Indebted (working title)

The Message (part 2)

He reached up and grabbed a handhold on the door to pull himself up to a keeling position. He pushed the door all the way open allowing the full force of the storm's hellish rage to pour inside. The rain and wind blasted him and threw his frail body into the door frame, he let out a yelp that the bellow of the gales and the sounds of rain and thunder swallowed up. First, he saw the spouts spinning in the distance and digging into the sea like thick curving fingers sprouting from clouds, and then another dazzling purple flash of light zig-zagged across the sky and, pulled his gaze upward to him. It didn't matter if the sea took him now, he was grateful to see the sky again and he smiled up at it, calling out the names of every god his mind could conjure before suddenly he was interrupted by a bang.

One would be forgiven for mistaking the noise for mere thunder, but as the old man crumpled and slid back against the doorframe and the rain carried bright red ooze away from him, what had happened became clear. Adaeze's calls for the man to wait before going outside had alerted Zian, and he'd just reached the base of the stairs when the man's lifeless body fell onto its side in front of the door's threshold. Zian paused, his eyes landing on a gaping hole in the man's back a wound he immediately recognized as the exit wound of a  pistol. The element of surprise that had allowed Adaeze to reach the hold was gone now, there was no point in dragging this out. Zian raced up the stairs and darted out onto the upper deck. His departure accented with the sounds of musket fire and unsheathing blades.

Others watched as the small cascading puddle of crimson oozed down the stairway, but not Ekon, he sprinted to the stairway, moving to the door so quickly that he slipped on the bloody steps and fell down behind the old man's corpse. Muskets fired a volley at him and Ekan ducked his head behind the dead man. His human shield jolted as and twitched as bullets burrowed into it, sending narrow red guizers shooting into the air. After a few seconds, the shooters stopped to reload and Ekon looked back to see Amobi running towards him. Ekon stood up and together the two of them rushed into the storm. All at once, the hold erupted with screams and battle cries. A mass of hands, feet and sweaty, skinny bodies poured from the doorway and flooded the upper deck. Melody watched them and abandoned his frenzied effort to reload his pistol, tossing it onto the wet floorboards before unsheathing his sword, behind him dozens of deckhands did the same.

"If God wills it I will relinquish this ship to the sea... And to him." Melody said as he raised his sword and pointed it in the direction of the hoard. "but not to you... never to you." he turned to his men and shouted,  "Kill every last one of 'em, and if ya find bear... make it hurt!".

The sensation of rain and wind on Ekon's skin felt foreign now. The pain in his aching underused muscles had been numbed by adrenaline and he felt as though his body was moving autonomously. A young sailor holding a rifle, finished reloading but failed to line up his shot before Ekon tackled him and the two men toppled onto the floor, splashing in the inch-deep water that had pooled onto the deck. They wrestled over the rifle and during the struggle the gun went off, discharging a belch of smoke and fire that sent a musket ball into the calf of another deckhand. The wounded man started to scream but it was interrupted by Amobi colliding with him and forcing all of the air from his lungs in an instant. He landed flat on his back and before he could react Amobi was on him. He grabbed the man's face with one hand and shouted as he rammed his head hard into the floorboards. There was a thud and a loud crack as the impact shattered the back of the sailor's skull. His eyes grew wide, and his lips parted for a final sputtering gasp. That was when Amobi realized... he'd killed someone for the first time.

He stood up and his body jerked forward, puppeteered by the same strange and powerful force that was compelling Ekon. Amobi abhorred violence but now, these inhibitions manifested only as distant shouts in his mind repeating the phrase "What am I doing?! What am I doing?!" over and over again.

Ekon pried the rifle away from the crewman he was fighting and brought the butt down on him. The first strike landed hard against his forehead, and the next, landed just under his chin caving in his throat. Ekon was already exhausted but his feet dragged him forward, further into the fray. Brown bodies flopped backward as blunderbusses and pistols delivered their deadly payloads. Skinny arms and legs flailed in the shallow water tinging it red with streaks of blood from fresh and fatal wounds.

Louis, who'd been wrought with fear of revolts ever since boarding the Almsgiver watched the approaching horde from behind a wall of his fellow crewmen. He found himself plagued by audible reminders of his own cowardice, that somehow rose above the sounds of musket fire and thunder, the sounds of crashing waves and furious screams. Somehow the chaos had not drowned out the chattering of his teeth, the heavy pounding of his heartbeat and the tapping of his feet that called for (or rather begged for) him to run but, Louis knew that there was nowhere to run. Behind him, the stormy sea rose waves and slammed them together like the gnashing jaws of some awful monster, and beyond that, the three tornadoes drew the Almsgiver ever nearer. He was not a soldier, he was barely even fit to call himself a sailor. He clutched the rosary on his neck so tightly that his palm ached, clinging to some desperate hope that God would recognize that he was out of his depth and offer him deliverance, or at least make his death quick.

He thought maybe he could duck into a small crevice or empty room until it was all over, maybe he could wait this thing out and let the older deckhands handle this, after all, they were being paid more than he was for their experience, they should know how to stop this without his help. "No", he thought to himself. If by some miracle he made it through this, he would not want to disappoint captain Melody, from what he'd heard about the man, that was as much of a death sentence as tossing himself into the angry water below. He gripped his sword and marched forward, hoping that something would click and that he'd find some semblance of courage as he made his way into the battle but all he found, as he squeezed through the wall of men and made his way to the front line, was death. An older dirty slave with a scraggly salt and pepper colored beard, lunged at him wielding a rifle like a club. Louis dodged, leaning back so far that his momentum carried him into an ungraceful backward shuffle. He steadied himself just in time to see the old man leaping to strike him with an overhead blow and screeching a terrible almost inhuman screech. He raised his sword to deflect the attack but it was knocked from his hands by the impact. He could feel his entire body shake with panic. "Is this how it ends?" he thought, not by a storm, or the wrath of the captain Melody but a half-starved old man beating him to death with an empty musket. He reached a quivering hand towards his boot to grab at a small knife he'd holstered there but he could see the old slave resetting for another attack.

Louis winced but just before the butt of the rifle made contact, he heard a loud bang that it filled his left ear with searing pain, and then... dull silence. A sensation of heat and a faint haze of gun smoke brushed the skin on his cheek; a bloody porthole replaced the old man's eye and out of it sprayed a spurt of blood speckled with fragments of bone and pink fleshy blobs. The assailant spun and collapsed onto his stomach, his face partially submerged and his final breaths producing crimson-tinged bubbles. Louis looked up to see the tall fat body and red sunburned face of Francoise. In one hand he held his beautiful tri-barreled pistol, and in the other he held a sword, still dripping with a thin mix of blood and rainwater. Louis had never pictured Francoise as a fighter, his duties aboard the Almsgiver seemed to primarily consist of delivering female cargo to Melody's office, but he seemed at home in this chaos. His eyes flickered to the dead man and he smirked with satisfaction.

To his right a two crewman prodded at another slave. His eyes were wild with fear and anger and he rapidly switched his attention between them, holding out his stolen blade to deter an attack. Francoise swung his arm in the slave's direction and fired a led ball through his thigh. He dropped his blade and fell to one side and Francoise's smirk widened into a full grin... as the crewmen ran him through.

"Get up, Louis", Francoise said as he yanked Louis to his feet. "You're missing all the action".