Where Loyalties Lie

Chapter 15 - The Phoenix

Keelin was first to board the Fortune, swinging across on a rope tied to the yard and hitting the deck just a few metres from the wounded Drake Morrass. The infamous captain looked a truly sorry state, with blood leaking from a dozen different cuts and his right arm cradled protectively against his body. His bodyguard, the Sarth woman, loitered nearby, looking almost as banged up as her charge.

More of Keelin’s crew followed him across and charged into the battle that raged on the other side of the Fortune, bolstering Drake’s hard-pushed pirates. “You look like all the Hells, Drake,” Keelin said.

“I’ll look a touch better when I drive these bastards off my ship.” Drake grimaced as he retrieved his sword and gave it a couple of test swings with his left hand. Keelin would have put money on the man never having fought with that hand before.

“You saved my life back in Sev’relain,” Keelin said. “Reckon we’ll be calling that debt repaid.”

Drake grunted. He looked a little like he was ready to pass out.

“Perhaps you should sit this one out, Drake. Let…”

“Ain’t happening, Stillwater!” the captain spat. “Ain’t nobody leading the charge to take back my own ship but me.” With that, Drake stormed off towards the quarterdeck, where the fight had already been won.

Keelin was about to follow his fellow captain when the Sarth woman spoke. “Why did you come back?”

Something reached inside of Keelin, something dark and indomitable, something he hadn’t felt for a long time and something he hated with all of his being. He felt the answer to the woman’s question, the truth, bubble up from inside and burst out of his mouth.

“For the charts,” he said, losing the battle against the woman’s magic. Before she could ask another question, Keelin crossed the distance between them and swung a fist at her face. She blocked the attack with ease, catching Keelin’s hand and holding it there.

A few of Keelin’s crew stopped, but didn’t intervene.

“You’re a fucking Arbiter,” Keelin hissed. There was nothing in the world that Keelin hated quite so much as the Inquisition. He’d happily have taken his hatred out on the woman standing in front of him, but no matter how hard he pushed she held his hand steady. Eventually he eased off, and she let go.

“If you ever use your magic on me again,” Keelin said, seething with rage, “I will kill you.”

The Arbiter started walking towards Drake, but stopped beside Keelin. “You can find the last eight men who tried to kill me up on the poop deck, Captain,” she said in a honeyed voice dripping with danger. “I suggest you take a look and learn their lesson well.”

Keelin waited for a few moments after the Arbiter had gone, letting his anger build. He turned to find some of his pirates watching him from a distance.

“Don’t just stand around,” Keelin snarled. “Fight!”

Kebble Salt watched the battle unfurl from a distance. From up in The Phoenix’s nest, the murder down on the deck of the other ships seemed disjointed, almost as if it weren’t really happening. He looked down the sight of his rifle and focused on three men trading blows. Two wore the blue-black of Sarth, and they’d herded the other, a pirate, into a corner. The pirate wouldn’t survive much longer with nowhere to run. Kebble sucked in a breath and took aim before carefully squeezing the trigger.

One of the Sarth soldiers attacking the fortunate pirate dropped dead in a mist of blood, a hole through his head. The other soldier startled, panicked, and ran, but the pirate wasn’t so slow and capitalised on his good fortune, skewering the soldier as he turned. Kebble reloaded his rifle without even needing to look, replacing the black powder and bullet by touch. He settled the rifle butt against his shoulder and searched for a new target.

He could barely see the deck of the Man of War with the masts of the Fortune in the way, only glimpses of the battle there as the pirates beat back the soldiers and took the fight onto their ship. Kebble spotted the other captain, Drake Morrass, near the rear of a fight. He was dancing into the fray whenever an enemy looked away, taking wild, left-handed swings with his sword. Kebble noted the man’s position, but decided he’d be fine with three other pirates backing him up nearby. Kebble blocked out the sounds of fighting and dying that floated up to his ears, preferring to remain a detached force upon the battlefield, not allowing the chaos below to affect him. He spotted a boy who looked too young to even grow a moustache attempting to fight a much bigger man. Kebble noticed the mismatch too late to stop the boy from losing his right hand, but not too late to stop him from losing more.

Kebble’s rifle flashed and the soldier hit the deck, bleeding from his chest and mouth as blood leaked into his lungs. A breastplate might be enough to stop a sword, but it would take much more to keep one of Kebble’s bullets out. The boy regained his feet and, despite the loss of his hand, set to kicking the soldier in the head until there was little left of the man’s face. Kebble moved his watchful gaze to another part of the battle.

There was the unmistakeable twang of a crossbow, and a bolt struck the outside of Kebble’s nest, its tip just protruding through the planking. He didn’t have time to take care of the man wielding the weapon; two of Captain Stillwater’s pirates jumped the soldier and gave him what was possibly the first and definitely the last stabbing of his lifetime. Glancing down and seeing how close the crossbow bolt had come to ending his life, Kebble let out a sigh; and kept on living.

He was running low on black powder; he estimated a mere four shots remained to him, and after that he would be useless to all those down there still fighting.

It occurred to Kebble that he occupied a strange position on a battlefield. He would never turn the tide through weight of numbers killed, but by choosing his targets carefully, he could make each shot worth much more than a single kill. But right now he felt he needed to prove his value to his new captain, and with that in mind he chose a target close to Keelin Stillwater.

Keelin sidestepped the attack, then sent one cutlass against the man’s shield while the second slashed at his belly. It was a wild strike driven more by anger than his usual precision, and it rebounded harmlessly off the soldier’s breastplate with a metallic hiss. Keelin cursed under his breath and disengaged, while one of Drake’s pirates came up behind the soldier and brained the man with a bloody mace.

The Arbiter had rattled him, and not just with her magic; her presence made him angry, and that rage was making him sloppy. Keelin had changed his mind – he’d been ready to support Drake, to follow him and help him achieve his goal of uniting the pirates – but now he wasn’t so sure. He needed to find out just what sort of hold the Inquisition had over Drake Morrass and what interest they had in the isles, and he was certain he wouldn’t get that information out of the Arbiter.

No matter how many years passed, the ghost of Keelin’s sister still haunted him, and every time he spotted an Arbiter she cried for vengeance. He could no longer remember Leesa's face or her voice, but he could never forget the smell of her flesh burning, the sound of her guttural screams. The sight of her writhing in flames.

Keelin had almost avenged her just a year ago. He’d given a half-crazed Arbiter safe transport in return for the location of Arbiter Prin, but the bastard had lied, and again his sister’s murderer had escaped his grasp.

The battle was moving on. They’d all but pushed the soldiers from the Fortune, and now the pirates, angered by the events of the past couple of days, were no longer satisfied with the damage already done; they wanted to take the ship. The grappling hooks deployed by the Sarth Man of War were now working against the soldiers, giving the pirates the opportunity to leap and climb onto the bigger ship and take the fight to their tormentors.

A soldier came at Keelin, screaming and brandishing a dagger and little else. Keelin was about to gut the man when something hit the poor bastard in the side of the head and he crumpled to the ground, all sorts of dead. Without even bothering to wonder what had happened, Keelin sprinted towards the nearby railing and leapt the three feet up and across from the Fortune onto the Man of War.

It took him a moment to scramble up over the railing, and when he hit the deck he found himself kneeling in a pool of blood. Keelin stood, gave the situation a quick survey, and charged the nearest soldier he could see, barrelling into him shoulder first and sending him crashing to the deck. Keelin wasted no time finishing the man off with a quick sword thrust through his unprotected neck, and turned to the next.

It had been a long time since Keelin had been to Sarth, but he recognised nobility when he saw it. This man wasn’t dressed like the other soldiers; he was wearing an impeccable uniform labelling him as Sarth navy and an admiral, if the number of pins on his lapel was anything to go by. He was also flanked by two soldiers bearing both sword and shield sword, who looked as if they knew how to fight and were more than willing to prove it.

Keelin paced in front of them, trying to goad them into coming at him. Their training showed and they held their ground, shields up and eyes alert. A quick glance told Keelin he was alone and could expect no help from either his crew or Drake’s. It was almost hard to believe that just a day ago he’d been beaten bloody and nearly killed in a bar, and now he was about to try his luck at three armed opponents.

“Last chance, lads,” Keelin said, still pacing in front of the three men. “You can see how the battle is turning. Ship’s near as ours already. Now I want that bastard alive, or at least clinging to it. If you two just turn him over and lay down your sharp and pointies, I’ll make sure you get to be among those we send back to Sarth alive.”

The admiral, a man of no small stature himself, with great bushy eyebrows and a dark gaze beneath them, drew his sabre and laughed. “Cowards and turncoats,” he said in a very admirable voice. “We will die to a man before we let you take the ship.”

“You won’t, but they will,” Keelin growled, and rushed the three men.

There was a part of Keelin – quite a large part – that realised how foolish he was to attack three men head on, especially when two of them were brandishing shields. But he was angry, and he didn’t make smart decisions when he was angry.

He pulled up short before the first of the soldiers and danced left, sending both his cutlasses clattering against the man’s shield. The soldier took the blow with a grunt and stabbed out from behind his cover. Keelin was already gone, twisting away and launching himself at the second soldier. Again he swung both his swords at the shield. This soldier was a bit more savvy; he pushed back while Keelin was off balance and sent the captain stumbling away. Instead of pushing the attack, both soldiers formed up in front of the admiral and stood their ground.

Regaining his balance, Keelin found himself with a chance to reconsider his foolish decision. Unfortunately his blood was still up, and now he was feeling humiliated as well – and that didn’t lead to rational choices. Again he charged the three men.

This time one of the soldiers charged as well, and Keelin collided with the man’s shield, sending him crashing to the deck. He rolled away just as something sharp bit into the wood where he’d landed, and came to his feet with both swords ready. One soldier was down, quickly regaining his feet, while the other was pulling his sword from the wooden plank of the deck. The admiral strode forwards to join the fight.

Keelin jumped forwards and attacked the soldier retrieving his sword; the man blocked with a wild swing of his shield, turning away one of Keelin’s blades, but he slipped his other one around and scored a shallow cut on the soldier’s thigh. Something hit the soldier in his shield arm and he roared in pain. Keelin wasted no time capitalising, bringing one of his own swords down in a heavy slash that severed the man’s arm just above the elbow.

As the soldier dropped to the decking, rolling and screaming, Keelin found himself beset by heavy blows from the admiral while the second soldier defended with his shield. But now the odds were better, and two to one sounded like they were in Keelin’s favour.

With a cheeky feint to his right, Keelin rushed left and jumped onto a nearby railing. Launching himself back into the fight, he slashed out with his cutlasses and the second soldier, still turning to face his flying opponent, dropped to the deck with a deep gorge carved out of his neck. Keelin completed his showy attack by landing on the deck, slipping in a deep pool of blood, and going down hard.

By the time he’d recovered from his unfortunate slip the admiral was upon him with the tip of his blade hovering above Keelin’s heart.

“Pirates…” the Sarth officer said, just before his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed forwards. Keelin managed to shift just before the man fell, and the admiral’s sword merely cut a shallow gash in his chest rather than piercing his heart.

With a grunt, Keelin shoved the admiral aside and pushed to his feet to find Drake Morrass flanked by three other pirates. Keelin’s fellow captain looked pale and bloody, but his eyes were bright and his single gold tooth flashed in his mouth.

“Life for a life, Captain,” Drake said through laboured breath. “Reckon you’ll be owing me that favour after all. That one looks important.”

“Admiral, I reckon,” Keelin agreed as he finished off the soldier with the severed hand. “How’s the rest of the ship?”

“Taken, for the most. Bit of resistance down in the holds. Nothing we can’t handle. Reckon we lost a lot for the victory though, my crew more than yours.”

Keelin grimaced at the pain in his chest and went to lean upon the nearby railing. The sounds of battle had died down, but the sounds of the dying had taken their place. Men screamed, men cried, and some men were even praying. The deck of the Man of War was awash with blood and littered with bodies. The deck of the Fortune looked more than a little similar. They’d have to make a body count to tally the total cost on both sides of the battle, but even if Sarth had come off worse, they had more men to lose.

“If we’re going to fight them, we can’t lose this many men every battle,” Keelin said. He sounded tired even to his ears.

Drake joined Keelin at the railing. The man was cradling his broken arm, and looked ghastly. “That mean you’re in? Joining my side of this instead of Tanner’s?”

“I’d never join Tanner Black’s side of anything,” Keelin growled.

“That ain’t an answer.”

Keelin glanced at Drake, and then back at the blood and bodies on the deck. There would be more battles just like this one before they were done, but for now it was the only way he could see to get his hands on Drake’s charts, and that was the only way he could see to get his revenge.

“Aye,” he said with a smile that was half grimace. “I’m in. So long as I don’t have to call you king.”