Raised By Wolves 1 - Brethren (51 page)

Of course, we did not need to return home by winter, as it would not become cold here. And the general mood of those about me was that we would not return poor. They had too many debts, and no money to keep them fed in Port Royal until the next cruise. This sloop was home for many of the buccaneers. They thought of no land as their own. They did not have houses they owned to return to. Here on the ship, they did not have to pay for any of the necessities of life with anything other than their share of the labor.

“How many months of the year do you spend on a ship?” I asked Gaston one afternoon.

He smiled and tousled my hair. “We should trim.”

“That long?”

He chuckled. “Is this another thing that you have failed to think through?”

“Oui.”

“Other than raiding ashore and careening, I have spent close to twenty-two of the last twenty-four months on a ship,” he said.

“That long,” I sighed.

I let him trim my hair back to stubble, for the second time since we had set sail a mere eight weeks before. I knew I had little to complain about. Yet the voyage to Jamaica, which was all I had to compare this with, had come to its end before eight weeks.

As he ran his fingers and a blade next to my scalp, I let myself think of how very much had changed in my life in a mere two months. I had a partner and lover. I was not alone. Despite my current restlessness, I was generally content. Other than the floor constantly moving, and being crammed together such that it was difficult to find a place to stand alone, and the monotony of our diet, and the lack of alcohol and horses, it was little different than any other place I had lived. I laughed to myself, though it was true. Even when I lived as I was accustomed –

in large rooms with large beds, and ready wine, and horses to ride, and all of the other niceties of civilized life amongst the nobility – I had still spent most of any given day sitting about doing nothing or conversing with my associates. In that, life onboard the sloop truly did not differ from life in Florence, Paris, or Vienna.

And of course, such places had been devoid of Gaston. I lolled my head back onto his shoulder and kissed his jaw.

“Have I been complaining? If I have, I am sorry. There is no place that I would rather be than here with you.”

“Liar,” he whispered. “You would rather be someplace with more room and fewer people, with me.”

“Oui, with a door that closed and a bed and tub and servants and…”

He laughed briefly and sobered. “I have forgotten how to live that way. Theodore’s was very strange.”

“Do you find it uncomfortable or merely odd?”

“I do not know. You will laugh, but I am no longer accustomed to living amongst men, if I ever have been.”

Pete was napping almost atop my foot. I could see twelve men from where we sat. I laughed. “I do think I understand your meaning, though. You mean civilized men.”

He smirked, “These are civil.”

“Oui, they are all armed.”

He shrugged. “I understand the order of things here.”

“Will you spend time ashore with me as I have to?”

“Of course. There is no place I would rather be than with you.” He kissed my forehead.

I closed my eyes, and reveled in lying across his lap and feeling the breeze on my scalp.

The night after we took the flute had definitely begun a new phase of our relationship. He was far more receptive to my touch, and he actively participated, though at a distance of sorts, in my obtaining pleasure. Sometimes he would press against me from behind as he had that first night; and other times I would lie upon my back, and he would lie beside me with his head on my shoulder and a leg across my thigh, as I took myself in hand. He never came in contact with my manhood, or allowed me to caress him in a carnal fashion. I was content in this for the time being, as simply having his tacit consent brought me happiness.

Two days after my second sheering, we raised sail on the Flota, as ships popped one by one above the horizon. There were twenty-seven in all: five galleons and twenty-two well-armed merchantmen. They formed a ragged line along our southern horizon, as they beat their way upwind with as much canvas crowded on their yards as they could carry. We were running before a reaching wind, toward them. The Bard and Bradley conferred, and we shot toward the middle of the line and through it; and the Bard did truly begin to sail circles around them, as we hung on the rails and had a good look at each in turn.

I was sure one of the men of war would turn and pursue us, but then I noted two things: the galleons were too fat and big to ever chase our sloop, and thus they posed no danger to us as long as we did not come in range of their guns; and, we were not the only rovers pursuing the fleet. There were three other buccaneer ships following along like sharks.

So we were unmolested as we observed which of the Flota’s vessels sat low in the water, were well-armed, were lagging behind, seemed slow in making a tack, and anything else that might prove noteworthy and help us choose a target. To say they knew of our presence during this activity would have been an understatement. We could see the Spanish officers watching us while we watched them. They were hapless fat sheep trying to swim as fast as they could, while the sharks circled ever closer.

And they were fat ungainly things in the water, too. I now truly appreciated how sleek our sloop was in comparison. Not merely in terms of aesthetics, but also in relation to the function underlying her overall design. The Spanish ships were large and bloated from bow to stern, with towering fore- and aft-castles rising high above the water, as if small houses had been dropped at the front and back of her decks. The North Wind was designed to move swiftly on the water, and therefore she could not carry a large amount of cargo or guns; the galleons were designed for carrying weight, whether cargo or munitions. They were more floating buildings than craft designed to ride the winds. They could carry a great number of cannon, though; even the merchantmen had us outgunned several times over.

Despite the guns, their only hope lay in letting a few sacrificial lambs slow their pursuers while the rest beat their way to safety. In looking at the larger tapestry of the situation, it was a ridiculous notion. There is no true safety on the seas; they could be followed to Havana. But when one considered the speeds, where we sailed, and the exigencies of capturing a ship, it was obvious that if we rovers stopped to engage, it would be more difficult for us to catch the fleet again; and there was always the chance we would lose them until they were at harbor. Thus the ships at the front of the flotilla had the best chance of escaping: if we engaged there, we would become targets for the next ship in line. So it behooved us to pick prey from those in the rear.

However, the ships trailing the rest were the ones they viewed as the most likely to be lost. Since the Spanish would not choose to lose their most precious cargo, the ships lagging behind would not have it. So we did not want the easy pickings at the rear.

Of course, most of the gold was on the galleons, as those were floating fortresses of seven hundred or more tons, over fifty cannon, and at least five hundred men. They would be the real prizes; and yet they were out of reach, not by distance but by magnitude.

So we were tasked with picking the likeliest ship to have cargo we wanted, and waiting for it to become separated enough that we could pick it off without one of its fellows coming to its rescue. This was easier said than done, as all worthwhile things always are.

There were seven merchantmen loosely grouped in the lead, followed by a pair of galleons, including the general’s; then seven more merchantmen, once again loosely bunched, one galleon, five more ships, two more galleons, and the remaining two ships – one of which was trailing badly. The whole fleet took up several miles from front to back and was spread out quite widely, as they were all beating upwind and even disciplined navies do not have ships that tack together. From the middle, we swept swiftly around the back with the wind and then worked our way forward, tacking across their paths, always out of range.

Our deck was a bedlam of men arguing about this or that possibility, all of them staying off the cannon and staying evenly distributed, as there were enough of us to unbalance the ship and the Bard had threatened to start shooting if men did not stay out of the way of the sailors and the yard. Bradley and Striker had been studying every ship as we passed, and Siegfried had been making notes for them. Gaston and I joined the group on the quarterdeck in crossing back and forth to regard our potential prey as we sailed among them.

As we gave the lone galleon a wide berth, I watched her with longing.

“Ah, to dream,” I sighed in French.

Gaston rolled his eyes and snorted. When he spoke, he kept his already-quiet voice pitched for my ears alone. “It could be done. I doubt Bradley has the balls, but it is possible.”

“You think so?”

“They are arrogant, and rightly so with one of those. They think we would never dare. But look how low she sits, and all of her lower gun ports are closed. She is carrying cargo below, a great deal of it, and no cannon. So she only has the upper deck to defend herself with.

Look at the men on deck: most of them are not in uniform; they are passengers. There are so many people on her deck, the guns she does have are probably impeded. In a boarding, the passengers will impede everything.”

Pete was standing with us. “What?”

“How would you take her?” Gaston asked him in English.

“Come In Normal. Sweep Her Poop. Block Her. Hang On Her Flank.”

It was what we had done with the flute, and was the standard buccaneer method of boarding a ship. I could have said the same.

Then Pete added, “Grenadoes. Use Slings.”

This departed from the usual tactics, but I could see his plan. One could kill or drive below a good number of men by lobbing grenadoes onto her decks.

“Then Go Slow.”

Striker joined us, and I realized we had been overheard. “Get as many men on board as possible: not just boarders, but our musketeers as well. And then take her deck by deck until they surrender,” he said.

“Release the rudder once you have the staff, and steer her away from the others. The lead galleon won’t come after if you’ve got this one’s cannon. Even if you haven’t taken the gun decks yet, they wouldn’t dare.”

Bradley was leaning on the rail, chuckling and shaking his head.

“I’m getting old.”

Striker sidled up to him and said seductively, “Look at her. Look how low she sits. She’s just waiting to be liberated from those Spanish bastards. They’ll be telling their grandchildren about us.”

Our captain laughed harder. He looked over his shoulder at Siegfried and then the Bard. His matelot’s eyes gleamed; but his master of sail appeared distraught. Not as much as he had concerning the swine, but not enthusiastic in the least.

“What does she have?” the Bard asked.

I wondered at this until my companions turned as one and studied the galleon’s stern. Despite our somewhat oblique angle, it was evident she had four guns pointed behind her, or at least four gun ports.

“And he’s got enough wind to turn her to get the angle.”

“You’reGettin’ Old Too,” Pete said.

“Nay,” the Bard said sarcastically. “Makes no difference to me. Same as any other ship from where I stand. I can get us on her and under her guns. Then I get to sit here. I don’t have to fight soldiers on her decks.

All I have to do is sail home with the survivors.”

“We also have the two last galleons to deal with,” Siegfried said, somewhat reluctantly: as if he were loathe to mention a sensible thing at the moment.

“Nay,” Striker said and pointed. We could all see that a pair of rovers had taken the straggling ship. One of the galleons had already turned to drop back and give chase. “We will not have much time, but dusk is falling. There will be confusion. If we are lucky, they might not even notice until she leaves the Flota.”

“They won’t notice because of the storm,” the Bard sighed. We all turned to see the great dark clouds cutting across the horizon. I had been so busy studying ships I had not noticed. The wind was becoming wilder.

“All right, then,” Bradley sighed. “Let’s put it to a vote.”

He walked to the front of the quarterdeck and yelled for silence.

Once he had it, he pointed at the galleon we had just passed. There was a simultaneous explosion of laughter and swearing. Once that died down, he outlined the plan of attack. There was less swearing, and many of the men started to grin. When he called for a vote, the ayes far outnumbered the nays. Gaston and I were among the majority.

Once it was decided, we moved quickly. The Bard began our turn, and we dashed to ready weapons and get into place. The four of us stood in the alcove, strapping on belts and baldrics and loading them with pistols and swords.

“I would like the two of you to stay with Pete and me,” Striker said, quite somberly.

“Try and pry me off your arse,” I said.

Pete laughed and slapped my back so hard I was sure he had marked me. Striker was amused. There was a predatory gleam in my matelot’s eye. I compressed my lips into a smile that I had once been told was quite feral. With the experience of the flute behind me, I now knew what to expect, and I was ready.

Striker collected the rest of our usual cabal of eight; and Liam and Otter seemed somewhat surprised by this, as they normally never boarded. Striker explained that we needed them to provide covering fire for the six of us, as we would be boarding first on the stern. I was relieved we would have two of the best marksmen protecting us.

Gaston clasped my shoulder. His eyes were hard. “Stay with me.”

“I will be right behind you,” I said solemnly.

“How are your feet?”

They were still tender at times, but had healed admirably well; and Gaston had pulled the stitches a week before. I did not relish climbing a rope with them, but battle was not about comfort.

“I will not disappoint you.”

“You could not.”

“No matter what stupid thing I do? If I tripped and fell and shot you in the back?” I teased.