Chapter XXII - Flight
Captain Kidd was fuming.
"It's gone past nine now!" he roared, stomping back
and forth across the deck. "What did they do, decide to put it off until
the storm hits?! They're bloody mad!"
"'Scuse me, sah, but is it at all possible they're
just on a different clock'n us...?" Thunderbird said desperately.
"IDIOT! Don't you know anything? A true pirate always
arrives on the dot no matter whose clock is doin' the countin'. It's in
the rules! And you'd be hard pressed to find men who obey the rules as
closely as these!"
"We been stood up, sah?"
"Stood up indeed. Take the men off their
watch; there's nothing for them for tonight."
"Aye, sah."
Thunderbird's pocketwatch struck 9:17.
And it was then that there came a sound very much
like the sky igniting.
The crew of the Queen Anne's Revenge looked
up away from the cliff's edge where their opponent's arrival had been awaited,
in time to blind themselves by the brilliant white light pluming up from
the mountain top. It streaked out in bright trails, lighting up the inlet
like day.
There were screams that arced out with them, spiraling
and tearing through the air like a blunt blade through cloth, reverberating
against the cliff walls. Horrible screams like the sounds of damned souls,
shrill enough to deafen, one after another as the light spilled out.
The light spilled into other colors; blood reds
and fiery blues, crackling and smoking. Screaming balls of orange flame
streamed down from above and hissed into nothing in the water; struck the
deck and burst, spreading to the ropes and canvas and the very wood of
the hull.
"In God's name!" Kidd bellowed, shielding his eyes.
"What the--" And he stopped, for his eyes had landed upon a small shadowed
spot at the center of the brilliance, the light illuminating only the very
edges of his features; standing tall, hair waving about his ducked head,
with two guns bared by arms crossed over his chest in all the solemnity
of in angel in prayer...
"No..." Kidd murmured.
The figure spread his arms wide, and from his back
sprouted two enormous apertures, easily twice his size and adorned with
bright, rainbowed feathers.
The figure pointed one of his guns. Slowly. It was
a painstaking action done with great care, movement so slow it was almost
inperceptible, and even the flare of the light as the hammer struck and
the sharp bang as it fired was lost among the heaven fire.
A few moments later, Kidd felt something sing past
his ear, followed shortly by a faltering cry of pain, and a heavy thud
as Thunderbird fell to the deck with blood spewing from a bullet wound
in his head.
The winged figure tossed the used pistol aside,
and raised the other up over his head. And his wings ignited into flames,
flaring up like the headiest bonfire, all blue and green flame. Around
him the lights intensified, filling up the entire western sky. The entire
crew aboard Kidd's ship recoiled to protect their eyes, barely having time
to see the figure leap into the air beyond the cliff's edge, and down,
down, down, flame flying up all around him.
Hardly anyone noticing he was swinging down on a
rope.
He landed hard on his feet, and as he did so his
wings shattered around him, spiraling off into little balls of flame that
ignited and scarred everything they touched, while the man himself remained
unscathed. Overhead, the last of the streams of light drowned out and fell
forward, bursting into unquenchable fire wherever they landed, while the
sky above grew dark once more.
He stood up straight, flicking a beaded strand of
hair back behind his shoulder.
Foolishly, one of Kidd's sailors started toward
him, sword drawn.
The boy was dead before he hit the floor.
Kidd choked back his own idiotic stammerings he
wished desperately to utter, and tried to look composed. Around him, his
crewmen were desperately trying to stamp out the flames raging across the
deck.
"Well," he said, as the dark figure paced back and
forth over the area of the deck that had by some instinct been cleared
away for him, "this certainly is a change of pace for you, Jack."
His expressioned hardened. "Are you alone?"
Jack Sparrow laughed a very uncharacteristic, sardonic
laugh, and kept pacing. Always with his eyes fixed on the assembled, like
a large predator. "To invoke the words of an old friend of ours..." He
swept a pointing finger around the crowd. "My men are here. I am here.
But soon you will not be here."
Far above on the cliff plateau...
"Excellent delivery. Excellent," Westley murmured
to himself, watching with absolute pride of the sort always beared by a
teacher witnessing a successful student. "Shakespearian to a tee. Why are
the most marvelous actors the ones that never approach the stage?"
"I liked mine better," Fezzik said after a bit of
deliberation.
"Oh, yours was good too, Fezzik."
Kidd was aware that the laughter wasn't doing much
good, but he tried it anyway. "It's the funniest thing, Jack: I thought
I killed you back in Bombay." His face froze. "Unless that was the double...
Who was that, anyway? Was it the girl?"
"It was me," Jack said, with a smile.
"Indeed? And how many more left of you until you're
finally dead?"
"It doesn't matter how many of me you kill, Bill.
You'll never be rid of Jack Sparrow, no matter what you do. I'm just a
part of what y'call life. I'm the antithesis to your thesis, I'm the other
half of the coin, I'm what's always gonna block your way." Jack's hand
went to the cutlass buckled to his belt. "And I'll never stop hunting
you!"
"To your arms, men!" Kidd bellowed to his crew.
Or at least, that's what he tried to say. He was
cut off somewhere around the second syllable by a whirling cannon ball
colliding with the hull beneath his feet, tearing through wood like paper.
Kidd was all but knocked off his feet, clinging desperately to the side
railing. He caught the briefest of glimpses of a dark outline far off in
the fog by the cliff's edge, small lantern fires burning in the depths
of its windows, before he spun around frantically and yelled to his crew.
"BATTLE STATIONS!"
A rush of air overhead. Kidd looked up in time to
see the silvery metal of a grapnel hook swing by and wound itself firmly
around the foremast. Then another, and another. He followed the rope lines
back up toward the cliff's peak, but his eyes were drawn instead to the
figures using them to swing down.
A sudden chill to his right, the sort of intuition
gained with experience and no sort of extra senses, caused Kidd to spin
around in time to block an opponent's sword swing.
He squinted at the figure.
"Jack?"
"Almost," said Delphine.
Will remembered the old sailors of Port Royal speaking
of the sea as a living creature. It thought and spoke to those that knew
how to hear it. It gave and it took. It took and not always gave. It played
for high stakes and you never knew when the life at risk was your own.
But this was a different kind of life. The sea was
breathing and quaking with a pulse of its own. It boiled red hot and churned
up the fog laid upon it like the skin of a soup, twisting it away so that
the water lay bare, swirling and sucking at the Black Pearl's hull
as Will directed the ship ever closer to her adversary.
"Be ready to dock!" he shouted to his crew, over
a last hail of cannon fire. They'd been instructed to wound, not to kill,
the great black fortress ship that lay beyond them, and this was turning
into an easy task. The Queen Anne Revenge's hull took her injuries
like the smallest of bruises, hardly reflecting on her smouldering surface.
The fire was being far more successful, but as the water kicked up and
splattered the decks the fire was fighting a losing battle against a superior
element.
They were up alongside the ship now, a small peon
in comparison to the Q.A.R.'s size, yet so upclose it could be seen that
while the older ship might be bigger, stronger, and faster in all respects,
she was a rough-hewn fragment of coal, while her sister was a perfect black
diamond.
"Grapnels!" Will commanded. At this order, his crewmen
took up the silvery hooks in their hands, swinging in a uniform circular
motion that had taken an entire afternoon of practice to finally get right,
and then let them go to sail upwards and latch onto the taller ship's railing.
"Come on, then!"
No sooner had he said it than his hand landed on
the shoulder of the little cabin girl.
"Not you, Trinity."
"I'm going to fight!" she said fiercely. She held
up a sword nearly as large as she was.
"No, you have to stay alive."
"Better dead than a coward!"
He discovered with some amazement that she meant
it, every word. He bowed his head with reluctance, and then kissed her
forehead against her protests.
"Gerroff! Don'tcha have a fiancee?"
"That was a long time ago in waters far, far away,"
Will said with a smile. "In a fake life that meant absolutely nothing."
"This life'll mean nothin' if y'don't get
goin'!"
"I think you may be right. Let's go."
She pushed past him, grabbing onto the grapnel rope
with both arms to start climbing. Will began to follow after her and hesitated,
touching first the handle of his rapier and then the flat disc in his waistcoat
pocket. Yes, it was still there.
He began to ascend.
Kidd pushed the Jackal's cutlass away with grunt.
"It was you back at Bombay, wasn't it?"
"I dunno wotcher talkin' about," Delphine shot back.
"Don't play dumb!" Kidd roared, swinging the blade
overhand so swiftly that the girl barely had time to duck to the left.
His sword instead clanked down upon a different sword, at the end of which
the Baron Munchausen, casually smoking his pipe.
Upon reaching eye contact with Kidd, Munchausen
removed the pipe from his mouth, blew a smoke ring, and said, "Why not
try fighting someone of your own level?"
Kidd seethed. "Maybe if I kill you you'll stay dead
this time!"
Munchausen nodded cordially. "There's always that
hope, isn't there?"
Behind the two, the Jackal was climbing to her feet.
"This is my fight, baron!"
"I have orders to obey," Munchausen murmured, blocking
Kidd's strike before going into a parry.
"If this is Jack's doing--"
"Not Jack's. My own," the German swordsman grunted,
straining to hold his own against the weight Kidd was forcing into his
sword. "Would that I sooner die every painful death than see a lovely lady
into harm's way!"
"I'm not a lovely lady!"
"We can argue later!"
For all her soul, Delphine wished she could continue
right then and there, but a movement behind her bearing a steel edge gained
her attention instead.
"'Ere," said the pirate whose blade she had whirled
around to block. "You're a lady."
They were going to be his last words.
The first thing that happened when Will emerged onto
the Queen Anne's Revenge's deck was that he ran into Ashley Trinity,
who had hunched up near the ground.
"Oop-- Sorry," he said, clutching her shoulders
to keep her balanced. "Are you all right? Not hurt, are you?"
"They're.... They're all fighting, Turner."
"That's what a battle is, Trinity."
"Yes, but it's never... It's never been like this!"
she cried. "Before it was all just business! Now they're fighting 'cos
they want to!"
"Don't you want to?"
"But this isn't brave! This is just a scuffle; this
doesn't mean anything!"
"We'll make it mean something. Come on; stick
with me. We're going to go find Kidd."
Granuaile was breathing heavily between swings of
her two-hander. This upset her because while her body was pushing 50, her
brain was still somewhere back at 25, and disagreements were really beginning
to erupt. Vesuvius-style.
She laid another group of five men to waste, every
muscle in her shoulders screaming, and then drove the point of her sword
into the floorboards and rested upon the pommel, panting. She remained
like that for a while, until something extrasensory caused her to swing
her arm back and connect her fist with a man's jaw, knocking him to the
deck. She flexed her aching hand a little.
Something rushed by her so fast it was like a gust
of wind. The wind patted her on the back.
"All right there?" Jack asked.
"Mm! Fine!" she said cheerfully, taking up her sword
once more.
Trinity and Will ran past a group of four pirates
ganging up on one of the Black Pearl's sailors without pause, only
to duck behind a crate when someone's limb went flying. They began to move
out from under their shelter, but shrank back against it as a half dozen
other pirates, all of Kidd's staff, rushed past right over their heads,
seeming to fly with each leap and shake the ground with each landing. Will
swallowed, realizing for the first time out of his normal surroundings
that he was, by and large, surrounded by adults. Jack Sparrow's young staff
was an abberation rather than the norm, and now here, surrounded by unfamiliar,
brutish figures that more than ever resembled giants and titans, Will trembled.
But as quickly as uncertainty had swept in, he flooded
it out again. He swallowed. He was halfway to sixteen, after all; that
was nearly adulthood. And age didn't matter to a pirate, Jack Sparrow could
tell you that, right enough. And Trinity was depending on him--
"Will," Trinity pleaded, tugging on his arm. "Are
you just gonna hide there forever?"
"What? Oh. No. Sorry," he said, climbing to his
feet.
Hand in hand, the two children ran on in the adult
world of clashing swords and gunpowder.
Anne Bonney and Mary Read could be said to follow
each other around, as opposed to one leading the other. This worked well
for their purposes because it meant that when they got stuck, neither had
to deal with getting the blame. Over the years of their companionship they'd
even come to enjoy the trouble spots they landed themselves in; it provided
a nice change of pace.
Such was the circumstance right now.
"'Scuse me," said Read, leaping backward to avoid
the cutlass's swing. "D'you know you're being beaten by a couple of girls?"
For some inexplicable reason, this didn't seem to
make their attacker relent. It actually appeared to make him fight harder.
This was fine by them because they felt like they needed a work-out.
"'Tis a sad day indeed when an able-bodied young
man has to lose to a couple of poor, defenseless, little women," Bonney
agreed, as the two parried off the advancing strikes, each with one hand
behind their back. "Wouldn't you agree, Mary?"
"Would indeed, Annie," Read replied, tossing up
her sword into the air and catching it with the other hand without a pause.
"How's about we give 'im a fighting chance and do 'im left-handed?"
"Good golly, Miss Mary," Bonney giggled, "that sounds
positively naughty."
"Good!"
With a finalistic swing, the redhead Mary Read knocked
the cutlass from her opponent's hand. She lifted her own blade until its
edge was an inch from his throat. "I've about had enough of this; how 'bout
you?"
"Bored out of me mind," said Bonney, faking a yawn.
She leaned against the starboard railing, appearing as if ready to go to
sleep.
BANG!
A puff of smoke filled Mary's vision. She looked
down to come upon the visage of a pistol, shakingly held in the grasp of
her defeated adversary. She looked over a little bit and noted the dark
red liquid spreading from the area of her left breast.
"Oh," she managed.
"MARY!" Anne Bonney screamed, the shock-induced
delay making her grab for her companion's hand as the body fell overboard
half a second too late.
Two other sailors of the Black Pearl nearby
looked up when a splash was heard in the water below. They each dropped
their present preoccupations, including the ones in headlocks, and rushed
to Bonney's side.
"What's gone on? What's happened?" the Jackal demanded,
peering over the edge of the ship.
"Mary, she..." Bonney trailed off.
"M'goin' in after 'er," Jack said decisively, tearing
off his coat. He was pushed roughly aside by Delphine, who was hastily
pulling off her vest.
"I'm going," she said.
Jack pushed her back. "Don't be stupid. Just stay
put here and I'll go get 'er."
The Jackal's eyes flared. She socked him in the
shoulder so hard he recoiled, although he refrained from clutching the
sore spot. "Just lay off, all right?" she spat, glowering so hatefully
that the look itself stopped Jack dead, so much so that he hardly reacted
when she kicked off her boots and plunged over the side, into the churning
black water.
The expression she had burned across her face before
she'd left remained etched in his mind...
She really hates you, Jack said to himself,
marvelling at the discovery. Your own d-- Your own-- And she hates you.
It wasn't long before the two children had to hide
again, this time ducking into a doorway to spare themselves from the falling
mainmast sail, which still burned from Jack's fireworks display.
"This is madness..." Will muttered.
"Y'wanna know madness?" Trinity said. "Fezzik an'
me were the firsts to even meet Kidd afore he joined up with us. If we'd
only known back then that we were fallin' to his bluff, we coulda..."
"Don't think like that," said Will, putting a finger
over her mouth. "Things happen, and you're only you... C'mon, I see an
opening in the crowd over there. We can reach the bow if we head that way.
The main villain's always by the head of the ship."
"'Cos it's in books, right?"
"That's right."
"Aren't I glad I've got a real thinker by me side,"
Trinity said with an exasperated sigh, following after him. They jumped
quickly over the line of fire that had driven them into the corner before,
dodged a pair of duellers, kept to the railing to avoid another brawl,
and was about to push their way through a line of what essentially amounted
to rioters, when Trinity screamed.
Will spun around in time to see one of Kidd's men,
a young but mostly bald man with fewer teeth than fingers, cackling as
he held Trinity aloft in both arms.
"Wos a little thing like you doin' 'ere, boy?"
"I'm a girl!" Trinity wailed.
Will was aware of a rush of blood welling up through
his veins and sending his brain into a dim red haze. On instinct, he reached
for his sword.
"LET HER GO!"
Inigo hit the ground, clutching his side.
"What a... What a damned cheap thing to do!" he
rasped, pushing against the wound to stem the flow of blood. It felt like
it'd cut his liver. Or a kidney. He could never remember which side held
what.
Kidd's second mate, whom Inigo had been duelling
with prior to a rude interruption by the stab-and-run perpetrator, looked
on into the crowd where the cheating fighter had dashed.
"I'll say. I've always had problems with that kid."
He leaned forward and extended his hand. "Need a heft up there, mate?"
Inigo accepted it readily, allowing the other man
to pull him to his feet. "Have to say, you're not quite what I expected
out of an opponent." Even as he uttered the final word, his neck stiffened.
There was a cold blade of a dagger being pressed against it.
"Oh, we're full of surprises," the second
mate cooed.
"Well, you... cheater."
The second mate gave an unexpected full-body jerk,
letting out something that might've been a yell of pain but was stoppered
to a groan. His dagger slipped a fraction and nudged its way through a
few of the upper layers of Inigo's skin before falling away, and the entire
figure lay crumpled and bleeding on the floor.
Inigo sighed at Anamaria. "I was about to handle
it."
"Sure."
Will pulled the sword from its sheath and tossed
the scabbard aside. The sword had long since seen use and Will had kept
it well polished, so that it gleamed like pure silver under the light.
"Will, NO!" Trinity cried. She struggled fruitlessly
against her attacker's grip.
Heedless of Trinity's words, Will dashed forward,
sword raised.
"Gerroff, you," the bald pirate snarled, holding
Trinity in one enormous hand while the other swooped forward and connected
with the side of Will's head, sending him tumbling. "What's gone through
your cap'n's head, keeping kids as 'is sailors? Some mighty crew!"
Screaming a battle cry, Will plunged forward again,
slashing wildly before the pirate could react. He cut across the man's
arm, leaving a livid red streak across the bare flesh. However, the man
didn't so much as flinch.
He howled. He tossed Trinity aside like she was
little more than a rag doll, then stomped forward and backhanded Will Turner
across the face. When Will fell to the floor, he reached down and picked
him up by a bunch of his waistcoat, pulling the boy up near his face, so
that they were nearly nose to nose.
"Jus' who d'you think you are, brat?" the bald man
growled, extricating his own sword from his belt.
Another blade came down upon it, forcing it to the
floor.
"He's the first mate of the Black Pearl,"
said the young Israel Hands cooly, staring the man straight in the eye.
"Show some respect."
"Mister Hands!" Will strained to say.
"If you're so hung up on the incapacities of children,
why not pick on someone your own size?"
"You? Huh! You're a kid same as them!"
"Permit me the opportunity to prove you wrong."
"Yeh, yer on, stuff-shirt!" the pirate sneered,
and without a second glance toward the boy held in his grip, he cast Will
aside the same as Trinity, letting him fall, and bounce, and fall again,
his sword clattering several yards away and a dull thunk as something heavy
but small fell and began rolling away.
Will groaned, holding his head as he looked up blearily,
trying to get his eyes to focus on anything at all.
And then he saw it, in crystal clarity, vision so
perfect as he'd never experienced in his slightly myoptic life, the small,
jewel-inlaid surface of the watch rolling, rolling, rolling with the tilt
of the ship...
No...
Will lunged, overextending his arm and falling half
an inch short of grasping it. He crawled forward on hands in knees, ducking
between legs and arms and whatever else, grabbing and always coming just
short, as the incline steepened, the air grew colder.
No, no, no, no...
He looked up for but a moment and saw the edge ahead,
saw the black wood railing, saw the watch spin faster and faster...
No, no, no, dear God no...
He reached out one final time, putting every last
ounce of strength in his body into the act, stretching his fingers out
past their limits to grasp that silvery disc he'd kept safe for so very
long...
And snatched only air.
Will leaned over the side, making one more fruitless
grab, far less of a point to it than before as the watch was already what
seemed like miles and miles below him, before it disappeared without so
much as a significant splash into the murky depths.
He fell back onto his knees, suddenly feeling very
cold inside.
No, no, no, no, no...
"Jack," he croaked, watching the space of water
where the watch had disappeared.
I need to find Jack.
Will shot to his feet, feeding off of reserve energy
he didn't even know was there, and probably wasn't. He retraced his steps
across the deck, and hunted across the floor until he came at last upon
his rapier, the gift from both Inigo and Jack, the only real thing, it
seemed, in the entire world.
A shaking hand landed on his shoulder. He spun around.
"Will, where are you going?" Hands asked, sounding
weak and tired. "You and Ashley should go back to the ship."
Will gaped at the streaming cut on Hands's forehead.
Seeming to acknowledge this, Hands released his grip on Will and wiped
some of the blood away, examining it speculatively. "It's nothing. An accident.
But you, Will, you shouldn't be here. Go take Ashley back."
"You can take her back," said Will, at the end of
his patience. "I need to find Jack."
"Whatever it is, I'm sure it can wait--"
"No! No, it can't!"
"Will--" Hands began, as the first mate of the Black
Pearl broke away toward the bow of the ship.
"Take care of Trinity!"
It was some time before the surface of the water
broke, and two figures emerged, not so much one clinging to the other as
both clinging to each other. They gasped for air, blinking the water from
their eyes, and staring up at the looming, shadowy ship.
"You all right, Mary?" the Jackal said in a hoarse
whisper. She swallowed. "No. 'Course you ain't. Stupid question."
"Want... Annie," Read whimpered.
"Only ever Annie? I'm here for you too, Mary."
"Annie..."
"God dammit," Delphine cried. "I love you
just as much as she does. Why can't either of you just-- love me back--?
Why can't anyone--?"
"Jack!"
Captain Sparrow glanced around at quite possibly
the wrong moment during a duel with the third mate, and only narrowly avoided
getting a very severe haircut before he came to his senses. He gave up
pretenses and dispatched the man quickly.
Will rushed to his side and grabbed the sleeve of
his jacket. "Jack...!" he gasped, his legs failing from under him even
as he spoke.
"What's wrong?" Jack asked, disturbed by the boy's
despair. He allowed himself to sink to the floor along with Will, the two
of them crouched there unnoticed in the middle of a battlefield. Will laid
his rapier down between them, like some makeshift dividing line. "Will...?"
Will Turner III hid his face. "I'm so sorry, Jack!
I'm so sorry! I..." He choked back a sob. "It's the watch, Jack! The watch
that won't start, the watch that holds your life in place! I opened the
chest that had it in Port Royal and I took it with me to keep it safe,
to see nothing happened to you!"
Jack shook his head in puzzlement. "Will, what are
you..."
"I lost it! Just now, in the water. It rolled overboard
and I did everything I could and now it's gone! It's lost and it's all
my fault, Jack!"
"Will... it..."
And then no words, but Jack had far from fallen
silent. At first Will thought the man was crying, and then, in shock, realized
he was laughing-- and looked up at Jack to see it was a mixture between
the two.
"You stupid-- It was just... You stupid boy," Jack
rambled, something approaching a mad look in his eye. "It wasn't... it
wasn't anything. It was just a watch. It was... it was for your parents.
I meant to-- meant to give it to them, for their wedding. A wedding gift.
I just couldn't, I couldn't bear to go, couldn't bear to even send it to
them--" He reached out and placed his calloused hands around Will's face,
pinching his cheeks. "Then you came along and you, you were convenient,
you were a way I could make amends, I-- You stupid, stupid boy!"
Will averted his eyes, unable to keep them on Jack's.
And it was because of that that Will saw what was approaching Jack from
behind. And it was because of this that Jack saw, reflected in Will's eyes.
In a mere fraction of a second Jack took up the
rapier, the gift he had given to Will to make up for fifteen missed birthdays,
spun around and diverted Captain Kidd's cutlass a second before it would
have slashed through his back.
But he hadn't seen the gun.
And everyone, everywhere, heard the shot.
End Chapter XXII