Where Loyalties Lie

Chapter 11 - The Phoenix

Yanic opened his eyes to dim afternoon sunlight and dark thunderous clouds. The world sounded muted and painful, and he was so tired. His body seemed to agree, so he closed his eyes and let sleep claim him.

Something hard hit him in the arm and he heard shouting, close and far away at the same time. He tried to roll over in his bunk, but the pain got worse so he lay back down. He coughed, and almost gagged on something bitter and metallic.

His bunk felt harder than usual, and that took some doing. A first mate might get his own cabin, but that cabin was small and his cot was packed straw, tough and lumpy. Something shook him, and the pain flashed through his body like lightning.

“Fucking shtop it,” he slurred. His voice sounded so far away, which seemed strange. With great effort he opened his eyes to see the blue sky, dim light, thunderous clouds, and the face of a pretty young man who barely looked old enough to grow hair on his stones.

It took a moment for Yanic’s mind to realise everything wasn’t right. “What’s goin’ on, Feather?” he mumbled up at the pretty young sailor.

“Ship exploded, Yan,” Feather said, his voice so distant.

“What?” Yanic sat bolt upright. The world took a turn for the worse and his vision decided it couldn’t keep up. Next thing Yanic knew, he was curled up in a ball, retching up his most recent meal, and his entire left side felt as though it were on fire.

“Yan? Yan?” Feather’s voice was starting to sound a little less muted now, but it was high pitched and urgent.

Yanic opened his eyes again to see a puddle of vomit and blood on the wooden decking. Something about that seemed more than a little worrying, but he didn’t have time to sort it out. “The Phoenix?”

“Still floating,” Feather said. “But Cold Rain is gone. Just… gone.”

Now the world was coming back into focus, Yanic could hear voices crying and shouting in panic. Boots thumping along decking. Something that sounded a lot like fire. He looked down at his left arm to find it covered in red and, by the feel of things, most of it was his.

“Bollocks. That don’t look too good.” He rolled onto his arse and realised for the first time that the thunderous black clouds were actually thunderous black smoke.

“What do we do, Yan?” Feather said, shaking him by the shoulders.

Yanic felt his eyelids growing heavy and shook his head to clear the cobwebs. “Get everyone back on board. Find the captain.”

“Aye,” Feather agreed, sounding a little more confidant now he had orders. “Aye. Will do. What about you?”

Yanic lowered himself down onto his back, ignoring the searing pain in his left side. “Reckon I might just have a little nap.”

A deafening thunderclap rolled over them, cutting Drake off and stunning them all. Keelin shook his head in an attempt to clear the ringing in his ears, but to no avail. Drake looked similarly bemused by the sudden noise.

“Look,” the Sarth woman in the hat said, pointing down towards the town of Sev’relain. “The bay.”

A great plume of black smoke had appeared off the shore, and it looked like there was burning debris on the water. The distant sound of a scream echoed up out of the town.

“Was that a ship?” Keelin asked, not really expecting anyone to answer.

“Magic?” Drake said.

“Worse,” she replied. “That is a black powder explosion.”

“How can you tell?” Keelin was struggling to contain the creeping sense of panic descending upon him. “And how is that worse? And how much black powder does it take to do that?” He pointed at the plume of black smoke out in the bay.

The woman didn’t appear to be listening to him. Her head was cocked towards the nearby forest, and she was muttering something to herself.

“What in the Hells is she doing now?” Keelin demanded of Drake.

There were people emerging from the nearby houses, staring towards the bay, including some of the armed guards from Loke’s personal estate. Most were wearing expressions tending towards the panic Keelin was suppressing.

“There are men moving through the forest,” the woman said eventually. “By the sound of it they’re wearing armour.”

“Sarth?” Drake said in a harsh voice little more than a whisper.

The woman shrugged. “They’re close.”

Keelin decided sometimes it was best to give in to the panic. “I have to get back to my ship.”

“Aye,” Drake agreed as he backed away from the trees. “Folk’ll be occupied with the explosion, and nobody comes into town armed anyways. This’ll be another massacre.”

One of the guards from Loke’s estate, a bald man with a perfectly groomed moustache, trotted over to them. “What’s going on?” he said.

“Sarth is attacking.” If Drake was at all surprised by events he certainly wasn't showing it.

“Shit.”

“Fair sums it up. Stillwater, you with us?”

Keelin felt someone grab hold of his arm, and he was turned to face Drake. “I need to get back to my ship,” he said.

“How’s your hold, Captain Stillwater?” Drake said. “Is it empty.”

“Bits and pieces,” Keelin said, coming round a little. “Barely worth selling.”

“Dump it. Get to your ship, and take on board as many of the townsfolk as you can.”

“What?”

A man emerged from the tree line. He was wearing the blue-black uniform of a Sarth soldier with a shiny cuirass over the top, and he was carrying a shield and a longsword. He shouted something behind him when he saw the four people staring his way.

There was a loud bang, and the soldier staggered backwards and collapsed. Drake’s companion holstered one pistol and drew another.

“Get back to your ship, Stillwater,” Drake shouted. “And take as many folk as you can with you. Anyone left on this island is going to die!” With that, Drake gave Keelin a hard shove in the direction of Sev’relain. Keelin took the hint and broke into a run just as he heard more shouts from behind. He didn’t bother turning to see if anyone was following him.

By the time Keelin reached the docks it felt like half the folk of Sev’relain were at his back. He and the bald guard from Loke’s estate hadn’t been quiet about the issue of the attack, and while many folk had dismissed the crazed men running through the streets shouting bloody murder, just as many others had heeded the warning. Word of the massacre at Black Sands had left everybody on edge, and some folk, it appeared, had already packed their belongings ready for flight. Those same folk would meet a rude awakening if they tried to take any of their crap with them on Keelin’s ship.

He had, at some point during his mad run to the docks, decided Drake was right about one thing, if nothing else. The people of Sev’relain would be murdered to every man, woman, and child if they didn’t escape the island. There was simply no way any of them could stand up to a determined force of soldiers from Sarth.

As Keelin’s boots hit the wood of the pier he stopped to take in the chaos that was unfolding before him. One ship was a mess of burning debris out in the bay, and by the looks of things it had taken a pier with it. Bloodied bodies had been dragged up out of the surf and now lay upon the beach, draining red back into the lapping waves. Some looked still alive, but just as many looked just as dead. One corpse was missing both legs and an arm; the sight made him sick to his stomach.

Folk were crowding the remaining piers and shouting at the pirates manning the dinghies. Some of those shouts were pleas, some threats, some bribes, and some were simply people begging for their lives. It was hard for even the stoniest of pirate hearts not to be moved by a woman with three young daughters begging for men to ferry them to safety.

Keelin spotted a couple of dinghies in the custody of his own crew, and they didn’t appear to be letting anyone on board. They were moored dangerously close to the smouldering wreckage that had, until very recently, been a ship.

“Cap’n?” Keelin spotted the owner of the voice, and pushed through a few people to find Feather looking paler than the ghost fish that haunted the shores of Brie Isle at night. The lad was barely more than a boy, but in that moment he was looking all his years and a dozen more besides.

“Yanic sent me ta find you, Cap’n,” Feather shouted over the crowd.

“What do we do?” cried one of the folk who had followed Keelin from Sev’relain.

“We need to get on a ship,” shouted another.

“Quiet!” Keelin roared in his best captain’s voice. There were times when a bit of stern discipline was needed, and this seemed like one of them. Blind panic would likely get them nowhere but drinking seawater at this point. Some of the folk moved off to find other boats, though most stayed behind and let Keelin speak. “Where’s Yanic?”

Feather pointed towards one of the piers, but Keelin couldn’t see through the crowd of people. “He’s hurt bad, Cap’n.”

“Shit. Get to the boats, Feather. Tell the boys to start letting folk on but not so many it’ll sink ’em, and nobody that’s causing a panic. We’re taking people on board The Phoenix.”

“Aye, Cap’n,” Feather shouted, and darted away. The lad always seemed to be calmer with orders.

“Captain Stillwater,” the bald guard from Loke’s estate said calmly. He was red in the cheeks from his run through Sev’relain but seemed no worse for it. “I think I can be of use to you.”

Keelin appraised the man quickly. He was tall and wiry and looked like he knew his way around a fight, but kept himself well groomed. “What’s your name?”

“Kebble Salt.”

“You know how to sail?”

“I’m a quick learner.”

“You know how to use that thing?” Keelin gestured at the rifle slung over Kebble’s shoulder.

“Better than any man alive.”

“We’ll see. Follow me and you’ll get a seat.” That prompted a chorus of similar claims from the folk surrounding them. Keelin ignored them all. He started pushing through the crowd towards his crew and his longboats.

Halfway along the pier Keelin found his first mate. Yanic left a bloody mess of a body, trampled and kicked and pushed to the side of the decking. His corpse had got tangled with one of the support posts and he lay half in the water. Keelin stopped and stared down at the thing that had been his oldest and closest friend. Yanic’s left side was riddled with wooden splinters and deep cuts, and he looked as though he was wearing more blood on the outside than in. His face had obviously been kicked by folk trying to get along the pier, and white skull was showing through the skin in more than one place.

Keelin felt the world recede around him. He stood still and silent in the chaos as people jostled against his back to get past.

Drawing in a deep breath and letting it out in a slow sigh, Keelin closed his eyes. He drew in another breath.

“Anyone still between me and my boats when I turn around gets to die!” It wasn’t the most poetic of threats, but he delivered it with enough volume to drive his point home.

When he opened his eyes and turned around, he found the people on the pier had crowded to the sides to create a narrow channel down the middle of the already cramped walkway. Some folk had suffered for the threat and were now taking a dip in the warm waters of the bay. A few stragglers still loitered in the newly created path, so Kebble Salt moved along in front of Keelin to shove them out of the way. Keelin, his face a grim mask of anger, stormed along the pier to his crew and his boats.

The members of Keelin’s crew manning the nearest boat waited quietly while he leapt down from the pier. Even Smithe seemed to think better than to comment. Kebble Salt followed Keelin into the boat, bringing the complement up to sixteen. The boats could hold twenty at a squeeze, and eight of those were required on the oars. They would ferry as many of the townsfolk as they could out to The Phoenix, but there simply wasn’t enough space to save them all.

“Twenty people per boat,” Keelin said loudly to the waiting crowd. He looked back towards the town. Much of it was now on fire, and the screams of the dying made it an eerie picture. “Anyone pushing gets left behind. Anyone refusing to dump their belongings gets left behind. Anyone so much as argues with a member of my crew, they get left behind. We’ll send back as many boats as we can, but we ain’t got time to ferry you all – so any can swim, I suggest you jump in and start paddling.” He pointed towards The Phoenix. “That there is my boat and your salvation. It ain’t big enough for you all, but we’ll take on as many as we can.”

“Is it Sarth?” a woman shouted from the crowd. “Drake said they’d be coming.”

“Aye.” Keelin nodded. “It’s Sarth.” He turned to his crew in the longboat. “Push off and put your backs to it.”

As the boat pushed away from the pier, Keelin witnessed many of those gathered surge forwards towards The Phoenix’s second boat. Some of the rest took his suggestion to heart and dove into the water to swim to his ship.

“Can’t save them all. Can’t feed them all,” Smithe said as he and the other seven pirates started rowing. Keelin hated to admit it, but the man was right about that. The Phoenix had limited supplies, and taking on a bunch of refugees was going to drain them quickly. They’d need to find another port soon, and he doubted he’d receive a warm welcome back at Fango.

“What the fuck is happenin’, Captan?” Morley said before Keelin’s boots had even hit the deck.

Keelin leapt over the port side railing and stepped away for the others to follow him up. “Sarth is attacking…”

“Did they attack your face?” Morley interrupted.

“No. This was… uh… something else. We’re taking on people, as many as can make it. As many as we can fit. Anything not edible or sharp enough to kill a man goes over the side.”

“You want us to dump the loot?” asked one of the nearby pirates. Keelin found himself with quite an audience, and it was growing every moment as more of his crew came to find out what was happening.

“Yes. To make room for those coming aboard.”

There was a grumble from a few of those gathered, but it was Smithe who spoke up as he finished the climb. “That there’s our earnings,” the man all but spat. “Ain’t right to throw it overboard. Ain’t your choice neither.”

Keelin rounded on the man, lamenting the fact that Smithe was a couple of inches taller than him. “Long as this is my ship, it is my choice, and I just made it. Good?”

Smithe stared back, and Keelin could see true anger in the man’s eyes. “No.”

The boat below had emptied now, and pirates and townsfolk alike stood on deck watching the confrontation.

“Then it’s a good job your opinion doesn’t mean shit, Smithe,” Keelin replied in a voice as dark and dangerous as a thundercloud. “The captain of this ship just gave an order. If you don’t like it, you can always head back to Sev’relain and find yourself another boat. I don’t have time for your shit right now.”

Keelin turned to his gathered crew. “Get the ship ready to sail. Soon as the Fortune leaves, we’re following her.”

Morley stayed behind as some pirates jumped to their duties and others showed townsfolk to the hold. “Drake Morrass?” he said.

“Temporary arrangement,” Keelin assured him. “Yanic’s dead.”

“What?” Morley’s expression was caught between anger and sorrow. “How?”

“You saw that ship explode? He was a little too close when it went up. That makes you first mate now, Morley.”

“Aye.”

“We gonna need a new quartermaster,” Smithe said, still lingering nearby.

Keelin shot the man a glare. “Aye. It can wait though. Right now we need to get ready to leave. Sev’relain doesn’t have long left and I don’t want to be here when Sarth sails round from the other side of the island.”

There were people in the water, boats in the water, hastily rigged-together rafts in the water, and all were heading towards The Phoenix or the Fortune. Keelin couldn’t tell if Drake had made it back to his ship, but they appeared to be taking on townsfolk all the same. Much of Sev’relain was on fire now. As the afternoon light waned it became more and more apparent that the invaders intended to torch the whole town. Ash and smoke drifted into the sky, and the sounds of fighting were all but lost among the sounds of people dying.

The second longboat bumped against the hull, and Keelin’s crew set about helping people up onto the deck. Some of those in the water, the stronger swimmers, were arriving too. Before long the ship would be full of those who had no home and no use aboard a pirate boat.

Keelin was just about to order the first dinghy back to pick up more townsfolk when soldiers appeared on the docks. There was little in the way of resistance, and they showed no mercy, sparing neither man, woman, nor child. Keelin was more than acquainted with the sight of death, but he felt a little sick to his stomach as he watched the massacre unfold on the beach and piers.

A few enterprising soldiers pulled out bows and began arcing arrows out onto the water. They were too far away to pose any threat to The Phoenix, but the men found their range and one of the boats heading Keelin’s way took a couple of shafts. Fresh screams drifted out over the water.

“Poor bastards are little more than target practice,” Keelin said, more to himself than anyone within earshot.

“I can help there,” Kebble Salt said from nearby. The man unshouldered his rifle and pointed it towards the beach. There was a flash of light and a noise like thunder, and one of the soldiers was thrown to the ground. He lay there, writhing.

“Wind is coming in from the east,” Kebble said as he brought his rifle down and started reloading. “Only winged him.”

Keelin plucked his monoscope from his belt and looked down towards the three soldiers with their bows. One was on the sand, struggling to crawl away, but the other two were still loosing arrows into the water. Keelin heard another bang from Kebble’s rifle and another of the soldiers dropped, but this one didn’t move after he hit the sand. The third soldier took note of his two fallen comrades and fled.

“Impressive,” Keelin said.

“Thank you.” Kebble was already reloading his rifle.

“Keep an eye on the beach. Cover those poor bastards as best you can.”

“Aye.”

Another boat bumped against the hull of the ship; more and more people were arriving. Keelin’s crew were doing their best to get as many of them up on deck as possible. There were still some folk jumping into the water from the piers back in Sev’relain, but the Sarth soldiers were busy murdering by the hundreds and no more boats would make it off the beach.

Only The Phoenix and the Fortune were left in the bay. The other ships – and Keelin remembered there had been a few – hadn’t bothered to take on refugees; they’d fled at the first sign of trouble. Keelin hated to admit it, but he would have joined them if not for Drake’s insistence on helping the folk of Sev’relain. It would, however, take more than one good deed for him to rethink his low opinion of the captain.

Something caught Keelin’s eye, a woman being plucked from the bay and dragged up onto the deck of The Phoenix. She was soaked to her skin from the swim and looked caught between terror and misery, but she was still beautiful to his eyes. It was the serving girl from the tavern, and Keelin found himself staring at her and smiling. He quickly wiped the smile from his face, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from her. Feather moved over to her, no doubt to steer her down into the hold where they would be keeping the refugees. She started to follow the young pirate, keeping her arms held tightly across her chest. Keelin had a brief internal war with his better judgement – he won.

“Feather,” Keelin shouted even as he realised that what he was about to do was a bad idea. “Put that one in my cabin.”

“Um… aye, Cap’n,” the lad said, and changed direction.

The woman looked no more or less alarmed than before; she didn’t even appear to notice she was being taken to the cabin of the captain of a pirate ship. Keelin had seen shock lock people down before; sometimes they became little more than living dolls, but most seemed to snap out of it given enough time. Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to consider the woman’s mental health right now, what with a town burning to ash just a short distance away and plenty more survivors wanting rescuing.

Keelin saw the Fortune turn across the bay and her sails billow with the wind. Drake – assuming he had made it to his ship – was leaving even though there were people still in the water. The Phoenix was filling up fast, and if they took on many more mouths they simply wouldn’t have the supplies to save any of them.

“Haul anchor!” Keelin shouted over the noise of the people on his deck. “Get some sail on and put us after the Fortune.” Pirates jumped to his orders in an instant, leaving the refugees on deck unsure of where to go.

Morley took up the orders and began putting the ship and her crew in motion while Keelin moved aft to watch Port Sev’relain’s death throes. There were still people in the water, dozens of them, screaming for help even as The Phoenix picked up speed and left them behind. Some might make it back to the island, hide from the soldiers and survive until it was over, but most would either drown or swim back to shore only to be murdered on the beach.

Once, long ago, Keelin had fancied himself a champion of the people. He would have done anything, sacrificed his ship and crew, in order to save those people. But that was long ago, and things were different now. He turned away from the burning spectacle of Port Sev’relain and focused instead on the ship and captain he was now following.