Chapter 228: The Rose Against the World

It took him less than a heartbeat to decide what he meant to do.

The grin returned, bright as a struck flint. James hauled the wheel over and put Rose’s bow straight at the forts instead of away from them, as if there were nothing on the whole ocean a good ship and a foolish enough captain couldn’t do twice before breakfast.

"EVERY MAN TO HIS POST!"

His voice ripped across the deck and fought its way through the wind. "Brace her hard, trim that riggin’ tighter than a nun’s knees, and watch yer feet, because I promise ye this, lads, it’s about to get a damn sight worse before it gets any better!"

Cudjoe had no breath to waste. He moved on, bellowing orders down the length of the ship.

"Guns loaded, matches lit, and every hand to his post, now!"

The battle went on just as ridiculous and glorious as before, with no rhythm to it except whatever raw chance provided.

San Felipe paid for every turn she wasted, and now smoke poured from her steadily, like a chimney fire that had got beyond control. Lengths of rigging had been chewed down to bare stumps and wounded sailors crowded the gundecks.

Cudjoe walked the length of the Rose like the devil had put a fire under his boots, shoving stragglers into place and hauling pirates up by their collars.

"MOVE, ye lazy sons of whores, or I’ll move ye meself, and ye’ll nae enjoy how I do it! The next man I catch starin’ at that fort like it’s Sunday mass gets his ears boxed till they ring louder than the cannon!"

Not a scrap of the doubt that had gripped him remained. Whatever argument he had meant to win, he had plainly lost.

That was unfortunate for the argument and considerably worse for anyone standing in his way. A Cudjoe with nothing left to prove fought harder than three ordinary men put together.

Nearby, Milagros threw her whole weight behind a gun crew. She hauled on the tackle rope and cursed the iron in two languages when the gun refused to move as she wanted.

"Muévete, maldito,"¹ she snarled at the piece.

Kwaku set his chain at his feet, coiled neatly like a snake asleep, then took up the rammer beside her calmly.

He said to nobody in particular, driving the charge home. "I confess I find gunnery considerably less interesting than swordplay, though I imagine the Spaniards cares little for my opinion on the subject."

Around them, more sailors from all positions came to bear. There was not a hand left idle aboard the Rose, not one soul stood about with nothing better to do than watch the fort grow closer.

James held the wheel through all of it, and raw emotion came alive in his chest. This was the whole thing laid bare, wind screaming at his ears, the deck trembling beneath his boots, and a ship he trusted as though she had been built for this one purpose and nothing else.

He had drowned once already. He had given the sea everything it could take from him, and the water waiting below now felt almost like an old friend calling him back to finish a dance they had begun years ago.

He threw his head back and laughed into the spray. The cry was loud enough that the nearby sailors laughed with him without having the slightest idea what was funny.

"COME ON THEN, YE FAT STONE BASTARDS!"

He shouted straight at the fort, as if he meant to dare the whole Spanish Crown to climb down from its walls and settle the fight man to man.

The Rose answered San Felipe again in the same breath, one of her guns barking across the row the moment its crew found the bearing.

James spared the great scarred hulk a grin over his shoulder, like an old drinking companion who had finally, and rather disappointingly, begun buying his own rounds.

"And you!"

He pointed straight at her, still laughing, soaked through with spray and delight. "Seventy guns, and still ye’ve not laid a hand on one wee brigantine sailed by a dead man! I’d be embarrassed for ye, if I were the sort to feel shame on another fella’s behalf!"

Then, the fort answered in full, every gun on both battlements fired together.

El Morro and La Punta roared as one, as though all Spain had finally run out of patience. The sky above the water seemed to come apart in a crash so complete that every other sound vanished beneath it.

For one long, filthy heartbeat, every soul aboard the Rose believed the shot had found them already, and there was nothing left to do except wait for the iron to arrive.

James hauled the wheel over the instant he saw smoke bloom across the walls, throwing his whole body into the turn. The sea around the Rose rose straight out of the water in white pillars nearly as tall as her rigging, drenching the deck from bow to stern in one violent, freezing wall of seawater.

Canvas hung heavy and soaked overhead. Sailors went sprawling across boards that had become slick enough to punish anybody who forgot to keep his feet.

Not one shot found her hull.

⚙ [PERK ACTIVATED] — The Rose’s Luck

James came up from it soaked to the bone and laughing louder than the guns, water streaming off him in sheets while both hands remained locked around the wheel.

"MISSED ME!"

He howled it back at the smoking walls. "MISSED ME CLEAN, YE FAT-ARSED, POWDER-BLIND BASTARDS! GO ON THEN, HAVE ANOTHER GO! I’VE GOT NO PLANS FOR THIS AFTERNOON BESIDES MAKIN’ FOOLS OF THE PAIR OF YE!"

He didn’t give the near miss another thought once it had gone by. There’d be time enough to marvel at his luck when every gun on that fort and every gun on San Felipe had stopped trying to kill him.

That time, unfortunately, had not arrived.

The walls had silent, and James knew exactly what that meant.

Every gun crew behind those stones would be busy now, worming the spent charge from barrels still hot enough to burn a man’s hands, sponging them clean, ramming in fresh cartridge and wadding, and getting matches back to the vents.

It gave him a window, and such windows had a nasty habit of closing just when a man started admiring the view.

He hauled the Rose fully around at last, giving San Felipe precisely what she’d been hunting the whole bloody afternoon.

One clean, forthright broadside laid square against another.

James roared down his deck, spinning the wheel through the last of the turn.

"Let’s give the poor lass what she’s owed, lads, and not a penny more!"

An hour ago, it might have been a fair fight. Now it was San Felipe, torn open and worn thin, with only whatever guns still answered across a gundeck the Rose had spent most of the battle teaching how much damage a wee brigantine could do.

James bellowed the order down the length of the ship. "Guns run out! Every piece laid true, breechin’ ropes checked twice, and brace yerselves proper, because this one’s got teeth on both ends!"

Cudjoe was among the guns, checking tackle with his hands as he went. "Loaded, lit, and ready, and dinnae make me come down there and check it meself!"

Farrow replied from his own end of the deck. He murmured to the iron as another man might murmur to a nervous horse before a race.

"She’ll speak fair for us today," he said, patting the gun once like an old friend.

Behind them, a voice nobody thought worth naming put into words the clear truth every soul aboard already knew in his gut.

"Kill or be killed, then. No half measures left for either side."

The two ships closed the last stretch of water between them like a mountain bearing down on a knife.

San Felipe rode high above the Rose in scarred, blackened splendor, two full tiers of guns still running across her length, thirty-five to a side even now. Her paint was scorched black in hideous streaks, and her canvas hung in torn ribbons no sailmaker alive would mistake for proper sails.

She had taken a beating fit to sink three lesser ships, and she was still standing, still enormous, still throwing a shadow across the water broad enough to swallow the Rose twice over.

The Rose came alongside her low and lean, twenty-two guns run out across a flank scarred with burns and splinters but still whole where it counted. The lass rode the swell as if she meant to bite a whale twice her size and then sail away laughing about it.

James looked from one ship to the other, and the sight stirred nothing in him but that old, nostalgic itch that had gotten him into nearly every fine mess he’d ever had to crawl back out of.

Farrow stood over his row of guns like a father with his children, laying a palm against the sixth piece and murmuring words too low for anyone else to catch. It was the same motivation he gave every gun before she spoke in anger.

Sawyer crouched near the mainmast with tar, oakum, and a stack of fresh planking at his feet, ready to answer the instant she needed him. Under his breath, he promised the old lass that whatever came through her side today, he’d have her whole again by nightfall.

Hobbs knelt over some injured gunner. Now that he had a breath to spare, he tied the wound off and told the lad cheerfully that he’d likely keep the arm, which was, in his considered opinion, a good deal better than most sailors managed on a day like this.

Kwaku held his gun steady at the rail, chain coiled loose and forgotten at his feet. He said nothing at all, which from him was worth considerably more than most men’s speeches.

"Capitano!"

Enzo called, ramming the charge home with the same fierce showman’s flourish he saved for plating his finest sauce. "If I die today, let it be known I died with a great deal more flair than any of these Spanish dogs!"

Kit hung from the rigging above them all, grinning wide enough to split his face.

"This is it! The bloody tale of the ages!"

"I confess, I find this circumstance considerably graver than the last."

Bert straightened his coat as though the occasion required a certain standard of dress. He loaded the swivel gun again, apparently unwilling to let his confession interfere with the work.

Tomás crossed himself once and whispered a prayer too low and too quick for anyone to follow. Then he left his blade loose in its scabbard, steady as ever while the noise washed around him.

Milagros spat clean over the deck and promised the whole deck of Spaniards across the water, in two languages at once, exactly what she intended to do to every last one of them.

Jim turned the whole business into a tale fit for taverns from here to Tortuga. "Mark me! I’ll tell this one a hundred times before I die, and I’ll wager I never tell it the same way twice!"

Anne rolled her sleeves past the elbow and grinned at the gun beside her. "I’ll put more holes in that fat tub myself than the whole row of you combined."

Cudjoe planted himself steady at James’s shoulder, every last trace of doubt burned out of him. There was nothing left worth saying that hadn’t already been put to rest between them.

And James himself, last of all and grinning wider than the whole lot of them combined, stood at the wheel of the only ship in this ocean mad enough to have brought him this far, soaked through, scarred, laughing, and entirely, gloriously unafraid.

He looked down the length of the Rose one final time. Every man and woman aboard her was set, ready, and waiting on him alone. There was nothing left worth saying that a single word couldn’t carry.

"FIRE!"

The word tore loose from a dozen throats at once, and in that same heartbeat both ships answered it together, San Felipe and the Rose speaking as one at last, thirty-five guns against twenty-two across a gap of water now too narrow for either side to miss.

The whole world between their two hulls came apart in one deafening wall of flame.