Present day, aboard The Splinter.

  Lock staggers backwards as one of his fellow sailors roughly shoulders him away from the bow of the ship. All the men aboard jostle with one another, roaring their challenge and waving their weapons at the fleeing vessel. The young man twitches his gaze over them, noting that a few of the greasy men are holding onto grapples. Those particular few are eyeing each other, with much the same avarice as carrion birds circling a dying animal, each wanting to get the best pound of flesh.

  He takes a shaky breath, the rising bile in his throat threatening to break free. The tight, smelly quarters full of shouting criminals does nothing to help his nausea. Break, the ship’s second mate, slithers through the crowd like seawater through loose boards. Before Lock can try and turn around to face him, the older man roughly pulls him back by his shoulder. Lock feels his stomach lurch, and a wild panic threatens to explode out of him along with the vomit as the man continues to restrain him. “You’d better be one of the first aboard that tub.” His breath is hot and rancid, and his unkempt and dirty beard is touching Lock. He squirms.

  Break misreads this, and gives the younger man a rough shake. “Do it, lad, or you’ll regret it.” Lock suppresses a shudder; the warning is unneeded. He is well versed in the mate’s temper, and the consequences of invoking it. “Aye sir,” he says, forcing a steadiness into his voice that is entirely falsified.

  The mate pulls away, shouting out orders as The Splinter closes in on her prey. Due to her being nearly half the size of the merchant galleon she’s pursuing, she’ll easily be able to get close enough that her sailors can latch their claw-like grapples into her flesh. Break stands amongst the roiling tide of pirates, ordering them to act as he sees fit.

  Just as Lock hears Break shout his name, The Splinter is vaulted upwards by a particularly rough wave. The bow of the ship and all of the sailors crowding it are momentarily airborne, leaving Lock feeling as if his heart will stop. As the craft crashes back into the sea, the sailors aboard her roar their pleasure and excitement at the marginal gain in closeness the wave had gifted them with.

  Lock, contrary to his ship mates, does not celebrate. Instead he rushes starboard, gripping the rough, wet railing and begins vomiting out all of the contents that are in his stomach. His entire body quakes, as if he were a particularly pathetic fish caught in a net; the pirates aboard treat him much the same, either ignoring him or making sounds of disgust. They attempt to give him a wide berth on the already cramped deck.

  As Lock continues to heave, shadows from the back of his mind begin to make their presence known. I’m going to die. He sees a blood drenched deck and smells the acrid smoke of burning sails. Too many people here. He groans in pain before retching again. He feels the waves throwing the ship about like a seabird caught in a wicked storm. Trapped. I’m trapped. We’re going to capsize-

  “Hey!” A voice roars out from behind him, causing Lock to nearly jump out of his skin. “Spewy,” the sailor slaps him roughly on the back, disrupting his attempts to stand and causing the young man to lurch back against the railing. Where am I? His quaking hands reach for the oiled scabbard at his side, preparing to draw the weapon within. They’re taking me aboard.

  “Lock! Kid,” a pair of calloused hands grabs his wrists. A face peers down at him; it’s a rather mangled one, sporting a rigid scar that bisects the left side of its upper lip and nearly crosses into its left eye. It seems that the man’s nose has recently been broken.

  “Bones?” Lock gasps out the man’s name, and just as quickly as they appeared, the bloody and burning decks recede. Just like when the ship foundered, he thinks, heart still racing and teeth still gritted together. He spits overboard, trying to purge the taste of bile from his mouth. After doing this a few more times, he turns around and forces his attention onto the pirate in front of him, who looks as if he’s had to repeat Lock’s name more than a few times already.

  “What happened to your nose?” He blurts out. Bones stares at him, appearing perplexed that he could think of such an inane question. A few members of the crew that overheard the exchange let out mirthless chuckles at the pair’s expense. A common opinion aboard was that Lock was as sound as a rotted piece of driftwood.

  Bones tightens his grip slightly on Lock’s wrists. He uses it to anchor himself, and desperately tries to focus his mind solely on what the older man is saying to him. “Second mate wants you and I together as part of the first boarding party. Come up front with me.” The implication is clear: get it together now, the crew’s watching. Break’s watching.

  “Aye. Sor-”

  “Outta the way! Coming through!” Bones’ sharp voice parts the crowd of rowdy pirates, splitting them enough to allow for Lock and himself to squeeze through. “Got into a fight last night with one of the drifters we picked up at Night’s Eels,” he says quietly, referring to a seedy port tavern that The Splinter had visited a few weeks ago. “Broke my nose. Can’t say it was a pleasant game, or that he was a good sport about it.” The young man presumes that the brawl was over a dice game, likely the same one that was Bones’ namesake.

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  Bones narrowly avoids shoulder-checking one of the pirates readying the grapples as he and Lock reach the bow of The Splinter, managing to free themselves from the impatient mob of men. The older man lets out a steady breath, rolling his shoulders and unsheathing his wide shortsword. He squats down, bracing the weapon against his knee and works away at it with a cloth, ensuring that the already well-maintained blade positively gleamed.

  Lock is the first to break the silence between the two of them. He matches Bones’ stance, unsheathing his far less impressive shortsword and working away at it with a cloth he had accidentally left in his pocket. He tries to not feel petulant as he reasons with himself, trying to think of what explanation he could offer. He had frozen, finding himself lost in an endless abyss of terror and despair, imprisoned by the unbreakable spider silk hold of his memories. He wasn’t exactly sure how to make that sound reasonable to Bones.

  What had happened to him on that day is exactly what he was now readying himself to do to the sailors aboard the fleeing galleon. According to Bones, Break had ordered that he was to help lead the charge; Lock doubted that this order was given with his best interests at heart. He also doubted that these sailors would be offered the chance to cling on to life that he was.

  Lock shakes his head, keeping a rigid grip on his sword’s hilt as he answers Bones’ unvoiced question. “Hit my head when she crested the wave. Knocked out all the sense left in me, along with my breakfast,” he says, projecting an air of sheepishness.

  Bones lets out a low, rumbling chuckle. “You’re still green as algae, eh boy?”

  Lock ducks his head, only partially feigning embarrassment. “Something like that, aye.”

  The young man looks up at the fleeing vessel, surprised to realize how close The Splinter has gotten to her. The sailors aboard are running about like rats exposed to the blazing light of a lantern, appearing unprepared for the pirate’s chase. Yet, as Lock watches them, about half a dozen men run portside, each wielding bows. Arrows are quickly rushed to each of them.

  “Archers!” He cries, a cold feeling of shock draping itself over him. Bones echoes his call, roaring it out to the rest of the crew.

  The deck of The Splinter is suddenly thrown into chaos, with men rushing about and crashing into one another as they all run for cover. Break’s bellow cuts through the panic on the deck. “What are you bloody morons doing!? Get the scrap!” As some of the pirates scramble purposefully towards large squares of scrap wood scattered across the ship, the first round of arrows land. Most strike harmlessly into the deck with loud thwocks and the sound of splintering planks, but it seems at least one finds their target. Lock watches in horror as a man goes down with an enraged scream, his blood spraying the crew members around him.

  “Clear the way!”

  Men bearing large, flat boards of salvaged wood swiftly disperse themselves amongst the crowd, acting as shields for the otherwise unprotected crew. “Second boarding crew, get below deck! Archers and first boarding crew, stay with the scrap!”

  As The Splinter’s archers ready themselves to loose their own volley, the merchant vessel’s own bowmen unleash their second round. However, this time the arrows that would have otherwise connected with the pirates find themselves lodged uselessly in the planks being held over the men’s heads. Lock tries to exhale a sigh of relief, but finds himself nervously watching the heavy sweating of the crewmates bearing the scrap above all of their heads. He’s not sure if it’s from terror or from the weight of ship-salvaged wood.

  Break’s voice booms out over the crowd, demanding that the bowmen launch their arrows now. Lock tries to suppress a flinch as tarred arrows are set ablaze and swiftly released with a discordant set of twangs. Fortunately for The Splinter’s archers, a few of the arrows strike true, and the victim vessel’s sails quickly catch ablaze. Shortly thereafter, there are screams aboard the galleon, demanding buckets! Buckets NOW! He can see the terror on the faces of the sailors aboard, and watches as a man a few years older than him sprints past his compatriots with a bucket of water, nearly bowling over one of them in the process.

  “Archers! Loose an unlit round!” Break roars. The Splinter’s archers oblige, and Lock feels his gorge rise as two arrows find their targets in the back and throat of the man he’d been watching. What are we doing? We’re slaughtering them. Lock takes a small step backwards. They’re just fighting to live. His hands begin to shake. I can’t be one of the first aboard. If I refuse to board, I’ll die. If I board, I’ll die. I need to flee. As his thoughts begin to spiral into a mess of panic and despair, his feet direct him starboard. He’ll jump off the ship, to swim away or die trying.

  Lock is stopped by a calloused hand holding him back. He looks up to see Bones staring down at him, the other man’s eyes as steely as his grip on his shoulder. “Lock. Look at me. Stop pulling away.” Bones crowds in closer to him, earning a snarl from the crewmate holding the board above their heads. Bones says nothing, but lowers his voice to barely a whisper as he continues speaking to Lock. “Think of clear skies, of being away from this pile of driftwood and refuse. Think of sandy beaches, or somewhere far inland where you never have to think about the sea ever again. This will not be your life forever: it’s only a short moment of it.

  “For this moment, though, you’re needed here. You’re expected to kill for this crew. It’s terrible work for even worse people. But, lad, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. You need to survive if you’re to make peace with it all.” Bones gives him a long look, appearing as if he’s just aged fifty years. “Let’s do what needs to be done.”