image [https://i.imgur.com/15eGPa6.jpg]

image [https://i.imgur.com/DqimdvY.jpg]

raked – Said of a ship when an enemy vessel has come up behind her, with broadside cannons facing her rudder. All guns firing into her arse. The worst possible position to be in during ship-to-ship combat.

THEY HEARD THE familiar juddering report of multiple cannons firing all at once. Not one of them failed to recognize what it was. Laurier looked back at Jaime, guiding the horse with Anne laid across its saddle. She was still unconscious. Up ahead, Jenkins peeked around the side of an apartment on Lime Street, held up a hand to signal them—“hang on a minute”—and then waved for them to follow as he dashed around the corner.

Laurier looked back at his haggard men. He could barely see them through the rain. He waved for them to follow, unsure if this harebrained scheme was going to work after all. It was a stretch upon its conception, before the Behemoth showed up, now this storm and these spectres had turned everything on its head.

And those cannons…they didn’t bode well. For if someone was firing in the bay it was a good chance they were firing at the Hazard.

There wasn’t a soul to be found on Lime Street, and almost every building had been leveled, like an angry child had stampeded across their dollhouses. The rain fell on two or three corpses in the street. Laurier stood for just a moment in wonder at all the destruction, the splintered wood dragged out into the street, floating in the mud puddles that, upon closer inspection, were the impressions of gigantic feet, at least the size of a carriage.

“Hear that?” said Jaime. “That a cryin’ baby?”

It was. John heard it, too. But after a few moments, it stopped. Jaime went looking for it.

“Jaime!” John called. But the Scotsman was gone.

They ran on, past the Fish Market. Laurier saw the fleshless body of a woman, still alive, her breasts peeled off in sheets beside her, as she screamed up at the heavens and reached for someone, anyone, to help. They ran past her. Past the two children floating facedown in the mud. Past the horse that had been half stepped on, its belly split open, intestines floating in the puddle like dead eels. And all around them, the smell of sulfur and ammonia.

Motion from their left. Laurier turned his sword at the dark shape coming at them. It was Jaime, a sniffling babe in hand.

“Keep that thing quiet,” John said.

“Poor thing, she canna help it, sir—”

“Keep her quiet, I said!”

Jaime put a hand over the child’s mouth.

At the Turtle Crawles, they came upon strays. Men and women dashing from shadow to shadow. A woman on her knees, weeping by the body of an old man, hands reaching up to the clouds as she shouted a prayer in a language Laurier vaguely recognized as French. In the distance, the cannons continued firing, and he could tell by their pitch that some of them were Hazard’s guns. She’s fighting back.

“Okoa’s fighting, Cap’n!” Jenkins shouted back. “You hear her? She’s fighting—”

“Sshhh!”

A pair of militiamen ran at them from out of nowhere. One of them stabbed Jenkins in his side with a bayonet before LaCroix could gut the redcoat, and the second one was dead from the shot Laurier fired. Laurier dropped his pistol, picked up their unfired rifles, tossed one to Vhingfrith, and ran on.

“You all right?” he said to Jenkins, who was holding his bleeding wound.

“I’m a’right, Cap—”

“Good. Rendezvous’s up ahead. If the others made it out, they’ll be waiting on us. Keep moving, all of you,” the Ladyman commanded.

They passed a woman in her apron, staggering in the mud, looking around in terror. John made a snap decision. He tore the baby out of Jaime’s hands and handed it over to the woman. “Take care of it!”

The woman gaped at him. Then at the child in her arms.

They ran on.

____

Akil fought against the throng, all of them going the wrong way. Bogoa was by his side, shouldering through the river of people, Mosi right behind him, hacking at the things leaping out from the dark, sometimes hacking the innocent by accident. There was something loose in the streets, some new Monster, with its black, surging, semi-liquid tentacles that swam down through the alleys and snatched at their throats or wrists or ankles and tried pulling them into the darkness. Some of them flew, like serpents in the air. Omari had already been grabbed by them—those tentacles with chittering, bladed needles like small mouths and tiny teeth—and he had been pulled into the darkness and lost. They searched but never found him, only pools upon pools of blood, and belly sacks, and tongues, all discarded like they were not the tastier bits.

A hand grabbed Akil’s shoulder. He did not think, only reacted, and hacked at the arm and kept running. Someone in the crowd shoved him. He shoved back. He stepped on the half-flayed corpse of a dog. Saw a chittering tentacle slash past his face and pluck a small boy from his mother’s arms and lift him screaming into the sky.

Akil had no idea what was going on, only some vague notion that he had accidentally stepped into a bad dream kept him from going mad. And yet part of him understood. This was the Long Night. The firmament acting up. This was what it did. This was how it was now. This was how it would be forever. Unless we escape it, find a way out of these Long Nights, set the World right again.

Until then, they were trapped inside a cave of horrors, designed by a terrifying god.

Mosi was grabbed by two militiamen. Bogoa hacked the nose off one of them, while Akil kicked the other in his chest and sent him to the ground. They grabbed Mosi and ran on. Ahead, they found a familiar form standing over a militiaman, hacking repeatedly with an axe. Roche saw them, briefly made eye contact with Akil as he ran past, and smiled as he got back to work hacking the militiaman to pieces.

“Shouldn’t we—?” Mosi started.

“Let him find his own way!” Akil ordered. “Keep moving! For the love of your fathers and mothers, keep moving!”

Akil and his people did not know their way around Port Royal very well, they’d had to trust the Ladyman’s earlier instructions on how to find their way back to the docks. It had been this sort of chaos since they failed to secure the carriage with Vhingfrith in it. Constables and militiamen and even Royal Marines had flooded the streets, shooting and killing anyone that looked remotely like a pirate, chasing down any Africans they spotted. Some of them fired wildly up at the Behemoth. No one seemed to know which was the greater threat, none of the militiamen or marines seemed to know what was the greater duty.

Akil hacked off the arm of another militiaman that appeared from an alleyway. Bogoa shoved a Royal Marine to the ground. They ran in, into the Long Night.

Akil had never seen nor dreamt anything like this scene. People were trampled to death in the street. Mounds of them. Some piled up around dead ends where they had tried to climb a fence and trampled and suffocated one another, while the living used those mounds as stepstools to leap over fences to reach the rooftops.

A wagon slashed by. Bogoa was clipped by the wheel, and fell to the ground. Akil helped him up, and ran on. They made it onto a wider street and found landmarks that the captain had said to look out for, like the drinking hall Akil had been taken to his first time in Port Royal—The Golden Goose.

“This way!” he shouted, emerging onto a mostly empty street. Just then a chittering tentacle came down from the sky, licking after a pair of white horses that had gotten free of their stables and come charging at them. Akil moved out of the way, but the horses forced Bogoa and Mosi to leap back into another alley. Suddenly, the tentacle gave up the horses, and now chased the two of them down the alley, away from Akil.

“Bogoa!” he shouted, running after them. “Mosi! Run—”

Something hit him square in the chest. Something as round as an oak tree, just as solid, but slimy, mushy, and with chittering teeth that sliced through his shirt, through his flesh, and knocked him to the mud. Akil slid backward. Tried to stand. The tentacle wrapped around his ankle and whipped him off his feet and lifted him into the air. Ten or fifteen feet. Now twenty. Akil roared as he slashed at the tentacle, ripping open a wound and pouring black viscous liquid onto himself as he plummeted.

He landed on a thatched roof. The wind was knocked out of him. The machete fell from his hand and went clattering somewhere. He slid off the roof and onto the street, facedown in the mud, trying to catch his breath.

Akil’s eyes were coated by fog. He closed them. When he opened them again, he was alone. Except for the ghost of a dead child, slowly walking towards him. He knew it was a ghost, for no white child was that pale, and none of them were translucent like foggy glass.

Akil forced himself to his feet. Looking around, two more spirits came towards him, a man and a woman, their bodies translucent but covered in blood, mud, and writhing in an unnatural way. They came towards him with keen interest. The ghost-child tilted his head to the side playfully, his eyes were milky agates inside deep, dark sockets. Then the eyes flashed purple and he started skipping over to Akil. Akil tried to run but his legs gave out. The fall had taken it out of him. His lungs felt constricted. Wheezing, holding out his hands, half interested in joining the dead—

“Akil!”

There was a child crying somewhere, but it was not the ghost-child. The ghost-child was walking towards him now with a sinister smile, hands outstretched, eager to touch Akil’s hand—

“Akil!” A woman’s voice. It grew louder, as did the child’s cries.

Then, the woman stood in front of him. Her back was to him, and Akil saw the child tied to her back. The woman held a pistol in one hand, a dagger in the other. “Can you stand?” Noala shouted.

“Songiya…Songiya…”

“Can you stand, Akil?”

He blinked. He no longer saw his wife, but saw Noala. “I…yes.”

“Then get up! Get up and let us go! I cannot carry you so you’ll have to do it yourself! Get up, my prince!”

Akil rose to his feet. Searched around in the mud a moment before he found his machete. Once he hefted it, he tapped her shoulder and said, “Let’s go.” The ghosts were closing in. Akil pulled Noala down an alley and they ran on, not knowing where they were going. They started down another alley, then turned back when they heard something approaching in the darkness. Something chittering. They came across two flayed bodies, still alive, still moaning, their lipless mouths opened in permanent screams, their lidless eyes looking wildly as they crawled in the mud and tried pulling sheets of their skin back onto themselves like bloody blankets. Their eyes suddenly glowed purple.

Whatever was doing this, it liked to skin people, eat parts of them, but left them half alive to join the spirits. The spirits themselves were trying on the skins of other corpses like trying on clothes.

“Akil, what is this?” Noala panted. On her back, Yame was squalling.

“This is the world now, sweet woman,” he said, guiding her down another alley. “This is what happens when the Long Night stays too long.”

“I won’t let them take my child—”

“I won’t either. Just stay close. Stay close to me and keep moving.”

“Yes, my prince.”

“No matter what happens to me, just keep moving. Don’t risk yourself for me again.”

“I will not leave you, my prince.”

Ahead of them, through the rain, a form came running at them. It was another militiaman. The redcoat ran right past them in a panic. A moment later, Roche appeared right behind him, and chased the redcoat down another alley, grinning ear to ear.

Noala shouted, “Roche? Roche! Come back, you fool! The Turtle Crawles are—”

“Leave him.”

“We need everyone we—”

“Leave him! He’s got his own demons to chase.”

Akil turned them down another lane. Yame’s screams marred his thoughts. All around him he saw windows and shutters closing as people piled into the homes of their neighbors and sought shelter in numbers. Something leapt out of the shadows to their left. Noala fired at it, the smoke plume made it impossible to see the size of the tentacle, and Akil grabbed her elbow and pulled her down yet another lane. Up a set of stairs. Across a muddy street filled with half-eaten torsos and dogs baying angrily at the moons and a horse trotting around in circles, in search of a master.

“Akil,” said Noala. “Something’s behind us.”

“Don’t look, just keep running.”

“It’s getting closer.” Yame’s cries reached a crescendo, it sounded like the child’s throat would break. “Akil—”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

He looked behind. Saw the large lumbering shape coming for them. He grabbed Noala and shoved her out of the way and brought his machete down on the Beast’s head. It was too dark to make out its true form. Boar-like, with tusks, but the rest of it was multi-limbed and malformed. It screamed and collided with him with all the power of a raging bull, and Akil held on to its head, to those horns protruding like an antelope’s. The wind knocked out of him, he clung to its fur and face, then felt as though his back was crushed when he collided with a door, which broke easily, and the Beast continued charging forward, into a house of screaming women and children. Its face split open like a sunflower and he smelled ammonia and plunged his machete into its gullet. Black bile poured onto his face, into his mouth, and he retched as the Beast lunged backward and snatched one of the children in its claws and retreated into the night.

“Nooooo!” screamed the child’s mother, running after it.

Akil stood up, gasping for air. He stumbled out into the street, looking for Noala. For a moment he could not find her. Behind him, inside the house, the children were all screaming in terror. He looked back at them. Considered staying for them. Staying and protecting. But what could he do? What could anyone do?

Akil strained his ears. He could still hear the Beast somewhere close by, though the child’s screams had gone silent. He heard its heavy footsteps, splashing around in the rain—

“Akil?”

Noala. She emerged from the doorway of a privy. She started to run towards him, but he held up a halting hand, and she retreated back into the privy and closed the door. Akil waited several minutes, listening to the sounds of Port Royal dying. An old man ran through the street, clutching the bloody stump of his right arm. Akil waited another moment, then ran across the street and opened the privy and pulled Noala and Yame out and ran down another alley.

Unarmed and lost, he felt hunted. He swore he heard those tentacle-things slithering on the walls all around him, over the rooftops. Once or twice, he saw them swim through a puddle, directly towards them, and he and Noala changed direction. Dozens of sets of purple eyes peered at them from almost every alley.

Then, something grabbed hold of Akil, and he spun to strike.

“Shhh,” said Roche. The Brazilian was coated in a film of blood and black bile. None of it looked like his. “I think they smell fear. Or are attracted to it. Like a lion chases that which runs. That’s why they run from me.”

Akil and Noala stood there, panting. Akil started to ask something, but just then multiple detonations close by muted him. Cannonfire, and no mistake.

“This way,” Roche said. “The Ladyman is waiting.”

____

“If you don’t hurry, Mr. Okoa, they’re going to rake us!” Belmont shouted.

Okoa looked astern. Saw the lead ship bearing down on them fast, firing just within range but still missing. Geysers sprouted from the sea as cannon shot plunged into the waters. The rain had eased up, but the wind was still battering them, kept changing its mind, putting them at first broad reach and then close reach. That was giving the brig chasing them all the chance it needed to maneuver in a way to start turning to starboard and bring its portside battery to bear. Okoa saw the brig trying to do just that, but the wind was making it barely impossible to do while keeping pace with Hazard.

But that was about to change, what with the shore reaching out ahead of them. Soon they would be forced to turn south, away from the shore and the shoals, and that would allow their pursuers to catch up. A change in course always slowed a ship down. The ship directly behind them harassed them with cannons, making a course change dangerous, while the four ships behind it were already changing course in anticipation of Hazard doing the same.

They anticipated this. They’ve done this before. They’re coordinated and trained and we are now missing half our crew because I was stupid and offloaded them onto the Lively, into a trap, and we’re also missing our captain—

“Mr. Okoa,” said Belmont. “You have to do something! I’ve no love for you people but I cannot swim and I have no desire to be blown to flinders by my own countrymen and die as a bloody pirate!”

Okoa thought quickly. The decision leapt to mind, and he had nearly zero confidence it would work, but he’d seen the Ladyman do it enough times and decided it might be their only shot. “Ship capstan bars! Prepare to drop anchor!”

Belmont looked at him in shock. “What?!”

“Mr. Irwin, we going hard to starboard on my command!”

“Aye, Quartermaster!”

“What are you doing?” Belmont demanded.

“We going to club-haul this ship, Captain Belmont,” Okoa said. And he could tell the militiaman’s mind was racing to make sense of that.

“But…won’t that just turn us around?”

“Aye. And we going to race right back at them. With luck, we go between two of them instead of being surrounded by five.”

“But that’s madness! Going between two ships…that puts us between the starboard guns of one ship and the portside guns of the other!”

“Better than being raked! Raked, we die. If we strafe between them fast enough, some of their shots maybe miss.”

Belmont shouted something but it was lost in the thunder. A moment later the anchor was dropped. Okoa grabbed hold of a rail and a rope as the ship heeled hard to starboard. Belmont did the same, but a wave hit them and water rushed up to his knees and knocked him on his ass. Hazard moaned and creaked under protest, but she persevered. Irwin straightened her out, pointing her prow directly at one of the four ships that had been heading southeast, trying to head them off.

“Weigh anchor!” Okoa cried, and the men at the capstan worked double time to reel it in.

The maneuver slowed them down considerably, but the ship that had been following them hadn’t seen it coming, so they only got a few shots off from their broadsides as Hazard swam away from her. Okoa ordered the stunsails drawn in for a bit, allowing them to not be so much a slave to the wind’s chaotic mood, then ordered them released once they were coming directly towards the two brigantines.

“Luff and touch her, Mr. Irwin!”

“Aye, Quartermaster!”

“Prepare cannons!”

“Aye, Mr. Okoa!” cried McConnell.

“Here we go, lads! Brace yourselves!”

____

Vhingfrith stood and listened to the arguing and confusion. “I dunna understand,” said Jaime, limping over to the lanternpost to prop himself up. “What’s ’appened? Why did Okoa leave us?”

“Are you deaf?” Jenkins barked at him. “D’you not see the bloody ships firin’ on them?” The lightning and three moons allowed them to see everything from here. “Okoa had no fuckin’ choice but to leave—”

“Where’s Dobbs?” LaCroix shouted. There were few of Laurier’s pirates here. Four of the Africans had arrived at the rendezvous point near the Turtle Crawles, and none of those were Akil or his warriors. “Or Isaacson? Anybody seen—”

“How the fuck’re we supposed ter get off this bloody island?” Jaime shouted.

“Has anybody seen Dobbs?” LaCroix insisted.

Vhingfrith looked at Anne Bonny, who was still lying over the horse’s saddle and had just stirred and mumbled. He checked on her while the others argued.

“Captain, we canna stay here!” Jaime said. “We need ter take one o’ them ships!”

“Are you mad?” Jenkins countered. “Do you still not see those fucking ships? They’ve got the whole bloody bay blockaded! They lured Hazard into a trap! And Okoa sailed right into it!”

“Wasn’t his fault,” said the Ladyman. “I told him where to go, what to do, but the storm would blind any seasoned sailor, so we must forgive Okoa—”

“Wait, why didn’t Okoa secure the Lively?” asked LaCroix.

“We canna stay here!” Jaime said again. “An’ we canna wait for any o’ the others! We ’ave ter save ourselves!”

“We’ll wait right here for Dobbs, at least,” Jenkins said.

“You can wait, but I’m—”

“Why didn’t they secure the Lively?” LaCroix asked again.

“Captain…” Anne was trying to say. She had woken up and was now sliding off the horse and leaned against Vhingfrith. “Captain…did you see it? Did you see the Behemoth? And all those…ghosts?”

“I saw them, Annie girl.” John walked over and kissed her forehead. “Damn, but you did a good job securing Captain Vhingfrith for us.”

For us? Ben thought.

“I—I tried to—”

“Easy, Anne,” said Jenkins. “You done good, girl.”

Vhingfrith handed her over to Jenkins and walked to the edge of the dock. He was still barefoot, still bleeding from his head, but he’d almost completely forgotten both burdens. He was soaked to the bone and watching the sea heave while five or six ships fired on the Hazard as she raced away from the North Docks. He cast his eyes to those docks, focused his cat’s-eye on the Lively, lightly bobbing there amid the other moored ships. He saw a dozen men moving all around her, none of them looked like his people, nor did they look like any of John’s. But something was familiar about the movement of one or two of them, their strides and their gesturing. He’d seen it somewhere before.

“I know why they didn’t secure the Lively,” Benjamin said. Most of the shouting died down, and they all turned to him. “I can see them from here.”

“See who, Ben?” John said.

“I don’t know who they are, but they aren’t your people or mine. They’re crawling all over my ship. And I see…two…maybe three men lying dead there on the quarterdeck.” He nodded to himself. “Yes…yes, that’s your cook there. They’ve killed him.”

“Reginald?”

“I believe so.”

“Who are the men you see aboard the Lively?”

Before he could answer, Vhingfrith heard one of the pirates ask, “How can he bloody see them from here?” and another one answered, “It’s that bloody devil’s eye. Cat’s-eye. Whatever. Have you been asleep these last few—?”

“I can’t make out their faces,” said Benjamin, straining to see through the sheets of rain and intervening distance. “But something is familiar about one or two of them. The way they walk…their gaits…”

“Gates?” said Jenkins. “They have gates blocking us? There’s no gates at the North Docks.”

“Not that kind of gate, Mr. Jenkins,” said John. “He means the way they walk. What about their gaits, Ben?”

Vhingfrith shut his right eye, and held a hand above his head to block the rain and the light of the three moons. He watched for a few moments while men with blades and pistols walked about the Lively’s deck. His deck. “They’ve got swords. Pistols. Most of them look like they know how to use them.” He kept scanning. A big man appeared from the forecastle, striding confidently, with broad shoulders and a large, shimmering, bald head. “Jacobson.”

Laurier stepped to his side. “Jacobson?”

“Yes. He’s down there. It was a trap, I suppose. Someone knew you would come for me. Or, at least, they suspected.”

“You’re sure? You’re sure it’s Jacobson?”

“I’m sure.”

“Those bastards!” Jenkins growled. “Fucking traitorous scum! They’ve turned against their own kind!”

“They were waiting on your ship,” Ben said. “When Okoa sent some of your crew over, they were slaughtered by Jacobson and his team. I am sure this was Rogers’s plan. The Admiralty may have authorized it but it was his plan.”

LaCroix spat. “Raclure de bidet! Fucking bastards!”

Vhingfrith heard footsteps splashing in mud. Looked to the right, cat’s-eye piercing the veil of dark. “You’ve got friends coming, Captain.”

John turned and looked.

“Who goes there?!” the Scotsman barked, rounding on the three shapes emerging from the dark.

“I told you, it’s friends!” Vhingfrith shouted. “It’s the Brazilian. And isn’t that your liberated slave, John? Who’s the woman and child?”

“Akil!” John beamed, and ran to the African and embraced him so fast and powerfully that it seemed to jar the big man. John slapped him, good-naturedly, on the face with his left hand. His Corrupted hand clutched his sword. (Ben had been eyeing that hand.) “Wonderful to see you, friend. And you, Noala. Yame’s lungs are still working, I see. Roche, you bastard! I knew you’d make it out! So glad you could join us. Well done! Well done, indeed, all of you!”

“We lost some of our people to Monsters, Captain,” Akil panted. “I’m happy you waited for us.”

“We weren’t going to wait much longer, faith. Yonder goes our beautiful Hazard, chased by English devils, and over there is the Lively, guarded by enemies who seem to have slain Reginald and some of our people.”

“We kill them?” said Akil.

“That’s why I feel a brotherhood with you, Akil. You see what must be done and bluntly state it. Yes, we have to take the Lively out of here. These other ships, they’re all boxed in with no way out, and most of them aren’t fast enough to outrun this blockade. And we’ll need her guns.”

Vhingfrith walked over and appraised the men and the woman. Akil was covered in some black, shit-smelling liquid, while Roche was covered in equal amounts of blood. “What happened to you?”

Akil looked uncomfortable addressing him, and Benjamin suddenly realized this was probably the first time Akil had ever spoken to a half-white man, much less one with a cat’s-eye. “Beasts. I not know what kind.”

John looked over at the Brazilian. “You all right?”

Roche shrugged, and spat. “Sí.”

“Are you armed?”

Roche pulled the axes from his belt loops. “Sí.”

“We lost our weapons, Captain,” said Noala, shushing her baby.

“Well, grab something. Fast. A club, a stick, anything. We’ll be heading to the Live—”

“Someone’s coming,” Vhingfrith said, pointing east up Lime Street. “Your man Dobbs, I believe. He’s alone.”

“Dobbs!” LaCroix shouted. The Frenchman ran to the young man, who came splashing through the rain carrying a musket. LaCroix gave him a bear hug and looked him over. “You fucking little nipper!”

Jenkins rushed over and slapped Dobbs before hugging him. Dobbs walked over to check on Anne.

Vhingfrith ignored the reunion, his thoughts were marshalled around how to get his ship back from his former first mate. He knew that if he went down there, there would be no negotiating with the likes of Euric Jacobson. Vhingfrith could only imagine that if he’d been bought off by someone in the Admiralty to act as an assassin to his old captain, then the rest of them must be there, too—Galbraith, the other mutineers, and Gordon and Hoyt Burr, who would still want revenge for Vhingfrith killing their brother Lawrence. Vhingfrith felt his father’s words coming true, that there would come a day when all the World would shun him, and he would be surrounded by enemies, and his only allies would be villains.

“What about the others?” Jenkins was asking. He looked at Akil. “Your friends, Bogoa and Mosi and all the rest.”

“I’m not sure they made it,” Akil said.

“What about Isaacson?” Jaime said, wincing as he held onto his ribs. “Anyone o’ yeh seen that cunt?”

“I lost him right after the carriage took off,” Jenkins said. “Anne, you seen him? Dobbs?”

“No,” said Anne.

“Haven’t seen him,” said Dobbs. In the darkness, no one else could’ve caught it but Vhingfrith. The look in Dobbs’s eyes, a glance over at the Ladyman, a strange exchange between the two of them. An understanding. Vhingfrith made a note to pursue it later, if he survived this Long Night.

There came another report of cannonfire and they all turned to watch the Hazard disappear across the bay, and all of the ships that had been in the bay were in pursuit.

“If we’re decided, then let’s move now,” John said. “The small mercy is we’ve got an opening now that they’re chasing Hazard. This is it, we won’t get another chance like this.”

“What is he talking about?” Dobbs asked.

“We’re a-thinkin’ we need to take back the Lively ourselves,” said Jenkins, catching him up. While he was talking, two more Africans showed up—Bogoa and Mosi, both of them bloody yet intact. They through their arms around Akil in a brotherly hug. Vhingfrith was aghast at Bogoa’s blackened, Corrupted face, and saw that it bore similarities in color and texture to John’s right hand.

While the others debated what they should do next, Vhingfrith stepped next to Laurier, and said, “I have to go in as advance. Alone.”

“Ben, you can’t—”

“I can see them, John. But they can’t see me. Not in all this.” He gestured at the darkness and the storm all around. “You bring your people from the docks, use the barrels there by that felucca for cover—”

“What barrels? I don’t see any.”

“Trust me, they’re there. Approach from that direction and use them as cover.”

“Where will you be?”

“Give me a blade. I’m going for a swim.”

Laurier hesitated a moment, then took the musket from Dobbs and unscrewed the bayonet and gave the blade to Vhingfrith. “Ben…we’ve been out to sea for months, and been through a few Long Nights. There are creatures out there in the sea, things born of the firmament.”

“I know,” he said. “I’ve seen some of them.”

“If you go swimming, watch out for anything. I mean it. They are not like sharks or squids or even krakens. They are…fiendish. Gargantuan. Or sometimes small devils with purple eyes—”

“I know.” Benjamin looked around at each of them. “I will scout in, try and take out one or two stealthily. When you hear the fighting start, move in fast.”

“Why don’t we take one o’ the other ships?” Jenkins said. “There ain’t anyone guarding the rest of them in the Crawles or the Docks.”

“Because, Mr. Jenkins,” Ben said, “you’ll notice the rest are all bunched in. Rogers made sure the Lively was parked on the perimeter of the Docks, outside the cluster of ships, so that she would be easier for us to get clear of the docks—that was the bait. We would probably need to move the Lively in order to get the others clear.”

John looked back at him. “Ben, this isn’t safe. You’ll be outnumbered.”

“We’re already outnumbered, John, we have no more pistols or rifles, and I’m sure they will have some. I just need to get in there and even it out a little, before they know what’s happening.”

“Ben—”

“If it’s one thing I know, Ladyman, it’s how to win hide-and-seek in the dark.”