Chapter 178: Come Aboard, If Ye Dare

James found the masts behind the quarterdeck, and one glance told him everything he needed to know.

La Golondrina was coming wide around the wreck of her sister ship and keeping clear of every gunport on either side of the Rosario, as if the captain aboard had already worked out exactly where forty-six guns could not reach.

There was only one piece of the old lady that had nobody watching it.

The stern windows, with the bare rail above them.

James and Tomás rushed over for the quarterdeck together. After two men have bled beside each other often enough, they acquire a useful habit of understanding things without discussing them.

James’s voice cracked across the deck. "Stay here and watch the sloop like she’s still got teeth in her! Some wounded beast don’t always know it’s dead yet!"

Kit’s voice came thin and delighted through the last of the smoke.

"Aye, Cap’n! Does that mean I get a second crack at her?"

"It means ye sit still and mind yer own ribs, ye daft article!"

Milagros wheeled on, her face showing genuine outrage. "Ay, cabrón, I’m meant to sit here nursemaiding a wreck while the pair of you go off and do the killing that matters?"

Sam walked over to the loaded guns, "Mind the time lass, ye can plant yer next blade in whatever crawls off her deck. That suit yer pride well enough, or d’ye want it in writin’?"

James was too far away to learn whether that satisfied her.

He was already on the quarterdeck, Tomás half a stride ahead, both men’s boots pounding the planks while the boarding party came up faster than either had expected.

Three grapples had bitten deep into the stern rail, one iron hook in the taffrail itself while the other two had buried themselves in the carved woodwork above the stern windows.

Every rope was drawn tight as a fiddle string down toward the water, where La Golondrina rode close alongside, her timbers groaning against the swell and scrapping low along the Rosario’s hull whenever the sea rolled between them.

Spanish sailors climbed each rope hand over hand, cutlasses clenched sideways between their teeth, their boots scratching desperately for ground against a stern built high and proud above the waterline.

It was a long fall, and a cut rope was no small inconvenience to any man still hanging from it.

Somewhere in the sloop, an officer shouted for them to climb faster, his thin, furious voice fighting with the creak of rope and timber.

Further below, the sea was dark and cold, churned hard by the Rosario’s wake and fouled with wreckage drifting away from Santa Bárbara’s broken hull, the splintered planks in the swell beside bodies, or simply parts of the bodies.

It was a poor piece of water for a man to lose his grip in, and James allowed himself exactly one breath to appreciate that fact before the first Spaniard hauled himself over the rail.

Three men came over together, cutlasses swinging sharply.

The first was broad across the shoulders, with a boarding axe hanging uselessly across his back. He came over hard, one boot skidding on the rail as he hauled himself onto the deck with his cutlass in a wide swing.

James knocked it aside with his crossguard and felt the shock run up through his wrist. The Spaniard recovered quickly, shouldering into him as he tried to bring the blade around again, but James was already stepping forward, crowding the man before there was room for another swing.

Then he stepped inside the man’s reach before the fellow could find his balance again and drove his blade up beneath the ribs. The blade met resistance, then punched through.

The Spaniard folded around the steel with a wet, choking grunt. James tore the blade free before the man had finished hitting the deck. He struck the planks on his side, the boarding axe thumping after him.

"Should’ve stayed home with yer mothers!"

James shouted into the smoke and noise with the effort of wrenching his sword free.

The second was lean, missing half an ear from some older quarrel, and he came at James’s left side just as the first man fell.

James turned, caught the cutlass on his own blade, and the two swords locked hard enough to stop them both. The Spaniard leaned into the bind, teeth bared, trying to force James’s blade aside, but James twisted his wrists and tore the cutlass loose.

The Spaniard’s hand came away red and empty.

Before the man could even think about reaching for it, James drove his own sword through his gut. The blade went in low and came out behind him, and the Spaniard made one small, surprised cry before his knees gave way beneath him.

Meanwhile, Tomás silently dealt with the third.

The youngster coming at him was scarcely more than a boy at all, and his war cry broke halfway through into much closer to a sob.

Tomás turned the wild swing aside with hardly a wasted motion. The boy stumbled past him, tried to recover, and came around again too quickly, his cutlass chopping at empty air before Tomás caught his wrist and turned him aside once more.

He murmured under his breath the whole while, the half prayer and half warning.

When the chance came, Tomás took it cleanly, driving one thrust through the chest. The boy stiffened around the blade, his breath catching as a dark stain spread quickly across his shirt.

He lowered the boy to the deck with care, then straightened and crossed himself once.

All three were still within a breath of one another, blood spreading dark across planks that had been clean an hour before.

Tomás seized the nearest rope and cut it through.

The hemp parted under the full weight of the climbing man, snapping with one sharp crack.

The grapple lost its hold at once, and the men still hanging from it dropped backward together, boots kicking uselessly as the rope whipped free and swung away from the stern. Their cries were swallowed the instant the sea took them.

There was very little time to rejoice before more men came over the rail, their boots slipping across a deck already slick with the blood left by the last wave.

Two came over this time.

The nearer one was grizzled, grey through the beard, and had more caution in him. He did not rush the first stroke, but instead planted his boots, watched Tomás for half a heartbeat, then came in with a short cut that forced Tomás to meet him rather than simply step aside.

The other was dragging a boarding pike. He never found enough room to use it.

James caught the shaft against his forearm, shoved it wide, and stepped in so close that the weapon became nothing but a length of timber trapped uselessly between them. The Spaniard tried to wrench it back, but James drove forward with his shoulder and put his sword through the man’s chest.

The blade punched through the coat and out the back. For a moment the man remained upright against the steel, mouth open, before James tore the blade free and sent him sprawling across the deck.

Tomás turned the greybeard’s cut aside and answered with a thrust beneath the ribs.

The older man twisted with it, trying to take the wound away, but Tomás followed him and drove the blade deeper. The blood dripped over the man’s belt as his strength went out of him.

Then he dropped to his knees, the blood spreading quickly across planks.

James wiped a forearm across his face, and found himself nearly laughing at the sight of it.

"Only two this round? Don’t get stingy with the reinforcements, lads!"

The second grapple met the same fate as the first.

Tomás cut it clean through.

The rope snapped slack, jerking violently through the iron grapple as the men still climbing it lost their support all at once. They fell together, tangled in hemp for one frantic instant, then disappeared into the dark water with hardly enough time between them to cry a scream.

The third grapple brought up only one man.

He was young, and he had the sort of fear on his face that a man needs a few more years to learn how to hide.

He got one boot over the rail before he saw what was waiting for him.

Five of his own shipmates were scattered across the deck, and two pirates had not broken stride through any of it.

He stopped dead with one leg still hanging over the side.

James saw no reason to draw steel on a man who had already defeated himself.

His fist caught the boy square on the jaw, the blow snapping his head sideways hard enough to split the skin inside his lip. Some blood sprang across his teeth, and his boot lost what little ground it had on the rail.

The lad went backward over the rail without managing much of a cry at all.

James shook his knuckles out.

"Manners, costs nothin’ to knock before boardin’ another man’s ship."

Tomás cut the last rope.

With nobody left hanging from it, the rope simply went slack and dropped into the sea.

James took one breath, chest heaving, hands slick with blood. His arm was beginning to ache, and the deck seemed to shift beneath his boots as the galleon rolled against the swell.

Beside him, Tomás crossed himself once more, then his eyes followed James’s across the water.

La Golondrina had nowhere left to go. Every grapple she had thrown now lay cut or slack in the water behind her, and the stern assault was finished with the last of the men who had tried to carry it.

The sloop had only one way to turn now, to a hard fall away from the wind that would swing her bow around for another pass.

It brought her straight across the starboard side.

James watched her swing into it.

At the same time, four of the nine loaded guns still waiting on the larboard side roared together.

Apparently, the wounded beast still had some bite left on her.