La Sombra Del Rey

The crow's nest called down and pointed west.

Amidst the setting sun, baking in its final glory of the day, the ship sailed towards them, not letting up their sails. They were still distant, far off; the hull barely breached the waves. However, even she knew that they were not looking to simply cross paths.

Cross swords

, she thought.

Pirates...

Like her thoughts grabbed the rawhide thong, the deck's bell rung and the crew went from half step to double time, manning and preparing themselves and their stations for war.

She stood next to the Captain, the noble man he was, and watched the ants weaponise their wooden hill. Axes, spears, grappling hooks, swords, ropes, muskets, and shot. Cannons were rolled forward into place, loaded with steel and gunpowder. Barrels were rolled to and from, regular supplies like food and water were replaced with ammunition and weaponry. All were brought about like clockwork; no one slammed into anyone else, no tripping, not even a word was spoken. They were the King's Privateers, after all; mercenaries of the high seas whose honour were replaced with deadly efficacy and their moral compasses replaced with those of the bow's direction.

Although they were all battle hardened, sea hardened, with many having military experience, she felt the sea salt cling painfully to her dry throat. She coughed, startling the Captain who remembered she existed. 'Miss Pleasant!' The stout Captain said, a little too loud for their short distance between each other. 'I will see you move to my cabin at once!'

Although her corset and overcoat inflated due to the fear growing in her chest, she put her chin up. 'I can help, Captain Ulysses.'

A cackle came from behind her and she turned to see the First Mate, the ugly one every man but the animals below deck called, 'Crag'. The man pushed his greasy hair back, revealing weeping sores behind his ears and down his neck, disfiguring the flesh.

'Let her join the fray, Captain,' Crag said. 'No doubt the bastards heard of blue amongst our red and have come for it. Let her see what she hath wrought upon us all.' He gave her a smile of rotten teeth, of which ran into the gums and along his cracked tongue.

'I will hear no more of this, Mister Storril,' the Captain said, not even looking at the man. 'You gave a vow to protect said blue. See her below deck, cower there yourself if you are unmanned by the sight of a single ship.'

Crag gritted what teeth he had left and grabbed her arm unceremoniously. 'With me, girl,' the man growled, pushing a hot, rank miasma into her face. 'Best not anger the Captain.'

They came down the stairs, aloof and weary of the dawning conflict. Crag leapt atop of her, pushing her to the ground. As she landed, the whistle sounded. A large wasp carrying thunder and death on its wings. She heard an almighty crunch and a man screamed both close and into the distance. A splash. She looked beneath Crag's yellowed cotton shirt, the tang of unwashed skin clouded her sinuses but through the tears, the crew had stopped, standing a brief, silent vigil for their comrade.

Then the confusion set in.

'Captain?' A voice called. No answer came above them. 'Captain?'

'What, Mister Swiss?' The Captain boomed. Every man who could hear flinched. It was a rare sight seeing or even hearing the Captain be above a low call.

Mister Swiss did not answer from among the idle crew so someone else rose to the challenge. 'How are we within range, Captain?'

No answer came. Crag stayed on top of her, seeming to enjoy the position. She dreamed then that he would get up, only for another shot to take him to unite with his crewmate.

'Captain?' The next voice came and the Anna Maria was rocked to the side as another shot made contact somewhere on the portside hull. The men stumbled, so too did their morale. She slid from beneath Crag and went to the other staircase and peeked between the bannisters. The attacking ship was still but a silhouette surrounded by a half-halo of orange.

They're right

, she thought.

We're still a good distance from a normal chaser cannon.

'Captain!' Another voice came.

'Unfurl the sails!' the Captain ordered after the long silence, not acknowledging the badgering. 'Prepare portside cannons and the portside anchor to drop.'

'Captain?' A crewmember said, the protest was clear in his voice.

There was a pause and she looked up to the wheel where the Captain stood. There was protest on his face, the fear coming down with each bead of sweat, but he stood strong.

There

, she thought.

There is why I've always wanted a life like this!

Another cannon shot careened into the ship, this time marking the upper-deck with a controlled explosion and sent shards of wood, iron, and weaponry flying. She crouched down and tucked herself as much as she could beneath the staircase. The crew let out a unifying cry.

'Prepare portside cannons!' The Captain repeated and the entire deck was alive.

The crew stepped over fallen or injured comrades, following the command. Crag had a massive splinter sticking out of his arm and he wretched it out and came to her. 'Girl!' He said, pulling her arm so hard she heard a low click. 'You fucking step away from me again and I will crush your windpipe and no one will hear what I will do to you!'

He pulled her through the doors and pushed her in. She fell and slid along the floorboards. Before she stood and turned, there was a sound of the doors slamming and being locked from the outside. The clamor fell to muffles but the alert and fear were still thundering. She felt an odd lurch in her belly that pulled forward and rose slowly.

They were moving.

Her sea legs were better than the weeks before, but still not quite ready to handle the added stress of combat. Prior, the seas were relatively calm, they had only encountered one storm of which passed quickly after realising it could not capsize the robust Anna Maria. The blue and gold ship soared across the waves, however high, and boasted thirty-five guns each side. No chasers were needed since the eastern silk sails carried them faster than any sloop, even against the wind. She let out a smile.

She crawled over to the windows, just in time to see the ship -- now edging closer -- let out another double volley from its bow. The sounds were noticeable now, coming across the swelling seas as deep bass drums. They missed, whistling by the Captain's cabin. So close they were visible. Her knees bent and straightened as the Anna Maria broke the blue dunes. Spray and even small fish that feasted off the barnacles slammed against the stained windows. Their multi-colored hazes gave the turning enemy ship moods. Green with envy, red with rage, yellow with sickness, black with death.

And the sun shone around it as indifferent as its purpose when at high-noon.

The Captain shouted something but it was muffled by the churning of the ocean and the distorted stomps of a two hundred feet. The attackers were slowly turning to intercept, turning their chaser guns but did not fire.

The cabin swayed and carried anything not nailed down to each wall; the sea's gravity deciding where the furniture would lay. The only thing that stayed relatively still was the Captain's desk.

She clicked.

She ran like a drunkard towards the magnificent art piece. The carvings placed the desk in a museum better than a warship. It spilled its draws, letting loose papers, old quills, maps, charts, and small ledgers, being moved about so quickly with full sail. She scooped them aside, looking for the button, that wooden inlay that the Captain did not know she had spied many times as Crag came knocking.

She felt beneath the table and pushed upwards. A wider panel went in and slid forward. Something heavy dropped into her hand and she withdrew it. A black powder flintlock pistol. As she rocked with the ship, her legs already finding its hold on the rum soaked wood, she pulled the frizzen forward and checked the pan. It was loaded and she shook, hearing the tinkle of the ball inside the darkened maw.

She went to the window and crouched at the diagonal set that pointed just around the staircase, seeing a clear view of the deck as men loaded the cannons but did not fire.

Why

, she thought.

Captain, you need to fire.

The attacking ship gained on them, demonically faster than the Anna Maria that listed and moaned forward across the foam of sea salt, her fat belly clearing the sea level and flopping forward like a whale being dropped. But the attacking ship went for full ramming speed and careened forward.

Only then did she realise that it was not its silhouette, but the ship was indeed as pitch black as shadow and sin. There were no other colours to break it, so the ship looked whole, its constituents merged together, even the ropes and cannons, which were now visible, were black as Crag's teeth.

'Now!' The Captain screamed so loud she thought he was right next to her. She heard a grinding of metal and a deep rumbling like a stampede or chains being dragged along the deck. 'Brace yourselves!' She heard the Captain continue with anticipation. 'On my order, gunners!'

She looked to everyone who bear hugged the side railings, the cannons, even each other, clinging like a hermit crab to its shell. Then the lurch happened, so much it sent her flying forward and dislocating a shoulder. She hissed as the Anna Maria stopped in its watery tracks and drifted from the rear and turned. She heard wood rip. It was a haunting sound she would never forget; like she heard the voices of the trees that the planks had come from scream.

Anna Maria spun still and the other ship turned the other way as if seeing its own fumble into the Captain's trap. It turned and rose.

Either the barnacles underneath their ship are black

, she thought.

Or none clung to it.

Anna Maria turned and when the portside anchor had pulled the portside cannons into the mix, she would remember the heat in her veins and the evil smile the Captain had when he screamed.

'

FIRE ALL PORTSIDE

!'

There was a roar that hung in the air briefly as the crew responded with screams of their own and unleashed shot into the foe's ship. Below its bow crashed open like a simple knock to a lamp's glass, revealing black innards. Bodies flew on the inside, however. Fleshy bodies. No ghosts or ghouls.

They're alive

, she thought.

So, they can be killed

. Her confidence soared and she waited. The gun crew below deck sent their volleys as well; the sound, although numbing in her bones, were music to her ears. The blood curdled in her veins, boiling, thirsty for itself.

'Fire all,' she said through gritted teeth, then imagined briefly about how her handmaidens would react to such barbarity, so she stopped and readied the pistol. 'Now comes the boarding phase.'

She treated it like a book. As she did her life, but the adrenaline had set in and there was no escaping the knowledge that came it. There were patterns to everything, she told herself when sitting in front of her tutor. There was always an order to the world.

The enemy ship listed under the power of the Anna Maria's fiery claws that raked the side. But the sheer weight of the other ship tipped it back and the floating war machine slammed against the Anna Maria. It was not as bad as the cannon shot, but the fact that something so hollow broke the glass and she could hear men being sent overboard from the impact.

'Here they come,' she said to no one.

The grapple hooks came first. Arching upwards over the enemy's railing, then the Anna Maria's, and latching onto a snag. The look of it seemed so surreal to her. Primal. The hooks dug deep and the adversary ship knocked gently against its captured prey.

Through the holes left by the Anna Maria's claws, muskets tore through the strangely long silence and its products scattered against the wood. She ducked, although they were too high to notice her. They hit the planks, ricocheted across iron, and fell crew members.

Nonetheless, the crew of the Anna Maria roared in defiance and opened with their own muskets and pistols. Crew from the enemy ship jumped the gap in almost theatrical unison. They wore black garments. Loose so they expanded in the wind like wings, and they dropped without a sound. They threw black orbs to the ground that cracked and swarmed into the space, covering it with black smoke.

Black

, she thought,

so much black

.

The Anna Maria's crew ran into the smoke, screaming with bloodlust and clashed with steel and pistol shot. More black garbed assailants jumped and swung down from the rigs above, they screeched like witches with cancer in their throat, or roared like dragons from fairytales; anything mythical and otherworldly.

One assailant dropped near her, atop an Anna Maria gunner, they struggled and slammed against the window panels then fell back to the deck -- the man from the black on top. He pulled a dagger from his waistband and held it in the air slowly, like some cruel ritual; letting the lamb see the knife.

She aimed the pistol out of the window and like the seafaring novice she was, she held the weapon with two hands and hooked both index fingers around the trigger and yanked. The flint slid down the frizzen and sparks landed amongst the gunpowder in the pan and a flash went off. The crack of a bullwhip sounded and the hilt of the pistol recoiled, knocking her in the head. Her vision rocked, her irises turned black from the inside and she fell.

*****

When she woke, the all-round battle had been reduced to pockets of screaming in random areas of the Anna Maria. Smog from fires and the smoke explosions poured through the windows and along the ceiling tendrils of dark ebbed over her like they had pulses of their own.

She sat up slow, her world still spinning, and her dress made by Bisset Brodeur in crumbled tatters. Oddly, she did not care in the slightest. Not anymore. She instead crawled to the window and peeked out. Part of her wanted to see what happened, the other half wanted to dive out of a window and swim until the sea or its children took her.

She saw him.

The man from the black on his belly, the wound still fresh but drying in the sun. The Anna Maria man was nowhere to be seen and there was no blood trailing away from the body, but her eyes stayed on the man from the black. A body. A dead body. All was her doing.

This is what Uncle spoke about

, she thought.

During the Nine Years' War, of how quick it was to end a life.

'A line,' he had said in one of his haughty, wine-pouring from the sides of his mouth moments that often rang true. 'A line. Stretching all the way back to the beginning of man, of the world, ended. Poof. Gone. A grain of sand rolling onto that vast sandy shore. Cunts. But dead cunts. Losing the cunt game of cunt life.'

She twisted and slid down the window, her hands searching for the floor below and instead wrapping around the hilt of the flintlock again. She looked down at it, catching the look of a dead eyed killer in the polished silver.

She wanted to reflect more, reflecting did her good, but the door bounced inwards, like a cannon ball was thrown against it. It made her jump and stand. She backed away from it, holding the empty flintlock up with both hands again. She knew it was empty, but whatever enemy came from behind the locked doors, they were to be none the wiser.

But it was not an enemy, Crag came bursting through the door, ripping the lock free. His eyes were wide and wild and he was lathered in blood and only God knew what else. She lowered the pistol, slightly relieved.

'Oh, thank God!' She whispered and went weak at the knees.

Crag closed the doors behind him and barred it with a chain, locked together with a dagger from his belt. Then he stayed still and turned.

'Crag...' She said, feeling alert seep into her nerves.

Crag twitched upon hearing the name. 'I... told everyone... to stop calling me that!'

She nodded and settled down. 'William... William Storril, what are you doing?'

'The only thing I should have when I saw you come aboard,' he rose his own musket to her, calling her bluff. 'I heard the gunshot. I know it was you firing the only shot you had.'

She trembled with fear, something that oozed in and around her clothing and wrapped her in its cold embrace. 'You're going to kill me...' She said more than she asked.

Crag strode towards her and threw her onto the bed. 'I didn't say that, did I?'

The fear turned to terror and she went to scream, anyone, the men from the black or the Anna Maria men, anyone who could hear a woman being sullied. 'Please!' She repeated more than any word she had used before. 'Please, Crag!'

There was a moment of softness in his expression, then she reached for a splinter of wood and swung it at him. He caught it lazily, as if he expected it and threw it aside. 'Nasty little cunt, aren't you?' He hissed and mounted her. 'I knew from the moment I saw you that you were something special. The Captain never outright told me but I knew! And so, just once, before we die, I will lay with a woman who eats better than my children ever will, even if she will not like it!'

She let out one final scream as she felt his head between her legs, an angry, throbbing heat. The scream was loud and piercing that Crag's eyelids flittered and reached for her mouth. She battered them away under he got a tight hold over her lips. She bit down but he was too far into his primal urges to care. In fact, there was a part of her that thought he liked such pain.

'Oh,' he moaned, using his other hand to rip her undergarments away. 'Yes, waste your energy, you'll be easier to fuck!'

The sound of a cannon went off and the doors flew from the hinges. The chain ripped free, breaking into pieces, along with the sword that was bent apart. Smoke followed and so too did the men from the black. They came in like solid shadows, fearsome and tall, wielding double swords as black as their garbs. They tore through the smoke, spinning them in such a way that dispersed the black mass.

Crag cowered immediately, rolling back onto her. 'No!' He begged. 'Please; not like this, let me pull my britches up at least!'

The men from the black cried out in their hellish voices and drove all four swords into Crag's body. One in the head, one in the throat, one in the belly, and the other in his shriveled phallus. She looked down and saw the points of the maroon pop through Crag's corpse like leaking run offs.

A man from the black pulled Crag off him and let his pants-less body fall to the ground. The other was about to help him but looked at her, both of them sharing a moment of surprise; him clutching at his sabre and her clutching at her chest like a damsel.

Around his eyes were black and so brought out the whites of his eyes, centered by an icy, sky blue. She went to scream again but he leapt on her and held her mouth closed. He got a hand under her and hoisted her out of the room, growling orders to the other man from the black.

When they emerged from the Captain's cabin, the last of the Anna Maria's fighting force either surrendered or had swords thrust through their vitals. A body fell over the stair's railing to their left and landed on its neck with a haunting snap. The man from the black growled happily and nodded up to his comrade who stood at the railing, laughing.

Tears streamed from her face. They would have been accompanied by wailing and sobs but his hand was across her mouth, tying a part of its fabric across it and between her teeth.

Men from the black stood by, laughing at her, droning what she thought to be whistles as they watched the blue eyed one strip her to her undergarments and pushed her forward onto the mess of prisoners.