Lock watches as The Splinter steadily closes the distance between herself and the Coastal Breeze. Despite her name, likely meant to invoke fluidity and grace, the galleon wallows through the water like a pregnant sow ready to drop. Bones squints out across the water, eying the ship. “She’s heavy, ain’t she?”

  Lock gives a single nod. “Aye.”

  A small smile twitches its way across Bones’ lips. Despite his earlier words of distaste towards piracy, the young man knew how much getting plunder to gamble at the table meant to his older companion. “Must mean she’s laden with goods,” Bones speculates. Lock glances at Bones and finds that he can’t help the amusement that comes from seeing the covetousness in the other pirate’s face. He huffs out a laugh.

  Bones’ eyebrows shoot up in surprise, and he casts a sidelong glance towards the young man. “Was that a laugh, lad?”

  Lock glances up at him, feeling a sudden tightness squeeze his chest. He’s nearly brought to his knees by the wave of dread that follows.

  He tries to steel his expression, feigning a grim look as he watches the men aboard The Splinter ready their grapples. “Na,” he mumbles. “Something caught in my throat.”

  Don’t draw attention to yourself. Keep your head low. Don’t draw attention to yourself. Keep your head low. He repeats the mantra to himself over and over, like a priest’s prayer for warding off evil.

  Bones shakes his head pityingly, having to lean in close to Lock to be heard over Break shouting orders to get The Splinter to halt her approach. “It’s alright, Lock. We flew the black flag and they fled. Not our fault; it’s just how things are.”

  Lock gives a single, curt nod. He feels as if he can barely move, paralyzed under the pirate’s gaze. Bones continues speaking. “Don’t worry about the flames. We’ll wait out the burn on their sails, then approach once they’ve tamed the fire, as we always do.” Lock feels the coiled anxiety loosen slightly; Bones must assume that he’s worried about the flames currently devouring the sails of the Coastal Breeze. Admittedly, the trailing smoke and embers from the other ship were getting uncomfortably close, which did put him on edge. Lock finds that he would rather discuss the coming atrocity as opposed to himself.

  He tries to speak past the burgeoning anxiety threatening to squash his voice. “Aye, we’ve done this before. But I worry, Bones: what if they fail to gather control of the fire and we lose the whole prize? Or if the embers alight The Splinter?”

  Bones seems to suppress a sigh. “You do know how many of those flame retardant gels we’ve seen in our plunder, aye? Near every ship carries ‘em now. Tale is that the Rí’s own alchemists designed them for his fleets, but other sailors loved ‘em so much that the recipe was reverse engineered. Not quite as effective on the sails, though, given how difficult it is to properly apply them to the canvas, as well as the constant patching that the sails need.” A wry smile flits across Bones’ face as he adds, “clearly the Coastal Breeze’s men didn’t do a good job with keeping her sails gelled.”

  Lock nods. He doesn’t remember the last time that the captain or mate had commanded that the gels be applied to The Splinter’s own deck, let alone her sails. It had been done early on after some of the gel had been plundered and set aside as the ship’s lot, but that had been months ago.

  After a few more minutes, the ship’s boy, Mack, runs around to the milling crowd of pirates to pass out an armload of bucklers. Lock declines his, earning a skeptical look from Bones as the other pirate equips one of the shields. “You really think it’s wise to go without extra protection?” He asks dubiously. Lock shakes his head, giving a single pat to the dagger strapped to the side of his thigh. “Boy-” the large man starts, though he fails to continue as Break’s voice cracks out over the crowd of pirates.

  “They’ve managed to put out the fires in their sails,” he roars, gesturing broadly to the now-crippled ship floating uselessly in the water ahead of him. It seems as if around half of the sails had taken severe damage from the fires. Break smiles wildly, and his actions have the twitchy movements of adrenaline shadowing them. “Let’s finish her off!”

  As the boarding of the Coastal Breeze looms closer, Lock moves like a marionette on a string. Break barks out orders to bring the ship side to side with the Coastal Breeze and Lock moves numbly towards his station. The young man tries to tune out the sound of terrified orders being shouted from the galleon, determined to do his work quickly and efficiently. Regardless of The Splinter being poised to deliver her killing blow, Lock finds himself internally mirroring the terror felt aboard the enemy ship.

  He casts a desperate glance towards Bones, but the large pirate is clearly preoccupied. A devilish glee dances across his face as he bellows out his challenge towards the galleon, taunting her trapped sailors. Lock exhales a trapped breath, trying to get himself to focus on staying alive. He dares to wonder for a moment if he could simply whip himself into whatever frenzy the other pirates had found themselves in. Bones could do it, after all, and he had been keenly aware of the cruelty of the entire endeavor. Perhaps-

  Lock is unable to finish his thought before all hell breaks loose.

  “Grapples!” Break howls, his call unleashing The Splinter’s hounds upon their weakened prey. His hounds, the pirates bearing grapples, surge forward. They loose their charges in a deceptively quiet rain of death, flinging them with great force towards the enemy ship. The grapples quietly whoosh through the air, breaking their momentary silence the moment they smash into the deck of the Coastal Breeze. The metal anchors are quickly reeled in by their wielders, the grapples gouging and tearing through the wood before they finally take hold. The Splinter’s men quickly tie the ends of the grapples to their own ship’s railing.

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  “Drop the scrap and claim what’s yours!”

  In relative unison, the pirates holding the scrap boards throw their charges down to act as crossways between the ships, the embedded arrowheads now facing the sea. Lock’s legs move of their own accord and he finds himself joining the boarding crew’s charge across to the Coastal Breeze. As Break’s warcry pierces through the chaos of screams and rasps of drawn swords, Lock lets out his own yell to join the abyssal howling and screaming of The Splinter’s men.

  At the same time that The Splinter’s men initiate their charge, the sailors aboard the Coastal Breeze release a sporadic rain of arrows into the incoming pirates. Lock feels as if his heart will explode out of his chest as a man in front of him suddenly jerks and groans, his staggering nearly knocking the both of them overboard. The man in front of him jerks again, this time with an elongated, bloody spike emerging from his back. In one breath, Lock shoves the man away from him, not waiting to watch as the man’s arrow-ridden corpse lands in the sea. In the next breath, Lock takes the deck of the Coastal Breeze.

  The moment Lock’s feet hit the deck, they immediately slip out from under him. He curses in shock as his sword slips from his grasp, realizing too late that the planks have been coated with slippery ash and bucketed seawater from the burning sails. As he falls, he finds himself tangled with one of the Coastal Breeze’s waiting swordsmen, causing them to both go down.

  They hit the deck in a tangled pair, with the sailor ending up below him. The man clubs Lock with his fist, causing his head to jerk backwards. As stars dance in front of his eyes, the pirate has a brief moment to dimly feel grateful that the man’s sword seems to have also been knocked away from him.

  However, his gratitude is short-lived. Lock screams in pain as the sailor viciously headbutts him, causing his nose to sickeningly crack. He tries to roll off of the man, but-

  Suddenly there is a thick pair of hands around his neck. Their palms are calloused and rough, and they’re wrapped tight. He can’t breathe. The sailor flips the young pirate onto his back, driving a vicious knee directly into his crotch. Lock gags, reflexing trying to vomit, but he can’t. Seconds become hours as the sailor keeps him pinned to the deck, and black spots begin to flash in front of his eyes. The man lifts him up by his neck, preparing to slam him head first back into the planks, but stops as a blade is shoved into his chest.

  At around the same moment, there’s an enraged roar and the man’s body is suddenly and violently shoved off of Lock’s, the sailor’s head nearly severed with the force of the blade that had been driven through its neck. The body tumbles and wetly thunks against the side of the ship.

  “Cric’s depths, boy!” Bones yells, roughly dragging Lock to his feet. “Did he get you?” Lock stares at him dumbly, though the burly man has already turned around to ward off any incoming sailors. He takes a second to inhale ragged wheezes of salty air, trying to recall where he is and what he was doing. He looks down at his hands, which are slick and wet with the sailor’s blood. He realizes his blade is still in the sailor’s body.

  “Need ‘m blades,” he mumbles. He staggers towards the sailor’s corpse, attempting to remove it from the man’s chest. However, his hands feel unsteady and weak, shaking like a child’s kite that has been reclaimed by the wind. After a third retrieval attempt finds his hands again slipping off of the blood slicked hilt, he abandons the blade in the man’s abdomen. Lock instead frees the sailor’s belt knife and slides it into his own now empty sheathe, though it’s a poor fit. He numbly wipes his blood coated hands on the sailor’s clothing before retrieving his sword from where it had fallen nearby.

  “Lock!” Bones snaps, turning around to half face him. The pirate looks worried. Lock’s still shaky gaze slips away from the other man’s, dancing around the ship to take inventory of the situation.

  Since boarding, The Splinter’s men have made good progress in their battle. The deck is already thoroughly coated with blood and seawater, and the pirate crew seems to be holding their own. The Coastal Breeze’s archers also seemed to have been suppressed or killed by The Splinter’s own bowmen, who are now routinely shooting any stray sailors not being handled by a pirate aboard the galleon’s deck.

  “I’m fine,” he manages, his throat screaming in pain from being strangled. “Just- lost m’ balance and got shocked.”

  Bones shakes his head, frustration and worry vying for dominance over his expression. “Lock, that damn swab nearly killed you. You can’t be doing that.”

  He scowls. “Doin’ what?”

  Bones fully turns to face him, exasperated. “Freezing. You stop moving and you just stare.”

  Lock stops staring at him. He wonders for a moment if he could pretend to not have heard what the older man said. He could blame the chaotic din of battle aboard the ship, or-

  There’s a flash of movement behind Bones. Someone, not one of The Splinter’s men, is approaching him rapidly. The figure raises his axe, aiming it towards the pirate’s center.

  Lock lunges forward with a yell, thrusting his sword past Bones and directly into the chest of the man that had been aiming to fell him like a tree. Lock shoulders the sailor, half tackling him to the ground to disrupt the momentum of his swing. His vision flashes and swims as they both roughly hit the deck.

  Lock quickly unsheathes the knife had taken from the previous sailor, shoving it through the ribcage of the man he had on the ground.

  Bones lets out a choked laugh, eyes as wide as saucers. “Bloody hell.. I suppose that makes us even, doesn’t it?”

  Lock thinks of the fact that he had killed the man on top of him before Bones had come to his ‘rescue.’ He chooses not to share that fact. “Aye. It does.” Lock offers him a slight quirk of a smile.

  Bones grins wickedly, the expression distorting his scar. He offers Lock a hand up and off the deck, which Lock accepts after quickly wiping his bloodied weapons off on the dead sailor. He exhales heavily as he examines the corpse-laden deck. He spares a glance at Bones, who looks as if some of the bloodlust has worn off. He meets Lock’s gaze with a now more sobered and grim smile. “Looks like we didn’t do too bad of a job as the first ones to board, aye? Let’s finish this up.”

  Lock nods, following Bones back into the carnage.