in which they encounter a slave ship
Nov. 9th, 2013 09:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smackenzie“That I will do, yes.” She did not mind that they were out in the open and anyone would see – she knew a few pairs had already vanished into the trees for some privacy – they were not going to do anything, and she did not have to worry about breaking her own code and unintentionally signaling to her crew that it was acceptable for them to do it as well.
“Thank you.” He took her hand and kissed it, and she could not but smile.
He was not a bad man, this priest. He needled her and goaded her and was sarcastic to her as a shield, a defense. He did not want anyone to see how afraid he was and how lost. He had once been a man with a sure path, who had to demonstrate his conviction to his congregation and his fellow faithful. He had not been allowed to look unsure, and just as she had not been able to shake all the training she had received in the Naval Academy and in the Royal Navy – just as she truly was in her heart still a proud captain of an imperial navy and not a pirate at all – he had not been able to shake off the constraints of having to appear as if he knew exactly who he was and exactly what he was doing. She was years out of the king's navy, and she would guess that the priest was only several months. She did not think he had been defrocked even a year.
And she still did not know how it had happened, if he had left or if he had been kicked out, and why either of those things might have occurred. But it did not matter. She would find out or not, she did not care.
“You finished my wine,” she said, picking up the cup from where he had set it down in front of them. She grinned at him.
“I suppose I did. There is rum if you wish.”
“I do wish. Get yourself a cup as well.”
He stood to fetch the drinks and she lay back on the spiky beach grass, her hands behind her head, trying to pick out the constellations she knew and to judge what time it might be from the angle of the moon and the stars. She could figure hours better with an astrolabe, but it was on the ship with Severein, who had refused to disembark on the theory that his instruments and charts would be best protected if he could sleep on top of them.
Maggie chuckled to herself, thinking about her scrawny, semi-competent navigator. He was the best they had and even though Maggie was not inclined to think that what they had was very good, they had captured a merchant ship under his direction and perhaps he might know what he was doing.
She could hear shouts off in the distance, what sounded like anger and the prelude to a fistfight, and sat back up. Could they not control themselves for just a few days? Was the forced leisure on this island making her crew tense? She would ask Doren in the morning what the Cormorant's hold looked like and if she was seaworthy yet, and hopefully they would be able to put out to sea tomorrow and continue their quest for valuable plunder.
The priest returned with the cups, offered her one, and toasted her with his. “To God and gold,” he said, and she laughed.
“I like you, priest,” she said, and he drank his rum and said not a word.
She fell asleep lying half on top of him, as he had requested, and woke up with her face in his neck and his arm across her shoulders. It was a nice feeling. When they were back in Port Doras, she decided, she would take him to bed. She wondered what he was like under the sheets.
Most of the crew seemed to still be asleep, so Maggie walked among them yelling at them to wake and shoving people with her boot when necessary. There was a significant amount of grumbling and complaining and swearing, all of which she ignored, and some time after midday Doren announced that the Cormorant was as sea-worthy as she would ever be, and they could go.
There was again some grumbling and complaining and swearing from the pirates who had quite enjoyed lying around an empty tropical island, until they were reminded of the treasure that lay in front of them and the riches that would soon be theirs.
Less than a week later the lookout spied a new ship, a bit bigger than the Cormorant but seemingly not a military ship – it did not seem to be carrying any cannon, the lookout reported - and flying the flag of a northern country friendly to the Usurper. The Cormorant and the Black Lightnint drew abreast of each other and Bernade swung across to have a quick conversation with Maggie about how to proceed. They would flank this new ship so that it would have no choice but to surrender.
“It might be a useful vessel,” Bernade added. “We should not damage it.”
Orders were relayed to both crews and sails unfurled to catch more wind and propel the two ships closer to their quarry. The new ship was wide in the beam and low in the water, and Maggie could see through her spyglass the men on board hustling to arm themselves and defend their ship and its cargo.
They did not stand a chance. The Cormorant drew up on the starboard side and the Black Lightning came alongside to port, and even though the men on the new ship started firing their pistols in every direction, pirates from two ships swarmed over their decks from both sides and subdued them remarkably quickly.
Maggie gave them the same choice she gave the sailors on every ship she captured – join her crew or be put overboard. This time they all joined, and she stood on the quarterdeck, the feathers of her hat bobbing in the wind, and watched her crew disappear into the bowels of the ship to tally up what they had captured.
She was quite surprised to find out what it was, though.
“They're slavers,” Doren told her, sounding surprised and disgusted. “The hold is full of men and women in chains.”
“We set them free,” added Yuna, her first mate. Yuna was dark-skinned herself and had been kidnapped away from her home and sold into slavery as a young woman. She had turned to piracy when the ship that she and her mistress were on was captured. The pirate captain had held Yuna's mistress for ransom, but Yuna herself was allowed to escape. She had made her way to Port Doras and then to the Black Lightning. Now she looked furious, and Maggie could hardly blame her.
“Did you offer - “
“Most of them wish to join us,” Doren interrupted. “We gave them the option.”
“We cannot take them home. Where are they from?”
“Many places, it turns out. They had all been kidnapped and taken to Merrinport to be, as one of them said, sorted and sold.”
“Where is the captain of this ship? Bring him to me.”
So Doren and Yuna went off to either find him or have someone else do so, and soon a couple of pirates brought the captain to Maggie. His coat was torn and he had lost his hat. She knew that he had accepted her offer to join the crew, which was the smart decision, but he looked defeated. Well, she could not blame him – he had lost his ship and his cargo to pirates, he had been pressed into joining their number, and if he was lucky he would be able to vanish into Port Doras, make his way home, and claim he had been strong-armed into joining them against his will. That was likely the only way he could save face.
“I had a letter of marque from the king of Tanne,” he said in a small voice, as if that made any difference to two ships of lawless pirates. He had no doubt tried to explain that already, to little effect.
“Did you now,” Maggie said. Her voice was cold. “Owning slaves is outlawed in Tanne. What is the king doing protecting slavers?”
“There is money to - “
“No doubt. Well. Your ship is mine, your cargo is mine, and those men and women you were so happy to buy and sell like cattle are now freed. They have chosen to sail with me. Count yourself lucky I do not run you through.” She rested her hand on the hilt of her sword as a warning.
“Red Maggie does not kill those who choose to join her crew.” She glared at him and he swallowed nervously. “Or so I have heard.”
“You heard correctly. But Red Maggie does not generally capture ships packed with human beings to be bought and sold.”
“Why do you - “
She slapped him as hard as she could across the face. His head jerked sideways with the force of it. One of the pirates who had brought him laughed.
“The first inhabited place we come across,” she said, “we will put you and your men ashore. You may tell the king of Tanne that his letter of marque served you not at all, and that for his protection of a slave ship, all ships flying his flag are now in my sights. You may tell your friends that Red Maggie showed mercy and did not hang you from the yardarm, nor did she put you in chains. Take him away and put him to work.” The two pirates did so. The captain did not even protest.
Maggie went off to find Bernade so they could split the newly freed slaves between the Cormorant and the Black Lightning, and then she went to find Yora, the master gunner, to give her a new set of orders.
(Yora had also been kidnapped and sold into slavery, although she had been taken with her family as a small child. Her parents had ended up indentured servants and had eventually bought back their freedom and the freedom of Yora and an older brother. She had an older sister who was still working as a housemaid on a plantation on one of the islands near Port Doras.)
When everything that could be cleared off the slave ship had been so, and after everyone had been sent back to their respective ships, Maggie stood on the gunwale of the Black Lightning and gave orders for Yora to fire the cannon. The Cormorant had carried two guns on either side – they could not do nearly as much damage as the cannon on the Black Lightning, but they could do some.
Ellim handed Maggie a bottle full of rum with a twist of fabric sticking out of it. She lit the fabric with a candle, waited until the flame had burned close to the mouth of the bottle, and flung it over the side of the Black Lightning onto the slave ship's deck. From up in the rigging, pirates threw small alcohol-fueled bombs into the ropes and sails of the slave ship, until it caught fire and both pirate ships had to pull away.
Maggie watched it burn and sink with grim satisfaction. They could have stripped it of every fitting, of anything worth anything, but to take its cargo and sink it was enough.
There was something she had not counted on, however - with the influx of freed slaves, now newly added to the combined crews of the Cormorant and the Black Lightning, the previous crew saw their shares of any booty shrink exponentially. Maggie could not invite nearly two hundred men and women to sign the Articles of Association and become pirates without also offering them a share of future plunder, but neither could she expect her crew to just accept the sudden drop in the size of their own shares. And there had not been enough non-human cargo on the slave ship to make up the difference.
Fights broke out on both ships after only a few hours, after the old crew realized what the unexpected increase in sworn pirates would mean for everyone. Bernade broke up disputes and fistfights and simple arguments on the Cormorant, as did Maggie on the Black Lightning. Floggings were administered. Bernade announced that the floggings would continue until morale improved, and Maggie started to wonder if she wasn't enjoying herself a little too much.
Besides that, there was the question of provisions. The slave ship had not carried nearly enough for all the men and women in the hold, and the provisions currently on the Cormorant and the Black Lightning would not last much longer.
"Find us civilization," Maggie told Severein. "We need to change course."
words: 2126
total words: 15,126
“Thank you.” He took her hand and kissed it, and she could not but smile.
He was not a bad man, this priest. He needled her and goaded her and was sarcastic to her as a shield, a defense. He did not want anyone to see how afraid he was and how lost. He had once been a man with a sure path, who had to demonstrate his conviction to his congregation and his fellow faithful. He had not been allowed to look unsure, and just as she had not been able to shake all the training she had received in the Naval Academy and in the Royal Navy – just as she truly was in her heart still a proud captain of an imperial navy and not a pirate at all – he had not been able to shake off the constraints of having to appear as if he knew exactly who he was and exactly what he was doing. She was years out of the king's navy, and she would guess that the priest was only several months. She did not think he had been defrocked even a year.
And she still did not know how it had happened, if he had left or if he had been kicked out, and why either of those things might have occurred. But it did not matter. She would find out or not, she did not care.
“You finished my wine,” she said, picking up the cup from where he had set it down in front of them. She grinned at him.
“I suppose I did. There is rum if you wish.”
“I do wish. Get yourself a cup as well.”
He stood to fetch the drinks and she lay back on the spiky beach grass, her hands behind her head, trying to pick out the constellations she knew and to judge what time it might be from the angle of the moon and the stars. She could figure hours better with an astrolabe, but it was on the ship with Severein, who had refused to disembark on the theory that his instruments and charts would be best protected if he could sleep on top of them.
Maggie chuckled to herself, thinking about her scrawny, semi-competent navigator. He was the best they had and even though Maggie was not inclined to think that what they had was very good, they had captured a merchant ship under his direction and perhaps he might know what he was doing.
She could hear shouts off in the distance, what sounded like anger and the prelude to a fistfight, and sat back up. Could they not control themselves for just a few days? Was the forced leisure on this island making her crew tense? She would ask Doren in the morning what the Cormorant's hold looked like and if she was seaworthy yet, and hopefully they would be able to put out to sea tomorrow and continue their quest for valuable plunder.
The priest returned with the cups, offered her one, and toasted her with his. “To God and gold,” he said, and she laughed.
“I like you, priest,” she said, and he drank his rum and said not a word.
She fell asleep lying half on top of him, as he had requested, and woke up with her face in his neck and his arm across her shoulders. It was a nice feeling. When they were back in Port Doras, she decided, she would take him to bed. She wondered what he was like under the sheets.
Most of the crew seemed to still be asleep, so Maggie walked among them yelling at them to wake and shoving people with her boot when necessary. There was a significant amount of grumbling and complaining and swearing, all of which she ignored, and some time after midday Doren announced that the Cormorant was as sea-worthy as she would ever be, and they could go.
There was again some grumbling and complaining and swearing from the pirates who had quite enjoyed lying around an empty tropical island, until they were reminded of the treasure that lay in front of them and the riches that would soon be theirs.
Less than a week later the lookout spied a new ship, a bit bigger than the Cormorant but seemingly not a military ship – it did not seem to be carrying any cannon, the lookout reported - and flying the flag of a northern country friendly to the Usurper. The Cormorant and the Black Lightnint drew abreast of each other and Bernade swung across to have a quick conversation with Maggie about how to proceed. They would flank this new ship so that it would have no choice but to surrender.
“It might be a useful vessel,” Bernade added. “We should not damage it.”
Orders were relayed to both crews and sails unfurled to catch more wind and propel the two ships closer to their quarry. The new ship was wide in the beam and low in the water, and Maggie could see through her spyglass the men on board hustling to arm themselves and defend their ship and its cargo.
They did not stand a chance. The Cormorant drew up on the starboard side and the Black Lightning came alongside to port, and even though the men on the new ship started firing their pistols in every direction, pirates from two ships swarmed over their decks from both sides and subdued them remarkably quickly.
Maggie gave them the same choice she gave the sailors on every ship she captured – join her crew or be put overboard. This time they all joined, and she stood on the quarterdeck, the feathers of her hat bobbing in the wind, and watched her crew disappear into the bowels of the ship to tally up what they had captured.
She was quite surprised to find out what it was, though.
“They're slavers,” Doren told her, sounding surprised and disgusted. “The hold is full of men and women in chains.”
“We set them free,” added Yuna, her first mate. Yuna was dark-skinned herself and had been kidnapped away from her home and sold into slavery as a young woman. She had turned to piracy when the ship that she and her mistress were on was captured. The pirate captain had held Yuna's mistress for ransom, but Yuna herself was allowed to escape. She had made her way to Port Doras and then to the Black Lightning. Now she looked furious, and Maggie could hardly blame her.
“Did you offer - “
“Most of them wish to join us,” Doren interrupted. “We gave them the option.”
“We cannot take them home. Where are they from?”
“Many places, it turns out. They had all been kidnapped and taken to Merrinport to be, as one of them said, sorted and sold.”
“Where is the captain of this ship? Bring him to me.”
So Doren and Yuna went off to either find him or have someone else do so, and soon a couple of pirates brought the captain to Maggie. His coat was torn and he had lost his hat. She knew that he had accepted her offer to join the crew, which was the smart decision, but he looked defeated. Well, she could not blame him – he had lost his ship and his cargo to pirates, he had been pressed into joining their number, and if he was lucky he would be able to vanish into Port Doras, make his way home, and claim he had been strong-armed into joining them against his will. That was likely the only way he could save face.
“I had a letter of marque from the king of Tanne,” he said in a small voice, as if that made any difference to two ships of lawless pirates. He had no doubt tried to explain that already, to little effect.
“Did you now,” Maggie said. Her voice was cold. “Owning slaves is outlawed in Tanne. What is the king doing protecting slavers?”
“There is money to - “
“No doubt. Well. Your ship is mine, your cargo is mine, and those men and women you were so happy to buy and sell like cattle are now freed. They have chosen to sail with me. Count yourself lucky I do not run you through.” She rested her hand on the hilt of her sword as a warning.
“Red Maggie does not kill those who choose to join her crew.” She glared at him and he swallowed nervously. “Or so I have heard.”
“You heard correctly. But Red Maggie does not generally capture ships packed with human beings to be bought and sold.”
“Why do you - “
She slapped him as hard as she could across the face. His head jerked sideways with the force of it. One of the pirates who had brought him laughed.
“The first inhabited place we come across,” she said, “we will put you and your men ashore. You may tell the king of Tanne that his letter of marque served you not at all, and that for his protection of a slave ship, all ships flying his flag are now in my sights. You may tell your friends that Red Maggie showed mercy and did not hang you from the yardarm, nor did she put you in chains. Take him away and put him to work.” The two pirates did so. The captain did not even protest.
Maggie went off to find Bernade so they could split the newly freed slaves between the Cormorant and the Black Lightning, and then she went to find Yora, the master gunner, to give her a new set of orders.
(Yora had also been kidnapped and sold into slavery, although she had been taken with her family as a small child. Her parents had ended up indentured servants and had eventually bought back their freedom and the freedom of Yora and an older brother. She had an older sister who was still working as a housemaid on a plantation on one of the islands near Port Doras.)
When everything that could be cleared off the slave ship had been so, and after everyone had been sent back to their respective ships, Maggie stood on the gunwale of the Black Lightning and gave orders for Yora to fire the cannon. The Cormorant had carried two guns on either side – they could not do nearly as much damage as the cannon on the Black Lightning, but they could do some.
Ellim handed Maggie a bottle full of rum with a twist of fabric sticking out of it. She lit the fabric with a candle, waited until the flame had burned close to the mouth of the bottle, and flung it over the side of the Black Lightning onto the slave ship's deck. From up in the rigging, pirates threw small alcohol-fueled bombs into the ropes and sails of the slave ship, until it caught fire and both pirate ships had to pull away.
Maggie watched it burn and sink with grim satisfaction. They could have stripped it of every fitting, of anything worth anything, but to take its cargo and sink it was enough.
There was something she had not counted on, however - with the influx of freed slaves, now newly added to the combined crews of the Cormorant and the Black Lightning, the previous crew saw their shares of any booty shrink exponentially. Maggie could not invite nearly two hundred men and women to sign the Articles of Association and become pirates without also offering them a share of future plunder, but neither could she expect her crew to just accept the sudden drop in the size of their own shares. And there had not been enough non-human cargo on the slave ship to make up the difference.
Fights broke out on both ships after only a few hours, after the old crew realized what the unexpected increase in sworn pirates would mean for everyone. Bernade broke up disputes and fistfights and simple arguments on the Cormorant, as did Maggie on the Black Lightning. Floggings were administered. Bernade announced that the floggings would continue until morale improved, and Maggie started to wonder if she wasn't enjoying herself a little too much.
Besides that, there was the question of provisions. The slave ship had not carried nearly enough for all the men and women in the hold, and the provisions currently on the Cormorant and the Black Lightning would not last much longer.
"Find us civilization," Maggie told Severein. "We need to change course."
words: 2126
total words: 15,126
