The Dust of 100 Dogs - A. S. King [57]
With no time to reflect, she moved on to her next victim, and then the next, making each one dead as if she had done it a thousand times before. Time twisted—into the same sort of shock-induced nothingness as when the Roundheads razed her valley or when the Frenchman had found her in the cave. She felt like an animal. She felt as big as the fires of hell, fueled by everything she’d ever suffered.
The brig began to free itself from them and Foley led the remaining crew to the ropes and ordered them to board. With a roar, Emer jumped from rope to rope until she found herself on board the pirate ship, surrounded by enemy sailors all with the Frenchman’s face.
She’d lost her cutlass, and so she pulled a dagger from her boot and the pistol from her pocket. Her left hand brought the pistol butt down on the enemy’s skull as her right hand stuck him forcefully with the blade. Only once did she find herself in trouble, her dagger still stuck in one man as another approached with an axe. Foley appeared and struck the man on the forehead with his cutlass. Emer grabbed the pirate’s axe and continued to fight, killing close to ten men by herself, until the brig finally surrendered. Foley ordered his crew back to the ship. Emer walked slowly, feeling a bit dizzy, over the dead. One man had a fine patch box on his belt and she squatted to retrieve it.
When she got back to their ship, the crew had already begun to toss the dead overboard and wash down the deck. The pirate brig bobbed dangerously close, and Emer wondered who would sail it. They had lost too many crew. There were barely enough sailors to take the fluyte to Martinique now, let alone sail the new ship behind it.
Foley had disappeared into his quarters, returning with a victory cask of quality rum and three unbloodied sailors. He ordered the men to disengage the fluyte from the brig and drop anchor. After passing a rum-filled ladle through the crew a few times, Foley asked the three men to stand on deck. He fetched a whip.
“These men are cowards,” he said. “More than that, they hid while a woman fought for them!” The men looked surprised, and Emer tried to hide her face and blend in.
“What am I doing wasting food on your useless bellies?” he asked them.
Some of the crew looked around leeringly. Emer looked at her boots.
“You, woman!” Foley called, “Come here and tell us where you learned to fight so bravely!”
Emer continued to look at her boots. “Woman!” he ordered one last time, and Emer moved slowly through the remaining crew and took her place beside the captain. He handed her the cask of rum and she drank from it. Feeling sick from a mix of approaching drunkenness, embarrassment, fear, and exhaustion, Emer could do nothing but lean wearily on the nearest crate.
“I’ll have her first!” a sailor called out. “I’ll have her next!” another answered.
Foley banged his fist against the crate and began to scream at his crew. “Shut up, you idiots! She just saved our lives, she did! Have some bloody respect!”
“She didn’t save my life, sir,” someone answered.
“Right. Who said that? You. You in the back there. Come forward.” A large man walked forward, still smiling. “Woman, kill him.”
Emer still stared at the deck.
“Woman, do as I say.”
“Captain, sir. With all due respect, we haven’t enough men to sail these two ships to Martinique. I cannot kill crew that we still need.”
The Captain nodded his head, seeming to agree. Then he pulled a loaded pistol from his waist and shot the man where he stood. The crew fell silent and the three cowards went stiff.
He said to Emer, “You have good sense, but no honor.” He turned to the cowards. “You three! Go clean that brig! I want it tip-top, sails and all, by tomorrow morning or you will all join him—” he motioned with his nose “—in Davy Jones’s locker. Men! Lower the rowboats.