in the deep shadow between the vessels.
‘Give me a hand with this,’ one of them called. ‘It’s bloody heavy.’
His voice came clear through a broken window. As Tom watched, another man joined him. Together, they lifted a strong box and carried it out the door.
The cabin was empty. Tom stretched as far as he could, glad of Aboli’s powerful arms belaying him. He reached through the jagged hole in the glass, careful not to cut his wrist, and undid the latch. He pushed the window open.
‘Let go,’ he whispered to Aboli. He grasped the window sill and hauled himself through. A pile of cushions broke his fall, their covers slit open and their stuffing ripped out in the pirates’ search for valuables.
Aboli passed Tom’s blue sword through the window. Tom buckled it on and checked the priming of his pistols as the others crawled through one by one. By the time they were all in, the cabin was so crowded they could barely move.
A roar of laughter sounded from the quarterdeck above. Tom wondered what was happening.
The door swung open. A pirate stood there. He must have been looting the wardroom, for he carried a fistful of silver spoons in one hand, and a candlestick in the other.
‘What are you doing? This is mine.’ And then, as he took in the strange group assembled there, ‘Who the bloody hell are you?’
There was no room to swing a sword in the cabin. Aboli extended his arm, blade in hand, and ran the pirate through the neck. He dropped to the floor clutching his throat. Blood gurgled through the wound. The spoons and candlestick clattered to the deck.
‘On me, Centaurus!’ Tom ducked through the door out onto the lower deck. It was a scene of utter carnage: men hauling bales of cloth from the hold, tipping out seamen’s chests, spilling precious spices across the planking. Further forward, some had broken open a cask of rum and they were drinking from the bunghole.
None had their weapons in hand. Most didn’t see the men emerging from the cabin, or didn’t realize who they were.
The Centaurus’ boarding party rushed at them. Dorian and Aboli were experienced warriors, veterans of countless fights. Zama and Tula, who had grown up with tales of their father’s wars, fought with the ferocity of young men given their first taste of battle. Alf Wilson and the rest of the crew had followed the Courtneys into more contests than they cared to remember. They knew precisely what they had to do.
The pirates barely realized what was happening to them, before most were felled without a fight. A few tried to protect themselves with whatever came to hand – navigation books, tankards or bales of cloth – but they were cut down swiftly. From the corner of his eye, Tom saw Dorian pressing forward with sharp, precise movements. One of the pirates had a knife in his hand. Dorian disarmed him with a flick of his sword, turned the blade and slid it between his ribs and through the pirate’s heart. With a twist of his wrist, the sword came out cleanly, in time to punch the steel guard into the next man’s face. The man reeled back, and Dorian stepped forward and ran him through.
But a few of the pirates had managed to escape up the forward ladder. ‘Up on deck,’ shouted Tom. Some of the pirates above must have worked out what was happening. If the pirates battened down the hatches, Tom and all his men would be trapped between decks.
Tom shot up the companionway, taking the blood-slicked steps three at a time. A man appeared at the top; Tom drew one of his pistols and shot him left-handed. At that range, he couldn’t miss. The man toppled towards him. Tom sidestepped him, took the last steps in a single bound and landed on the main deck.
With his senses heightened by the rush of battle, he took in the scene at once: the knot of prisoners corralled at the back, surrounded by armed pirates; the captain on his knees, bleeding from his face and arms; and the woman pinned down on her back, skirts spread, with a bearded pirate holding his sword between her thighs.
Tom raised his second pistol and fired. Too quick: the ball went wide off the mark and hit one of the men behind. The pirate captain jerked up. With a snarl of rage, he raised his sword to stab it through the woman beneath him.
Another shot rang out. Dorian had come up beside Tom. Smoke blew from the pistol in his hands; the pirate captain dropped his sword and stumbled back, bleeding from his wrist.
Tom grinned at his brother. ‘Good shot, Dorry.’
‘I was aiming for his heart.’ Dorian jammed the spent pistol in his belt, and swapped his sword back to his right hand. A pirate lunged at him with a pike. Dorian sidestepped the blow, caught the man off balance and lunged with his sword. It took him in the centre of his chest and the blood-smeared point appeared a hand’s length from between his shoulder blades.
Aboli had already cut his way back onto the quarterdeck. Tom followed him up the ladder. Another fierce melee boiled across the ship’s stern. With cries of ‘huzzah’ and ‘Dowager’, the merchant’s crew had turned on their captors. They were unarmed, but the pirates were off-guard. Some had gone to join the looting; others had been too busy watching Legrange toying with the woman. Some of them had put down their weapons, and now they were caught from both sides. Sailors wrestled swords from the pirates, or grappled them so closely they couldn’t bring their weapons into play. Tom moved through the melee, searching eagerly for the pirate captain.
His foot caught on something. His eyes flicked down. It was the woman he’d seen earlier, curled into a ball, holding her torn skirts around her. Nearby, he saw a smouldering brazier sitting on the deck, utterly forgotten as the fighting raged around it.
Even in the heat of battle, Tom felt a spike of alarm. Fire was every sailor’s worst fear – the one thing that could reduce a ship to black ash in minutes.
Aboli had seen it too. He picked up the brazier by one leg and hurled it over the side, onto the pirate ship. Hot coals skittered across her deck. One came to rest against a pile of rope, but with all the uproar aboard the Dowager, no one noticed it.
Tom stood over the woman, threatening off anyone who came near, still scanning the throng for the enemy captain. The men from Centaurus, the crew from the Dowager and the remaining pirates were all locked in mortal combat. More pirates emerged from below deck like rats: they kept coming, fighting with a ferocity he’d rarely seen equalled. Men who had everything to lose.
And then, like a shift in the wind, the pirates started to give way. Space opened in front of Tom, space to lunge and strike. He advanced, cutting down men as they ran from him. For a moment, he didn’t realize why they were running. Then he smelled it. It was not the acrid tang of gunpowder that had stampeded them, but the powerful choking scent of burning wood and tar.
Caught between determined foes and a burning ship, the pirates raced to get back to put out the fire that was sweeping through their own ship. Tom skewered one just as he made to leap from the Dowager’s side. He toppled into the gap between the ships and was crushed between their hulls. Tom looked across. Black smoke billowed out of the Fighting Cock; flames licked over her gunwale and started running up her stays.
‘Cut her loose!’ Tom yelled. If the fire jumped across to the Dowager, they’d all burn and drown. Zama started cutting away the grappling ropes with his boarding axe. Two of the Dowager’s men grabbed cutlasses that had fallen on the deck and joined him.
The flames ran higher. Still the ships remained locked together. Looking up, Tom saw the Dowager’s yardarms caught in the pirate’s
