The gun went off, the sound loud in the confined space, her heart seemed to stop, beside her an earthenware pot shattered. He had missed. In the second it took her to realise she was still alive, Street raised his hand wrapped around a long-barrel pistol. The man took the shot in the face, falling back, dead before he hit the deck as Clemence, sickened, reeled back with a sob of terror, her vision filled with the image of what the bullet had done to human features. That had been a man. That had almost been her.
Then there was a scream, lost in a tremendous crashing, the sun vanished and the whole mainmast of the decoy ship began to fall. Clemence ducked away from Street’s hand, dived through the door and saw Nathan in the stern as the mast came down between them.
Clemence’s slight figure was lost in the descending mass of spars and canvas. Nathan began to move forward, parrying a descending sword. ‘Hulme!’ he shouted into the face of the lieutenant wielding the weapon.
The man pulled the stroke. ‘Sir!’
‘Pass the word, there are captives from the hold fighting on our side.’ He raised his pistol, fired and a man about to stab a midshipman fell off the rail with a scream. ‘I’m going forward.’
‘You’re going to hell.’ It was Cutler, blood dripping down his face, his cutlass in his fist. ‘You bloody spy.’ He gestured with one hand, beckoning Nathan forward like an alley bruiser with a victim. ‘Come on and die, Stanier.’
Nathan had no loaded weapons left, his cutlass had broken off five minutes before as he sliced at a pirate and hit a cannon on the down stroke.
‘Sir!’ Hulme was holding out his own sword.
‘Thanks, but I’ve no time for this.’ The dagger came out of its sheath as though it were oiled and his eyes were still locked with the first mate’s when the blade thudded into the man’s chest.
Nathan yanked it out and was running before the big body collapsed on to the deck, dodging through the knots of fighting men. The fallen mast blocked one end of the deck from the other as effectively as a wall—a shifting, treacherous wall full of traps and tangles. He turned aside, swung out into the rigging and began to climb.
The pain flashing across his back was like fire as he reached and stretched but he kept going, heading for the ropes dangling from the first spar. He couldn’t see Clemence, but he could see McTiernan, cold as ice, his blade cutting down men all around him.
Then a scarecrow of a man pushed his way through to confront the captain. What he was yelling, Nathan couldn’t hear as he climbed, bullets flying past his ears, but he saw the contemptuous ease with which McTiernan felled him with a sideways sweep of his cutlass, raised the weapon for the death blow.
And out of the smoke and confusion Clemence appeared, a broken spar in her hands. She swung it, even as Nathan shouted her name, and McTiernan’s blade stuck into the wood. The man yanked it towards him and she went with it, into his lethal embrace.
He was still below the dangling rope. Nathan jumped, reaching with a yell of pain as the wounds on his back split open, but he had it, swinging across the barrier of the fallen mast. At the height of the swing he let go and hit Sea Scorpion’s limp foresail, one hand scrabbling for a handhold, the other slicing into the canvas with his dagger. The weapon held him for a moment and then began to cut down. All he could do was hang on, trying to control his descent with his feet as he slid towards the deck.
Below him was a blur of movement, but he could hear Clemence screaming defiance at McTiernan, and then he saw her, her hands locked around the man’s sword hand with desperate strength, while he shook her back and forth like a terrier with a rat.
Nathan landed, staggering, behind them and launched himself at McTiernan’s back just as the man swung Clemence round, taking Nathan off his feet. He seized her as he fell. ‘Let go!’ She fell with him and he dragged her up and behind him, turning to face the pirate with the realisation that the only weapon he held was one small dagger and the man was too close for a throw.
‘I’m going to slice you open and drag your guts out in front of your eyes,’ McTiernan hissed, lowering his cutlass to weave a dizzying pattern.
‘Clemence, run.’
‘No.’ She edged further round and he realised that she was effectively trapped. If McTiernan took him, she had no escape.
The man lunged, the point of the weapon slicing through his shirt, across his belly like a whiplash. Nathan recoiled back, shifting his balance, searching for an opening, aware that if he had to, he could take the blade in his body to give Clemence a chance to get free.
‘Stanier!’ It was Melville.
Nathan looked up in time to catch the thrown sword and drive McTiernan back with one slashing stroke. He took Clemence’s arm and almost hurled her through the opening.
‘Melville! Catch!’ There was no time for more as McTiernan leapt forward with a roar, Nathan’s foot slid on the blood-soaked deck and he went down, flat on his back.
‘Nathan!’ Clemence bit, screamed, struggled, but the burly man in the blue uniform simply wrapped his arms round her, hauled her to the side and thrust her at a marine.
‘Get him below. Guard him.’
She did not make it easy, and the marine, confused about exactly who he had got hold of, was not gentle. There was a sickening moment when she hung over the gap between the two ships as they ground together and then more hands took her, bundled her below, thrust her into a cabin. She heard the lock turn and hurled herself at the door, hammering at the panels. ‘Nathan!’
The explosion hit her before she heard it. A great blow, like a hurricane striking, then the side of the cabin blew in, at first very slowly, as if in a dream, and then, as the noise came, with a thundering crash. Something hit her head, she was aware she was falling, then, nothing.
‘Miss Clemence! Miss Clemence, wake up do, miss!’
Eliza? She must have overslept; Papa would be impatient if she was late for breakfast. Clemence made an effort, then realised that the drum beat thudding through her was a monumental headache.
‘Eliza?’ She managed to open her eyes a crack. There was the familiar face of her maid, her face contorted with worry. Perhaps she was ill. But she was never ill. Something was wrong.