Chapter 121: Drunk, Zen, and Delighted
The storm eventually lost the will to keep going. The rain eased little by little until it became more mist than downpour, nothing like the solid wall of water that had nearly driven the Rose onto the coral less than an hour earlier.
At last, patches of blue broke through the blanket of grey overhead, the first James had seen in the sky since well before the Falmouth had shown her topsails. Beneath both ships, the sea stopped into an uneasy calm. The swells still rolled, but they no longer climbed and crashed the way they had while chasing them across the Bank.
Grey refused to bring the Rose any closer, not with that stretch of shoal hiding broken coral beneath a fresh layer of sand. James agreed, and both ships hove to where the depth still left room to maneuver.
Sails came down in a hurry, and rowboats splashed into the water from the Rose and the Fortune. Oars bit into the sea to a chorus of curses before the crews found a steady rhythm, crossing shallows so clear they could see pale sand and dark ribbons of weed wherever sunlight slipped through the thinning clouds.
James climbed down into his own boat third. Some bastard had to make sure the fourth man reached it instead of falling straight into the sea.
That fourth man turned out to be exactly the sort of trouble James had expected the moment he’d heard the news.
Anne and Tomás already sat at the oars when James sat himself at the tiller. Bert came down after them, missed the last rung of the rope ladder entirely, and landed square on his backside in the bilge with a splash loud enough to make men aboard the ship turn and stare.
"Christ."
James watched Bert struggle to stand, fail once, then twice, then somehow manage an even worse third attempt.
"Is he drunk?"
"Drunk, and proud of it."
Anne grabbed him by one arm and hauled him onto the middle bench without the slightest hint of gentleness. "Lost the bloody wager to Pete and Jim, the one about the chase. And instead of paying with coin, they made him pay by drinking for everyone’s amusement."
"Fine timing."
"Not that they seem to care."
"Bert strong."
Bert declared to nobody, clinging to the gunwale as though the boat had personally insulted him. "Bert do."
He suddenly reached for Tomás’s oar.
James caught him by the back of his clothes before the boat could tip, dragged him back onto the bench, and held him there with a grip that left no room for argument.
"Easy, lad. Easy."
His voice stayed calm, the tone he’d use to settle a frightened horse. "Nobody’s stealing your oar. Sit your arse down and let them row."
Bert blinked at him, then gave a slow, muddled nod.
"Bert no hit Cap’n."
He rubbed at the back of his neck where James still had him by the collar. "Bert sit."
James let go.
If he acted like last time drunk, the fool would have swung first and thought later. Now he just lowered his eyes, grumbled under his breath, and sat back onto the bench like that was that.
James didn’t know what to make of that.
He wasn’t complaining either.
Anne, meanwhile, looked as though Christmas had arrived early and brought her a cutlass. She pulled hard on her oar with obvious delight, rain-soaked hair plastered to one cheek, her eyes bright with the particular excitement James had learned usually meant trouble for somebody.
Usually somebody who wasn’t her.
"This is different, isn’t it?" she said, not quite asking. "Rowing toward a fight instead of serving rum to men too drunk to remember asking for it."
"Different for the men waiting on that beach too, I’d wager."
"Good." Her grin sharpened. "Let it be."
"Careful, lass. Keep talking like that and I’ll start thinking you enjoy this more than you enjoy me."
"I enjoy plenty of things more than I enjoy you, James Calloway."
She never looked away from her stroke. "Killing Englishmen’s just the latest one to make the list."
"Where do I rank these days?"
"Above drowning, below a decent bottle of rum."
"That’s better than last month."
"Hmph."
Some warmness flickered across her face before disappearing just as quickly.
"You’ve been behaving yourself. Mostly."
Tomás rowed beside her without wasting a word on their banter. His face had the calmness he’d worn throughout the storm and his lips moved faintly, silently, either on a prayer or keeping time with each pull of the oar.
"You praying, Tomás, or counting?"
"Both, Captain." He kept rowing without looking up. "It does not hurt to do both."
The boat slid onto the sand between the first wreck and the second.
Off to their right, the bow-buried merchantman stood tall and helpless, her sails still full as though she refused to admit the fight was over. Beside her lay the escort sloop, grounded so hard she leaned until her rail nearly touched the water washing against her hull.
Farther along the sandbar, beyond torn canvas drifting in the shallows and the sloop’s fallen mast blocking much of the view, the other three wrecks appeared only in fragments. Some cracked foremast here, tangled rigging there. None close enough to matter yet.
The British sailors were already climbing out of the wrecked sloop, either scrambling up the beach in blind panic, no longer caring where they ran so long as it was away or throwing themselves behind the tilted hull as though it had been built for cover.
Swords flashed into waiting hands as a knot of them found enough courage to stand and fight while the rest scattered across the sand.
James was already over the side, knee-deep in warm water, before the first shouted a challenge.
His fat pistol, [Counterargument], barked once.
Its shot punched through the man’s chest, throwing him backward into the shallows with a splash that swallowed the words he’d meant to yell.
[Verdict] was unsheathed a heartbeat later.
The next man rushed in and discovered exactly what argentsteel could do. It crashed against his rusty cutlass, split the blade apart, then cut him clean along the ribs before his swing was done. A fountain of dark blood spilled into sand already stained the tone of rust.
Two more came around the sloop’s bow together, hoping numbers would succeed where their companions had failed.
Steel rang against steel as James gave ground in half steps, turning with one man while keeping the other in sight.
He parried high to knock a cut aside, twisted low to catch the next at his hip, then slipped sideways before they could close him between them. One came in hard and fast, the other trying to circle and split his attention, but James kept the wreck at his back and his feet moving, forcing them to come at him one at a time if they wanted any chance at all.
That was when Anne came sweeping in on his flank, all teeth and fury, and drove her blade clean through the nearer man’s throat. He jerked once, eyes going wide, hands flying uselessly to the steel in him before he folded to the sand without so much as a scream.
James took the chance, turning on the second man before he could recover from the sight of his mate dying at his side. One slash through the ribs was enough.
"You’re welcome!" she shouted, already turning toward the next man.
"I had him!"
"You had him bleeding out over the next quarter hour!"
She ducked a wild slash and thrust beneath another man’s guard, twisting her sword free with a wet sound she ignored completely. "Some of us like our Englishmen dead a wee bit quicker!"
"Keep that up and I might have to take you for myself!"
"Keep talking and I’ll gut you myself. Save the Crown the trouble!"
She grinned through every word even while blood coated both her forearms.
James caught himself grinning right back, even as blades kept coming for him from two directions.
A few yards away, Tomás met his opponent with zen that barely resembled violence. It looked more like a ritual he’d practiced so often he’d forgotten what fear felt like.
He turned aside the first strike without taking a single step back, murmured some prayer over the clash of steel, perhaps Latin, perhaps not, then slipped his blade into the man’s chest with the steady care he’d use threading a needle beside candlelight.
The man fell.
Tomás paused only long enough to make the sign of the cross over the body. Then he moved on with unhurriedly, searching for the next task waiting for him.
Bert found trouble without anyone needing to point him toward it. Whatever skill he lacked, he made up for with sheer drunken determination.
A sword slashed across his shoulder hard enough to drop most sober men.
Bert barely noticed.
He crashed into his opponent instead, seized the man’s arm with both hands, and bent it until it cracked loud enough to carry above the battle.
"Bert sorry," Bert told the screaming man with complete sincerity.
Then he drove a fist into the fellow’s face hard enough to flatten him onto the sand.
Nobody had breath left to laugh.
James silently promised himself he would later.
Moments after, the fight eventually waned.
A handful of British sailors who still breathed let their swords fall into the sand and raised empty hands, staring at nothing, finished with the battle before it finished with them.
James paused for a moment to look over the strange crew that had come ashore with him.
Bert swayed where he stood but somehow remained upright, blood covering his knuckles instead of his own body, wearing some odd, pleased smile.
Tomás stood where the fighting had left him, perfectly still save for the slow rise and fall of his chest. His hands came together once at his waist, his head bowed a fraction, and for a moment he might have been carved there from the same hard, patient wood as the mast beside him.
Then he lifted his eyes, made the sign of the cross, and looked away as calmly as if the blood at his feet belonged to someone else.
Anne stood just next to James, breathing hard, grinning wide enough to show every tooth. Blood that wasn’t hers dripped from one hand while she flexed the fingers of the other as though she wished to use them again soon.
Could be worse, James thought as he looked over the lot of them.
Could be a whole lot worse.
"Right then."
He wiped [Verdict] clean on the coat of a man who no longer needed it. "The beachhead’s ours. Whoever’s fool enough to be leading this whole miserable mess is somewhere farther up the bar, and I mean to have a word with him about surrender before the day’s much older."
Without waiting to see who followed, James started up the beach.
He already knew the answer would be all three of them.