Chapter 33: Red Sky, Black Flags
"Sail ho!"
The cry rang down from the masthead, sharp with excitement, the lookout too eager to bother with a proper report.
"South-southwest, off the bow! Five sloops around three fat cargo ships! Spanish colours, plain as day!"
Barely a heartbeat later, Kit’s voice came sailing down from somewhere high in the rigging, a place he definitely wasn’t supposed to be.
"That’s five of them and two of us!"
"Good to know you can count, boy."
Doyle never looked up from the rope he was coiling. His tone was dry enough to sand wood.
Farrow was already moving across the deck before the shout. He cut through the growing noise with a voice that carried exactly where it needed to.
"Clear for action! Crews to yer guns, and move sharp about it! Somebody find Pete before he drinks the powder ration instead of loadin’ it!"
Ezra and Silas Hollis took off for the foredeck together. They ran shoulder to shoulder, neither trying to shove ahead of the other.
That alone told James how serious things had become.
"I once outran five of these in a fishin’ boat with half a sail and no proper oars!" Mackerel Jim bellowed from near the mainmast.
Nobody answered.
Nobody needed to.
Then Cudjoe’s voice cut through the chaos. He never raised it, but somehow everyone heard him anyway.
"Powder monkeys, tae the magazine! Sawyer, make certain that splice holds! I’ll nae hear excuses later! The rest of ye, less singin’ and more workin’!"
James kept both hands on the wheel and ignored the shouting. His eyes could tell him more than the noise ever would.
The three Spanish cargo ships sat at the center of the formation. They rode low in the water, heavy with treasure, moving with slow certainty of vessels carrying more weight than they would have preferred.
The ships stayed close together, a loose cluster of captains who had chosen safety over speed and accepted the trade.
Five sloops surrounded them.
Guarda Costas. Lean little warships built to hunt. Most mounted a dozen guns or so and carried crews large enough to board anything they could catch. None of them matched the Revenge for weight of metal, and the Rose outweighed them even more, but five ships could still make a dangerous problem of themselves.
Two held position ahead of the merchants, watching the horizon for trouble.
The trouble had just arrived.
Two more guarded the flanks, one to either side.
The last remained behind the merchants, covering their rear in case anything slipped past the others.
Then alarm bells began ringing across the water.
The noise carried thin and urgent through the evening air.
The formation shifted almost immediately.
The two forward sloops split apart, each swinging toward a different bow and creating a distance between them.
The flanking ships turned inward.
Behind them, the rear sloop came about hard, closing the space left by the others.
At the center, the three merchant ships tightened their cluster even further.
Like sheep bunching together the moment they spotted wolves.
Textbook doctrine.
Which meant somebody over there had actually bothered to read the book.
James glanced toward his fellow pirate ship.
The Revenge sailed alongside at her own distance. Even from here, he could see Thatch at the wheel.
The man leaned into the moment like like a tavern brawl, eager and completely at home.
The Revenge’s flag broke from the masthead first.
Black cloth snapped open in the wind.
A grinning skull stared out from it. Beneath the skull stood a full skeleton, spear in one hand and an hourglass in the other.
The banner stretched tight in the evening breeze, as though it had been waiting just as long for this fight as the man who flew it.
"Get our colours up!" James shouted. "Let’s give the bastards somethin’ worth squintin’ at!"
A moment later, the Rose’s own flag climbed skyward.
Black against the orange glow of sunset.
A grinning skull.
Crossed bones.
And clenched between the skull’s teeth, stitched in faded crimson thread, a single rose.
James turned the wheel.
The Rose answered at once.
He felt the ship lean into the new heading. The deck tilted beneath his boots as the sails caught the wind differently.
Ahead, the two vanguard sloops looked like a door left half open.
James intended to sail straight through it.
Once he was there, both enemy ships would have to deal with him instead of looking past him toward easier prey.
Off the starboard side, the Revenge broke away.
She swept into a wide, fast arc, moving clear of the Rose’s course. Her target was the starboard flank sloop.
From there, the enemy would struggle to answer her while two pirate ships closed in from different directions.
Like a wolf peeling away from the pack to strike from another side.
James watched her for a single breath.
Then he turned his attention back to the opening ahead.
"Run out the guns!"
Farrow’s command rolled across the deck.
The Rose answered with thunder.
Eighteen gun carriages rumbled forward in unison. Wheels groaned across the deck planking. Heavy tackle snapped taut. Iron muzzles thrust through open gunports on both sides, one after another, until the ship seemed to bristle with black metal teeth.
The deck shuddered beneath the sudden movement. Timber complained. Rigging rattled overhead. For a few moments the familiar sounds of sea and wind vanished beneath the noise of a warship preparing to kill.
The alarm bells were close now.
Close enough that James could make out men racing along the rail of the nearest sloop.
They were running out their own guns as fast as they could.
Cudjoe stepped up beside him at the wheel.
His eyes stayed fixed on the Spanish ships.
His voice was as dry as driftwood.
"At least they look like they know which end o’ the cannon points forward."
He didn’t sound too worried.
That was as close to a compliment as Cudjoe normally gave an enemy.
James grinned.
He said nothing.
He kept the wheel steady and watched the distance between the ships shrink away while the last light of day deepened into the same crimson shade as the rose stitched into the flag above his head.
