Steel

Jill didn’t have time to ask him to explain. Another roar of thunder sounded, another mass of smoke erupted from the Heart’s Revenge. This time, the Diana was within range, and this time, the longest side of her enemy, and the most cannons, were facing them.

“Get down! Down!” Abe shouted, and everyone fell. Hit the deck, Jill thought, wondering if that was w

here the phrase came from. She curled up against the foremast, arms covering her head. Something exploded, and debris fell.

Another round of cannon fire burst from the other ship, which didn’t make sense to Jill—she’d been paying attention to the Diana’s cannons; she knew how long they took to reload. Then she realized: The Heart’s Revenge had only fired half its cannons in the first round. They fired the other half while reloading the first.

The Diana returned fire almost in the same moment, so that the whole ocean was nothing but thunder, shot whistling overhead, smoke, and the stink of gunpowder. How could anyone see in this? How could anyone even dare to lift their head to see what was going on and decide on the next move?

Or maybe it was like fencing, a duel of move and countermove, only between two ships instead of two people with swords. That she could understand. What she didn’t get here were the moves. This was nothing like parry and riposte. This was about putting yourself in the right place to blow the crap out of the other person, without getting blown up yourself. There were no other defensive moves except to just not be there.

Captain Cooper was so determined to get at the Heart’s Revenge that she’d put the ship in a position to get the crap blown out of it.

The ship heeled over in a sudden change of direction, causing the deck to slant at an unbelievably steep angle. Jill lost her place and rolled, convinced that the whole thing was going to tip over and dump them all in the water. But a wave caught it and set it to rights. No longer huddled by the side, Jill was able to look around.

Instead of dark, weathered wood, several places, including part of the mainmast, now showed pale splinters. It looked like some large animal had gnawed a piece from it and left shreds of splinters hanging out.

And still Cooper hollered at the crew not to back down, not to waver, to keep the helm heaving over, steering them into the maw of those cannons. The Diana shuddered as her own cannons fired a volley in reply. Cannonballs screamed, slicing through the air.

Jill tried to be calm. She tried to imagine herself in a bout, in a quiet gymnasium during the finals of a tournament. There, she could always calm herself, center herself, focus outward, and do what needed to be done, let the skills she’d practiced until they were worn into her muscles come to the fore and guide her.

It didn’t work. She was in the middle of a war of noise and stench.

The best and smartest thing she could do would be to find a place to hide, curl up there as small and out of the way as she could, and wait for it to end. But she didn’t, because she couldn’t think of any place on the ship that would be safe from the thunder, from the pounding of cannonballs that could rip through the thickest wood.

Then there was the screaming.

Members of the crew had fallen. Some of them picked themselves up; others didn’t, but instead writhed and moaned, clutching their heads or arms. Blood spilled from them. Again, blood soaked into the nice clean deck she’d spent so much time scrubbing. Jenks had a gash on his face, but he didn’t seem to notice; he kept going from mast to mast, shouting up at crewmen working the sails, trying to keep the ship moving.

In the middle of the deck, a young sailor named Saul tried to pick himself up, but he couldn’t. Even through the smoke and the haze, Jill could see the bleeding wound in his arm and the splintered bone showing through skin. She didn’t have a job, not in the middle of all this, and she didn’t know what else to do, so she ran to him.

Stumbling to a crouch beside him, she grabbed his good arm and propped him up. “Don’t move. Your arm’s broken.”

He looked at the wounded arm, maybe for the first time, then turned his gaze skyward, wincing. “Oh Jesus!”

“It’s going to be okay, we can go someplace safe, belowdecks.” Away from where the cannons were roaring and the ship was splintering around them. Cannons rumbled on wooden wheels against the deck, sparks flew, the stench of sulfur choked away the good air, and Tennant’s shouting echoed. The deck was roasting, heat radiating from the iron cannons. Many of the men who worked the cannons went shirtless, and their skin gleamed with sweat.

“I fell, fell off the yard. Stupid!” Saul said around gritted teeth.

She had thought of him as just another one of the crew, one of the rough and snarling pirates, barefoot, with worn clothes and a mocking attitude. Close to him, though, seeing his face tense and lined with pain, she saw that he was maybe even as young as her and Henry. They were all young.

Getting him belowdecks might not be the right thing to do, but she couldn’t think of anything better, so she pulled his arm over her shoulder and urged him to his feet.

“You! Girl!” A new voice was shouting at her. She looked back, twisting to see over her shoulder, and there was Emory, the surgeon. Someone had untied him. He had his own injured man, Martin, his face covered with blood, propped up next to him. “Bring him here! Quickly!” He gestured down the steps.

She helped her injured man stumble over to follow Emory into the depths. They took the stairs carefully, Jill trying to balance both her charge and herself while barely being able to see. The lower deck was dark as a cave after the light and noise of the battle.

Emory led them around the steps into a relatively clear space along the prow. There were already two other men lying there, cradling limbs, covered in blood, moaning. A pair of lanterns hung from the beam overhead. They swung on their pegs, throwing dancing shadows over them all, making the scene even stranger.

“Put him down there,” Emory said, depositing his own burden against a bulkhead. The surgeon looked at her and her injured sailor, and frowned. “God, what a mess. You, go back up and bring down anyone else.”

There wasn’t anything like a hospital here, not even a table or a basin of water. She didn’t know what Emory could do to help them. With a sick feeling in her gut, she realized that maybe he couldn’t do anything, and they were bringing the men here to die, out of everyone’s way.

She ran back up and looked for the next injured crewman.

Cooper still yelled orders, commanding the ship to move, to give chase to the Heart’s Revenge, which had now turned, managing to catch a wind that carried it away from the Diana. They’d unfurled sails, speeding their escape. Jill couldn’t tell how badly they’d been damaged, if at all; the other ship seemed perfectly functional. On the other hand, the Diana wasn’t responding to the captain’s orders. It might have been because there wasn’t enough crew standing to carry them out, but that didn’t seem to be the case because there were certainly enough people running around the deck and shouting.

When Jill looked up to the canopy of ropes and sails that was the Diana’s engine, she saw death. Cut and burned lines swung free, useless. Sails drooped from broken yards, slumping across masts and rigging. One of the smaller sails—Jill tried to remember its name, one of the triangular sails tied off to the bowsprit—was still trimmed, spread and ready for action. But it wasn’t enough to move them forward with any speed. It caught the air and sent them slowly downwind.