image [https://i.imgur.com/15eGPa6.jpg]
image [https://i.imgur.com/DqimdvY.jpg]
orlop – The lowest deck on a ship where cables are stowed.
“—ARE HEREBY ORDERED to toss aside all weapons and surrender! Surrender yourselves, or we shall open fire!”
John heard those words and thought, So this is it. I run no more. He stood ankle deep in the mud, curtains of rain falling on him, obscuring the shapes of the men bearing rifles on him. A row of men at the back held flickering torches. A horse surged out from a nearby copse of trees, and took up formation behind John and his people. Looking around, he saw half the slaves were already dropping to their knees, hands held up high. They would do him no good.
Thump—thump—thump!
The ground shook. John felt tremors going from his ankles to his guts.
Lighting flashed in the sky, but this time, instead of blinking in and out of existence, it momentarily coiled like a serpent made of blue light, spiraling down to the earth for two or three breaths, then spun back up into the sky and vanished.
John saw it all. The manifestations of the night had caused him no small horror and delirium, to the point he started to shake. Not from laughter or sobbing, but something in between. The redcoats all held their positions, and John had naught but pity for them. Pity for all mankind. So this is all how we all die. We all fall down and our thoughts vanish and we cease to be, and all our constituent parts simply find something else to do. Distantly, he thought of Rothlis, of his firmament talk, of Abner and the Hellmouth, and before that, all the long years of good service, and how he had made Dobbs of all people kill the old man.
Thump—thump—thump!
Ripples traveled across the mud all around them. John hardly noticed.
The redcoats advanced several steps. John and his people tightened into a circle, facing their ensnarers. They were wolves who saw the netting, and the hunters, and the hunters’ dogs, and instinctively they tightened. And tightened.
Perhaps a fleeting thought crossed his mind, a vague notion that somewhere in the dark rooms of some office in Port Royal, men had gathered in previous weeks to discuss how best to be rid of the pirate scourge. He could see them all there, resting easy in their settees, well-laced boots propped upon fine oak tables imported from England, legs in blue breeches being crossed in front of a comfortable fireplace, goblets of wine passed back and forth as they discussed the dangers of hunting game in Jamaica. Some would have pined for home, for England, for better postings in beautified harbours far from the Caribbean. Along the course, they would have discussed this very moment with relish, the idea of the Ladyman cornered as a rat, his dress flapping in the breeze, women’s underwear pulled over his head as they dragged him up the steps of the courthouse on High Street. What laughter must have consumed them at the thought of throwing a man in the women’s prison of Bridewell, what wheezing they must have done when imagining a man in a skirt hanging by a gallows in front of the Old Church.
Thump—thump—thump!
His mind traveled farther back. Back to England and the estate. To his brothers and sisters, some accepting him, most mocking him with severe disdain. He thought back to the summer of his leaving. To his father that discovered him for what he was. To his time in the church monastery, where deviants were sent. To his time existing in the streets, in the rookeries, on the verge of selling himself. To his friendship with Ellis who led him to the press-gangs. To his fateful meeting with Arthur Vhingfrith here in the islands, and the enterprise that brought him here.
To die by a firing squad. Or by a rope in front of a cheering mob.
John quivered with rage. He knew this was Woodes Rogers’s work. And he knew Benjamin was friends with Rogers. But into his mind it would not enter that Benjamin had betrayed him in any way. Not like this, not to this severity.
John started to take a step forward. His final step. When they did not shoot him, he took another.
A large man atop a horse cried out, “Halt there!”
John took another step.
Then, one of the freed slaves turned and ran, and two shots rang out. The freed man twitched once, then splashed facedown into the mud and writhed a moment before going still. The Africans that had not been kneeling, now knelt. All except for Akil and his men.
“That was your last warning!” the large man on the horse bellowed.
“Do you not fuckin’ see what is happening?!” That was Jenkins. John looked behind him, and saw his spotter, who had given him two good years of service in the crow’s nest, staggering forward in the rising river water, his stringy black hair plastered to his face, shouting against the rain. “Do they only train blind men and whoresons to be redcoats! D’ye not fuckin’ see what’s plainly—?!”
“Mr. Jenkins!” the Ladyman called out.
Jenkins looked at his captain.
Thump—thump—THUMP!
No more, the Ladyman thought. Let not one more to die for me. Not one more. “Let it be, Mr. Jenkins. Just let it be.” The thought was borne by a momentary pang of guilt. It had been his deviancy that had his father send him away, and his deviancy that led him from the monastery and into the streets with his friend Ellis, and then onto the sea and into the Caribbean. It all just suddenly hit him, like a bolt out of the blue. Abner Crane, Rothlis, Cedar the surgeon, all the nameless others. “Just let it be,” he said again. John Laurier tossed down his cutlass. “Just let it be.” The words were aimed inward, and he knew he spoke them to allay his own fears. He had run all this way, to the other side of the world, and had sought some small granule of respectability by first becoming privateer, then pirate. And for what? How many had died? And for what? For what?
Treasure? It made him laugh. Glory? Love?
Anne Bonny took two steps forward, her cutlass raised.
“Anne!” John shouted at her. “Let it be.”
Bonny stopped and stared back at him. Both her anger at her captain, her fear of the hangman, and her horror at all she had seen tonight wrestled for supremacy on her features.
Thump—thump…
“All of you, on your knees!” shouted the large man on the horse.
“Captain, sir?” said young Dobbs to his left.
John could not bear to look at the boy. “Let it be, Mr. Dobbs. Mr. LaCroix, Mr. Kepler, let it be. Mr. Akil—”
A sword went hissing past John’s head, powerfully thrown by the large black man that now followed through on his throw. The cutlass had been thrown like a spear, and had no business being used like that—and yet it flew through the night at a speed most unbelievable, and the blade either embedded or glanced the throat of the large man on his horse, but it was hard to tell because he spun out of his saddle and landed in the mud.
“No—” was all John got out before the redcoats opened fire. And in that half a heartbeat, he changed his mind about all of it. About all of them. When the first bullet tore through Jenkins and Tomlinson, John dived to the ground and slid in the mud and his hand somehow found his cutlass and he half slithered, half climbed back to his feet as the night erupted in gunfire. Giant plumes of smoke filled the clearing all at once, and John saw dozens of freed slaves bolt in every direction, some of them twitching from a lead ball tearing into them.
The first redcoats to fire pulled back and the second rank came forward, their muskets already pre-loaded, and they aimed and fired.
Almost none of them hit their targets, because a dark hand reached out from the night, fingers as large and as crooked as tree branches, with sheets of red flesh dangling like moss from every inch. And there were many, many fingers. Each one plucked a redcoat off the ground, and some slaves and pirates, too. Plucked them like choice grapes from a bowl and lifted them up into the night sky. When the next coil of lightning bore down from the sky, John saw the Behemoth, the many-fleshes-as-one, stepping through the trees—
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!
—as its midsection opened and swallowed the plucked men. The lightning gave him a glimpse of the naked souls writhing on its crusty exterior, some of them dangling from its pendulous manhood, as large as the roots of an oak. Its reverse-jointed third leg dug into the mud and propelled the Behemoth forward like a drunken sow.
John gave no more second guesses about his life before, or his destiny hereafter. He now lived moment to moment. He seized the opportunity, and ran for a riderless horse that was mule-kicked and splashing in panic. The redcoats bearing the torches dropped them all ran. Some of them were brave enough to stand and fight, and fired uselessly at the giant creature. The Behemoth leaned down at them. Eyeless, it still somehow found them, and plucked more of them off their feet.
Purple eyes. Dozens of sets of purple eyes glowed from the swaying sugarcane, and in the water, and down in the puddles at his feet. Purple eyes lit up the night, but John could not make out the shapes of their owners—
Redcoats still tried surrounding the Ladyman. Two of them advanced on John, one using the bayonet of his musket, the other lashing out at him with a sabre. The first man slipped in the mud, off-balancing himself, and thrust with the bayonet, which Laurier batted first with the palm of his hand, receiving a slight cut across it. He performed an outside-deflection check, head-butted his enemy, and slashed at his throat before performing a quarter-turnstep and parrying the first thrust of the second enemy. The sabre was easily parried once, twice, and then the Ladyman slid his blade cleanly down the length of his enemy’s blade, in gissard fashion, riding the blade until he slashed his enemy’s wrist and disarmed him and kicked him into the mud.
More redcoats fired at the Behemoth, at the pirates, at the slaves, at anything, while John mounted his horse and waved his cutlass in the air and boomed, “To me! To me! To the boats! Follow me to the boats you fucking scallywags!”
“A-hoo!” shouted a handful of pirates, and ran after him.
John saw everything happening in momentary glimpses of lightning flashes. Dobbs helping Jenkins up. Tomlinson lying facedown in the mud, bleeding, not moving. It was over for him. Akil and Bogoa ran alongside a dozen slaves, gesticulating towards the trees in the south. Anne Bonny and Isaacson together pulled an officer off his horse, and both leapt into the saddle with Anne driving. Someone fired at Isaacson and a bullet ripped through his arm. Kepler jumped on another horse, was plucked out of the saddle by a huge fleshy finger, and vanished into the belly-mouth of the Behemoth. LaCroix ran through the ever rising river water, occasionally pushing away a redcoat that grabbed at him. One redcoat grabbed him around the throat and started to drag him down into the muddy water, until Roche came up behind and cleaved the redcoat’s head with his axe. One of the Behemoth’s fingers tried to pluck Roche, but the Brazilian ducked and rolled out of the way, then sprang up alongside the Frenchman and together they ran through the water, into darkness.
John followed them. He rode hard, looking behind only once, seeing another bolt of lightning that came down from the sky and struck the Behemoth’s head, catching it momentarily on fire before it was quickly doused.
____
Anne found the Frenchman and the Brazilian somewhere in the dark. They were in the thick of the jungle, the river rising, and a wave overtook her horse and she and Isaacson fell into the water. She swam in darkness, swallowing filthy water, choking on it. While under, she was sure she saw a set of purple eyes dancing around her. She screamed and swam for the surface, coming up for air, looking for the horse. The water receded back into the Rio Grande. And then another knee-high wave took her feet, and she went swirling through mud, her head beneath water until a strong hand grabbed a wad of her hair and yanked her back up. “Come along, mademoiselle!” LaCroix cried. “Just a little more! Just up ahead! Just a little more!”
“LaCroix—there’s something down there,” she shouted, coughing up water.
“I don’t care! Keep moving!”
The water surged and receded. Surged and receded. Every time it did either, it nearly knocked them over.
Anne saw the Ladyman ahorse and riding fast, splashing through the jungle, which seemed to be sinking at times. And then the water would recede again, and like a strong tide, it felt like it was pulling them in. Pulling them into the river. Anne saw things slithering around out there. She also saw logs, downed trees, bobbing in the muddy water. The rain came down harder, if that could be believed, and all the water was a wet slurry. LaCroix pulled her by her shirt, slammed her against a tree whenever the next wave came, and together, they and the Brazilian hugged the tree until the water receded again. Then they ran.
The boats, unsurprisingly, were not where they left them. The boats were in the jungle, amid the trees, tossed there by the surging Rio Grande. The Ladyman pulled his horse to a stop, and ordered his men to convene on him. Akil and a few others were close by, and together they lifted the boats and pulled them deeper into the jungle, away from the river. Anne ran over to join. Just then, by brief lightning, she spied five or six redcoats running towards her.
“LaCroix! Roche!” she screamed, and drew her dagger—for she had dropped all her other weapons—and ran headlong into the enemy.
They clashed in knee-deep water, wet limbs grasping at wet flesh, pressing and pushing one another while some type of strange eels slithered between their feet. Anne jabbed her blade into a redcoat’s eye socket and twisted the blade. He screamed above the booming thunder as another redcoat tackled her. She went momentarily under the water, and then by luck the wave rolled them over and she was now on top, he underneath the water, and Anne wrapped her ankles around his knees so that he could not wriggle free or rise. Whenever he tried to come up for air, she pushed his head back beneath the water and punched him in his side. A trick Jack taught her ages ago, making a man gasp underwater, making him blow out air and suck in water. She did it repeatedly while LaCroix and Roche struggled somewhere behind her.
When her enemy finally spasmed and went still, Anne leapt off his body and searched for a tree branch, a rock, anything to hit with. She found a jagged stone and lunged at the redcoat strangling LaCroix and cracked his skull. Stunned, the redcoat went sideways, tried defending against both of them as they beat and bludgeoned him. Roche was laughing somewhere, using his axe to remove a man’s head. Then another redcoat emerged and punched Anne across her face. She heard her jaw crack. She fell against a log and saw him coming for her, when suddenly young Dobbs came out of nowhere and gutted the man with his bayonet.
Six dead bodies lay all around them. Gasping, holding her jaw, Anne turned away from the corpses, letting the next surging waves take them into the Rio Grande. She imagined they, too, would resurrect soon, like the bodies had done at the Smith plantation. She did not want to be around to see it.
Anne was just limping away—apparently she had twisted her ankle somehow, and didn’t even remember it—when she heard the familiar sound of someone retching. Turning, she saw the man she thought she had drowned, emerging from the water, vomiting out the muddy water and gasping and looking around wildly. She just realized he had been a large man, and how lucky she had been to—
Wait a moment…
Dobbs was just clutching his musket and aiming his bayonet at the man before Anne grabbed the nipper by his collar and tugged him backward. “Wait! Just wait! That’s the officer!”
“The what—”
“The bloody fucking leftenant! Or captain! Or whatever the bloody fuck they call themselves.” Anne looked around at one of the dead redcoats, and lifted his sabre and walked over to the officer and pierced his right thigh. The man screamed and fell to the ground, splashing in the receding water. “Stay right there, you fucking cunt! Just you stay there!” Blade tip to his throat, she eyed him. “Fetch LaCroix, Dobbs. We’re taking this one back.” She leered down at him. “See how he likes standing a pirate’s trial.”
The nipper ran over to grab the Frenchman. While they were trying to prise Roche away from his work on the next dead redcoat, the officer at Anne’s feet stared up at her, sneering savagely. “You’ll…all…hang…for this,” he panted.
“I’m gonna roast your balls and feed them to your children, you say one more word.”
That shut him up for the moment.
LaCroix came over and aimed a sabre down at the officer, and instructed him to rise. Together, they limped behind their prisoner, guiding him over to the boats.
Dobbs’s face was covered in blood. “You’re bleeding,” Anne croaked, and grabbed his hand like a mother guiding a child. LaCroix pushed the officer on. He shouted back at Roche to come along, but the Brazilian was still collecting heads from corpses. They left him there.
Bogoa arrived with more slaves, twenty or thirty, all confused, some of them weeping. There were a few women among them, Anne noticed, at least one of them was holding a baby.
This is our new bloody pirate crew?
Lightning swirled in the sky, spiraling down towards the earth, just as before. And, just as before, it slithered back up into the churning clouds and winked out.
The Ladyman was directing them all to carry the boats farther downriver, hopefully away from the tumult of the creature, which he was now calling the “Behemoth.” “Perhaps the waters will not be influenced by the Behemoth’s displacement on down. Let us hope there are not more like him across the island. We can—avast there! Anne? What the ruddy fuck is this?” Captain Laurier aimed his cutlass at the officer.
“He’s their leader,” she said. “Don’t know his name. Didn’t catch it, as I was too busy drowning the cunt. Figured we’d take him back.”
“And do what with him?”
Anne glared at the Ladyman. “Stick him in the fucking orlap for all I care! A hostage is a fucking hostage! Or have you forgotten how we do this?”
The Ladyman stood there, accepting all their judgments. They had all seen it, the defeat in him, the moment when he gave up and threw down his sword and surrendered to the redcoats. It was something they weren’t used to, seeing the Ladyman defeated. Seeing him despondent at all, really, Anne thought. She knew that men only respected strength and decisive action, and the Ladyman’s reputation had been a granite statue, now chipped a little, following the events of the last few moments.
At last, Laurier nodded and said, “Superb thinking, Anne. Superb. Bring him along.” He wiped mud from his face. “What is your name, Officer?”
“Captain Belmont,” the big man croaked. He looked so much less regal and authoritative now, with his redcoat turned filthy brown, his hair flattened, his posture bent. Each flash of lightning revealed a ghost of a man, fearful and hateful of everyone around him.
“Captain Belmont, you ordered me to surrender moments ago. Your men shot and killed some of mine. Consider yourself lucky to have found yourself at the mercy of Anne Bonny, and not at the axe of the Brazilian.” Laurier glanced back at Akil and the Africans. “Are we ready?”
“Aye, Captain. We ready.”
“Then you and your men take the lead. Anne, you and Dobbs watch our rear. LaCroix, I want you to go and fetch the—”
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
“I know, Capitaine,” said the Frenchman, who bounded forward through the jungle, on some errand that Laurier never needed to utter. Anne that was strange but said nothing.
“Captain?” someone said. Anne looked around and saw that it was Isaacson, the bald bastard emerged from the woods, trudging through ankle-deep water. “It took Kepler, Captain. It took him straight up—”
“I know, Mr. Isaacson,” the Ladyman said. “I know. I saw it.”
“What is it, Captain?” asked Jenkins, limping over to a tree, clutching his leg to try and stop the bleeding. Dobbs rushed over to see about him. “What the bloody fuckin’ hell is that…Behemoth, ye call’d it? Is that somethin’ from the firmament?”
“I don’t know what it was.”
“Never read anything like that in Scripture—”
“Have you ever seen anything like it before?” said Isaacson. “Have you ever heard tell of it in any of your books? The Good Book or any other writings?”
The Ladyman pushed a blond lock of hair out of his face. Anne thought he had just regained some of his regalness. “It is not in any of my books because there are no books that hold such a tale, or I’m sure I would’ve heard of it. Because this isn’t from the Good Book or anything else of the Universe we know. They are not of any old stories because we have stepped into their story. A new story. These creatures are of the firmament, a world outside our own, perhaps someplace leftover after God’s first attempts at Creation.”
Isaacson wiped mud off his face. “What, like God’s own leavings? Like the undesirables the bloody fucking butcher cuts away from the better morsels?”
Anne said, “More like some pus-filled ulcer the sawbones cuts off and tosses in the bucket. Only these ulcers come crawling outta the bucket.”
Jenkins muttered, “Like Lilith?”
Anne looked at him. “What?”
“After God made Adam, he made Lilith. Only somethin’ wasn’t right with her, so God tossed her aside and made Eve instead.”
“I never heard that,” said Dobbs.
The Ladyman waved a hand. “It is a thing beyond all our comprehensions, nevertheless. That is all we may speculate. What use is this talk?” He looked at them resolutely. “Now, I said get the boats up and I bloody well meant it. Let’s go, maties! Yo-ho!”
“Yo-ho!” they answered, and got to work.
While all the men handled the boats, Anne took a moment to cut her hand with her cutlass’s blade when they weren’t looking, then smeared blood on her bared breast. For luck.
____
The veneer of order that usually got most people by when all things had been thrown into chaos was, Remy LaCroix thought, so brittle as to be insubstantial. Add a dose of chaos and fear, then, to anything, and touch it with a feather, and watch that veneer part like thin cobwebs. That was what his time spent with his old mentor Bennett had taught him. He had managed Bennett’s account-books for ages, which included business dealings with men and women with legitimate businesses, and yet they dealt with pirates. Because pirates did not have to share their treasures with the Crown, wealthy people might sometimes fund a pirate crew on a particular venture. LaCroix had seen high lords and good ladies lie to their families, to their lovers, to the militiamen, even under interrogation, even with the threat of death hanging above their hands, all so that they could keep hidden ill-gotten gains that had been squirreled away on some island.
It happened enough that at some point Remy LaCroix ceased being amazed at any peeling back of that veneer of order, to the point that even now, having stood transfixed and horrified by a monster stepped from Satan’s nightmares, he already found himself adapting to it.
Of course, the Behemoth exists. How could it not? All things are a veneer? All the world, all the oceans, all the skies, they are but a thin skein between this world and whichever one we visit in our dreams.
This produced a strange calm in him, one that steadied his thoughts and allowed him to get his bearings in the dark jungle long enough to find where he had hidden the cache.
Upon entering the jungle from the Rio Grande, the Ladyman had ordered LaCroix to take his two boxes of grenadoes and haul them on land. Then, because they would be too heavy to haul all the way to the Smith plantation, along with the boats, the Ladyman had LaCroix place the two boxes by a Mayaguana tree, and set a few rocks and leaves over them. The grenadoes were only in case the rumours the Ladyman had heard were wrong, if Smith had in fact had a cadre of militiamen or Republic pirates guarding the plantation. The grenadoes would have killed clusters, while also providing shock and distraction.
But now they might just serve another purpose.
LaCroix was only to happy to serve the captain. Thinking back to moments ago, he thought Bonny had been too harsh on him. Laurier had just faced what they all had. The Behemoth was unlike any creature even described in Scripture, LaCroix was sure. And they had been outnumbered. Bonny could not understand, but LaCroix believed he did. The world was shattered, utterly ruined by disruption of the firmament or whatever. What was treasure and glory now, in the face of such cosmic horror?
And what will grenadoes do to it, if anything? he pondered, stacking the two boxes and hefting them over one shoulder. It seemed absurd. Enough so that he even laughed. But what does one do when one realizes they are inside a dream? One keeps going, until the dream finally ends.
____
The water was better a mile down. Akil could almost smell the sea. He scouted ahead, found where an outcropping would allow them to seek high ground and run around the murky water. He lifted his sabre and nearly cut down the Frenchman when he appeared suddenly from a game trail up ahead, and ran past, delivering two boxes to Captain Laurier. Akil noticed the Frenchman was missing a shoe, and his bare foot was bleeding. They were all bleeding or battered in some way. The captain’s right arm was wrapped, but the cloth was soaked through, and his face was haggard.
And we are down a helmsman, Akil thought. By the time we reach the Hazard, the ship may be without a working crew. He suddenly realized how badly he needed the Ladyman, for neither he nor Bogoa nor any of the Africans knew the first thing about sailing.
But that fear could wait. As Akil finally found them a path down to a workable shoreline, he spoke to the freed slaves. A woman clutched a wailing babe in her hands, shushing it to no avail. When she saw they were all about to get into the boats and get out onto the water, she backed away hastily. “What is your name?” Akil asked her.
She was much shorter than Akil, and looked up with round, angry eyes. “Noala.”
“And what’s the baby’s name?”
“His name is Yame.”
Akil touched the boy’s head. “Yame, you are in the presence of Akil, prince of the Hadza. You are a fierce warrior, I can tell it is in your blood, because your mother is so brave and your scream is so powerful. I can see it in both of you.” He looked at her. “Your child has my protection. All of you do.”
She gazed up at him, suspicious and hopeful. “I cannot swim. None of us can.”
“You don’t have time. These boats are well made.”
“That thing! That huge monster…it lives in the water!”
Akil looked up the river, towards the plantation whence they came, and imagined the Behemoth there. He flicked his gaze left and right at the two shorelines, then looked north down the river, towards their escape. An event of vanishingly small probability, he surmised, but Akil could not abandon hope as he had seen the Ladyman do. Akil touched Noala’s shoulder. “Bless you, mother, you are protected by Oba, she who makes the river and controls its water.”
Noala looked at the boats with trepidation. Captain Laurier and his men were already piling in, and Bogoa was ushering in the rest of the freed men. She shook her head. “I cannot…Yame cannot…”
“I told you, Oba blesses you.”
Noala looked at him. “Does she not bless you?”
“No. I am of Ogun’s blood. He guides my spear and shield. Both are in service to you and these freed people, sweet mother. I give you my word, Ogun will protect me, and I and Oba will protect you.” He took her hand. Noala recoiled. Then she looked back at the jungle, lit up by another bolt of swirling, unnatural lightning. Black waters or black jungle—those were her choices. Only one of them provided her with the allies she needed to survive. She got on the boat with Akil, who waded waist-deep into the water to shove it clear of the flooded shoreline, then climbed in with the others, who helped him up.
Bogoa patted him on the back and said, “Brave man, Akil. You truly are a prince of—” A black limb reached up from the depths and grabbed Bogoa by his face and pulled him into the water. Akil reached for his hand, but missed.
Noala screamed.
Bogoa resurfaced from the water, half his face missing, with multiple blackened arms pulling at his neck, his arms, and shredding his clothes. Akil reached for him, grabbed his bloody hand, and Bogoa screamed in fear and agony.
Above it all, Akil saw the Ladyman leap from his boat onto Akil’s. The man’s dress whipped around him in a savage wind, and he screamed, “LaCroix! Hand me one! Lively now, you French cocksucker!” The boat swayed heavily in the waves but the Ladyman remained impossibly poised as a spherical ceramic flask went arching through the night, slung by the Frenchman in a separate boat. Laurier snatched it out of the air, just as sparks leapt from it. In the perfect darkness, amid lightning and torrential rain, the Ladyman looked like a god holding sparking fire as he reached down with one hand and grabbed the waistband of Bogoa’s pants and helped Akil haul him in. With his other hand, the Ladyman threw the ceramic sphere into the water and then threw himself onto the boat floor, a second before the explosion went off.
The limbs that had been grasping for Bogoa now retreated into the water like frightened fish.
A moment later, the whole river reacted by glowing with deep, brilliant blue light.
____
The thundering boom of the grenado’s explosion rocked the boat side to side, and a geyser of water shot up over them, drenching them. And instantly the blue light rose from underneath them, and John looked around at the Rio Grande, turning night into day in a reversal of blue sunlight coming from the water. It was as if they sailed on the sky.
“LaCroix?”
“This isn’t supposed to happen! This isn’t the grenado doing it!” the Frenchman called back.
Dobbs cried out, “Captain, look! In the water!”
John peeked over the side. They all did. He saw long, eel-like shapes, and along their sinewy, slithering bodies, he saw four arms protruding. Some of them had six. Somewhere, Bogoa was howling in pain, clutching at his ruined face. John barely acknowledged it, so mesmerized was he by the black shapes, coiling and uncoiling around a rising blue light. Like an ingot the colour of a Spanish bluebell flower. It even had offshoots like petals. Gargantuan petals. Impossibly large, for each one looked big enough to support a dozen galleons or more, and yet he knew the Rio Grande was not that deep.
“Captain—” Akil said.
“To your oars, boys!” John shouted. “To your fucking oars! Now! Row as one! Row for your bloody lives! It’s coming up from below!”
“What is, Capitaine?”
“Just row, you cunts!”
____
They rowed until well past midnight, when the clouds suddenly stopped churning, and the lightning etched jagged lines across them, and did not go away. The lightning remained suspended, not vanishing as lightning ought, but instead underlit the clouds which now looked to harden, creating a ceiling of stone above the entire world. The whole time, the river glowed, and single filaments of an enormous petal rose from the water a mile or two behind them, before slowly dipping back into the water.
Things reached from the boats, and pulled down two more of the freed slaves. Isaacson was clawed across his chest by six razor-sharp fingers, and was bleeding and screaming under the ghostly yellow light coming down from the sky.
When they happened to come close to the eastern shore, one of the Africans leapt into the water and tried to swim for the shore. But something pulled him under, and no one ever saw him again.
They rowed on.
The clouds began to move again, and the lightning finally dimmed, and dimmed, and dimmed. Until at last it dispersed as it ought. The clouds parted quickly, revealing familiar stars and a gibbous moon. Men pointed at things flying overhead, elongated creatures, eel-like, with squamous wings and stygian-black pits for eyes. They were enormous, half the size of the Hazard, easily. As they rowed, they saw one swoop down with huge talons and pluck a man and his son off the shoreline, lifting them into the air. Another such creature stretched out its talons and grabbed the lower half of the man. The two creatures briefly fought, and in their battle they tore the man apart and both flew off in opposite directions.
“My God,” Dobbs breathed. “What is happening? Abner, are you listening? What’s out there? Did you bring this on us? Is this your retribution?”
They rowed until after dark, when dawn at last lifted its head and brought red-gold light into the world. Hazard was waiting a hundred yards out to sea. Captain Laurier shouted to Okoa, who had been entrusted to watch Hazard while they were away, along with a handful of trustworthy sailors and gunners. Okoa ordered the men to throw down the rope ladders and haul everyone aboard, and he tried rapidly to catch up, as Dobbs told their story.
“We saw none of this monster, Captain,” Okoa said, hopping over on his crutches. “Not from here. But the storm and the clouds, we saw plenty strangeness. Lightning behaving like I never saw before—”
“To the capstan bars!” the Ladyman shouted, pushing right past him. His corset was untied, his bare chest wet and showing his crisscrossing tattoos. His right arm was wrapped in a bloodstained cloth. He was in no mood to talk. “Stand by to weigh anchor! Boatswain’s party, ready to let fly! To the gunnels, grab some lines! Okoa, how does she sit?”
“Water be awfully choppy, sir,” said Okoa, following him up the stairs to the quarterdeck. “And the wind changed suddenly. We soon to be in irons.”
“I’ll take over at steering. ’Vast, Jenkins! Let that prisoner plop to the deck! He’s not going anywhere! Get you to the crow’s nest!”
“Aye, Captain!”
“Captain?” said Okoa. “Where is Kepler? And Tomlinson? And who is this redcoat—”
“We lost some brothers, Mr. Okoa. And the redcoat is Captain Belmont of the Militia, thank you for reminding me of his presence.” Laurier walked over to the prisoner and cracked him across the jaw with a fist, then grabbed him by his throat. “Was it Rogers? Tell me! Was it Woodes Rogers who ordered this?”
The militiaman croaked, “Who else?”
Laurier sneered. “Someone get him down to the bloody orlop. Make sure Anne goes with him, too. Lock the bastard inside and keep a guard on the door. Dobbs! Why aren’t you up that mizzen, you fucking nipper—”
“Going, sir!”
“Akil, is that man going to live?” the Ladyman shouted down to the main deck. He pointed to Bogoa, the man they were pulling up over the starboard rail just now, half his face missing or hanging off. He looked delirious from blood loss. The Africans were trying to find a place to lay him on the cluttered deck. Meanwhile, the woman with the wailing child stumbled around, frantically looking for somewhere to go.
“I don’t know, Captain!” Akil called back. “Bogoa lose much blood! Do we—eh—?” He said some words in the African tongue.
Okoa translated, “He ask if we have surgeon on board?”
“Not anymore. We lost Cedar during the fourteen-day darkness. Get him to the galley and lay him on a table. Isaacson, too, his chest is split nearly wide open. Cedar’s old things are still in the fo’c’s’le, he should have some poultices and reagents to apply to the injured.”
Akil’s mouth tried to make the words. “Pul…poult-ice…?”
“Goddamn it, Okoa! Translate it for me, I’ve got a boat to steer and hardly a crew to bend a sail!” Laurier threw the wheel hard a-larboard. “Jaime, help Masters with the line! Tell me what the seabed is like underneath us!” Because, he wanted to add, if what we saw on the island is any indication, the ocean floors may be an alien world now.
He remembered the long night. He remembered what Ben said about the two moons, and the things he saw flying around them.
“Aye, Cap’n!” the Scotsman called, and he and Masters grabbed up the knotted lines and threw them over the starboard and port rails. Jaime reeled his in first, looking at the contents of the cup. “Six fathoms, Cap’n! Shale and loose sand!” Jaime cried from starboard. Masters confirmed the same from port. But Laurier did not trust it, and told them to check again. Traumatized more than he dared admit, he sensed evil all around them. True evil. Something beyond the firmament.
Okoa had been right about the wind. They could not sail south around the island to Port Royal, else they would be in irons. The speediest way was going to be to tack northwest, come round the Old Horn and let the ocean current carry them sou’sou’east. He felt Kepler’s ghost next to him. Damn, but he needed the loyal old bastard. The world had turned upside-down, and John could only guess it was going to get worse. Because even as the sun rose fast behind them, he imagined he saw large, black, reflective humps appearing out of the water in the northeast. No whales that large or that black in the Caribbean. No whales like that anywhere.
Soon, a brittle network of white threads appeared in the air all around them. Every man and woman aboard noticed it. It was like a universe of cobwebs suddenly materializing—at first like a fog, something they merely passed through. And then the cobwebs broke as each person, mesmerized, reached up to touch it. The cobwebs went up and down the length of the ship, covering every surface. The cobwebs felt like feather fronds and crackled and broke at the merest touch.
“What is this curtain?” said Okoa, coming up from below.
John ran his fingers through the air, through the brittle cobweb-like things, watching them dissolve at his touch. “I don’t know,” he said. But he did know. In the marrow of his bones, he knew.
They were passing through the firmament now. The whole world was passing through it.
“Captain, do we really go back to Port Royal? Now? Surely all the redcoats be waiting for us there.”
John had to think a moment. Yes, of course, Okoa was right. It had been paramount in his mind before, but it had slipped his mind—by returning to Port Royal, he was flying directly into the net of those that had sent the militia to arrest him. It was Rogers. But did Ben have anything to do with—?
No, it would not enter into his mind.
Still.
Did he sail for Royal?
Did he take that risk?
What about Ben? Might he need John’s help?
But what help could John offer if all of Royal was against him?
Was all of Royal against him?
Thoughts like gnats swirled around his head, and when he looked at the inability of his new crew, observed his utter lack of a satisfactory replacement for Kepler, and estimated their odds against the King’s Militia, John Laurier made a calculation. He gave the wheel a quarter-turn to starboard.
____
The dark cloud dropped down from the sky, and touched the sea around Lime Cay, where ships usually let out their mainsail to first gain speed when leaving Port Royal. The cloud came on suddenly, and swarmed around Bull Bay, then swirled and clenched like a fist around King’s Bay before plunging into the sea. There was a single, bright pulse of yellow and purple light from within. The waters quivered like a maiden to a lover’s touch.
But that lover’s touch soon turned brutal, and violent. A cruel hand no longer content on waiting, but now taking what it wanted. Things spilled from the clouds and into the water. And then many things rose from the water, creatures of forms beyond the ken of Man. They slinked onto shore, and most found they could not survive long outside the water. But a few could. A few could.
But the men and women aboard the Hazard never saw any of this. Because night had fallen again, they saw only darkness, and an opening of the sky, and strange ghost lights moving beneath the waves. A few sets of purple eyes. As they raced away on a propitious breeze, Captain Laurier stormed belowdecks and bolted the door to his cabin and screamed and kicked over his desk and ignored the pounding on his door from Okoa.
Hours passed.
Laurier sat in his chair and looked out the three rear windows at the storm. A storm without winds. And yet the sea heaved.
As he watched the waves surge and the cobwebs dissipate, John Laurier began to do something that had long been his skill, born out of a need to hide. Hide himself, hide his motives, hide his true feelings, and hide his true intelligence. A need to hide from the law and his father. All of it enhanced a skill that was always there, just beneath the surface, and honed with experience. Taking what was available and applying it to a new goal.
Planning.
Was this you, Benjamin? Did you know what Rogers would do? Did you know and still do nothing?
When the storm was lying flat on the horizon, John stood up and walked to the door and opened it. He called up for Okoa.
“You call me, Captain?”
John paced a moment before he said, “Captain Belmont. Bring him to me.”
“Of course, Captain. What are you going to do?”
Laurier closed each of the windows, and locked them. “Punish the world.” He touched the locket about his neck. “What a famous thing that would be, Mr. Okoa. To punish the whole goddamn world. Imagine it. Take all their coins and silks and spices, and watch how they falter and founder without them. To leave King George and King Philip both bankrupt, destitute, doomed to walk the world as barefoot paupers, from town to town, their teeth rotting and their hands out like fucking beggars. What a famous thing that would be.”
____
That night, Akil swung in the hammock at the far end of the forecastle where he and the other Africans had been allotted space. He peered across at Noala, with the babe in her arms, suckling from its mother. From the ship’s stern came screaming. Bogoa was undergoing some sort of white man’s medicine to try and save what was left of his face.
This had been going on all night.
Every time Bogoa screamed, Noala looked around in fright. Akil had heard such screams too many times to remember, both before and during his subjugation. He stood and walked across the room and held out a canteen filled with water. “Drink,” he told her.
Noala’s eyes glittered in one of the three lanterns that lit up the forecastle. She took the canteen after only a moment’s hesitation and drank thirstily, then she looked around at the traumatized faces of the crew. Akil looked with her. They both looked at the vacant stares, and listened to someone weeping.
“This is like a nightmare,” she said, and coughed.
“Drink,” he said again. “For the baby. You need your strength. Yame needs it, too.”
She took a deeper draught.
“Have you ever fought?” Akil asked.
Noala wiped her mouth and shook her head.
“You will fight. That will cure you of everything.”
“What do you mean? Cure me?”
“Of all this fear and doubt you’re now feeling. Of your hatred and feelings of powerlessness. Of your fear for the child. You both will fight. You will see.” Akil turned away when he saw Okoa come limping down the stairs. “Excuse me,” he said to Noala, and walked over to the quartermaster. “Okoa, what of the captain? What of our course? Where shall we go?”
“Not for me to say right now.” Okoa tried to brush past him, but Akil grabbed him. Okoa looked down at the hand on his elbow. “Release me, sir.”
“Tell me, rafiki. Where are we going?”
Okoa looked like he might make this an issue, but then nodded for Akil to follow him down the companionway. At the other end, he spoke in low tones. “The captain…I think he believes he was betrayed.”
“Betrayed by who?”
“Maybe no one. Maybe one person. Maybe many people.”
“And what will he do?”
“He will make an argument for vengeance, and try to convince the crew to go with him.”
“What do you mean, ‘try to convince’? He is the captain, isn’t he? He doesn’t have to convince anybody, he can go where he pleases.”
“You still don’t understand our ways. This isn’t a naval ship. It’s a pirate ship. And pirates vote on everything. Captain Laurier will not go anywhere the majority of the crew does not wish to go. However, when it comes to this sort of thing, he tends to be persuasive. He tends to get his way.”
“How?”
“Has anyone ever told you about the captain’s wrath?”
Akil shook his head.
“It is a thing to behold. Pray none of us are ever at the other end of it. Now, get some rest. In the morning you and your people will learn to hand and reef. You will learn how to crew. And you will also have a say in where we go next.”
“What? We will have a say?”
Okoa chuckled. “This isn’t England, rafiki. This is a pirate ship. Everyone is equal here. If you don’t want to come along for the captain’s vengeance, you don’t have to. Just like you didn’t have to help him at the Smith plantation. But if you decide not to join us, you will miss out on his plan.”
“What is it? What’s his plan?”
Okoa scratched his neck. “I have only gleaned parts of it, for he keeps much of it hidden. But from what I’ve gathered, I can only make a guess.”
“Then make a guess. Tell me.”
And so Okoa told him what he knew of the Ladyman’s plan. It took a couple of hours to explain it all, both of them huddled in the dark while the others slept and Noala sang her son to sleep, but once Okoa was done, he said, “So, what will be your vote?”
Akil had never heard of a plan so grand. He was taken aback by the enormity of it, but once the waves had settled in his mind, he sighed and said, “Where is this place? These…Colonies?”