Page 137

“Crew of theNightwind! I need you all to listen up, and listen well!” I bellow. Normally Thane would be giving some of these orders but from the way he’s still cradling Sam’s lifeless body, albeit moved out of the way of the action now, I decide to let him be. I just hope he knows to look out for himself, but even if he doesn’t, I’ll be sure to look out for him. Brothers will always have each other’s backs.

“Cruz!” I bark. “Go to the swivel guns and clear the decks of those nearest ships over there. Matisse, you and Lothar keep picking them off with your muskets. Don’t fire unless you get a clear shot.”

“Aye, aye,” they chime, scrambling in different directions.

“Bosun!” I yell, picking up a musket and tossing it to him. “Keep the boat steady, shoot when you can.”

“Aye, cap’n,” he says, catching the rifle and going back to the helm.

“Drakos!” I yell just as a roundshot blasts through the ship, causing a barrel of tar to explode and all of us to hit the decks. I cry out as my shoulder strikes the edge of an iron cleat, then I’m quickly getting to my feet to survey the damage. There is tar and oil everywhere, but the rigging still stands.

“Drakos!” I yell again and he appears beside me, panting, soot marks under his eyes. “Go down below and recruit Sedge, John, and Bart. Lucas needs to stay in his room in the center of the ship, but the other boys, it’s time for them to play. Get them to help Remi and Horse, we need more cannons firing from both sides of the deck now.”

“As you say it,” Drakos complies and starts to run off.

“And when you’re done, join Cruz at the swivel guns!” I yell after him.

He nods at that and disappears below deck.

I look around, trying to figure out the next move. Ed Smith is standing right over there, just a few yards from the ship, and while we’re holding our own and pummeling the devil out of his ship, it’s the other ships that have us in a chokehold. TheNightwindhas never stayed in place and fought an entire fleet before. That’s forty guns against hundreds and those ships are getting closer. No matter what we do, we’ll never be able to outgun them.

We’re not going to win this, I think, and the realization hurts like hell. I always thought that when my time came that I would make peace with it, but there is no peace here. I can’t die at the hands of Ed Smith. I simply won’t allow it. Normally there’s always a way to escape for us Brethren since we’re so particularly hard to kill. Humans assume they shoot or stab you and that’s it. There was even a time when Cruz was captured and taken to the gallows, but he just played dead and when night fell and everyone was gone, he removed himself from the noose and walked away. Complained about a sore neck for a few days, but that was that.

But Ed Smith is one of us. He’s the worst kind of Brethren and he knows exactly how to kill us. If we end up in his hands, each one of us is going to die a horrible death. He will make sure of it. He will torture us for days and he will torture me the most of all.

I’m just glad that Maren isn’t here to see it. That she’s safe in that ocean where she will remain the top predator. I just hope that by some small bit of luck that Smith might take a tumble into the sea. Then he’d surely be torn apart. Oh, how I wish that’s something I could see.

“Looks like I’ll be joining her soon.”

I turn around to see Thane behind me, red-eyed and covered in his wife’s blood. He nods at the ships. “There’s no way we can survive this. Doesn’t matter how blessed we are.”

“We can always outrun them,” I suggest. “We can always put wind in the sails.”

“Aye,” he says with a slow nod. “But don’t you get tired of running sometimes?”

I sigh. “I do. But sometimes I get tired of fighting too.”

We stand beside each other as the cannons blast from below us, as our gunners pick off as many crew as they can, and everything the navy ships fire back deliver twice the impact.

We don’t have much time before theNightwind, our unsinkable ship, finds her grave at the bottom of the sea.

“It’s been nice serving with you, brother,” Thane says to me. “Our father would be proud of you.”

I feel a prickle of tears at the corner of my eye and briefly put my arm around Thane, squeezing him.

“I know he’d be proud of you too,” I say.

Meanwhile on the other ship Ed Smith smiles gleefully at us, awaiting our demise. I abhor that he’s going to see it.

But as I’m thinking that, on the other side of his ship, large black tentacles start rising out of the water.

“Oh my goodness gracious,” Thane mutters.

“Jesus Christ!” I swear. “It’s the Kraken.”

This is exactly what we need right now, though I’d rather the Kraken kill us at this point than Smith.

But when the Kraken brings its giant tentacles down, it brings them down on Smith’s ship, smashing the railing off.