This installment is intended to be read after prevous post entitled This Wide Sea.
I’m currently writing a pirate-themed fantasy novel titlted The Dread. This week, I thought it might be fun to share a snippet of the novel with my readers and Instagram friends. I’m still in the drafting stages but hope to have a finished manuscript by the end of 2023. To learn more about my career, writing or upcoming releases, visit my social media and website.
Blasted wood and screams and water whipping furious white. The ship bell clanged, despite the fact that the cannon had rocked the Endeavor hard enough to throw every sailor from his bunk.
Arabella peeled herself from the deck. The frenzied bell clamged and clanged, seeming to rebound inside her skull. Boots thundered around her as she whirled, searching for her brother.
“Will? Will?” Her voice cracked. “WILLIAM!”
“I’ve got him, miss!” A black-haired sailor popped onto the quarter deck, hauling Wiliam by the bicep.
Arabella’s stomach dropped. She flew to her brother’s side, hands outstretched. Blood smeared the boy’s forehead, streaking down his cheek. “Oh gods, you’re hurt --”
"I’m fine -- don’t fuss -- I’m --” William squirmed but his face was ashen. Arabella pulled him tight and turned to the sailor.
“Thank you, sir.”
“He’ll be fine,” the sailor shouted over the din. “Scalp wounds bleed something fierce. I’d get below decks if I were --”
A horrible whistle truncated his sentence. A boom and then a fountain of water jettisoned skyward. Arabella shrieked, clinging to William as oceanwater rained and drenched them both. The sailor rushed to the railing.
“A miss!” he crooned. “First must’ve been a lucky shot, the bastards!” He shepherded Arabella toward the stairs. “Get below decks, miss, quickly, quickly!”
“Below decks?” Arabella cried. Somehow trapping herself within the ship’s hull felt like a deathwish.
The sailor leaned close to be heard. “This is an Imperial frigate. A few cannons won’t sink her. Not today. Go, go!”
“TAKE COVER!” bellowed a voice from above. The watchman leaned from the crows-nest, frantically waving his cap.
The whistle-shriek and a cannon -- streaking black -- ripped through rope and tackle. Canvas sagged like fallen laundry, and a scream pierced the air. A boom had splintered, ropes popping; a sailor scrambled to grab purchase on the shroud, a line, anything. Below, his comrades scurried, yelling for a net.
“Wh-what’s happening?” cried Arabella.
“Pirates!” yelled the sailor.
William’s eyes popped wide as silverspoons. “Pirates!?”
Bodily, the sailor shoved Arabella towards the main deck. “Below! Now! Run!”
Pirates. The word stabbed cold through Arabella’s brain. Pirates -- pirates -- no,this can’t be happening -- Gods help us --
Half-dragging William, Arabella flew. Down the gangway, leaping over fallen lines, past three sailors holding their net, screaming for their friend to jump, jump now --
He plummeted--
Just as another cannon roared --
Arabella yelped and ducked. Barely registering if the fallen sailor was safe, she dragged William toward the center of the ship.
Again rang the warning screech. Another water geyser, spray like bullets on her skin.
“RUN OUT THE GUNS!”
“TURN HER ABOUT!”
“ALL HANDS -- ALL HANDS ON DECK!”
Orders ricocheted like gunfire as the Endeavor awoke with purpose and fury. Arabella shoved William toward the main deck.
“Run, William! Run!”
Ahead a man beckoned from a hatch leading below decks. His eyes were wide and white beneath his tricorn. “Here, miss!”
Arabella’s skirts tangled, wet and heavy, around her legs. Safety beckoned from the darkness below. Arabella need only step into it. Yet on the precipice, she slowed, an unbidden force compelling her to turn and to look back.
The world slowed. Foam speckling the air, flying wood like confetti, the sea enraged and white.
Arabella’s gaze lifted to the horizon.
And she saw it.
Like a monster burst from the deep, black and hulking on the waves: a galleon. Hull as dark as pitch, sails proud and full, it crouched broadside. The mainmast was a proud fist against the sky. From it unfurled a black flag.
Arabella’s eyes widened.
A black flag hoisted above a black ship. Black against cerulean blue skies, black as night, black as death.
The name popped into Arabella’s head, pulled from penny pamphlets, barked from citycriers. A name that had risen to gruesome prominence throughout the Empire. The name of the only vessel flying both black sheet and black banner.
She gasped the word like a curse:
“The Dread.”
Light flashed on the galleon’s distant flanks. A thunderclap of ignited powder.
“Below!”
An urgent hand shoved between Arabella’s shoulderblades. Caught off guard, she tripped -- toe catching against the hatch door -- and tumbled down into the hold. Her hands scrambled for purchase. Briefly she grasped the ladder, then only empty air. The hatch fell, and the world closed upon her.
#
Fuzzed black lines and slatted light. Cold dripping onto her forehead. Pain sparking in her ankle.
Arabella’s vision focused. A gray rag hovered over her face, dripping brown water. A gnarled hand moved to reveal a face knotted and dark as driftwood.
“Ah, there she is,” wheezed the old man standing over her. He grinned, revealing two teeth stark in his black maw.
Arabella batted aside the dirty rag. Pressing a hand to her forehead, she stammered: “Wh-what happened?”
“Ye took a right nasty tumble, you did, miss,” said the old man. He slopped the rag into a bucket at his feet. Droplets spattered Arabella’s bodice. Wincing, she rose onto her elbows.
“Ari?” a nervous voice murmured over her shoulder.
Arabella’s heart skittered as memory slammed into her. Cannonfire, pirates -- “William!”
Wide-eyed and pale, her brother knelt at her side. Arabella grasped his knee. The cut on his forehead had stopped bleeding, although red caked his hair. Barrels loomed behind him. Pitch, salt, and spice mingled with sour water.
The hold, she realized. Someone must have carried her to the frigate’s cargo level.
“Your head struck the ladder,” William supplied. “A soldier brought us down here.”
Arabella inspected her own forehead and winced. A goose-egg had formed above her right eye.
William nodded at the old seadog. “Cookie here helped me.”
“I --” Arabella started to thank the seadog, but fear sank like a stone in her belly. “Oh gods, William! The Dread! I saw it” She grabbed her brother’s hands. “I saw the pirate ship!”
“Aye,” growled the cook. “And aptly named, I’d reckon.” He chuckled, the sound creaky as the frigate’s bones. Tapping a finger to his nose, he winked. “Ye’ll notice the quiet? Nary a cannon blast.”
Arabella’s heart surged. “Did we outrun them?”
“Outrun?” The cook’s eyes popped: hard and yellow as cueballs. “Outrun the Dread?” Whee! Gods bones, miss!” He shrilled and the sound whistled through the gaps in his teeth. “No ship outruns the Dread. Nay. Look out yonder.”
As the words left his mouth, darkness bloomed around them. Something blocked the light rippling through the Endeavor’s portholes. As the sunlight faded, Arabella’s spirits sank.
Oh gods no.
The old cook chortled as if watching a street show. Outside, black planks overtook the slate sea. Weathered boards, speckled with salt, then the malignant eye of a cannon barrel. Its soulless glare bored straight into Arabella’s heart.
“Whee - heehee -- there’s no ship afloat can outpace the Dread.” The seadog’s voice pitched like a teakettle. “You’ll meet him now, missy. And maybe yer maker too, eh? -- whee hee!” His wheezing old-man laugh raised every hair on Arabella's neck.
A bone-shaking thud. The Endeavor pitched. Water splashed against the portholes and Arabella scrambled for a handhold as William careened into her.
“What was that?” he gasped, righting himself.
More thuds, followed by shouts overhead.
The cook’s grin stretched taut over his skull. “They’ve rafted ‘longside.”
They’re boarding us. Arabella’s core went cold. Without thought, she shoved William between the crowded barrels.
“Oof! Hey!”
“Hide!”
“But --”
“Hide now!” Arabella kicked him into the small curved slot behind two apple barrels, then lunged for a sheet of spare canvas. Boots thundered far above. “Hurry!”
“You too, missy.” The cook leered at her elbow. Taking the canvas, he nodded at the makeshift hiding spot. “In you go. Nary a peep.”
Arabella’s stomach twisted. She had no desire to entrust her fate to this drunken yellow-toothed lubber; but what choice did she have? She huddled beside William, pulling her skirts tight around her boots. Her corset bit into her ribcage, but the discomfort did not faze her.
With a final wink, the cook dropped the sheeting and disappeared from view.
“All hands!” boomed a distant voice. Arabella nearly leapt out of her skin. “All hands on deck!”
“That’ll be me,” grumbled the cook.
View shrouded by white, Arabella clutched her brother as the cook’s boots receded. She heard the dull thump of a hatch, then Arabella and William were alone with only their hammering hearts. Brother and sister exchanged one wide-eyed look.
A thud overhead -- William jumped. Arabella grabbed his hand with both her own. Don’t make a sound, her eyes begged. Fear crawled like spiders over her skin.
Voices, shouts, one loud doglike laugh. Heavy boots pounded over their heads as men traversed the decks. The Endeavor sloshed -- Arabella’s stomach with it -- with the redistribution of weight.
William, she repeated her brother’s name like a prayer. Just protect William…
A whistle pierced Arabella’s panic. High, long, and dignified. A captain’s whistle.
Arabella and William exchanged a bewildered glance. Did pirates salute their captains?
The cacophony overhead calmed. A heartbeat of silence passed; Arabella heard only William’s breathing.
A deep, male voice murmured. Arabella strained to catch the words but could not identify or distinguish anything concrete.
The hatch banged open. Light poured into the cargo hold, bright against their canvas shelter. Hands pressed to her mouth, Arabella willed herself still, willed herself silent, even as William trembled with round panicked eyes, even as bootsteps clambered down the ladder.
“Search every corner!” A voice boomed through the hold, and it was all Arabella could do not to yelp. Arabella’s eyes met William’s. She clutched his arm. Gods protect us. Please, please --
The canvas snapped -- light flooded their hiding place. Before Arabella could scream, she was hauled to her feet.
A tattooed face leered next to hers. “Two below, Cap’n! A girl and a whelp of a boy!”
#
Blinded by brightness, Arabella’s eyes smarted tears. She saw only searing white as she jerked against the pirate’s grip. One hand straggled free -- but her captor snatched her black hair.
“Let me go!” shrieked Arabella.
“Quiet, bitch!”
A shove drove Arabella to the deck. Pain rang through her knees. Her vision swam.
White figures molded into huddled shapes that further solidified into men, stripped of their blue coats. Arabella gasped. The Endeavor’s crew knelt along the gangway, hands bound and heads bowed. Behind them stood an army of men. Muskets, pistols, machetes brandished. One blade dripped red.
William! Arabella turned, only to have her hair yanked so severely that stars danced before her eyes.
“At ease, Bilson,” a voice barked.
A pair of boots stepped into Arabella’s vision. As she stared at the steel-capped toes, her heart sank. Her gaze traveled to a black belt festooned with tarnished coins -- up the velvet waistcoat, red as spilt blood -- to a bandolier jagged with knives -- and finally to a face.
A face borne from seamen’s yarns.
The pirate’s trim black beard split into a cruel grin. One gold incisor winked. He was chiseled and bronzed by decades of sun with eyes as cold as the surrounding sea. Arabella’s blood thundered in her ears. The pirate’s boots creaked as he knelt bringing them face-to-face. An austere baritone, cultured as any Imperial schoolboy, rolled over her:
“Miss Windcroft, I presume?”
Eye to eye with the rogue, Arabella felt her spine go soft. The pirate captain’s left eye was blue as baywater, pure and vivid. But the right was blighted: a veil of white obscured its pupil. Silvereye. The name, whispered in ports and screamed from pamphlets, popped into Arabella's mind.
Jaryx Silvereye, captain of the pirate vessel Dread, knelt before her. Sea salt encrusted his gold belt buckle, dusted the toes of his boots. One hand rested on his pistol as he assessed her, slowly. His smile uncoiled like a snake.
"I've searched this wide sea for you, lass. And here you are."
Thank you so much for reading and supporting my creativity.
My book Scythe and Pen, a grimdark Jazz-Age retelling of the Hades and Persephone legend, releases this fall from Counterpoise Press.
Ooh, I'm intrigued!