Chapter 169: Did I Do It Right
The cups came down slowly, and the laugh died in the throat of the soldiers.
James was already halfway through the room, three strides before the soldiers could even react and draw their swords.
"Leave none of ’em bastards alive."
His cutlass came across in a flat, vicious sweep, and one soldier got his cup up just in time to catch it. The blade smashed through the clay in his hand, bursting it apart so violently that the broken pieces flew into his fingers and palm.
He screamed and staggered back as blood spilled between them.
Then the room was split into fragments.
The soldiers reached for their blades as the crew charged into the room, and within moments every man was caught in his own fight. James found himself against two soldiers who came at him at once.
Steel crashed against steel, and the force of it jarred James’s arm to the shoulder. The second blade came at his face, and he turned just in time, feeling it tear past his cheek. He answered with a cut of his own, but the other man caught it and drove him back again.
James yielded another step, deflected one blade on his own, and turned it hard into the other man’s stroke. The two swords tangled for half a heartbeat, and James used it to slip his cutlass across the nearer man’s forearm, cutting a shallow line that immediately became red.
Through the noise and iron, Tomás fought by the door.
He looked as though he had all the time in the world, even with two soldiers on him. One came at him in a wild rush while the other tried to get around his side, but Tomás turned the first man’s blade aside and stepped just far enough to keep the second from reaching him.
His lips moved as he murmured words too gentle and too calm to be a curse.
When the first soldier came at him again, Tomás slipped his blade past the man’s guard and drove it cleanly into his chest. He pulled it free at once, and the soldier stumbled back, clutched at the wound, and crumpled to the floor.
Tomás crossed himself, then turned to face the second man.
James had no time to watch what came of it.
He yielded ground beneath the two blades, his boots sliding on wine and blood. Both soldiers struck together, one high and one low, and James caught the two blades in the same sweeping parry, turning them aside before either could reach him.
He counterattacked at once, slipping his cutlass through the first man’s guard to open a thin cut along his arm, then turning into the second man’s blade and drawing a narrow red line across his ribs.
Neither wound was deep, but both men felt them. They hesitated for half a breath, and James used it to drive them back across the room.
There, against the wall, a half-full jug sat there beside them, abandoned in the confusion.
James caught the next stroke on his cutlass and held it there just long enough to keep the second blade from reaching him. With his free hand he snatched up the half-full jug from beside the wall and hurled it at them both.
The clay struck hard between the two soldiers and burst apart, throwing wine and jagged shards across their faces and coats. The soldiers flinched and lost their guard for the same precious instant.
James took the chance.
He drove his cutlass straight through the nearer man’s mouth, punching through teeth and tongue before the blade burst out behind his head. Then he ripped the blade free, and the soldier crashed backward onto the stone in a spray of blood.
The remaining soldier pressed harder, swinging faster in the hope that speed might make up for the skill he lacked. James let him come, yielding ground only when he had to and keeping his blade ready.
The next stroke came as a desperate lunge. The soldier reached too far, his sword cutting empty space as his weight carried him forward. James stepped aside and drove his cutlass up beneath the ribs with both hands, burying the blade deep into his body.
The man’s breath burst out in a wet gasp while blood flooded from his mouth.
James tore the cutlass free, and the soldier staggered two steps before his legs gave way beneath him. He crashed onto the stones in a pool of blood.
Behind him, Milagros’s voice cut through the noise, loud and fierce with the rush of the fight.
James caught only a glimpse of her through the thinning confusion.
She had both hands on her cutlass and was driving it through a soldier’s chest with such force that the man seemed to hang there for a moment. His eyes went wide and empty, and then he slid off the blade and struck the stone.
Then it was over.
Eight men lay across the stone, and the blood and wine washed together through the cracks as neatly as though the floor had been built for the purpose. The cups rolled in slow circles, bumping against dead men one after another until the last of them came to rest.
There was only the ragged breathing of the living and the small, wet noises made by men who had no way to stand up again.
James crossed the room straight for Kit. He dropped hard onto his knees beside him, hard enough that he would feel the bruises later, if later came.
His cutlass slipped from his hand and lay forgotten on the stone.
Up close, Kit was in a worse state than he had expected.
James put a hand flat against his chest and left it there. He did not trust his own voice until he knew what he would find.
Then a pulse, weak and irregular beneath the palm, but there.
"Christ." The word broke in James’s throat. "Christ, lad."
Kit’s eyes cracked open. It was swollen and red, and for a moment he seemed to have forgotten where he was.
Then he found James’s face above him.
"Captain." The word came thick through his split lip, scarcely sounding like one. "That you?"
"Aye."
James slid an arm beneath his shoulders, suddenly careful in a manner his hands were not usually famous for.
"It’s me. I’m here, lad."
Kit’s breath caught painfully between the words, and his fingers twitched against the stone as though they meant to make a fist and had forgotten how.
"Did I do it right, Cap’n?"
He had to stop there and pull another breath into himself. "Kept me head up the whole time. Didn’t let ’em... didn’t let ’em talk shit about the crew. Not once."
James laughed, though there was nothing funny in it. It came out wet and ragged and so completely unguarded that he might as well have laughed his heart straight onto the floor.
"Bloody idiot kid."
He lowered his forehead against Kit’s, not caring about the blood between them or the blood already on either of them.
"Aye, ye did it right. Every bit of it. I’m proud of ye."
Kit’s split lips rose into, under kinder circumstances, might have been called a smile.
Then his eyes closed, and he passed out in James’s arms.