"Most of us think so. The gaff-spar speared him like a spitted chicken, and after he broke the big piece off and gave it to you he just flopped down. We got him below, for burial when we get to shore, 'cause you don't just pitch a dead bocor into the sea if you know what's good for you - but a couple of the men say they can feel a pulse in his wrist, and Lamont says he can't keep his mind on his work because Woefully Fat keeps hummin' real low, though I don't hear nothin'."

Shandy tried to concentrate. He remembered some of these things, vaguely, when Skank described them, and he remembered a sense of desperate urgency about them, but he couldn't now remember why that should be. What he most wanted at the moment was an impossibility - a dry place to sleep.

"That storm," he said. "It was very sudden? There was no shelter we could have taken?"

"We might have been able to run back to Grand Cayman," Skank told him. "Venner was for doing that. You said we had to go on."

"Did I ... say why?"

"You said the storm would get us anyway, and we may as well go on after the Orpheus. Venner said you wanted to because of that girl. You know, Hurwood's daughter."

"Ah!" He was beginning to see some hints of pattern in his concussion-shuffled memories. "What's the date today?"

"I don't know. It's Friday ... and, uh, Sunday's Christmas."

"I see," said Shandy tightly. "Keep reminding me of that, will you? And now that the storm is past, get up as much canvas as you can."

The next morning at dawn they spied the Ascending Orpheus - and there was no disagreement about what to do, for they'd spent all night bailing water out of the Jenny, and in spite of having pulled a tar-smeared sail around under the forward keel, and hammering rice-filled rolls of cloth into the gaps between the strakes, the water was coming in faster every hour, and Shandy doubted that the battered old sloop could hold together long enough to make another landfall. Maximum canvas was crowded on, and the Jenny lurched unevenly across the expanse of blue water toward the ship.

Crouched in the sloop's bow, Shandy peered through the telescope, squinting against the blinding glitter of the morning sun on the waves. "She's suffered," he remarked to the haggard, shivering men around him. "There's spars gone and rigging fouled on the foremast ... but she's still solid. If we do this next hour's work right, there'll be rum and food and dry clothes."

There was a general growl of approval, for most of his men had spent last night laboring over the bilge pumps in the rain, looking forward to the occasional brief break in which to swallow a handful or two of wet biscuit; and the rum cask had come unmoored and broken apart during the storm, filling the hold with the smell of unattainable liquor.

"Did any of our powder stay dry?" Shandy asked.

Skank shrugged. "Maybe."

"Hm. Well, we don't want to wreck the Orpheus anyway." He lowered the telescope. "Assuming our mast doesn't snap off, we ought to be able to cut south and head her off - and then I guess just try to board her."

"That or swim for Jamaica," agreed one ragged, red-eyed young pirate.

"Don't you think he'll try to run when he sees we're after him?" Skank asked.

"Maybe," said Shandy, "though I'll bet we can catch him, even busted up as we are - and anyway, we can't look too formidable." He raised the telescope again. "Well never mind," he said a moment later. "As a matter of fact, he's coming at us."

There was a moment of silence. Then, "Lost some men in that storm, I daresay," commented one of the older men grimly. "Be wantin' replacements."

Skank bit his lip and frowned at Shandy. "Last time you tangled with him he picked you up and dropped you into the ocean. You ... got some reason to think it won't happen that way again?"

Shandy had been pondering that question ever since they had set out from New Providence Island. Blood, he remembered Governor Sawney saying, obviously there's iron in it. Link your blood to the cold iron of the sword. Make the atoms of blood and iron line up the way a compass needle lines up to face north. Or vice versa. It's all relative ...

Shandy grinned, a little sickly in spite of his best efforts. "We'd all better hope so. I'll be at the bittacle - have somebody bring me a saber ... and a hammer and a narrow chisel."

The Orpheus had turned and was charging straight downwind west toward the Jenny, the morning sun behind her casting the shadows of her rigging and masts onto the luminous sails. Shandy kept an eye on her as he worked with the hammer and chisel over the grip of the saber Skank had brought him, and when she was still a hundred yards away he straightened and held the sword up by the blade.

He'd cut away the leather wrapping and half of the wood grip, exposing the iron tang that linked the blade to the pommel-weight, and, just where the heel of a swordsman's hand would press, he had chisel-punched a narrow crack into the metal.

Shandy stood up and leaned on the bittacle pillar, looking down through the glass. "If it should ... go against us here this morning," he said to Skank, who had been staring at him uncomprehendingly for the last several minutes, "get east of him - with the state the Carmichael's in he can no more tack than fly - and try for Jamaica."

"It better not go against us."

Shandy smiled, and somehow it made him look even more tired. "Right." He raised the hammer and brought it down solidly on the bittacle glass, and then he dropped the hammer and fumbled around among the glass shards; a moment later he lifted the compass needle out with bloody fingers. "Get the lads ready with hooks and lines. With luck we'll be able to start boarding before he knows we're trying to be aggressors."

Skank moaned faintly, but nodded and hurried forward.

Shandy carefully inserted the north-pole end of the compass needle into the crack he'd cut in the saber tang, then he crouched and picked up the hammer again and gave the needle a tap to keep it in place.

Shandy carefully slid the doctored saber through his belt, and for a minute after that he just breathed deeply with his eyes shut; then when the Ascending Orpheus jibed sharply in on the Jenny's port flank, putting her in shadow, he snatched up a grappling hook, whirled it a couple of times in a vertical circle and then let it fly up toward the big ship's rail; sunlight glittered on the points at the moment of pause, then the hook dropped onto the rail and gripped.

Tags: Tim Powers Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net