Living on Writer's Block

The room was silent, but beyond the door, she heard noises. She quickly dropped out of her hammock and pulled her boots on, noting dismally that the sole of her right boot was coming off, and went out the door. The crew were all talking animatedly and hurrying around the ship, and she rushed up to the prow where Samuel was holding onto a rope with his left hand, leaning out over the sea, looking ahead. The sleeves of his usual navy shirt fluttered in the wind, and his black ponytail whipped over his shoulder. He wore his double-breasted blue velvet vest, as usual, and his right hand held the cutlass loosely by his side. She grabbed the rope and pulled herself up on its other side, next to the captain, her bright red skirt swirling around her legs. 

“What is it, sir?”

He glanced over at her. “Enough with the ‘sir’, Red, please. You can just call me Captain. Or Samuel, if you like, as before. But I feel like I’m forty when you call me ‘sir’.”

She rolled her eyes. Not the time, she thought. “Oh, very well, but what’s going on?”

He grinned suddenly. “You said you wanted to do some pirating, right?” She looked where he was now pointing his sword. Between the horizon and the Osprey she saw a merchant ship, large but still only about half the size of the Matron’s. Her eyes sparkled with a bright, keen blue that was very similar to Samuel’s eyes. She looked over at him and grinned. He laughed. “You ready, Lady Redhawk?”

“Never been readier, Captain,” she said, and looked up at the ship again. 

Samuel stared ahead hungrily. He glanced at the lady beside him, and remembered something with a slight jolt. “I just realized, you lost your daggers that day didn’t you?”

“What day, si— er, Captain?”

“The day you escaped from the Matron.”

Her eyes widened in surprise. How had she not realized in the nearly two months she’d been there? “Why, I suppose I did, yes.”

He stuck the sword at his side into the deck and pulled a knife from a sheath on his belt. After hefting it carefully for a moment, he looked up and handed it to her. “I’ll want it back, you know,” he said, his eyes resting on the weapon as her fingers closed over the hilt. “You’ll probably be able to get something better from the mercenaries that merchant is carrying.”

“Mercenaries?” Her eyes went to him interestedly, rubbing the blade of the knife with her thumb before sliding it through the sheath around her hips that had once carried her own dagger. “I didn’t know they did that sort of thing. Guard-duty, I mean.”

“Red, mercenaries will do anything for money,” he said. “Besides, a merchant’s a good catch; they go everywhere. A man can see the world on one of those things,” he said, grinning out at the ship they were chasing. He glanced knowingly at her. “But only if their contracts let them. A pirate ship, on the other hand, can well and truly go anywhere in the world it pleases, and there’s no one to stop it.”

“Except some poor royalty somewhere that bans all pirates and puts a price on the head of any that enters their seas,” Ramona put in. “And then they have a tough time enforcing it.”

Samuel shrugged. “Well, that could certainly put a delay in things, but we still go if we want to.” He smirked, then his gaze shifted skywards to the rigging. Ramona followed his example and her lips parted in the same awe as the day she’d first joined. Around and above them, the crew was leaping among the rigging busily, and the Osprey was quickly gaining on the the merchant ship, and going quicker every second. Their prey soon loomed above them before the lookouts had even noticed the tiny pirate ship bearing down on them. The Osprey veered a little to the side and blew past the merchant on the right, its mast arms bumping along the swollen flanks of its larger target. Ramona gazed up in awe as the ship’s passing sides loomed above her, blotting out the sun and casting a shadow over the small corsair ship. Samuel let go of the rope, plucked his sword up in his left hand, spun around, and grabbed the rope again with his right, looking back over his ship. Ramona looked over at him, and as he began shouting orders, she stepped a little nearer the rope to turn and look over the Osprey’s swarming deck, smiling as she watched the eager crew. 

“Make ready to board!” Samuel bellowed. All over the ship, the corsairs began to whirl grappling hooks around their heads, preparing for the right moment. As Wilhelm expertly twisted the ship around, the oars slid out of their sockets, and the ship began bearing down on the merchant again. They went nearly head-to-head and then dodged neatly out of the way to pass again along the larger ship’s port side, and Ramona held her breath as the crew flung the hooks into the air and caught them on the merchant vessel’s sides. She looked over at Samuel in amazement, but something else caught her eye.

“Um, Samuel?” she said quietly.

“Yes?”

She gestured helplessly to his fingers, where they had actually wrapped around her own instead of around the rope. He raised an eyebrow at their hands, lips tightening, then quickly released her and dropped down onto the deck, stepping toward the side of the ship. He put out an arm and caught a rope, then began pulling himself up, climbing hand over hand, his sword sheathed again. Ramona watched him. He flashed up over the side of the merchant vessel ahead of the majority of his crew. Her heart beat faster as she shifted her gaze to the crew ascending all along the length of the huge vessel, and she grinned wildly.

Flinging herself off the prow, she leapt to an empty rope and began climbing. She was up very quickly, due to her training, but because of the crew’s head start and greater experience climbing at sea she was still up last. She dropped onto the deck, landing in a crouch, her skirt fluttering in soft folds to the deck all around her as her hair swung forward off her shoulder. She saw the crew engaged in fights all over the ship with slovenly-looking fighters wearing random assortments of armor. These must be the mercenaries, she thought, as she straightened up. There was a door under some stairs to her right, and through this there suddenly came a man in a shirt more full of holes than her own clothes were, and carrying a rapier. She turned quickly, slightly startled, putting one hand behind her to the knife in her belt. He saw her and grinned malevolently.