Opening Atlantis (27 page)

“I have faith,” Radcliff said. “I have faith that the freebooters are less foolish than you make them out to be.”

And his faith, such as it was, was vindicated when shouts from the fleet's crow's nests came down to the decks: “Sail ho! Sail ho!
Sail ho!
”

“Sail ho!” the lookout shouted from high in the
Black Hand
's rigging. “Sail ho!
Sail ho!
” The third repetition seemed to carry an almost desperate urgency.

Red Rodney Radcliffe peered north. He couldn't see anything from the brigantine's deck. He would soon enough, though—all too soon. Sailors had known the world was round long before landlubber scholars realized as much. The way things came up over the sea's long, smooth horizon showed it plain as plain.

“Send
form line of battle abreast
!” he shouted to the Royal Navy renegade who made signals for him.

“Aye aye, skipper!” Quint answered with a grin, and ran up the flags.

Not far away, the nominal admiral's ship would hoist the same signal, and hardly anyone would know Red Rodney had ordered the move first. He only hoped the freedom-loving captains who commanded the other ships would take the order seriously.

The bastards on the other side would do what their admiral told them to. Rodney Radcliffe was only too sure of that. He usually despised the men of Stuart and England and Nieuw Haarlem for their slavish obedience. In battle, though, he knew how much it mattered.

He was too busy looking to port and starboard to see what his colleagues and comrades were doing to pay much attention to what lay ahead for some little while. When he did turn his eyes to the north again, his stomach lurched as if he were prone to seasickness. He had never seen such large ships so close before. A pirate with an ounce of sense sheered off when he spied a first-rate ship of the line. He wasn't likely to last long against one in a straight-up fight.

They were in line of battle, the men-of-war and their accompanying scavengers. All their ships sailed as if animated by a single will. So Rodney thought, anyhow, till he spied the gaggle of Dutchmen keeping station on one another rather than with their English comrades. But they didn't do much harm to the enemy line, and conformed to the movements of the rest of the fleet.

His own ships, on the other hand…

If he hadn't known they'd practiced staying together and fighting as a group, he never would have believed it. They straggled all over the sea. If they formed a line, it was a line drawn by a drunk.

At least they sailed toward the enemy fleet. The wind blew from a little north of west, which gave the enemy the weather gauge and the choice of fighting or declining battle. The big ships sailed forward, their masts blooming with sails. They weren't here to pull back.

Neither was Red Rodney Radcliffe. He glanced toward those men-of-war. Then he looked west, out toward the edge of his own ragged line—and beyond. Looking that way meant looking into the westering sun. Red Rodney smiled to himself. In some ways, this couldn't have worked out better if he'd planned it for months. He had planned to fight, but knowing when the fleets would meet…. That was luck, nothing else. And luck favored him now.

Luck favored him as long as he
could
make a fight of it, anyhow. A bow chaser on one of the enemy ships fired. He saw the puff of smoke and the belch of fire before he heard the cannon go off. Bow and stern chasers were long guns, which gave them more range than the pieces on the gun decks.

The iron ball splashed into the sea several hundred yards short of the closest pirate ship. By the size of the splash, it was a twelve-pounder. Rodney muttered to himself. Twelve-pounders were broadside guns on the
Black Hand.
Would a ball from one of them even pierce a ship of the line's thick iron planking?

He'd find out before long. William Radcliff and the men who sailed with him would want to slug it out at close range. Of course they would—they had all the advantage that way. A broadside from one of those monster ships could smash a brigantine to ruins. The corsairs' fight was slash and dart and run away.

But Avalon couldn't run. Red Rodney hated his cousin with a loathing all the more profound because William Radcliff understood that too well. Individual freebooters could survive even if the worst befell their town. Their reign over the Hesperian Gulf? That would be over, over forever.

“Shall we answer them, skipper?” called a pirate at the
Black Hand
's bow gun.

It was a pipsqueak four-pounder, good for nothing more than frightening ships that couldn't fight back. Red Rodney nodded all the same. “Yes, by God!” he shouted. “Let 'em know we're here to give 'em what for!”

A moment later, the little popgun roared defiance at the approaching fleet. Its ball also fell short, but by less than the first gun's had. The pirates manhandled it back into position, swabbed out the bore, thrust in the worm to dispose of any bits of smoldering wadding, and then rammed home powder and ball and fired again.

Several other bow chasers on both sides went off. One ball struck home with a crash that echoed across the water. Red Rodney eyed the enemy fleet with wary apprehension. When William Radcliff or whoever was in command judged the time ripe…

As smoothly as if they'd practiced together for years, all the ships of the line and the smaller vessels with them swung to port. “Hard to starboard!” Red Rodney shouted to his own helmsman, and then, to Quint, “Signal
hard to starboard
!”

His own fleet's broadside would be puny next to the one that came at it, but he had to stand the gaff at least once. Yes, the corsairs would take punishment, but they would also dish some out. And they would hold the enemy in position for a little while. Rodney Radcliffe glanced west again. They needed to do that if they were to have any chance of discomfiting the dogs out of Stuart.

Then the enemy broadside spoke, and Red Rodney thought he'd fallen into the end of the world. The flame, the smoke, the thunder…A heavy cannon ball smashed into the
Black Hand
's rail and decking. The brigantine staggered; Radcliffe felt the shudder through his feet. Whistling, whining splinters flew everywhere. A man not six feet from him went down with a gurgling scream, clutching at the jagged length of timber that speared his throat. Blood poured from the wound, and from his mouth. He was a dead man, one who wasn't quite finished dying yet.

The corsairs' broadside answered the one from the enemy. Even to Radcliffe's ear, it sounded thin and ragged. It didn't have the crushing weight of metal the English and Dutch and eastern Atlanteans enjoyed, and it was disrupted by taking hits from those big guns. Even so, a mast on one of the men-of-war toppled. On deck, sailors on that ship ran like ants when a foot comes down. Red Rodney whooped.

He wasn't so happy when he turned his eye toward his own side. One pirate ship was on fire, another slewing helplessly out of line with rudder shot away, yet another with both masts down. The men-of-war fired again, this time ship by ship. They were happy enough pounding pirates to pieces.

Red Rodney looked west once more. He could only hope the enemy admiral wasn't doing the same.

W
illiam Radcliff watched in somber satisfaction as pirate ships crumpled under the thunderous barrage from his fleet. Aboard the
Royal Sovereign
, sweating, swearing, bare-chested sailors reloaded and ran guns forward to fire again. Petty officers urged them on with shouts and with strokes from rattan sticks.

“They are fools, to try conclusions with us,” Elijah Walton said. A little to the east, a pirate brig caught fire. Men scurried like mice, trying to douse the flames. William didn't think they'd be able to.

“They are fools, to turn corsair to begin with,” he said. “Sometimes you have to beat a fool's folly out of him.”

A roundshot slammed into the
Royal Sovereign
's oaken flank. Screams following the crash said the cannon ball or its splinters did their vicious work. The pirates were brave enough. They were almost madly brave, to challenge ships so much larger and stronger than their own.

As if echoing that thought, Walton said, “This unequal combat makes me wonder what possible hope of victory the brigands had.”

“Sir!” A midshipman still too young to shave dashed up to Radcliff. “Sir! There's signals from out of the west! Fireships, sir!”

“Fireships!” William Radcliff said, and then something much more pungent than that. Fireships were every honest sailor's nightmare. You had to get away from them, regardless of what that did to your line. Let fire get hold of a ship full of men and it became an oven on the instant.

Fireships could do worse than that. He still remembered the Hellburner of Antwerp from the century before—as who did not? It had been loaded with tons of gunpowder and more tons of metal junk and stones—and it blew hundreds, maybe thousands, of Spaniards halfway to the moon. If Red Rodney Radcliffe remembered the Hellburner, too…

“Tell the signalman to raise
each ship to act independently,
” William said.

“
Each ship to act independently.
Aye aye, sir!” The midshipman darted away.

Walton peered west, shading his eyes with the palm of his hand. “Damned setting sun makes them bloody hard to spy,” he said.

“Yes.” William nodded. And had his unloved and unloving cousin counted on that, too? William didn't know exactly how smart Red Rodney was. Tough and hard? Yes, no doubt. Smart? It wasn't so obvious. Or it hadn't been so obvious, not till now. The pirate chief knew what he was doing, all right.

Again, Elijah Walton thought along with him: “This must be why the bugger accepted battle with us to begin with. He wanted to hold us in place whilst launching his incendiaries at us.”

“That seems much too likely,” William said unhappily. He too peered west. Now the plumes of smoke from the burning vessels were plain to see, befouling a sky that should have been pristine. Also plain to see was his fleet's disorder. His ships steered every which way, trying to escape those flaming harbingers of doom.

The pirates had nerve. They hadn't just launched their fireships and then abandoned them to wind and wave. The weapons would have been much less dangerous if they had. Instead, men stayed on the burning vessels as long as they could, steering them toward ships in William's fleet. Only at the last possible moment did the skeleton crews dive into the Hesperian Gulf and swim toward boats the fireships towed.

And it worked, damn them. One of the Dutch ships of the line burst into flame, and a horrible beauty was born. The sails caught first, the sails and the rigging and then the yards and the mast. Flaming canvas and tarred rope fell to the upper deck, starting fresh fire there. The Dutchmen forgot their gunnery in the frantic quest to save themselves.

They might forget, but their foes didn't. Pirate ships, tenacious as terriers, went right on shooting at them. Before long, despairing sailors started jumping into the sea. Some struck out for the closest friendly ships. Others simply sank. Not all men who went to sea could swim—far from it. The ones who couldn't decided drowning made an easier, faster death than roasting. If that choice came to him, William Radcliff decided he would make it the same way.

Crash!
Another cannon ball thudded into and through the
Royal Sovereign
's planking. The man-of-war's gunnery had fallen off, while the pirates fought harder than ever. And, with the ship of the line doing all she could to escape the freebooters' fireships, the enemy vessels could position themselves as they pleased and give her broadsides she couldn't answer.

“What do we do, Admiral?” Elijah Walton asked hoarsely. “What
can
we do?”

Before, he'd always sounded sardonic when he used William's title. No longer. Radcliff was the man who had the authority to save the fleet…if he could.

He opened his mouth to speak. Before he could, a thunderous blast staggered him. Sure as hell, one of the fireships had blown up alongside a British man-of-war. William was amazed the explosion didn't take the British ship straight to the bottom. It did take down two of the man-of-war's three masts, set her afire, and leave her helpless in the water. Maybe some men would get off her, but she was ruined.

“What do we do?” Walton asked again, desperation in his voice.

William Radcliff looked at the fight. He looked at the sun, which almost kissed the smoke-stained horizon. Whatever they did, they would have to do it soon. “We pull back,” he said, and shouted for a midshipman to relay the message to the signal officer.

“Sail for Stuart?” Walton sounded as if that was exactly what he hoped to hear.

But William shook his head. “No, by God. They've slowed us up. They did something we didn't look for, and they caught us flatfooted. They hurt us. But we aren't beaten unless we own ourselves beaten. We'll fix ourselves up as best we can and get on with the fight.”

“Upon my soul,” Elijah Walton said.

Bodies wrapped in sailcloth slid into the sea, a round shot or two at the feet making sure they would sink. Fresh blood stained the
Black Hand
's deck and splashed the masts and rigging. Soon enough, it would go dark. The stains would seem inoffensive enough then…unless you knew the story behind them.

The corsairs aboard—those who lived—were in a festive mood. After the fireships did their fearsome work, the men had watched the fleet that seemed invincible turn away and say it had done all the fighting it cared to do. Some of the pirates even wanted to go after their retreating foes.

Red Rodney Radcliffe said, “No.” Something in the way he said it persuaded even his crew of cutthroats not to press him any further. He wasn't sure whether he would have reached for his cutlass or for his pistol if the pirates had pushed, but he was ready to kill to keep from fighting any more today.

With a creak and a groan, the pumps started up again. A stream of water poured over the side. As far as he knew, the
Black Hand
had taken only one hit at the waterline, and that one was patched now…after a fashion. All the same, the leak continued. It didn't seem to be getting any worse. He was no praying man, but he thanked God for that.

“Well, we beat 'em back,” Ben Jackson said. The mate had a new bandage on his left calf, and walked with a limp.

“Damned if we didn't.” Red Rodney wished he didn't sound so surprised. He tried to hide it with gruff kindness: “How are you doing, Ben?”

“It's a fucking scratch, that's all. Nothing but a fucking scratch.” Jackson spat scornfully. “I got tickled by a flying toothpick. Higgins cut it out of me. I would've taken care of it myself, but it always hurts worse when you do your own.”

Rodney Radcliffe nodded; he'd seen that, too. Wounds were accidents. You were always startled when you got hurt. Repairing them sometimes required deliberate damage to your own precious flesh. He'd known many otherwise ferocious men who couldn't face that.

“What do we do now?” the mate asked.

“I think all the great captains had better hash that out.” Red Rodney shouted to the signalman: “Send up
repair aboard the admiral's ship
while there's still light enough for the rest to read it.”

“
Repair aboard the admiral's ship,
” the Royal Navy renegade echoed. “Aye aye, skipper.”

How many of the great captains still lived? As far as Radcliffe knew, all their ships but one still floated. But the number of dead and wounded on the battered
Black Hand
warned that not all of them would have dodged bad luck.

Splash!
Another body swathed in bloody canvas went into the drink. Red Rodney scowled. “If we win another fight like this, we're bloody well ruined.”

Ben Jackson shrugged broad shoulders. “Well, skipper, we're bloody well buggered if we lose, too. So where does that leave us?”

In trouble,
Radcliffe thought. You didn't want to believe what a man-of-war's broadside could do to a ship. And the
Black Hand
was lucky. That leak wasn't…too bad. She still had both masts and most of her yards and rigging. Men were aloft, patching the sails. She could go where she needed to go. She could fight again…if she had to.

The boat ride over to Michel de Grammont's ship was a relief. While his men rowed him from one brigantine to the other, Radcliffe didn't have to think about anything. The
Aigle d'Argent
had taken less damage than the
Black Hand.
Rodney Radcliffe supposed that was because de Grammont hadn't wanted to close with the enemy, and so fewer cannon balls had come her way. At another time, he would have something to say to the Frenchman. For now, it could wait.

He clambered up over the side. “Is it that we are victorious?” de Grammont asked in accented English.

“For now, anyway,” Red Rodney said. “Let's go back to your cabin. What have you got to drink?”

“Wine,” the admiral answered. Rodney Radcliffe hid a sigh. He wanted whiskey or rum. But wine would do if he drank enough of it.

It was red and sweet and strong—strong for wine, anyhow. A couple of mugs began to build a wall between him and what had happened earlier in the afternoon. One by one, the other leading captains came aboard. Bertrand Caradeuc's earring was missing. So was his right ear; a marksman on one of William Radcliff's armed merchantmen had shot it off. Had the ball flown a couple of inches to the left, Caradeuc wouldn't have been there. Goldbeard Walter Kennedy wasn't. He'd lost a leg above the knee, and probably wouldn't live out the night. His younger brother, a massive man who carried the nickname Brickyard, came in his place.

“We beat 'em,” Brickyard said. He'd brought his own jug of something strong, and swigged from it now.

“We did.” Red Rodney sounded so gloomy about it, he made everyone else stare at him. And he had reason for sounding gloomy, too: “What do we do if they come after us again tomorrow morning? We're out of fireships, and we'd never surprise 'em twice anyhow.”

Cutpurse Charlie Condent stared at him in horror. “They wouldn't do that…would they?” He shook his head, answering his own question: “Nah. 'Course they wouldn't. I lay they're bound for Stuart now, tails between their legs.”

“How much?” Radcliffe asked. “A gold sovereign? I'll take your money. I'll take it, all right…if my damned cousin and his dogs don't take your life.”

“You're on, by God!” Condent said. “You'll pay me when I see you in Avalon. Or if you turn out to be right, I'll pay you when I see you there…or I'll pay you when I see you in hell.”

Red Rodney spat when he heard that, to turn aside the evil omen. So did Brickyard Kennedy. “Watch your mouth, Charlie,” Radcliffe said.

“I didn't mean anything by it,” the other captain said.

“Watch your mouth anyway,” Red Rodney told him. Cutpurse Charlie Condent glared back. At another time, they might have gone for swords or pistols. Radcliffe thought about it anyway. By the way that glare lingered, so did Cutpurse Charlie. But, until they knew what the enemy ships were doing, they had more important foes than each other.

“We sank some of their ships of the line, and wrecked some others,” Bertrand Caradeuc said. “They may have decided they've had enough.”

“If they have, we sail home and we fill up our forces again,” Red Rodney Radcliffe said. “I know I'm not the only one who lost more than he wished he did.”

The other captains all nodded. He'd been sure they would. He'd never known—he'd never imagined—a cannonading like that. He counted the corsairs lucky that Goldbeard Kennedy was the only major skipper missing here. To Radcliffe's surprise, de Grammont spoke up: “
Can
we fight them again on the sea?”

“Is anybody aiming to try, if they come south again?” Red Rodney asked.

No one said anything for a long time. At last, Brickyard Kennedy said, “We beat 'em. Cutpurse Charlie's right about that. They won't dare try to hit us again. They sailed away, after all. We didn't.” He sounded like a man trying to convince himself as well as his comrades.