Chapter 66: Fully Clothed, As God Intended
James charged up the last two steps, his wounded forearm burning with every pump of his arm. Before he could plant his feet, Corbin was already there.
The Frenchman cut straight for his shoulder, a blow that would have split him to the bone if James hadn’t snapped his own blade up in time. Steel crashed against steel, the impact ringing through his wrist until it went numb.
Corbin wasted nothing. His footing stayed compact despite James’s pressure, every parry flowing into the next with precision. This was the work of a trained man.
Some emotion eased inside James’s chest, and to his embarrassment, it felt dangerously close to happiness.
The last time he’d been in a duel this serious, he’d crossed blades with a naked Frenchman after spending the first few moments of their acquaintance wrestling over a whip and a blindfolded, naked woman tied to a desk, all while something pressed against his hip that, God help him, definitely hadn’t been a belt buckle.
"About bloody time."
James grinned through the strain as their blades locked together. "A proper fight, and the man’s even got his breeches on. Small mercies."
Corbin understood none of it. He answered regardless, driving James back with a burst of fast, disciplined cuts.
"Vous ne comprenez rien, pirate! Reculez, ou je vous saigne comme un porc!"
Behind James, one of the French sailors broke away from the knot of men by the rail and sprinted for the steps, cutlass raised as he tried to assist his officer.
Bert intercepted him by catching the blade on his own forearm instead of his sword. Steel carved through his sleeve and bit deep into the flesh beneath before his arm simply refused to bend any farther. The Frenchman stared at the weapon lodged there as though it had personally betrayed him.
"I would ask you not to do that again."
Bert punched the man in the jaw hard enough to lift him clean off the deck.
Edmund caught the falling sailor before he crashed into Wesley and used the body to bowl two more Frenchmen off their feet.
"Certainly."
Wesley stepped over all four men without slowing.
Corbin gave ground toward the wheel, letting its spokes spoil James’s rhythm. He circled the timber while his blade flicked low, searching for an opening near James’s hip. James caught the thrust on his cross-guard only a hair from his belt, forced through the bind, and shoved Corbin backward over planks already stained dark with someone else’s blood.
"You fight like a man who’s had lessons."
James breathed hard but never lost the grin. "Somebody back home’s gonna be right proud of ye. Shame he’s not here to see how it ends."
Corbin answered with steel.
Three sharp cuts drove James toward the rail. The last slipped through when his guard came up half a heartbeat too late. A shallow line opened across his forearm and blood welled at once, soaking his sleeve before the sting even registered.
"Vous parlez trop pour un homme qui va mourir!"
James’s reply came on the edge of his own blade. His cutlass sliced across Corbin’s thigh, splitting cloth and flesh wide enough to expose muscle beneath.
The Frenchman stumbled as blood poured down his stocking and filled his boot, only the rail behind him kept him upright.
Nearby, a wounded French sailor braced a pistol against the deck with trembling hands and fired into Bert’s shoulder from only a few feet away.
Bert rocked back half a step as blood spread through his shirt where the shot had punched clean through the muscle near his shoulder.
He looked down at the wound with mild curiosity, a stain on a freshly cleaned coat.
"That was considerably more painful than I anticipated."
He crossed the distance in two strides, seized the sailor by the throat, and drove a punch into his face hard enough to snap his head back against the rail. The man’s neck bent at a sickening angle before he collapsed, limp before it even hit the planks.
Edmund glanced toward his brother’s shoulder without interrupting his own fight.
"You are bleeding, Bert."
"I am aware, Edmund. Thank you."
Corbin abandoned swordplay entirely. He rushed inside James’s guard so quickly that James’s blade met nothing but empty air before a shoulder slammed into his chest and knocked every bit of breath from his lungs.
They crashed onto the deck together.
Corbin’s uninjured leg trapped James’s sword arm while his fist smashed into James’s jaw hard enough to fill his vision with white.
A heartbeat later his forearm crushed across James’s throat. The Frenchman leaned his full weight into it.
James drove a knee straight into the wound he’d already opened in Corbin’s thigh.
Corbin convulsed off him with a scream that cut through every other cry on deck.
That gave James one second.
He rolled free and came up on one knee just in time for Corbin’s kick to slam into his ribs. The impact folded him sideways, driving the air from his lungs in a harsh bark. His own cutlass had skidded somewhere across the blood-slick planks, well out of reach.
Corbin still had his.
The Frenchman raised it for a killing blow, but James hurled himself inside the swing and smashed his forehead into the bridge of Corbin’s nose. The crack echoed through James’s own skull.
Corbin staggered backward, blood pouring from his nose.
James’s rushed over to reach the fallen cutlass first.
Snarling through a mouth full of blood, Corbin charged one last time with a wild overhead swing. James caught it with a parry that nearly ripped the weapon from his grip.
He rolled his wrist through the bind and thrust beneath Corbin’s ribs. The blade punched upward through the Frenchman until its point emerged slick with blood from his back, a hand’s width from his spine.
Corbin’s mouth opened around a sound that never became a word.
His cutlass slipped from his fingers.
His legs gave way beneath him.
James tore his blade free in a spray of blood and let the man collapse against the wheel he had defended for the entire battle. Corbin’s weight dragged two spokes downward before his knees finally buckled.
He slid to the deck beneath the wheel, blood spreading quickly around the base of the post.
James planted a boot on Corbin’s chest, threw back his head, and bellowed loudly enough for the entire deck to hear.
"THAT, ye bastards, is how a PROPER duel’s fought! Steel to steel, both men dressed decent, and not one damned Frenchman tryin’ to kill me with a stiff cock! I’m callin’ that a personal best!"
The few French sailors still standing looked once at their officer slumped dead beneath his own wheel and surrendered without needing to be told again.
Somewhere behind James, the fighting had already faded. It had given way to groans, coughing, and the heavy silence that always followed once a deck had decided who’d won.
James wiped his blade clean on Corbin’s coat, slid it back into its sheath, and turned toward what remained of Le Faucon’s crew, now gathered by the rail with their hands in the air.
"Right then."
He raised his voice so everyone could hear. "Strip ’em of anything sharp and pitch the lot over the side. Mobile’s close enough to swim, and I’d sooner they had the exercise than the company."
The pirates approved of the order far more than the French did.
Rose’s sailors grabbed prisoners by their belts and collars, relieved them of every blade and pistol they carried, then tossed them over the rail one after another while the deck erupted in laughter and indignant French shouting.
Greasy Pete leaned over the side to watch one particularly heavy sailor flail toward shore, coughing seawater between strings of French curses.
"Kick harder, ye soft article, the crabs’ll have ye otherwise!"
All across the deck, pirates had already begun telling their own versions of the battle. Every retelling grew louder and less believable than the last. Kit’s voice rose above the rest as he insisted to anyone willing to listen that he’d been responsible for at least the victory himself.
James was still smiling as he watched the Frenchmen paddle desperately toward shore when an unwelcome realization struck him.
Both ships had been sitting motionless, lashed together, for quite some time now.
And with every shot fired, Fort Louis had been creeping closer.
He heard the noise a full breath before anything else, a flat crack rolling across the water from the palisade.
Then the sea beside both ships exploded upward in a towering pillar of water.
The splash crashed across the deck, drenching the celebrating crew and knocking one pirate flat onto his back.
"Right then. New problem."