Chapter 300: Surrender or Die

James readied his stance on the wet floor and held [Verdict] low. Anne pressed her shoulder against his, hard through their soaked clothes, and kept her cutlass raised.

The platform was a flat slab of dark rock, thirty paces wide and twelve deep. They stood at the front left corner, with the rubble slope behind them and a drop just beyond it, while to their right there was a wall.

Across the platform, sixteen redcoats had formed a half circle, their bayonets fixed and their guns four to six paces away, while by the right end, the corporal kept his thumb on the hammer of his pistol. A few soldiers still held torches, but beyond them the hall was drowned by darkness.

The commodore stood in the middle of the half circle, eight paces away.

Three broad steps crossed the back of the platform, each one knee high. The stone sarcophagus lay on the top step, about the size of a rowboat, its flat lid covered in carved figures.

The key thumped against James’s ribs, beating harder whenever he looked at the coffin. It tugged at him, and he was sure the next key was inside that box.

James grinned.

Sixteen muzzles gaping at him was hardly the house he’d have chosen, but he had played worse rooms, and drunker ones. He thumbed his hat back, let [Verdict]’s blade sag an inch where every redcoat could watch it fall, and spread his free hand wide.

"Aye, well, that settles the rum, Falcombe."

He clicked his tongue. "A sad, sad day for the King’s cellar. But tell me, since we’re all friends here, what does a commodore want with a muckle stone box in a stinkin’ swamp? Some saint’s wee finger for a bishop’s mantelpiece?"

His eyes glittered.

"Or perhaps wee relics you might slip into your coat when no one’s lookin’?"

He watched the commodore’s face, but that small, fond smile never twitched.

Only his eyes shifted from the steps to James. "You ask what the Empire wants, Mister Calloway, much as a bird might inquire why a cathedral troubles itself with windows."

His voice spread across the platform, vast and mild. "That coffin and this swamp are leaves of a book that was already old when your family had a name to lose, and the Crown does not explain its sea to a weevil."

James only laughed, a short, bright bark. "Och, that’s a grand speech, Commodore, a truly braw piece of pulpit thunder! Bunch of words to tell me nothing at all, and I’m sore tempted to ..."

"Enough."

The old voice turned cold, with no patience in it. "Lay down your steel, Mister Calloway. Surrender, or die where you stand. I shall not ask a second time."

Hammers clicked back across the ranks in an uneven clatter. Anne bared her teeth, but the commodore kept his eyes only on him.

James kept his face easy and surveyed the platform. There was no harm in knowing what a man had to work with before the shooting started.

Some of the muskets held steady, while others shook.

Beside him, Anne was breathing fast and shallow, her knuckles white around the grip as she prepared her stance wide on the wet rock. Her cutlass rose an inch, and her shoulder pressed harder against his.

Water dripped behind the soldiers. The key kept pounding, but no one spoke, and the silence lasted enough for a sailor to consider his sins, if he had the patience for it.

Then the floor started to quake.

A deep boom came from the wall on the right and spread across the platform, sending dust sifting from the ceiling and making the torches jerk in the soldiers’ hands. The commodore narrowed his eyes a fraction.

The corporal’s hoarse voice split down the middle and climbed toward a squeal. "Sir! Sir, it’s t’ wall, it’s movin’! There’s summat comin’ through it, sir, summat big!"

"Steady, lads, steady now. It is a wall, not the last trump."

The word washed over the ranks, and the redcoats held their ground.

James’s grin split wider, and he swept an arm toward the shuddering wall. "Och, that’ll be company, Falcombe! Hope you’ve laid an extra place, they’ve a mighty fierce appetite, and they don’t care to be kept waitin’."

The next blow struck like a cannon fire.

The boom rang through the hall as cracks split the wall into black forks, and the whole thing burst apart against a slab as big as a door, that tore through amid a storm of jagged stone and skidded across the platform into the right end of the ranks, burying a redcoat beneath it with his legs sticking out, white bone showing through his torn clothes.

"Get it off, get it off me! For the love o’ God, please!"

Flying chips of stone knocked two more soldiers flat, faces torn open from brow to jaw.

Water came pouring through the hole behind the slab, which was wide enough for a cart. The room beyond must have held ankle-deep water, because the rush soon thinned to a cold sheet no deeper than a boot, spreading across the platform toward the edge and carrying the blood with it.

The grey fog of dust washed through the breach and swallowed the redcoats, who split their muskets to the hole and the merry couple.

Then Jim’s voice rang out through the confusion, high with joy. "God’s teeth! He picked up a bleedin’ wall and flung it! Strike me blind, I’ve seen giants, I have, on a scrap of island that ain’t on no chart. Big as houses, they was, lobbin’ boulders at galleons just for the sport of it, and our Bert’s got a better arm than the whole bleedin’ lot o’ ’em!"

A huge figure stepped through the hole, brushing the dust from his enormous hands.

"Rather light, I am afraid."

Bert rumbled to the room at large.

"As one does hope for a sturdier class of masonry, a trifle disappointing, as walls go."

More figures emerged behind him. Tomás came first, sword drawn, followed by Black Sam, then Jim, beaming from ear to ear. Kit came last, with a knife between his teeth, studying the commodore like a prize at a fair, while about a dozen sailors from the Rose and the Whydah crowded in behind them, dripping wet and ready with pistols and cutlasses.

Tomás lifted his eyes to James with a small bow, perfectly composed amid the carnage.

"Capitán. Please do forgive the wall."

He spread his free hand in apology.

"We though the door occupied, so, you understand, we make another."

James and Sam exchanged a look and a nod, and Anne’s grin returned, wide and wicked.

The commodore’s gaze moved over the new arrivals, and his chin dipped a fraction. "More vermin, and unsummoned, too. The whole nest has come trotting to the hangman’s door of its own accord. Egad, sir, how very obliging."

Sam splashed to the front of his men and flung his cutlass skyward.

"Lads!"

His voice spread across the chambers, broad and warm. "Look at ’em! Shakin’ in their boots like wet dogs at a wake, so they be! These be the King’s gravediggers, me handsomes, sent to dig a hole in a fever swamp and stuff empty boxes, and they’ve buried their own doin’ it!"

The speech rose further in ardor. "But we be free men, lads! Free as the gulls over Nassau bay! There’s a hungry belly back home for every shilling in this place, so take it, take every last piece, and may the King’s gold rain down on every empty belly in the Bahamas! Charge, me beauties! Charge!"

The pirates roared and surged forward.

Over the uproar, the commodore’s voice spread mildly. "Corporal. Be so good as to take the privates to the breach and sweep it clean. I shall keep Mister Calloway company, I fancy he is rather fond of it."

The pirates struck the redcoats, pistols cracked, muskets fired, and men fell into the shallow water as steel crashed against steel. Torches dropped and hissed out, and Kit’s shriek rose above the rest.

"CONQUEROR O’ HAVANA!"

On the top step, the stone coffin remained where it had lain.