Chapter 1 - Scene 3

From over rolling seas the Bitter End lay waste to the Red. The rear quarter of the ship was destroyed, a mess of splintered wood, even where the timbers were three feet thick. Water gushed in through a hole below the waterline. The ship was crumbling, its crew scattered, and caught in a deadly turn that was bringing it into full view of the enemy cannons. Sall scrambled low as a cannonball ripped through the air to his right. It smashed the mouth of a twelve-pounder and sent it spinning on its mount. The cannon wrenched free of its lashings and flew at him.

The frayed end of a rope whipped his cheek. He jumped clear and landed on his back, as above screeching grapeshot tore the sails to shreds. Rolling onto all fours and keeping low, Sall skirted a dead gun crew, each sailor on it killed by a cannonball that had torn through the middle of them. Nausea stirred his stomach at the sight of their mutilated corpses. He ran from the direction of the barrage, catching scattered sprays of wood as the ship around him burst. A spar carrying rigging crashed overhead and he was stuck fighting through the lines.

Enemy cannonballs thundered into their sides, rocketed across the deck, and struck the seas around them. Spouts of water shot up and buffeted the wallowing ship with their impact. Sailors ran senseless and died, abandoning any attempt to mount a defense. The Bitter End was here to sink them, not take them. Captain Strommken’s vengeance was final. Sailors abandoned ship at will, fleeing the decks to splash down into cold waves and pray for a little hope.

Sall was blown off his feet by a nearby strike and sent flying through the air. The ship swayed beneath him. When he landed he was ten feet from where he started, landing hard on his shoulder, going tumbling straight down the middle of the deck.

Sall fell down a hole rent of the main hatch. He fell to the sounds of wailing screams and desperate calls for help and the stench of smoke and death. His back hit the planks hard, stunning him. A gust of smoke choked the air and he blinked open his eyes. Flames whirled at the stern end, belching hot breath all the way to the fore. He could see open sky through there.

The Bitter End’s first volleys had ruined them. The ship was done and it was time to go. Already it groaned and gurgled like a mortally wounded animal.

Sall rose winded, steadying himself on a ladder. Sailors were dying all around as their ship was wrecked, their calls for help loud now in the absence of cannonfire. It was an eerie, bloody scene, reminding Sall of the sudden storms that would come off the cold seas of his homelands, rip through the streets and disappear as quickly as they had come, leaving nothing but destruction in their wake.

Bodies draped the guns, the crates, lay motionless on the floor. Only a few were unhurt. One bloodied sailor came barging through and scrambled up the ladder. He came into the sunlight for only a moment before a teetering crash brought the broken main mast down on top of him. The sailor didn’t have time to react. It caved his head into his neck and crushed him spreadeagled beneath it, the poor sailor flattened with one limp arm dangling through the blocked hatchway.

The mast was too heavy for Sall to budge, and too wide to squeeze past. Smoke burned his lungs. He coughed into his sleeve searching for another way out.

A group of sailors were coming for the ladders dragging a wounded comrade between them. Sall waved his arms. ‘No way out! The hatch is blocked!’ he pointed up.

The sailors’ expressions fell. They were dirty, bloody, and covered in splinters, lost in the choking swirls of smoke, hearing only the dying. The ship shuddered. They all looked down.

Hissing sounds of water came through cracks in the decks below. The ship was breaking apart, but nobody was fleeing upwards, towards them and freedom. He looked around. The hatch below was obstructed by a pile of debris from the deck above, where a mortar had landed square on it.

Desperate hands reached through, attempting to scrabble at the wreckage confining them.

‘They’re trapped down there!’ Sall looked up for the sailors, but they were gone. Fled before the next barrage, no doubt. Sailors deserted the ship in droves, fleeing through the holes blown in the hull, but noone was helping those below.

‘I’m coming!’ Those people down there had no other way out, and the ship, he could tell from its groans and juddering screeches, was sinking. He fell to his hands and knees and started tearing away broken equipment, a smashed barrel, and dug away enough of an opening to see scared, wet faces cluster to peer up at him.

‘We’re up to our knees, hurry!’ A skinny sailor said. He and several others sloshed about in the dim light of a few lanterns. Sall cleared away as much as he could, but he only dug out a narrow opening until his fingernails scraped against a heavy ceiling beam.

It took strong hardwood to build a ship, and this block was a foot thick and wedged somewhere below. Sall squared his palms on its rough surface and tried to budge it. Splinters dug into his flesh. It didn’t move.

He shouted through the hole. ‘You need to push it from down there! Get behind it and push!’

Water was gushing now. He heard them hurry around it, but as Sall raised his head he saw the Bitter End sliding alongside.

‘Push!’ He said, and heaved on the beam. Below, the trapped sailors added their strength, and it budged, sliding a bare inch. It wasn’t enough. He looked at the End. Those guns were about to fire. Sall had to go.

Sall looked down, into the face of the skinny man, and Sall could see the water was up around his waist. He shook his head.

The skinny man’s face turned to panic, his eyes widening in blind fear. He began to scream. Sall darted away.

‘No! No!’ The rest of the trapped caught on, and their pleas joined his, but their cries were swallowed in the eager roar of cannonfire, its thunder sending him stumbling. He shaded his eyes from scatters of obliterated debris thrown at him from every angle, catching splinters in his skin, his clothes, his hair. He was wrapped in dust and black smoke.

Blinded, Sall ran through a pile of debris and crashed over it. The wind came out of him as he hit the deck. He gasped a hot whump and a cannonball’s whining screech tore overhead, blasting away a section of hull. It would have obliterated him.

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Light streamed through the hole. It was big enough for him to escape through. Fresh air and a breeze caught the smoke and dust and funnelled it away. He could make it. He ran, stumbled again, fell into broken, splintered planks and picked himself back up. The smoke was clearing, and he found the broken edges of the hole in the ship’s side.

The guns’ aim shifted, pummelling other areas of the ship. It wouldn’t survive another volley. As Sall found sunlight the ship made dying sounds, great yawing cracks that brought more light from above. The ship was splitting in two. Sall jumped into the waters churning from the ship’s final throes.

Behind him the heavy mast crumbled through the ceiling. It brought the deck with it, collapsing at Sall’s heels as he came soaring out. The water below was littered with bodies and debris.

He plunged into the waves, vision filling with thousands of tiny fizzing bubbles. He sank, drawn down by his heavy boots and the bag of gold. He kicked off his boots, but he wasn’t losing the gold. It was quiet but for the drawn, whalish moans of the sinking navy ship. They were haunting sounds. The Bitter End was still firing, their barrage loose now, raging. Licks of orange cannonfire turned greenish and unnaturally alien through the impermanence of the water.

Sall kicked and struggled for the surface and tried not to think about drowning, holding back panic as his lungs drew tight. His clothes held him back, billowing around him like tendrils of creeping seaweed. The ascent was slow, but he broke into fresh air and when he did he gasped, spitting water and shaking his head. Salt stung his eyes.

His escape couldn’t have been sooner. The Bitter End didn’t lead another volley. The navy frigate was dead, and tilting over. Water gushed through wounds ripped in its hull, dragging the sinking vessel onto its starboard side.

A broken mast hit the water with a slap, extinguishing fires burning in the sails. Sall watched the pirate vessel circle, those aboard cheering. Their ship was barely harmed.

Sall swam towards a hogshead floating in the water. There were a few other survivors nearby, each of them alone and paddling for something near to hold onto. One pulled himself up onto a raft made of a broken section of bulkhead, gasping at the clear sky. He bled from his side and didn’t notice Sall as his skin paled and he stopped shivering.

Sall wrapped his arm around the hogshead’s middle and tried his weight on it. It must have been empty, it floated well in the waves. More’s the pity, he supposed. He’d have really been in luck if it had been a fuller one. If there was one relief he had, it was the bag of gold sat snug against his belt, and that it hadn’t drowned him. Rum might be too much to ask for.

He tried the tap anyway. Nothing came out, so he clung to the barrel and watched the Bitter End circle. Their guns ceased, and a smoky pall hung over the stricken ship that was being dispersed by the breeze. The survivors were calling out for their mates, some recognising each other amongst those that remained. Others called for their family, or their saints, voices which weren’t returned.

The ship sat on its side. It would take a few more hours to sink, maybe all day. Surely those pirates knew the smoke would be visible for miles, and someone would be on their way to investigate. They were only a day out of the last town. If Strommken was planning on plundering the wreck for his winnings the Bitter End wasn’t going anywhere for several hours. People were climbing out of it and onto the overturned hull, but overall there remained far fewer men than had sailed her. There were twice as many bodies floating around it, and who knew how many still inside.

A sailor watching the pirate ship circle called out ‘they won’t get far if they stay much longer! Half the government will be after them and then all of them will hang! Their effort is wasted on this stupid vengeance!’

The Bitter End came about. He saw figures up on the bow, however not clearly in the glaring sun. Sall shaded his eyes with his free hand. The pirates seemed to be scouting the survivors, not the wreck. The sailors bobbing in the waves watched the circling ship, and a few tossed boos that echoed across the distance.

A shiver went down Sall’s spine. He grit his teeth, feeling watched. By the glint of a spyglass distant he recognised Captain Granger standing amidships. As they came out of the sun’s glare Sall saw others with him, near at his right a tall, rakish man in a sharp coat. He was pointing at Sall.

With a fine skill the Bitter End’s helmsman brought the ship near, the bow carving up white rushes of foam along the tall reach of its hull. When it was close enough the helmsman threw the ship into a banking turn, sending the waters around Sall rolling and loosing his grip on the barrel.

It floated away. Sall spluttered at the seawater washed into his mouth. He skimmed the surface of the water to keep his head afloat.

The ship had come to a stop no less than twenty yards away. Sall looked up at the pirates training flintlock rifles down at him. Granger stood at their fore, his expression bright and evil in the pride of his victory.

He said, ‘Bring the big bastard, leave the rest.’

An inflated buoy sailed over the rail and landed in the water next to him. There was a long rope on it so they could retrieve him. With no other option Sall swam to it.

As soon as he’d hooked it around his arm they were reeling him through the water. He held on tight and hit the side of the ship with a thump. He rubbed his shoulder as they hauled him up.

It took four of them. Sall made no attempt to make it easy for them, so he let the cackling and whooping pirates fish him from the water and haul him to the gunwale. He came over the side.

Sall said nothing to the gang of pirates before him.

‘He still got the gold?’

A pirate nodded, his eye catching the bag at Sall’s side. ‘Aye, I recognise it.’

‘Alright, hook him in, bring him to the Cap.’

They tried to crowd him. Sall grabbed the nearest pirate around the neck as the others scrambled, surprised at his burst of energy. The ragged swab reeked of sweat and grime. Sall swung the pirate around, trying to put him between the rest, but Sall was wet and exhausted, and the pirate too skinny. He slipped from Sall’s grasp.

They piled on. He drove an elbow into a nose. Blood spurted up his forearm. Hands grabbed at him from every which direction and hauled him away from the gunwale. One of them came at him with a pair of shackles. Sall shot a boot flat into his chest, sending the pirate sprawling, but half a dozen of them jumped him, pinning him to the deck. Sall struggled and cursed. He bit someone’s hand and caught a strike across the temple.

Granger pushed through. Someone found the bag of gold at Sall’s belt and yanked it away. Sall thrashed, to no avail. ‘Captain! His winnings! He kept em on him!’

Rage rose up his throat. That was his gold. He locked eyes with the pirate. ‘You miserable thief! Give it back, fucken, I’ll break your fucking hands, give it over! I know your face now, you fucking rag!’ He thrashed again, and someone belted him. He bared his teeth, tasting blood, his cursing interrupted.

‘Shut it, dog,’ they said.

The pirate jingled the gold and passed it up to the captain.

Granger snatched away the bag and loosened the drawstring. His mouth broke open in a shaggy grin. He bounced the bag in his hand and looked at the tall man with him. ‘It’s a start,’ he said, putting the bag away in his coat. His eyes trained on Sall. ‘Ugly fucker, aren’t ya?’ he said, bending to study Sall closer.

‘Won’t be winning any beauty pageants, but we won’t need you for those.’ His eyes now were duplicitous shades of green that shifted in the light.

Sall spat in his face and laughed. The captain straightened, wiped the gob of spit away with his forefinger and flicked it on the deck. He clasped his hands behind his back. His eyes were narrow slits looking down at Sall. ‘You’ve found us a real savage, Wilbur. I hope you’re on the money.’ He spoke to the rakish man, who was looking at Sall the same way he would his dinner.

‘I only hope for your sake, Captain,’ Wilbur said, with a certain sneer. Granger seemed to pay it no mind.

Granger turned and surveyed the crew. ‘Alright boys and girls, we’ve been away from home long enough. Turn this ship around, and ride the wind like you stole it!’

With no further interest in Sall he strode away. The crew parted to let him through. He walked with his hands clasped behind his back. They were tight hands, clenched, his veins extruding as though placed under terrific stress. His expression as he looked over his shoulder was distant, occupied.

Sall saw a desperate man in Granger Strommken.