Chapter 216: The Blockade of Havana

The glass stayed up long enough to make his arm ache, right in the middle of counting the eleventh hull, when the shimmer appeared in front of him and put an end to whatever peace he’d had left.

⚔ [QUEST ISSUED]

The Toll at Havana’s Harbor

A blockade is easy enough to declare from a tavern table. Holding one, against however many ships a Crown can still scrape together the silver to crew, is another matter entirely.

Break the squadron Havana has sent to clear you from her front door. Take what the city cannot afford to lose. And be three days gone before her cousins across this ocean learn there is a debt worth collecting.

Reward : 500 Fate

Reward : ???

Reward : ???

Five hundred Fate was a considerable sum, and I generally kept sums like that for occasions likely to get you killed. Consider it a vote of confidence. Or a very expensive apology, offered in advance.

James let out a low whistle. Whatever else the voice thought of his ambitions, it had never before put that many zeroes behind one of them.

The shimmer wasn’t finished with him.

⚔ [BATTLE OVERVIEW]

ALLIED — CONCORDIA’S FLEET

Bloody Rose — Combat Ready, Reserve

Grand Dame — Combat Ready, Anchoring the Center

Queen Anne’s Revenge — Combat Ready, Anchoring the Center

Black Fortune — Combat Ready, Southern Flank

Marianne — Combat Ready, Southern Flank

Revenge — Combat Ready, Northern Flank

Ranger — Combat Ready, Northern Flank

ENEMY — HAVANA’S ARMADA

Guarda Costa Sloops (12) — Combat Ready, Maneuvering

Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe — Combat Ready, Holding Position

Nuestra Señora del Carmen, San Miguel y San Antonio — Combat Ready, Holding Position

Nuestra Señora del Rosario y San Francisco Javier — Combat Ready, Holding Position

San Felipe el Real — Combat Ready, Holding Position

Twelve sloops led the way, just as predicted. Behind them came three old galleons, and behind those came the very thing the fleet spent the whole voyage hoping Havana couldn’t afford.

San Felipe el Real.

A ship of the line, seventy guns spread over two decks, riding low and patient at the back of the procession like a king who saw no reason to hurry toward his own coronation.

Word spread across the Rose faster than James could have done it himself.

Kit had his own spyglass up in a heartbeat.

Then he lowered it slowly and stared at nothing in particular.

"Conqueror of Havana’s got himself a proper title fight, then."

His grin spread wide enough to show every tooth he owned. "I’ll want that one carved special. Slayer of a Ship o’ the Line. Two lines, mind, it’s a mouthful."

Pete snorted from the side. "Ye’ll be Slayer of a Ship o’ the Line’s Bilge Water, more like. Assumin’ anybody finds enough of ye left to carve anythin’ on."

Jim was already three sentences into telling the story. "There I was, off Havana, the whole Spanish navy bearin’ down, seventy guns on the biggest of ’em, and I says to meself, Jim, I says, this is the day they’ll be singin’ about, so I—"

The deck lurched under a swell and sent him staggering sideways into a coil of rope.

"So I nearly went arse over elbow into the scuppers, which I’ll be leavin’ out of the song."

Doyle worked his way past them with a jug already uncorked, pressing it into any hand too nervous to refuse a drink before a fight.

"Steadies the nerves," he explained to nobody who had asked.

Bert took a cup with a small, courteous nod, as though he’d been offered tea instead of whatever Doyle currently called rum. "I feel bound to observe that many guns is an extravagant quantity of artillery for a single vessel to carry with any dignity."

Edmund studied the display with the mild, pricing interest. "Extravagant, certainly. Though I confess I find the number almost admirable in its excess."

"Certainly."

Wesley stood somewhere behind them both and offered nothing more.

Cudjoe said nothing for a long moment.

Then, flat as a plank laid straight, he said, "I’m nae plannin’ on treatin’ her any different for the extra iron."

Another pause, longer than the first.

"Aye, that’ll do it."

That was as much as he meant to say about it, and the deck was left to make of it what it pleased.

Milagros stood apart from most of the noise, arms crossed. Whatever she found there looked closer to satisfaction than dread.

"Vamos a hundirlos a todos, cabrones."¹

James let the noise run its course while he kept his eyes on the water.

The dozen sloops out front had already broken their neat formation, spreading into a loose, eager fan. They pressed forward with confidence, not aware what awaited them.

Behind that fan, the three galleons and the great seventy-gun lass held back, the two lesser ships out front and San Felipe el Real tucked behind them.

None of the four ventured beyond whatever distance still felt safe.

James read the strategy of it quickly. Instinct did the work, reasoning would only slow him down.

Twelve guns a side on those sloops, near enough. Respectable against a fat merchantman, and worth very little against what he’d brought to meet them.

"Mortars out!"

He said it once, then louder, in case the wind had swallowed the first try.

"Both of ’em! Let’s see how much appetite that fan’s got left once it’s missin’ a few teeth."

Anne was on it.

The crew around the twin mortars fell into her rhythm, ever since she learned the difference between a halyard and a hole in the deck.

"Elevation!" she called, one hand steady on the screw.

"She’s laid," Farrow answered beside her, checking the quoin with his own eye,

"Touch her off whenever ye like, lass. She’s in a forgivin’ mood today."

"Better be. I’ve heard what she does when she isn’t."

The mortars fired together.

⚙ [PERK ACTIVATED] — True Shot

The shell rose, hung against the sky for one long breath, then dropped straight through one sloop’s mainmast as though it had an old debt to settle there.

The mast leaned, held for one impossible second, then went over sideways into the sea, taking a tangle of rigging with it and dragging sailors from the yards, who disappeared beneath the falling spars or struck the rail on the way down and vanished into the churn below.

The impact split the mast where it met the deck, and the force of it tore open the sloop’s works. Timber burst across the deck in jagged lengths and sailors screamed as they were thrown from their feet, or stumbled through the wreckage trying to get away of the falling rigging.

A heartbeat later, across the water, the Queen Anne’s Revenge answered with her own mortar.

Thatch’s gunners laid her true on aim alone, and the shell caught a second sloop square amidships.

Splinters and blood went up together where a rail had stood a moment before, and the blast punched a black wound through her side. The sailors there were simply gone, while those who survived were hurled across the deck, leaving dark streaks where they struck the planks.

The sloop lurched hard to starboard. Her forward sails sagged uselessly as sailors scrambled over the wreckage, trying to reach the pumps, hauling at torn lines with blood running down their hands.

For a few seconds she seemed likely to roll onto her side.

Then she righted herself, smoking and wounded, and limped onward under what canvas she still had.

The rest of the fan pressed on regardless, ten sloops still closing, undeterred by the two now bleeding behind them.

The mortars fired again.

⚙ [PERK ACTIVATED] — True Shot

The shell found one more sloop deck and kept going, down through timber and into whatever she kept below it.

For half a heartbeat, her ribs glowed orange from the inside.

Then the whole hull came apart at once.

The deck blew upward in a sheet of broken planks, iron, and flame. Sailors were thrown clear of the wreck, some already burning as they fell and vanished beneath the smoke, and the screams that came through it were cut short one by one as the ship’s wreckage collapsed around them.

Fire and smoke tore up through her hatchways thick enough to swallow a mast whole.

Flames spread along the deck and caught the rigging overhead, turning the remaining canvas black before it could even fill. Her guns, dislodged by the blast, broke loose and crashed against their tackles as the hull rolled beneath them.

The crew went over her rail into black water with nowhere better left to go, some jumping, some simply falling.

Several surfaced among the wreckage, clawing at floating timbers and calling for shipmates who would never answer. Those who died had their blood spreading in thin red trails through the dark water.

Thatch’s mortar answered a breath later.

The same sloop he’d already wounded was still square in his sights, and this time his aim found her mast true, bringing it down in tangled ruin.

The mast came down across the deck with a crack like a pistol volley, and the sailors beneath it disappeared in the crush. Those who escaped scrambled through torn canvas and broken spars, dragging the wounded clear by their arms and collars.

Three sloops accounted for inside two exchanges, and the Rose’s deck knew it before anybody bothered to shout the number.

A rough tally came from more than one throat at once, boots hammering the boards in the same loud, unfiltered noise this crew had always made when a fight was going their way.

Then the flags went up.

They ran up San Felipe el Real’s halyard, plain enough to read as a signal even without knowing the code behind it.

The remaining sloops answered at once, breaking off their fan and surging hard toward both ends of the pirate blockade instead.

It was a clear push meant to pin Bonnet and Bellamy on one flank, Howard and Vane on the other, and choke off the center, leaving neither side much room to maneuver or lend a hand.

Behind that surge, the three galleons and the great seventy-gun ship finally began to move as well.

They remained slow and cautious, still holding well short of anything the pirate blockade could presently answer.

For now, they were content to let their smaller ships buy the distance in blood.

James watched the whole thing unfold. Three broken sloops had only bought them the opening exchange.

The fight itself hadn’t properly started until now.