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"Chopez la salope!"
Get the bitch!
You don't know if the scream tears from your throat, or someone else's. Your throat is raw from shouting, from the stench of smoke, salt, and blood.
Your captain is on the quarterdeck, silhouetted in ash and black powder, pointing his saber at the HMS Victory, the gap between Redoutable and the English warbitch becoming smaller and smaller.
Crates, barrels, coils of rope, even furniture from below decks is piled up as makeshift barricades. You crouch low, waiting for Redoutable to draw close enough for the gangplanks to lower, his port side to her starboard side. Then you and the rest of the crew can mount her like the Portsmouth tart she is and spill English blood. Properly. Up close and personal.
A musket ball splinters the wooden crate by your head and you flinch on instinct. You pat the satchel of shot and powder by your hip, the weight and leather reassuring and reminding you it's there.
It's half-full now, the rest of it has been expended at the English.
With the English fleet approaching, the captain ordered Redoutable to maneuver to protect the flagship, Bucentaure, spitting iron broadsides and lead-loaded swivel guns at the enemy. Redoutable's bowsprit was nearly touching Bucentaure's stern when the Victory slashed between your ship and Bucentaure, cutting the line apart. The entire deck twisted and seethed in that moment, crew and ship fusing as one furious entity of flesh and oak and seventy-four guns of pure rage. And now Redoutable is going to make the saucy bitch pay, even if revenge means his crew will spend their lives like coin.
"Chopez la salope!" Captain Lucas' shout echoes the men's, or maybe he gave the order. You don't know, but it's not important. Your captain half-crouches behind the barricades not far from you, his saber slashing the air towards the Victory, the sun momentarily catching on the steel. A fog bank of gun smoke obscures the decks of both ships.
The English always call their ships women. Soft, sentimental. Like the sea is some sort of genteel salonnèrie, but Redoutable works the waves like a proper man. A man who will go down fighting for every last inch because he has nothing left to lose. Does it matter that Victory outweighs Redoutable in tonnage and outguns him by more than a third?
The house is tilted in the Victory's favor, but Redoutable is calling even-odds on momentum and spite, and the wager will be in the number of corpses he'll make when he collects.
Your heart flutters in its cage of bones. You wonder how many beats are left.
"Pas de feu!" There, that's the captain. "Pas de feu!" Hold fire! “Attendez le signal!” Wait for the signal!
Your hands tighten around your musket. A bullet whips past your ear, and you can feel the deck vibrate as the sailor behind you drops. You feel his hot blood like rain on the back of your neck. You don't look.
Redoutable is close enough where you can see the pale-faced panic on the English sailors' faces as they realize what's about to happen.
"Elle va crever, la putain d’Albion!" That whore of Albion's gonna die!
The Victory's masts and rigging loom above you, drawing closer, and closer. Dead men bob on the brine, many with heads and limbs missing. Blood colors the sea water scarlet.
Splinters pepper you from a cannon splintering the starboard gunwale. The gunners below are whooping, preparing to fire at point-blank range into the bitch's belly.
"Allez, allez, allez!" Go, go, go!
You're already dead, but you haven't quit breathing yet.
You think about Paris in springtime. You think about the flowers.
You're not going to miss the hardtack. Maybe the devil will have a banquet prepared for you and yours.
Your lips pull back from your teeth. A half-smile, and half a wolf's snarl.
Impact.
A crack louder than the cannonade, louder than anything you've ever heard shudders through Redoutable. You brace on the rough wood of the barrel in front of you as the force of Redoutable's blow throws you forward. The stink of copper and saltpeter burns your mouth and throat through every inhalation. Your teeth rattle as the force of the blow resounds through Redoutable's timbers. The deck tilts dangerously under your boots as the two ships smash and grind against one another. Redoutable leans into his brawler's punch. You cast your gaze up long enough to see Redoutable's port side ratlines sway and begin to tangle up with the Victory's spars and shroud. Bulls locking horns, or a cutthroat pinning his mark.
Redoutable's going down, and he's dragging Albion's battle-whore down with him.
"Feu! FEU!" your captain screams. FIRE!
The oversized cow sits higher in the water than Redoutable. The English open up with a solid wall of musketfire and grapeshot from swivel guns mounted on her forecastle and gunwales. You flinch again, bullets pinging off your rude shelter. And, through the wall of gunpowder and smoke, you sight down a bit of movement. A red uniform and a glint of brass buttons. The man is one of the royal marines above you and across the gap. You put him in your front sight.
You breathe. You let it out. Your finger flexes.
The shot rings in your ear, loud over the crash of cannons, the walnut stock kicking against your shoulder, and the enemy drops out of sight. The man next to you fires, and the one on the other side, a line of thunder and lightning striking the Victory's crew. You duck as musket balls hiss above you. You're still breathing, still moving, which is more than you can say for the man on the other side.
Below, you imagine Redoutable's gunnery crews hurling whatever they can at the Victory's shuttered gun ports, close enough to touch — hammers, knives, marlinspikes, chamberpots, bad grammar. However, you don't have the luxury of deck planks between you and the English riflemen at Victory's gunwales. You have a flimsy barricade that's being chewed up by every shot they fire.
You squint through the haze. The gangplanks aren't coming down. They should be, but they're not, not with the enemy gunfire as thick as constipated shit. There's no way to put down the gangplanks and storm the English flagship's decks, not from here. The space between your barricades and the gangplanks to Victory is slaughterhouse floor, a no-man's land of certain death.
"Toi!" You! Captain Lucas is shouting over the roar of the guns and cannonade. He's crouched behind the crude barricades along with the rest of you. Lucas points at Lieutenant Fournier from the landlocked Loire, always with a rosary in his pocket, and one of the few junior officers left. "Toi! Toi!" Bellecourt, a young sailor with the coastal fog of Brittany in his French. Pecaut, the Creole carpenter from Martinique. "Toi, toi, et toi!" You, you and you! Pellegrino, the Neapolitan who swore allegiance to the empire. Jouveau, the marine and card-sharp from Toulon's barracks. Latrielle, the ship's part-time cobbler and full-time caulker.
"Toi!" Captain Lucas points at you. Your mind is a white blank, and for a moment the crackle of musket-fire and cannonade recedes like an unpleasant hum. You threw up awhile ago, so you can't even dry heave. He didn't pick any of you by accident. A job needs to be done.
Lucas made his picks because each of you have the right skills. He made sure all the men who serve under him knew more than just their post. And now that's going to pay off.
You nod. You're ready.
The captain jabs upward with the palm of his hand and makes a quick circle. "Monte, vite! Là-haut!" Climb, quick! Up there!
The swivel guns in the mizzen-top. They'd been firing earlier, when the Victory had been making her approach. You look up. You know what Lucas means without him having to spell it out: get up there, fire the swivel guns, clear up the Victory's decks enough for Redoutable's men to get over.
You've drilled this a hundred times. But fifty feet never looked so far away as it does now.
You wonder how fast your heart can beat without it exploding. At least you remembered to empty your bladder over the gunwales before the shooting started. That can get messy.
Lucas snaps a salute to the seven of you, and then turns his attention back to the crude barricades your comrades have thrown up. Another man you know gets hit and goes down on the soaked deck, screaming. There's no more time.
Pellegrino empties his satchel of musket cartridges out on the deck, and scrabbing on all-fours, he pulls the swivel gun cartridges and grapeshot from a box stashed against the barricade and slings it over his shoulder for the climb. There's no time to find a satchel with compartments to carry the cartridges and shot you'll need up there. He mutters in his heavily Italian-accented French, the stretched vowels menacing, “Pour Naples, enfoiré. Pour Caracciolo. Pour ceux qu’il a pendus. Et pour le roi que Nelson a remis sur le trône."
For Naples, motherfucker. For Caracciolo. For the ones he hanged. For the king Nelson put back on the throne.
Fournier is right behind, filling his own satchel with a wordless nod as Pellegrino passes cartridges first to him, then Latrielle, Jouveau, Pecaut, Bellecourt. You. No one gives a fuck about the chain of command.
You drop your own musket cartridges and shot into the pile, stuffing just enough into your pockets just in case, and arm yourself with the instruments to tune a swivel gun instead. Either you make it up there, or you don't. And if you're the cursed bastard who makes it through, you'll need the proper tools to do your work.
You're all dead men, throwing yourselves into the jaws of fate and daring it to deny you one last shot.
Redoutable's timbers roar as he smashes against the Victory again, the brawler in him throwing another uppercut at the lumbering English sow.
From the corner of your eye you see Bellecourt give Pecaut a pat on the shoulder. You never knew a Black man could go that white — but that's what fear will do. Pecaut's mouth is set in a tight line, and you know he'll climb just like the rest of you.
You're about to sling your musket over your shoulder when you remember haven't reloaded it from the last shot. You spot the loaded one dropped on the deck by the dead sailor who was behind you. The stock is tacky with his blood. You don't look down at him, but you know he'll appreciate the gesture.
You shoulder his musket.
Fournier has already grasped the lower ratlines, leading the charge up. You take in one last look around slaughterhouse floor that is the top deck, and judge that the thick smoke choking the decks of both ships will give all of you cover, but you know better than to count on it. You grab the rope next.
"On y va, putain!" your mouth spits. Let's fucking go!
You're not brave. If this were a calmer moment, you'd be wondering what the fuck you're doing and if you've completely lost your fucking mind.
Good thing you're not thinking.
Up. Hand over hand. Don't look down.
You pull yourself up. Fournier is ahead of you on the ratlines, his bag of grapeshot and swivel gun cartridges bouncing against his hip. The ash-smeared sun glints gold on a brass buckle.
Someone behind you screams and the rope thrums.
The ratlines are rough under your bare hands. A musket ball screams past you, but you keep climbing. Hand over hand, your boot in the next rung up, and then the next. Gun smoke clogs your throat, the sensation like swallowed knives and parched as the sands of Egypt. Breathe. In. Out. Your lungs burn for clean air, tears your eyes, and your blood beats twice as loud in your ears.
Redoutable snarls again, and he lists further into his port side, clawing at the bitch Victory. Her spars are tangled with his, wood, rope, and sailcloth clipping into one another, groaning and snapping. The ratlines sway under you as Redoutable shifts and your grip tightens until you're sure the skin on your knuckles are going to crack.
Another cry of pain behind you. The sensation of weight falling away from the rope. The cry cuts off with a wet thud like a melon thrown off a building and onto cobbles. You don't look to see who it is.
“Ci vediamo all’inferno, bastardi!” rings out somewhere behind you. You know just enough Italian. Pellegrino. I'll see you bastards in hell! Does he mean the English? His crewmates? Fate? The rope lurches again, but you're so close to the top now, and you don't have time to ask Pellegrino what he means. Your breath is loud and coarse in your ears, each one snatched from the jaws of death for a heartbeat longer.
Below, the volley of musket fire between the crews of Redoutable and the Victory continues, unabated.
Ahead of you Fournier reaches the top, and is slinging his bag of shot and powder onto the platform and about to haul his body after it when a gout of blood erupts from his temple. He hangs suspended for just a moment, the smoke-dimmed sunlight catching on the brass buttons of his lieutenant's coat one more time, and then there's only empty air above you.
Something stings your left thigh, like being prodded with a fireplace poker. The ratlines sway dizzily under you and your stomach lurches with it. The white-hot burn of agony ripples out from your leg. "Putain!" Fuck! A sticky wetness clings to the fabric of your trousers, as darkness hovers the edges of your vision. Your jaw is ready to snap as you bite down on the pain, your teeth gritted so hard they might crack.
Just one more rung, just pull yourself up. Your straining, shaking fingers brush the edge of the mizzen-top platform, tears blurring your view. One more push with your good leg. Just one more.
You haul yourself over the edge, rolling onto your back. You stare at the wide expanse of the sky, your breath hitching, whimpering. If not for the columns of smoke, the cries of dying men, the hail of deadly bullets, it might even be beautiful.
A musket ball pings the wooden platform from beneath.
You turn your head to look at one of the breech-loading swivel guns, air whistling through your gritted teeth. Fuck. Someone forgot to clean out the wadding and encrusted powder. You're not sure you can stand up as another wave of agony and nausea threatens to make you dry heave. Even if you could stand, one gun is jammed. Fucking useless. Even if you could load one of the other two by yourself, you're not sure if you could stand up to do it, not on your remaining good leg. "Nom de dieu de putain de bordel de merde!" God’s name of whorehouse of shit!
No one comes up over the edge of the platform to join you.
Redoutable and the war-bitch Victory batter and grind against one another in a spiraling death grip, the groaning and scraping of timbers a grim and high aria against the carnage being paid in lead and blood. The crash vibrates through his mizzenmast, shaking you in your precarious perch, and your fingers fly out to grasp the platform's edge to steady yourself. Your heart vibrates in time with it. You strain your neck to see that the Victory's own mizzen-top is empty, the angle of her slew to one side leaving her swivel guns unmanned.
You can't clear the Victory's top decks from here. You can't do anything.
Fournier's bag of powder and grapeshot is on the platform, and you still have yours. Both utterly useless to you. The musket's stock is digging into your back as you fight back the blackness trying to claw you down.
Your musket ….
You have one shot left, you realize.
The plan is forming in your mind. Whimpers of agony escape through your lips and white flashes like stars bloom behind your eyelids as you force yourself to roll over onto your belly, putting weight on your wounded thigh as you do. Your elbows are rubbed raw as you pull yourself on your belly, until you can see clearly. Or, as much as the smoke-choked air will allow you to.
You don't look down, no. Not at Redoutable's bleeding deck. You look across to the Victory, over the tops of the heads of the royal marines and sailors bracing at her rail, firing, reloading, firing again, trying to pick off what remains of Redoutable's crew.
"C’est quel connard qui a eu l’idée de ramener son gosse à une putain de bataille navale?" you mutter out loud in disbelief and moral outrage despite no one but God and scavenging gulls to hear you. It's reassuring to hear your own voice while you've still got breath to use it. Which asshole thought it was a good idea to bring his kid to a fucking naval battle? Your eyes narrow, wondering if you’ve hit your head somewhere along the way. No, that is a short, skinny kid. He’s even playing dress-up with the hat and medals.
The big man next to him is as broad and as tall as the Alps, the golden epaulets and aiguillettes glinting in the haze. Through your faltering gaze, you watch him bark orders to runners, who snap salutes or nods and scurry off in the smoke and screams to convey them. Him. That must be the captain of the Victory.
You hope that's not his kid, but this is personal now.
With gritted teeth and a grunt, lying on your belly, you check your musket for readiness.
The stock slots into the hollow of your shoulder, as you place the big one in your front sight.
Breathe in. Out.
The steel of the trigger is warm.
Your finger flexes.
In less than an eye-blink the little one turns to speak to the big man — and Redoutable lurches beneath you.
The musket’s report cracks in your ear, the stock kicking, your aim spoiled.
The little one bucks and falls, and your heart stutters.
You're not supposed to shoot kids. Even if some idiot brought one to a war zone.
"Merde!" Shit! You fumble for your bag of shot and cartridges. Fuck, fuck, fuck, if Redoutable hadn't shifted in that last split second. What the fuck. You don't have time to think too hard about what you've done. That's between you and God now, or whatever it is that passes for God. You're going to lose this moment if you don't act quickly.
Your eyes snap back to the Victory's deck.
The big one is trying to scoop up the kid off the deck, a cordon of royal marines gathering around the fallen body. His skin's already gone the color of ash. Gold flashes on the coat. Gaudy and bright even in the fog of battle.
The empty sleeve of the coat flaps loosely, now come undone.
You stare, stunned. You've never seen him, of course not. But you've heard. Everyone has.
Your musket ball didn't find its target in some English captain's errant child.
“Ouah. C’est ça, Nelson? Je le pensais plus grand.”
Wow. That's Nelson? I thought he'd be taller.
Your eyes flick down to your musket's stock. Was it you, or was it Redoutable who aimed that shot as a final "Fuck you"?
Redoutable shudders, rattling your precarious perch on the mizzen-top. That's a good enough answer, you decide.
Over on the Victory, the cordon of marines shuffle their fallen admiral away. You have no idea if he's actually dead — or soon will be.
You roll onto your back and stare into the smoke stained azure sky, a death's head grin peeling back your lips as a veil of peace settles over you.
You're not going to make it back down the ratlines. Not with the wound in your leg leaving a spreading puddle on the wood of the mizzen-top.
You lift your head to look down over your feet, and see HMS Temeraire approaching from starboard, her men fresh and ready and closing in for the final kill. Beyond that is Fougueux, too late to the dance.
The English stole that name from a fine French ship, Téméraire, Redoutable's twin. They stole it, sawed the balls off, and then branded "His Majesty's Ship" on her ass. The English desecrated the name, and turned it into a curse. They can't even spell it right, can't say it right, but they act like Téméraire's had been born to their kingling all along.
You spit.
Then the effete Temeraire's guns and cannons open up.
Redoutable shudders again, even more violently than before. English cannonballs rip through his gun decks from starboard to port, gutting him wide open. Some of them even rip through his belly to strike the Victory on his other side, the English not caring if they draw the blood of their own as long as they force Redoutable to kneel. Grapeshot chews up the wood of the mizzenmast beneath you. It teeters like a tree before an axe. Splinters and ammunition are scything down your brothers-in-arms, the carnage reducing them to meat and bone.
It looks so far away from your uncertain refuge high above the killing fields.
The deck is covered in offal and gore and lumps of twitching, screaming flesh. Blood runs off of Redoutable's gunwales, and like a bull stuck with a dozen spears in the arena, he's still trying to gore the bastard holding the sword.
He's dying, bleeding out for English sport.
You grin.
What is it the rosbifs like to say? Ah, right. "May every man do his duty."
You did yours.
You tilt your head up at the sky, and breathe. Pulverized wood and black powder chokes your lungs. On the Victory's other side, where she'd sliced through the French and Spanish lines, Bucentaure is trailing a snake's tail of inky smoke, his stern afire. You hope he gets away.
You won't get to find out. But you'll be alright.
Redoutable's keel was laid down as the Revolution was born screaming into the fire. He'll die screaming too.
Ça ira. It'll be fine. On y va, putain.
The mizzenmast beneath you quakes as a cannonball sunders it with a crack.
You let go.
Redoutable's deck rushes up towards you.
You changed the course of history — and no one will ever know your name.