“Me, too,” said Duncan Tew.
In short order I had my team, twenty men ready to join me in boarding the other ship. I stressed two things: Watch your fellow soldiers’ backs, and take the captain alive.
I went to see Jane. Her leg was noticeably better, and she was bright-eyed and rested. “Hey, boss,” she said when I came in. I put a sword beside her. “What’s this?”
“Not as big as you’re used to,” I said, “but big enough. We’ve spotted another ship closing in.”
She tried to stand. “I’m not waiting in here-”
“Yes, you are. I’m leading the boarding party, and Clift’s commanding the troops here. He claims this heap can outrun anything, so if they get away, you’ll have to make sure he chases us down.”
“He will. But I can still fight. Just give me a crutch and-”
I couldn’t help it; I laughed. “You can’t even put your pants on, Jane. Just stay in here until the fight’s over.”
She glared at me. “Could you?”
“I could if you told me to.”
She started to snap back, but I added, “I’ll get the carpenter to knock together a crutch for you. But it’s only for emergencies. And I won’t be here to watch your back.”
She grabbed the collar of her tunic with both hands and ripped it open almost to her navel. “And they’ll be too busy staring at my front. Go do your job, LaCrosse. I’ll be fine.”
Now the waiting had a purpose, so the men were silent and still. Clift and I risked peering through the porthole to watch the ship as it neared.
“Look,” Clift said. “The banner.”
It was black, tapered, and trailed like one of the monster’s tentacles. Stitched in white was an image I’d seen before, on the letter Angelina had kept all these years: an angel holding a sword over a skull. And then, beneath it, the double X.
“And the name,” Clift added.
Painted on the bow in large black letters were the words BLOODY ANGEL.
A thrill I’d never expected to feel again went through me. I was about to lead men into battle, and damn it, at some level, I loved it.
“Ready, lads,” the captain said as loud as he dared. “We’ve hired the band, now it’s time to name the tune.”
Chapter Twenty-two
The Bloody Angel ’s crew scurried into their sails like monkeys, gathering the canvas and slowing the big vessel as it neared. They were slower than the Cow ’s crew, but then again, they were self-employed. She was a third larger than the Cow, and consequently her crew outnumbered us. I wasn’t worried about that nearly so much as I was about having no real place to retreat. If my trap failed and they bottled us up on the Cow, all they had to do was set fire to us and watch us burn.
The ballista gunners stood ready at their weapons, the grapples pointed up as much as the ports allowed. They would arc over the Bloody Angel ’s rail, fall to the deck, and then we’d yank them back until the hooks caught. Then we’d reel them in. If we were lucky, it would rock the Angel ’s deck and confuse them even more.
“Swing across!” someone called, and a moment later there were multiple thumps on our deck. I counted at least half a dozen; I’d hoped for more. That left an awful lot of them still on the Angel.
The boarding party walked around, inspecting the ship. If we’d inadvertently left anything on deck to betray our presence, we were screwed. Then a voice yelled back to the Angel, “Looks like a merchant ship. Lots of crates on deck. Tie us up.”
“Not so fast. What’s the cargo?”
I caught Clift’s eye. Someone on the other ship was already suspicious.
“Fuck if I know,” came the annoyed reply. “Think I can see through solid wood?”
“Open a crate and check it,” the first voice said.
“You open it, I’m going to check the hold.” To someone else in the boarding party, he said, “I hate these fucking empty ships. I keep expecting a ghost to jump out at us.”
“Yeah, and this one wasn’t moored to our trap,” his compatriot said. “That’s why the captain doesn’t want to tie on to it.”
“No shit. You figure that out yourself? I’ll tell you what’s happening: After all this time, the captain’s paranoid. It just broke loose and drifted away, any idiot can see that. If anyone had been alive on board, they’d have been yelling to get our attention, thinking we might rescue them.” He laughed. “Dumbass floating salesmen. Probably a hold full of damn women’s shoes. Come on, let’s get what we came for and send this heap on its way.”
We moved back into the shadows so that the light from the hatch wouldn’t reveal us. I crept to the top of the ladder beneath the new exit and made ready to throw it open.
Just below me a sword hit the deck, jostled from someone’s hand. The noise sounded like crashing cymbals. We all froze, waiting to see if there would be cries of warning, but apparently no one on deck heard. “Steady,” Clift whispered.
“Wait a second!” a new voice said. “Here, look at this. These are ballista sockets.”
Damn. It hadn’t occurred to me to cover the holes where the weapons were mounted. I saw by Clift’s expression that he was mentally kicking himself, too.
“It’s another damn pirate hunter,” the first man said. “Son of a bitch, disguised as a damn merchant ship.”
“Don’t be a moron, you headless eel,” a woman’s voice said. “Somebody too cheap to build their own ship just bought an old pirate hunter. Either way, it’s empty now.”
“She’s right,” a third voice said. “Let’s find the-”
The noise of the main hatch cover being lifted drowned out the final words. A pair of boots appeared on the top step. The first one down was the woman, short and round and with one of those arrogant, vicious little faces you saw on a lot of criminal types. She had gray hair cut mannishly. Behind her were a half-dozen big, filthy men, also older than I expected. They all wore rags, except for the odd bit of newish gear they’d likely looted from ships like this. These were real pirates, the kind I remembered from my mercenary days, and as if to confirm it, the first wave of their stench reached me.
But one thing I hadn’t expected: They were so confident in their monster’s thoroughness that none of them had drawn their weapons.
The mean round woman reached the bottom of the steps. Tense sweat stung my eyes. A dozen men stood within arm’s reach, but she couldn’t see them, because her eyes hadn’t yet adjusted.
“Fire,” I said softly.
The ballistae thunk ed as their pronged bolts shot into the air.
I took a deep breath and bellowed, in a voice I thought I’d never again use, “Stab at their balls, men!” Then I shoved open the new hatch and led the charge up onto the deck.
Like the old days, I absorbed the scene in a glance. Dozens of men lined the Bloody Angel ’s rail, but surprisingly few of them were armed. On the Cow, four men waiting to descend into the hold stared at us, frozen in surprise. The biggest surprise was that they were all old, with gray hair, white beards, and missing body parts replaced with wood or metal implements. That didn’t make them any less dangerous; veterans were twice as vicious as even the most enthusiastic new recruit, because they had the skills to survive.
Then both ships rocked as the lines fired from below caught and our men pulled the hulls together. They hit with a solid thud that knocked down most of the Angel ’s unprepared crew, as well as several of ours.
“To the other ship!” I shouted, stepped onto the Cow’s rail, and leaped the short distance to the Bloody Angel ’s deck.
There was no time to pick and choose targets, and I cut down unarmed men as well as those with weapons. Many died still struggling back to their feet. I fought off two men and a woman who had sense enough to attack
