before, and they remained unchanged, unfazed by what Anne thought would be a strange development.
Again, and again the crewmates struck the bell, but nothing changed. At least, not on this side of the town.
Soon, Anne could hear sounds of fighting within the town in between the striking of the bell. The crew didn't let up, because Anne didn't tell them to, and the sounds inside grew with each strike. Shouts, snarls, gunfire, and clashing swords, a bizarre counterpoint to the ringing of the bell.
After some time, the fighting came to the stockade. Those fighting Silver Eyes' crew were not the crew of the Queen Anne's Revenge. Those fighting were the crazed, entranced villagers they had previously been trying to save. Triggered by the bell, they would attack anyone, even their masters.
The cruel, immoral act that Anne had chosen to commit was to use those poor souls to do the fighting for them. They had taken the entranced villagers, unable to refuse, into the tunnel and locked the entrance behind them. Then with the bell turning them mad, there was nowhere to go but into the town. There, they fought Silver Eyes' men.
Exhausted and enraged, Anne just wanted it over with, and with the least casualties to her crew as possible. They had suffered enough; she had suffered enough, and she wanted it to be over.
She had considered leaving, briefly, but her anger wouldn't let her leave before she'd had her revenge.
They kept ringing the bell as the fighting continued. There was no doubt that Silver Eyes' men had access to a handbell like the one that Sam gave them, but they knew that it wasn't permanent. As they continued ringing the bell, they ensured the fighting would continue.
When the sound of the fighting died down to almost nothing, Anne ordered the crew to stop striking the bell. Then they brought the cannons forward.
In the eight days that Anne was unconscious, Nassir had built a few limbers from the wagon parts. That gave the cannons more maneuverability and stability and enabled the crew to take them in closer to the stockade. And, without their enemy manning the stockade's cannons they had no fear of retaliation.
They fired the cannons at the stockade's entrance, the large iron bouncing off the massive wooden beams. With each hit, the beams cracked increasingly until they finally gave way under the force. The entrance now open, the crew were free to enter the town and finish off Silver Eyes' men.
Anne,
