Passenger (Passenger, #1)(13)

He was loath to admit the real reason they had stalked the waters, searching for it. Ironwood wanted the two women, the passengers, who sailed upon it.

The sudden shift of air at his back, the splatter of hot, salty sweat against his skin—Nicholas dove hard to the right, slamming his shoulder into the wood as a tomahawk sliced down behind his head.

The cannon smoke had choked the air from the moment the ships had exchanged broadsides, and the dismal breeze of the day refused to carry it off and clear the field. It was all fruitless fighting now; the result was obviously in his boarding party’s favor. Nicholas tried to find purchase against the ever-growing tide of bodies and blood staining the deck.

The sailor with the tomahawk stalked forward through the chaos of clanging steel and the earsplitting explosions of flintlock pistols firing.

The wood under him bounced as Afton, one of the Challenger’s mates, fell inches from Nicholas, his chest shredded by balls of lead, his face a death mask of outraged disbelief.

Anger roared through Nicholas, heating him at his core as he felt for a weapon. His own flintlock had been fired, and there’d be no reloading it in time. Throwing it would only stun the man, and would be a waste of a damn good pistol at that. Nicholas plucked a knife from a tangle of rigging someone had cut away. A deer-horn handle, ornately carved. His outlook on the situation brightened considerably.

The short, stout sailor with the tomahawk charged toward him screaming, eyes glassy, face gleaming with sweat and soot. Nicholas knew that look, when the burn of bloodlust had set in and you gave yourself over to the pounding rhythm of a good, hard fight.

His right shoulder burned as he lifted his unloaded pistol from his side, pretending to take aim. The gray light caught the muzzle, making it glow in his hands. The seaman drew up short so quickly that his feet nearly slid out from under him. He was close enough for Nicholas to smell him—the acrid sweat, the gunpowder—to see his nostrils flare with surprise. The sailor’s grip on the tomahawk eased, just for a moment, and Nicholas threw the knife. He imagined he could hear the thwack as it pierced the sailor’s meaty neck, and felt some grim satisfaction that he’d hit his mark.

The fight was finally slowing as more of the men realized the fact of their defeat. Bodies began to ache, and powder cartridges emptied; where there had been shouts, there was now a growing silence. The knife was lodged in the side of the sailor’s neck—he must have turned just before it struck. He’d given himself a bad death, drawing the whole business out as he drowned in his own blood. Nicholas leaned over him, instinctively bracing his weight against the swelling sea.

“Sent…down…to…devil”—the sailor’s eyes were narrowed, one last bit of defiance as he choked and hacked—“by—by—a—a shit-sack…negro.”

The last word was accompanied by a fine misting of blood across his waistcoat. The heat beneath Nicholas’s skin evaporated, leaving a perfect, cold diamond of fury in the center of his chest. He had been called far worse, been beaten for simply having been born on the wrong side of the blanket to a woman in chains. Perhaps it was the stark contrast of victory with defeat.

His life now held worth and value. On a ship, it mattered less what your origins were, and more what work you were willing to do; how hard you’d fight for the men around you. Nicholas had decided long ago to keep his eyes on the horizon of the future, rather than look over his shoulder at what he’d left behind.

Only—that expression the sailor wore. The way his snarl had curled the word into something hateful. Nicholas took a firm hold of the knife’s hilt. He breathed in the sour stench of the man’s breath as he leaned over his face.

“By your better, sir,” he said, and drew the blade across the sailor’s throat.

Nicholas had never been one to crow or luxuriate over another man’s demise, but he watched as the last of the color left the sailor’s face and the skin turned a waxy gray.

“That was a far kinder death than I’d have given him.”

Captain Hall stood a short distance behind him, surveying the slowing fight with a filthy rag pressed against his forehead. When he pulled it away to get a better look at Nicholas, blood spurted from a gash over one thick brow.

Nicholas swallowed the stone that had formed in his throat. “Yes, well,” he said. “I’ve never particularly enjoyed viewing a man’s entrails.”

The captain guffawed, and Nicholas cleaned the knife against his breeches as he made his way to the side of the towering man. He knew he was tall himself, broad in the shoulders, strong-bodied after years of hauling lines and cargo, but the captain had seemingly been carved from the rocky shores of Rhode Island.

Nicholas had been in awe of Captain Hall from the moment they met nearly a decade before—the Red Devil, other sailors had called him. Now, only his beard retained some of that original color. The grooves in the long planes of his face were set deeper by the years, yes, and several teeth and fingers had been sacrificed along the way, but Hall kept himself tidy, kept a tight ship, and made sure his crew were fed and well-paid. In their sphere of life, there was hardly better praise to be had.

The captain’s eyes moved over Nicholas with a father’s instinctive concern. He’d spent years trying to break Hall of the habit, but some things truly were impossible feats.

“Not like you to let someone get that close,” Nicholas said, nodding at the cut on his forehead. “Need the surgeon?”