|
All hell breaks loose just like in a real movie except this isn’t a real movie, it’s just a pretend story
about some characters that belong to Disney and I don’t make any money from it.
Warning: Ahoy, angst ahead! Violence and blood and treachery. Nastiness and all that.
The Blood of a Pirate
Jacob DeMaurier cursed and ordered the men to being the ship closer to the Serpent Fire. He’d wasted precious time chasing after the navy ship, hunting down a skeleton crew of confused seamen.
Really, he had thought at first, Norrington hadn’t been able to rouse much of a fighting force.
Then he’d realized Norrington was nowhere in sight, and that this ship was a decoy. He couldn’t see Norrington anywhere, but he could see that the fighting was not going well for the Dauntless.
The Interceptor II came about and lined up next to the Serpent Fire. Jacob ordered his men to sink it, without mercy. Many of the pirates were swarming over the deck of the Dauntless, and while Jacob could not get there to help, he could make sure they’d have no ship of their own by the end of the battle.
He looked up and saw three figures climbing up the steep rock face.
“Will,” he said. “And Jack!”
Charles pointed to the cliff. “Nagaraj is after them.” But there was nothing to be done about it. The pirate ship was firing in both directions now.
Matthew threw himself over the rock that jutted out from the water, while Alphonse clung to him from behind.
“You all right?” he gasped.
“I’ve seen better days,” Alphonse said. “Were you injured?”
Matthew shook his head. “Only startled.”
“I lost sight of you. There was a repugnant pirate hacking away at me with his sword. By the time I cut him down, you were gone. Jack yelled to me that you’d gone over the edge.” Alphonse pressed his face against Matthew’s wet shirt. “But you’re all right now.”
“And we have to get back to the ship.”
Elizabeth grasped the plank with both hands and stared down at her husband. She couldn’t quite believe she’d bashed him over the head like that.
It felt good.
Really good.
She looked up to see an evil sneer on the face of the pirate.
“Norrington’s missus? Oh, that’s precious. You really have fallen into bad company, Jack.”
Jack took up a fighting stance and backed away from Nagaraj, toward Will. Nagaraj spun and cut off Jack’s path, without actually turning his back on Will.
Nice footwork, Jack thought. Shame he’s on the other side. He whipped his blade up to parry a thrust. “Nagaraj, you’re outnumbered.”
Nagaraj backed up, looked over his shoulder at Elizabeth and then at Will. “You’re right,” he said, and in a move that was almost too fast to follow, he pulled a blade out from his boot and hurled it.
Jack panicked. Will had thrown the last blade in a fight with Nagaraj. He knew exactly how much that had irked his old captain. Nagaraj prided himself on his knife skills.
Jack’s mind flashed back to years before, one night when a drunken Nagaraj had dragged him out of bed under the light of a full moon.
“Up against the wall, lad. I need some practice, eh?”
Jack remembered the wood of the wall clunking against his head, and the way Nagaraj kicked his feet apart to throw him off balance. His hands were shoved up so his fingers gripped the very edge of a ledge. And then Nagaraj walked ten paces away, spun and threw the first knife. It had ripped the inside seam of Jack’s breeches.
Jacob told Jack that Nagaraj had done the same thing to Charles, right after the lad before him had been sent ashore in disgrace. Nagaraj was always volatile when he lost a Will Turner. He’d been like that before, with Jack, as well. Maybe losing Jack was the reason he was so volatile.
He would do things like that at random, with no warning. Jack remembered the feel of the blade, still later that night, when Nagaraj had dragged him back into the cabin and cut the clothes off him. Cold steel lingering over his skin, the keen edge touching enough to scare, enough to raise goose bumps, enough to feel sharp, but not enough to cut.
Nagaraj had been upset when Jack didn’t get hard. “You’ll have to learn what to like, boy,” he’d snarled before taking Jack from behind.
Jack looked at Will.
Will saw the flash of steel in the sunlight. He thought of the knife he’d thrown at Charles, and the wound Charles had shown him the day before. It was almost healed now. That Okonkwo really was a miracle worker. But this blade was traveling so fast, and it was heavy. It would do far more damage, and there was no way to stop it.
Elizabeth felt the searing heat of the blade before she realized what it was. It burned into her, ripping through her coarse, linen trousers, her pale skin, her red flesh, embedding itself in her thigh.
Hot, she thought at first. Like a brand. Like it was cauterizing the wound as it cut through the very muscle. As hot as a sword Will was forging. It went in so easily, she marvelled. Hot knife through butter.
Then she felt the pain radiating out through her thigh. Intense. Overwhelming, really.
She dropped the plank and her knees buckled.
Will reacted from instinct, not strategy. He didn’t even know if there was anything he could do for Elizabeth. He only knew he couldn’t let her fall. Somehow, her being there was all his fault. He was responsible. And as much as he didn’t love Elizabeth anymore, he’d always respected her, and he’d grown quite close to her since she came to the island. After all, she was Jack’s sister-in-law now.
He leapt to her side, sword clattering to the ground, and caught her before she hit the ground.
Nagaraj laughed. “So, this is your loyal boy, eh? Gives it up for his old girlfriend. Mine would have never done that.”
“Yours gave you up like yesterday’s news, Nagaraj. How did you think we knew you were coming?”
That wiped the smirk off the pirate’s face. “Charles is here? Where? I’ll kill the whelp.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” Jack snarled and raised his sword again.
Will held Elizabeth around the shoulders. She gasped and clutched at his chest wildly. He moved his hand down to the hilt protruding from her thigh. If he pulled it out, he would have to bind it fast or she would bleed to death. If he left it in, the pain would be unbearable.
“Help Jack,” she said, between gulps of air. “He needs you more.”
Will shook his head. But then he looked up and saw that Jack and Nagaraj had started to battle in earnest. The clanging of the steel was frantic. He could help Jack immediately. To help Elizabeth would waste precious time. Then she shrieked and her leg convulsed. Blood spread out fast from the wound. In or out, the knife was going to kill her if Will didn’t act fast.
Will lay Elizabeth down on the ground and ripped his shirt off. He gripped her thigh just above the knife and threw his leg over her body to hold her down. He grabbed the hilt. “This will hurt, but I have to do it,” he gritted out and yanked hard.
Elizabeth saw stars explode on a black background. She was vaguely aware of Will moving her leg, wrapping something around it, the tightness around her thigh. Then she fell back into a blissful loss of consciousness.
Nagaraj slashed away at Jack, egged on by the wench’s screams. But wait, the boy was helping her. Oh, Lord, he ripped the shirt off his back. Off his chest! Nagaraj had trouble keeping his footing. He’d never had a Will Turner with a chest like that.
The first one was leaner, then Richard had been a bit bulkier but without the definition, and Charles had a different shape to him entirely. This chest was magnificent. Nagaraj couldn’t wait to get his hands on it, to see it heave from exertion as it was now, but not from the excitement of battle. He wanted to see it while Will was on his back with his legs spread wide in the air.
Jack did his level best to ignore the expanse of golden skin hovering over Elizabeth. He would have the rest of his life to enjoy that, but only this one chance to kill Nagaraj. The Snake had lost his concentration. Ha, Will Turner will do that to you, Jack thought, and drove his nemesis back to the very edge of the cliff.
Jacob slit the throat of a pirate who had leapt aboard the Interceptor II and was trying to grab Charles. Charles made a sickened face at the brutality of it. He recognized the pirate. He was a burly Irishman who’d come aboard a few months before. Nasty man, he’d had his eye on Charles from day one. Whenever Nagaraj was in a foul mood, he would threaten to send Charles down below to him. Now he lay on the deck with his life oozing out over Charles’ boots.
“You know him?” Jacob panted as wiped his knife on the man’s coat, leaving a thick smear of the blood of a pirate.
Charles only nodded. He had no taste for killing. Not any more.
The roar of the canons shook the entire ship and the Serpent Fire began to list to one side.
“Finally,” Jacob muttered. He spotted Alphonse on the Dauntless, climbing up over the railing with Matthew at his side. They began to hack their way through the attackers with relish.
For a sometime-healer, Matthew had a nasty side to him. His powerful body surged through the ranks of the enemy pirates. He literally tossed as many of them as he could overboard. Jacob grimaced. He was glad he wasn’t one of Norrington’s men. It looked as if Matthew’s warrior training was in full control of his actions today.
He looked over the deck of the sinking Serpent Fire. Where was Norrington? He wasn’t on the navy ship. He didn’t seem to be on the pirate ship. If he were, he would have been on deck, barking orders and bullying people around. Jacob had never seen Norrington flee from a fight.
Norrington shook his head and tried to remember where he was. There was grass under his hands. And rocks. And his head hurt. Someone had hit him on the head. But who?
He glanced over his shoulder in time to see Will Turner, sitting on Elizabeth with a knife in his hand. He lunged toward him.
Jack saw the flash of red as Norrington leapt at Will. Good god, no, Norrington thought Will was putting the knife in, not taking it out!
Nagaraj took advantage of Jack’s momentary lapse of attention. He twisted to the side and lunged so that it was Jack backing up to the brink.
Norrington couldn’t locate his own sword, but he saw Will’s lying on the ground. He reached out for it, grabbed the hilt in his fist. He could see Will wrapping something around Elizabeth’s leg. She was bleeding. She was injured. The bloody knife lay on the ground and Norrington instantly recognized it.
It had an ornate handle, with a serpentine body wrapped around it and a cobra’s head at the top. Nagaraj had taken it out that night in the tavern. Showed it to him. Thrown it across the room and skewered a man’s sleeve to a post. That was Elizabeth’s blood on the knife. Nagaraj had thrown it.
Jack stumbled and risked a quick glance down. He couldn’t see the battle, it was happening too far up the coast. They must have travelled quite a long way on the tops of the cliffs. The waves crashed against the jagged rocks below him, very far below him.
Not good. Definitely not the way he wanted to go.
Norrington gripped Will’s sword tightly and lunged to his feet.
Will tied the knot in the tourniquet and looked around. Elizabeth had passed out, which was for the best, all things considered. Norrington was up, though, and he had Will’s sword in his hand. And he was heading for where Nagaraj and Jack were fighting by the edge of the cliff.
“No,” he shouted and leapt to his feet. He looked around wildly and located Norrington’s sword on the ground. It was a sword Will had made himself, and irony not lost on Will as he snatched it from where it lay and turned toward the fight.
Jack slashed at Nagaraj and nicked his cheek.
Nagaraj roared with rage and hacked at Jack with all his strength.
Will saw it all in slow motion.
The line of blood appearing on the Snake’s cheek.
Norrington stumbling toward the two pirates.
Nagaraj’s face twisted in a grimace of fury.
Jack’s foot slipping on a rock at the very brink.
Nagaraj’s sword coming down over and over while Jack tried to keep his balance.
Jack’s arms wheeling in the air as the rock under his foot broke off.
The rocks below, sharp, rising from the water in deadly spikes.
Jack plunging off the edge of the cliff.
Next: TBC in “The Gaol – TPW 94”
|
