Chapter 301: Rude Awakening

Ask any man who stood on that platform what happened first, and he’ll swear it was whatever happened to him. A fight with forty men bleeding in the same puddle doesn’t keep a proper order, and this one never made the slightest attempt.

The water, at least, knew what it was doing. It poured through the hole, spread in cold, thin sheets across the floor, and dripped towards the edge, carrying whatever fell into it, blood for the ride and torches, whose flames died with a hiss.

At the hole, Bert had prepared his stance to keep the redcoats out.

Of the many bastards crowding the platform, a bold private lunged at him, driving his bayonet towards the courteous giant’s chest, but Bert caught the musket barrel, hauled the fellow in like a rope, and smashed his head against the jagged edge of the wall. The impact split his skull, spraying blood across the stone as he collapsed down.

Bert rumbled, directing his words to the next attacker. "Good afternoon, sir, If you would be so kind as to hold still a moment, I’d take it as a great favor."

Next came a redcoat swinging his hanger down, but Bert caught his wrist and twisted the arm backwards until the bone broke through the sleeve, leaving the soldier screaming and the blade dangling uselessly from his hand.

The words came over the screaming.

"Thank you, kindly, sir, you’ve been most obliging, I do assure you."

He flung the man across the floor, and the redcoat slid through the bloody water to Sam’s boots, where the captain stepped over him without pause.

Black Sam had kept one pistol dry in oilcloth, and when a musketeer took aim at Bert’s broad chest, the captain drew and fired. The lead shot struck the soldier through the cheek, shattering his jaw and spraying blood across the man behind him as he fell.

A hanger man rushed him with an overhead chop, which the captain caught on his cutlass before stepping inside the soldier’s reach and slashing through his thigh to the bone. The redcoat’s leg buckled, and he went down in the water with a scream, clutching at the wound.

Then, Sam looked around and bawled. "Kit! Jim! Oi! Find me that little whelp doin’ the orders’! Gut him, shut his gob, and the whole bleedin’ lot comes apart like wet rope!"

The loudest voice on the platform belonged to the corporal, who had two ranks of privates at the right end of the floor. He kept them firing like a single gun, a useful trick when the pirates facing you had swords and a serious objection to being shot.

"Frooont file, PRE-sent! FIRE!"

The front rank fired and stepped back.

"Rear file, step UP! Steady, lads! Pre-SENT! FIRE!"

Each volley left more pirates sprawled in the water.

On the third volley, the front file stepped back to reload, opening a gap that Jim and Kit charged through together before the rear rank could turn their muskets on them. They shouldered aside the nearest redcoats, forcing their way into the ranks before the soldiers could bring their bayonets to bear.

The corporal met them with a lunge, driving his cutlass steadily toward Jim’s chest, who turned the blade aside but took the force of the blow through his arms and dropped to one knee in the water.

"Hold still Jim! Or I’ll stab the wrong bleedin’ bloke! And I ain’t promisin’ which!"

Kit planted a boot on Jim’s back and sprang over the corporal’s blade, landing across the officer’s shoulders before driving his knife into the side of his neck. As the corporal choked and reached for him, Jim rose from his crouch and thrust his cutlass beneath the ribs, the blade biting deep enough to bring blood spilling from the man’s mouth.

The boy dropped from the dying corporal’s shoulders, grinning, blood spattered across his face and pink to the teeth. "Pretty, weren’t it? I done all the pretty bit, I di,. Jim just had to stand there and look ugly, which, credit where it’s due, comes natural."

"Ye did nothin’ but ride me like a bloody mule, ye wee limpet!"

Jim wrenched his cutlass free with a grunt. "Ma back’ll be the shape of yer boots till Easter, and I’ll be sendin’ ye Hobbs’s bill!"

With the corporal gone, the ranks lost their rhythm and bunched together, leaving a gap in front of the steps.

Tomás darted through it, finding a marine with his bayonet against the Spaniard’s chest. The marine thrust as he approached, but Tomás knocked the point aside, ducked beneath the swinging musket butt, and stepped inside the reach, where the long weapon could no longer help him.

His blade cut through the knee, severing flesh and tendon and dropping the young man screaming to the planks.

Before the marine could crawl away, Tomás thrust his sword through the side of the his neck. He drew the blade free as blood dripped down the soldier’s collar, then made the sign of the cross with the same hand that had just killed him.

"Dios te perdone, muchacho... y a mí también, que falta me hace."¹

The next sound came from the front right corner, where the route beyond the fallen pillar met the platform, as boots struck the planks in perfect step.

A fresh rank of redcoats marched onto the floor two abreast, carrying fresh torches with their bayonets fixed. They halted, raised their muskets, and fired by ranks into the sailors in the water, dropping some pirates in a single volley.

All across the floor, sailors and privates stabbed, clubbed, and bit one in the shallows while smoke rolled up the steps in a grey haze. Blood spread through the shallows as the wounded crawled or thrashed beneath the feet of men still fighting, while water continued dripping towards the edge.

Above the roar came a thin, bright ringing, finer than any cutlass could make, and when the smoke thinned around the top step, it revealed two men already fighting.

James’s wrist ached all the way to his elbow as the commodore’s blade came for his eyes. He knocked it aside with [Verdict]’s edge.

The top step was dry and two paces deep, with the coffin lying lengthwise down the middle, even with James’s shoulder. The commodore stood on a crack in the stone, his right arm extended and his left hand clasped behind his back, while a dropped torch burned on the second step, throwing orange light over them both.

Down on that step, Anne had two marines to deal with, knocking a bayonet aside as she twisted away from the second man’s thrust and bared her teeth.

"I did promise you company, Mister Calloway. I am, I flatter myself, a man of my word."

"Ah, sure, you are and all, Falcombe!"

James cut high, and the commodore turned his blade so that the edge of [Verdict] slid down its flat before he riposted towards the ribs. The pirate turned the blow aside, the blades scraped together, and [Verdict] came away clean.

"Will you look at that blade!"

James crowed, ducking the riposte with a flourish.

"’Twill be a bread saw by suppertime, Falcombe! Where’d ye come by it, off a ragman’s cart?"

"It has cut better men than you, sirrah."

The commodore caught James’s blade and pressed forward, forcing him backwards along the step with a strength that had no business in a man of his years. The pirate captain dropped to one knee and slashed at Falcombe’s shin, but the older man hopped over the cut and landed on the same crack as if he’d never moved.

James laughed, breathless and thrilled. "You’re wasted on the navy, Falcombe, you’d make your fortune at a fair, with a wee bell on your hat!"

"Mountebank."

The commodore cut at James’s head, and he turned the blow, their blades scraping together before ringing against the carved side of the coffin. Dust trickled down the figures as the stone let out a faint shiver beneath their boots.

Neither man stopped. The fellow who stopped first would take a blade in the face, and neither had come this far to oblige the other.

They attacked together, James cutting at the head while the commodore thrust for his throat, and their blades locked at the hilts before sliding off to the same side and striking the sarcophagus hard.

The whole coffin buzzed, its lid jumping against the rim as the steps shook beneath them. Water leaped in beads below, and pirates and redcoats staggered wherever they stood.

Neither man could afford to stop. The next clash drove them both against the corner of the coffin, their shoulders striking stone as the platform lurched beneath them and cracks spread across the floor in black forks.

Above the coffin, a cloud of darkness began twisting slowly, like smoke in a bowl, though there wasn’t a breath of wind.

"Jesus, Mary an’ Joseph! James! JAMES!" Anne’s cry broke in half.

From the top step, James watched the entire platform sink to its knees, redcoats and pirates alike crashing as torches fell into the water and hissed out, leaving a few still burning on the dry steps.

The commodore dropped to one knee and planted his sword against the stone to support himself.

Then the shaking stopped, and silence reigned so thick that a man could hear the water dripping toward the edge.

A long grinding noise came from the sarcophagus as the lid slid aside by itself, scraping across the coffin’s rim until the dead within lay exposed.

Inside James’s head, a short sigh dropped into place.

The thing in the coffin was a king, or had once been one. His skin resembled brown paper stretched over bone, a gold band rested on his head, and green stone beads circled his throat, his robes having rotted to threads.

His crossed hands held a black stone key carved into the shape of a coiled serpent, its teeth cut in a pattern unlike those of the key James carried, and the key against his ribs began hammering like a fist against a door.

James rose, took off his hat, and bowed to the dead man.

"Good afternoon to you, your Majesty. And how’s the family keepin’?"

The small smile finally vanished from the commodore’s face. For the first time in the whole fight, his left hand emerged from behind his back and reached for the key.

James reached for it too.

A scream rose from far below. Then one more, then hundreds more, until the darkness was full of voices.

They came up from the abyss and through the cracks in the floor, pale apparitions made of little more than shadow and a sick light. They had too many arms, their faces slid sideways, and their jaws gaped wider than any skull ought to allow.

These things poured through solid stone around the steps and the coffin as their distorted limbs reached into the living world.

It rose between the two men and the key, its torn jaw open at their faces.