The Devil's Fire (18 page)

"Give chase."

Griffith turned and set his hands on the rail. Much of the crew gazed up at him. "Man the fore chase! Make ready the starboard guns and small arms! And hoist our colors!"

The decks came alive as men rushed to their stations in waves. The black flag was ascended to the top of the mainmast, and the bloody crimson heart and bone white cutlass that impaled it shined brilliantly against the broad of daylight.

It was an hour before
Harbinger
was close enough to fire a chase gun. Though elegant in appearance, the galleon was large and cumbersome, and
Harbinger
had little trouble gaining on her.

The blast of the forecastle chase gun, which sent up a plume of water near the galleon's port side, did little to slow her. Spaniard sailors rushed frenetically about her decks and scaled the rigging to make adjustments to her sails.

"She doesn’t relent," said Livingston as he joined Griffith on the quarterdeck.

"Where's Robertson?" Griffith said, searching the main deck for the crewman in question.

"Right here," came a reply, and Livingston moved out of the way as Louis Robertson ascended the stairway with his musket at the ready. "Who needs a bullet?" the marksman asked, dispensing with formalities.

"Take out their helmsman," Griffith said, "as well as any man what replaces him. Let's make them fear their own helm."

A bullet whizzed past Griffith's cheek. Louis’s eyes went wide. Griffith turned to see the helmsman clutching his face, blood spurting from between his fingers. The man collapsed onto his back, trembling violently. The spasms descended into sporadic twitches before ceasing entirely. His hands fell away to reveal the ruin of his face. The bullet had punched a fair chunk of his nose into his skull. A dark pool of blood widened about his head.

Griffith, Livingston, and Louis dropped to their bellies. Louis started to crawl to the helmsman's aide, but Griffith stopped him. "You're no use to him. He’s dead. Get yourself out of sight and discover their marksman! After you’ve killed him, take out their helmsman."

"Aye!" Louis nodded.

And Livingston added, "Along with any other fool enough to pop up his head."

Louis crawled to the rail and stuck the barrel of his musket through an opening. He squeezed one eye shut and swiveled the barrel as he searched for his prey.

A second shot whizzed overhead and struck the helm, splintering one of the spokes. Griffith clenched his jaw. The enemy marksman was taunting them, daring another man to take the helm and be shot down for his trouble.

"A thousand hells!" shouted Livingston.

"He's crafty, this one," muttered Louis.

Griffith reached out and seized Louis’s ankle, squeezing hard. "Find him quick and blow his craft straight out the back of his head!"

Louis shook his head. "Haven't found him as yet."

"Don't waste a shot till you have!"

A third bullet chewed into the deck a foot from Griffith's face. He pulled back instinctively.

"That was close," Livingston remarked.

Griffith frowned. "Too close for a marksman on level with our deck."

"The hell's that mean?"

Griffith inserted his forefinger into the hole, confirming that the projectile had entered at a slant. He looked to Louis. "Either this marksman's shots carry the weight of a cannonball, or he's fixed himself aloft. Search their masts! I'll bet my share of her booty that you'll find him there."

"Aye," said Louis. He immediately angled his musket upward. After a moment, he said, "Got him!" and fired.

Griffith and Livingston popped up their heads in time to see a man plummeting from mizzen topmast shrouds. He hit a yard on his way down, which instantly silenced his scream, and tumbled to the deck.

Louis turned to Griffith and grinned.

"That's it, boy!" Livingston shouted. "Now for the helmsman!"

The three of them started to their feet. Griffith heard a thunderous report and the subsequent howl of a cannonball. The bulwark shattered in a hail of splinters and Louis's body exploded at the midsection. His upper torso tumbled over the edge; his lower torso splashed blood and guts all over the quarterdeck. Griffith and Livingston collapsed onto their backs, showered in the spray of Louis's insides. As Griffith struggled to his feet, he was dimly aware of shouting on
Harbinger
's main deck.

One-Eyed Henry peaked over the top of the stairs and said, "Who's dead?"

"Sadly for you," Livingston replied, "I'm breathing."

"Jesus," Henry exclaimed when he saw what remained of the marksman. He covered his mouth. "Was that Louis?"

Griffith felt a murderous rage rise inside him, and one glance at Livingston revealed a similar emotion made plain on the quartermaster's blood-covered face.

"Not a single Spaniard on that ship will live," Griffith proclaimed. "Get down there, the both of you, and tell any man with a musket to aim for their helmsman, and any man takes his place. Stop that ship dead, and then she's ours to broadside. White flag or no, she's scuttled by the end of this, and the waters will forever run red where she rests."

Livingston and One-Eyed Henry nodded firmly and started to their duties.

"And get another bloody helmsman up here!" Griffith called.

He grasped the railing and made for the stairs. His heels nearly skidded out from under him in the gore that had pooled from the bodies of the marksman and the helmsman. As he descended the narrow stairs, he glanced down and saw blood trickling down the steps.

When he set foot on the main deck, a few of the crew stared at him with horrified expressions, faces pale. Griffith had to remind himself that he was covered in blood. "Let us show these Spaniards that the only thing worse than a white flag is a fucking black one!"

They raised their cutlasses and cheered.

A second helmsman passed Griffith and fearlessly proceeded up the blood-streaked stairway. Griffith turned around to call after the man, and he felt like he was moving in slow motion while everyone else was a step ahead of him. "Fine on the starboard bow!" he ordered the new helmsman. "Steer us as close as possible for a broadside. And when you hear a report. . . duck!"

"Aye!" said the second helmsman, and he continued to the quarterdeck.

Griffith returned his attention to the main deck. The four Musketmen moved to the starboard bulwark and each fell to one knee, setting their musket barrels on the gunwale. Four shots rang out simultaneously, and one of them stole the life of the galleon's helmsman. The spray of blood from was visible even from afar. Later, the Musketmen would argue with equal conviction over which of them made the killing shot.

Griffith watched as the Spaniards scatter frantically about their deck in a peculiar pattern. They would drop to their knees for a moment and then fall back into a circle, and then repeat the process. One by one they would fall out of sight, until there were roughly a dozen of them left on the deck.

The Spaniards didn't bother to replace their helmsman, and the ship tilted to her port, which slowed her considerably.
Harbinger
was gaining on her at an alarming velocity.

Griffith looked to his newly appointed helmsman and ordered, "Hard to port!"

The helmsman spun the wheel and
Harbinger
started to turn, but the evasion was too late. The elevated bowsprit plunged into the galleon's forecastle bulwark and raked across the deck as
Harbinger
turned. One of the Spaniards found himself caught between the sweeping bowsprit and a hulking cannon. He tried to duck, unwittingly placing his head within the bowsprit’s path. His skull burst like a watermelon as it was smashed between the bowsprit and cannon. A mangled body with nothing but a lower jaw for a head tumbled through the shattered bulwark and into the water below. The cannon rolled along the deck, catching yet another unlucky crewman. Pieces of his insides exploded from his mouth and rear as the cannon pulverized his torso, and one of his eyeballs was projected from its socket as the barrel continued over his head.

Griffith had never seen anything so beautiful, with the lone exception of the woman in his cabin.

The blood-soaked bowsprit tore free as the ship turned, and
Harbinger
’s starboard side crashed into the galleon's port. Men on the opposite ship had to brace themselves to keep from falling over; three of them were less successful than the others. The first two plummeted headfirst into the abyss, and the ships pulled apart just long enough to swallow them up and crush two them, dashing the third man in his companions’ blood as he slipped downward, clawing at the hull of his ship and shrieking like newborn baby. He managed to grasp a bit of planking, but his legs had gone too far, and the ships’ hulls ground together a second time. His body twisted and rolled like a ball-bearing while the ships moved in two separate directions. Splintered bones jutted from his skin and chunks of his face smeared across the wood. His warbled shrieks faded.

Livingston bellowed, "FIRE!!!"

Cannons boomed and small arms cracked from both ships. The galleon's deck was higher than
Harbinger
's, which gave the galleon's heavy cannons the advantage. Many pirates were pulverized as cannonballs tore across the deck in sweeping gray blurs that arced into the sea.

Harbinger
's shots blasted gaping cavities in the galleon's hull, but Griffith couldn't be sure of the damage to the galleon's crew, as most had mysteriously vanished. Why would they retreat below deck in the middle of a fight? Were they cowards?

The pirates on the forecastle lit the fuses of their granado shells and tossed them onto the galleon's decks. The small bombs exploded a few seconds later, sending two Spaniards hurtling over the bulwark. In an attempt to avoid shrapnel, another unfortunate Spaniard made the mistake of leaping between the two ships, having learned nothing from the three that had gone before.

Several pirates tossed grapples while others were content to scale the galleon's hull, using their axes and cutlasses for leverage. Three Spaniards appeared at the bulwark and aimed their pistols down to fire upon the climbing pirates. Two of them were instantly taken apart by guns from Griffith's crew; the third got a shot off before the hook of a misguided grapple came down on the back of his head and exploded from his cheek. He dangled there for the rest of the battle, mouth gaping as his jaw slowly came unhinged.

One of the Jamaicans caught a bullet in the throat and made gurgling noises before he lost his grip on the hull and plunged into the crevice. He clawed at the galleon's hull to avoid the same fate as the pulverized Spaniards, but succeeded only in prolonging the inevitable.

Two Spaniards finished loading a cannon just as one of the pirates climbed onto the channel below their gunport. The pirate struck a match against the barrel of the cannon and then put it to the fuse of a granado shell. He reached for the opening of the barrel with his granado, intending to toss it in, but the Spaniards fired the cannon and the granado exploded in the pirate's hand. When the smoke cleared there was a smoldering, sticky black stump where the man's arm had been, and he screamed and toppled from the channel, disappearing into the gap between the ships.

The cannonball responsible for the pirate's grisly death barely missed
Harbinger
's mainmast, and Griffith let out a breath of relief as it passed and continued into the ocean, taking with it the life of three men.

Livingston unsheathed his cutlass and charged, and he promptly slipped in blood and fell on his rear. One-Eyed Henry ran past him, taking up the charge along with a mob of pirates, and attached himself to the galleon's hull before Livingston could get to his feet. "Fucking hell," Livingston growled, glancing about to see if anyone caught glimpse of his clumsiness.

"Don't worry," said Griffith as he moved past with cutlass in hand. "They've got other cares."

Livingston followed, taking his steps cautiously. "Where do you think you're going?"

"To kill some Spaniards," Griffith announced. "A fight like this one means they've got something worth fighting for, wouldn't you say?"

Nathan didn't know how he had survived the battle thus far, but he suspected that luck was largely a factor.

As he scaled the side of the galleon, he glanced up and saw One-Eyed Henry and Gregory climbing over the top of the bulwark. Gregory halted in place and glanced down at Nathan, his face ghostly pale. Whatever he had glimpsed on the other side of that bulwark mortified him.

Nathan looked down, risking dizziness, and saw Griffith and Livingston making their way up the hull below him. The sight of his captain so eager to engage in battle filled his heart with a powerful urge to press on. He summoned all of his energy and hauled himself upward, and he did not stop climbing until he reached a gunport.

Gregory lingered just below the bulwark to the left of the gunport, clinging to the side. Nathan glanced at his friend as he came alongside him, but Gregory’s face was pressed against the hull, his lips moving with no words emerging. "Gregory?" Nathan said, freeing one hand just long enough to grasp his friend’s shoulder. Gregory jerked away and nearly fell. Nathan shook his head and continued on. He reached through the gunport and sunk his cutlass into the deck like a grapple. He squeezed through the slim wedge between the cannon and the opening.

A blanket of sparkling shards littered the deck, scattered like stars across an inverted night’s sky. Dozens of pirates had fallen and were clutching their sliced feet while cursing and moaning. Rolling around on the deck made matters worse, and their hips and legs were bleeding as well. The Spaniards, who all wore boots, were moving about with ease and thrusting their blades into wounded pirates.

One of the Jamaicans stepped on a particularly jagged shard and started hopping about and yelping. He slipped in a puddle of blood and collapsed onto his belly. He lifted up with a face full of glass, carved beyond recognition, and shrieked at the heavens.

Nathan was frozen in terror. There was no way he could traverse that deck, unless some unlucky Spaniard died near enough for him to steal a pair of shiny boots. No wonder Gregory was petrified.