Chapter 230: The Scourge of the Antilles
Across the open waters, the pirate fleet settled back into its blockade formation, ships picking their way through drifting wreckage. Behind them, the smoke of San Felipe climbed black into the sky.
The Grand Dame was near enough for James to hear Kit and Bran fighting across the deck about the battle, as if either of them had beaten the Spaniards single-handed.
"CONQUEROR OF HAVANA STANDS ALONE, LASS!"
"Conqueror o’ nothin’, ye copper-headed pup!"
Behind her, Don Rodrigo raised a thin, delighted toast to some ancient Spanish victory. Roberts’s dry voice informed him that the ship they had just sunk belonged to the very Crown he was drinking to.
The sailors by the Rose’s mainmast had already started digging for the rum, and Cudjoe was on them before the bung came loose.
"Put it back, thirsty bastards."
His voice cut straight through the celebration. "We’re still standin’ this blockade, and I’ll nae have the lot o’ ye three sheets tae the wind when prize comes over that horizon. Job’s nae done till it’s done."
The sailors put the cask back with oddly endearing sulking.
James sat propped against the shattered stump of the rail and let Hobbs go to work.
"Still in there, is it."
Hobbs casually commented while prodding the torn shirt until James hissed through his teeth.
"Aye, good ol’ length o’ oak, third one this day."
He took a deep drink from his bottle, wiped his mouth, then poured what remained straight into the wound without so much as a warning.
James’s whole world went white, and every foul word he knew came out at once, with most of them directed toward Hobbs’s mother.
Hobbs took no notice. He found the buried end with the probe and pulled it free in one steady motion, four good inches of bloodied oak came out with it.
Then he threaded his needle.
"Mind it doesn’t go septic," James managed, mostly from habit.
Hobbs’s needle stopped dead.
He asked as if the word had come aboard from some foreign ship and tracked mud over his clean deck.
"What in Christ’s name is septic?"
"Means gone bad. Poisoned, from the inside."
"Aye, and I’ve a word for that already. It’s called rotten, and I was fixin’ to clean it before some bleedin’ captain started teachin’ me my own trade."
He pulled the next stitch tighter than it needed to be. "Thirty years I’ve kept men’s arms on their bodies, and now you’re handin’ me new Latin for what I’ve been doin’ since before yer mother shagged yer father."
"Just makin’ conversation, Hobbs."
"Make it with yer mouth shut, or I’ll leave this needle crooked and let ye explain to the lasses why yer arm hangs weird from now on."
James shut his mouth.
Speak of the devil, Anne and Milagros arrived together, and whatever either woman had meant to say, neither bothered waiting her turn. They both started on him at once.
"You absolute-"
"-reckless, bird-brained-"
"-cabrón who cannot be trusted with a wheel, a woman, or his own hands-"
"-for ten bloody minutes together!"
Anne finished, planting her hands on her hips and looking him over which concern dressed up as dissatisfaction.
Milagros took his chin in one hand and turned his face toward the sun, checking his eyes in serious inspection.
"You are not allowed to die, hear it?"
She said it as though he had done it specifically to offend her.
"Aye, well."
James grinned through it, wincing as Hobbs drove in the next stitch. "Seemed polite, seein’ as the whole armada went to such trouble arrangin’ it."
"We’ve the wounded to count and the deck to square before Cudjoe has both our hides."
Anne leaned closer, lowering her voice for him alone, though not nearly enough to keep Milagros from hearing every word. "But once that arm’s fit to bear weight again, I mean to ride you till you forget you ever owned a shoulder to begin with, and she’ll be right there holdin’ you down."
Milagros went red from her neck to her ears and, for once, had no sharp answer ready. She merely lifted her chin, haughty as a queen.
"Believe her. I intend to enjoy every second of it."
Then the both of them left, bickering about something else entirely.
Some few more minutes passed, and then the Queen Anne’s Revenge came around in lazy sail and closed near enough, scorched black from stem to stern. She looked as pleased with herself as her captain.
Thatch stood at her wheel, his beard still smoking faintly. There was no sign left of whatever devil had been steering him an hour before.
"CALLOWAY!"
His voice rolled warm and easy across the water. "Put two o’ the bastards on the bottom meself today! What’d ye manage, one fat lass and a wound that’ll have ye weepin’ for yer mammy every time it rains?"
"One lass, aye!"
James shouted back. "But she was the biggest bastard in the whole Armada, Thatch, and I’ll wager she outweighs both yer galleons put together, guns, timber, crew, and all!"
"Bigger don’t mean better! Ask any woman in Nassau!"
"Ask any woman in Nassau about you, and she’ll tell ye to keep yer bloody voice down!"
Thatch roared, delighted with himself beyond reason.
Then he apparently ran out of insults worth hurling across the water, bent at the waist, and slapped his own arse twice in James’s direction.
"That’s my answer to the lot of it!"
He bellowed, still laughing, as the Queen Anne’s Revenge came about and fell away toward her own position.
By then Hobbs had finished the binding, winding the linen tight and securing James’s arm in a rough sling.
"Don’t use that arm."
He collected his instruments. "Not to haul a line, swing a blade, or whatever your ladies got in mind for it. For a week at least."
He went off toward the next man still bleeding without waiting to discover whether James intended to obey.
James remained where Hobbs had left him, with the fleet’s celebration washing on all around, and for one gentle hearbeat allowed himself to do nothing at all.
Then he was rudely interrupted.
⚓ [SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
Quest Complete : The Toll at Havana’s Harbor
Reward : 500 Fate
Reward : Title — [El Azote de las Antillas]
Reward : Ship Perk — [Calloway’s Armada] (Bloody Rose, Black Fortune, Grand Dame)
Five hundred Fate, paid in full.
Balance is now, five hundred and fifty.
I expected this quest to cost me the sum in whichever member of your crew buried you. I find myself pleasantly, if grudgingly, mistaken.
James gave a low whistle.
He turned the words over like a new blade.
"Bit of a mouthful. What’s it actually do, besides look pretty on a bounty notice?"
Spanish merchant crews will strike surrender the moment they recognize you or your ship, sparing everyone the tedious business of a chase. Spanish Armada crews will do the same unless their numbers clearly favor them, in which case they’ll fight you regardless, albeit terrified, and I’ll note the outcome for the record.
"Feels like you sound almost impressed."
I sound the way I always sound. You are simply choosing, as usual, to hear what flatters you.
"And the fleet?"
The Rose, the Dame, and the Fortune fight better together than any of the three manage alone. Coordinated fire, correctly read signals, officers who’ve finally learned to answer the same flag without squinting at it. I hadn’t bothered considering the effect until you began collecting ships the way other men collect debts.
"And whatever I pick up after today?"
The same as the rest. I see no reason to complicate things you’d only ignore regardless.
James laughed outright, short and rough around the pain in his shoulder.
His eyes wandered past his crew and the wreckage drifting back into the blockade, toward the smoking rooftops of Havana and the two forts standing grey and silent over the harbor mouth.
The fight was done.
Now came the days to collect the rewards.