"Get up you idiot. UP!"
Astryd was thrown from her hammock in a dramatic assault. Sprawled on the ground and franticly forcing her hair from her face, she looked for her attacker. She looked up to see long crimson hair hanging overhead. Carmen looked down at her with a cheesy grin. After a glance around the room, Astryd noticed no one else was there. Before Astryd could ask what was going on Carmen dashed away across the room to the staircase that led to the upper decks. Rushing to her feet, Astryd followed.
The smoke of cannon fire blurred Astryd's line of vision. The sun was barely waking up and peeking through over the horizon. The shouts of the bustling crew surrounding her and the loud pounding in her ears prevented her from understanding anything anyone was saying. She choked on the thick smoke cloud as she tried to fight her way through the crowd. Looking over the railing on the side of the ship, Astryd saw a neighboring ship that seemed nearly within arm's reach. The opposing ship towered over the Crescent. It was at least one story taller and with a much larger crew. The sheer size of the ship made the Crescent look like a dingy.
Astryd could hardly make out any faces among the crowd around her, but she saw a flash of blazing red hair rush by. Astryd rushed after it and found Kincade regally standing in front of the helm and gripping the railing. He had a confident grin on his face and a commanding stature. He seemed to not even notice Astryd was there. He had a look about him that looked like a child playing his favorite game. He shouted commands Astryd could not understand such as, "Watch the keel!" and "About ship!"
Suddenly, something clicked in Astryd's head. "We're being attacked!"
Through all the commotion, Astryd was at a complete loss of what to do. Her first decision was to look for a means of defending herself.
I'm not going down without a fight, she thought.
Astryd scrambled around the small ship packed with people. As she forced her way past a few people towards the stairs that led to the lower decks, she ran head first into a tall, silently intimidating, and muscular man in front of her. He was a bald man with dark skin and foreign tattoos etched into his arms, and he was at least a head taller than Astryd. For a moment she just stared at him, until the man silently extended an axe out to her.
"Oh," she hesitantly took the axe, "thank you?" She wasn't sure if that was the correct response.
Without a word, the man turned his back and faded into the crowd.
"Ah, Morgan beat me to it."
Astryd jumped, axe ready in her hand, and turned to see a boy with straw colored hair standing behind her.
"I was goin' to give you this," the boy showed a cutlass he held in his hand. "Morgan's havin' me pass out weapons."
"Tom!" the large man's booming voice carried from across the ship, and Astryd guessed that was Morgan. Before another word was spoken, the boy dashed after the man.
Astryd looked down at the axe in her hand. She didn't know how to fight. She didn't want to take anyone's life...
"NOW!" Kincade shouted to the crew. She turned around to see Kincade be the first to swing a grappling hook over his head. The claw like hook clung to the railing on the opposing ship. The crew mimicked his actions and a dozen ropes went flying into the air at once. Most of the hooks hit their mark, and the hooks were so large that the rope could not be reached to cut them loose. A man leaned precariously over the end of the ship to reach the rope. But as he tried to reach farther out with over half of his body hanging over the ship, he plummeted into the deep blue water below.
With all of Kincade's crew using all their strength they pulled the Crescent closer to the larger ship. They were so close it looked as though the two ships were going to ram into each other.
"What are you all doing?" Astryd franticly shouted to the men around her. "We need to get out of here!"
Some of the men that heard Astryd laughed as they passed.
Nothing was adding up. If they were being attacked, why were they securing themselves to the enemy ship? "How did I end up on the one ship that's run by a bunch of idiots?"
Astryd's first thought was that the cannons from the other ship would blast them to smithereens. But she soon realized that the merchant ship beside them didn't have cannons at all. The Crescent had six, three on each side.
She looked at the axe still clutched in her hand then back at the rope tying the two ships together. She raised the axe high above her head with a staggering breath, and then in one swooping motion brought it down upon the railing. The rope snapped and fell into the water like a dead snake. She looked around to see if anyone was watching her then advanced onto the next rope tied to the Crescent.
A startlingly large booming sound erupted that was so loud Astryd staggered backward, dropped her axe, and let out a scream. The blond haired boy Astryd ran into earlier had fired one of the cannons. The shot rang through the ship as a crashing sound soon followed, and a gaping hole was left in the hull of the opposite ship.
They weren't being attacked. They were attacking.
The pounding in Astryd's chest grew exponentially. Kincade lied to her, and now she's being forced to be a part of an attack at sea. This wasn't what she wanted.
They were now forcing their attack upon the crew of their victim, concentrating gunshot and cannon fire above deck which forced the men to duck down low. That allowed the Crescent's crew to climb the ropes and board the merchant ship with little resistance.
Astryd was being pushed and shoved out of the way as more men climbed onto the opposing ship. She forced her way against the crowd and bumped into another man. Before she looked up to see who it was, she could smell the wretched stench of week old ale.
Astryd's heart plummeted to her stomach and her breath caught in her throat as she met eyes with the man still standing in front of her, No sneering smile came from the man that she first met in the alleyway during her escape. Instead, he gave her a deathly glare as he towered over her. One of his eyes was closed shut with a fresh wound running from his brow to his cheek. Her dagger hit its mark after all.
The man growled and raised the axe in his hand. He held it high above his head, seemingly enjoying the terror written on Astryd's face. She had left her axe behind, and it was swallowed up by the crowd. He relished a moment longer in the suspenseful agony. The smile returned to his face once more, and he began to bring it down upon Astryd.
She ducked down, and with her small frame, she managed to tuck and roll under the legs of her attacker. Using the tiny window of time that it took for the man to comprehend what had happened and turn around, Astryd snatched up a stray cannonball and lunged it at the man, silently praying that it would cause damage in some way. The fist sized iron ball hit the man square in the shoulder, and he let out a howl. It gave Astryd enough time to disappear and evade him completely. For now.
By the time Astryd got her bearings again, she heard an outcry of cheers. The battle was already won.
She rushed to the netting leading up the main mast and climbed it until she was level with the merchant ship. Kincade was standing on its deck with Carmen at his side. The ship's crew was being gathered at the center of the ship and forced to the ground by their shoulders to kneel before Kincade. At the front of the gathering of men looked to be the captain of the ship. There were onlookers of Kincade's men from both ships.
"I must say," began Kincade casually as he cleaned his cutlass, "I didn't expect such resistance from you." He addressed the captain. "If you had surrendered more quickly, I may have left you with some of your cargo. But for your resistance," a smirk played on his lips, "I suppose we'll just have to take all of it."
Kincade's crew roared with cheers as they raised their weapons in triumph.
"Men, take whatever valuables you find and remember to present it before Carmen."
The rest of the crew swarmed onto the ship and rushed below decks while a few men stayed on deck to guard the captured crew. Carmen suddenly took an authoritative stature, as she seemed to be overlooking the looting process. Trunk by trunk and barrel by barrel the goods were passed onto the Crescent and taken below decks. Kincade did nothing. He simply watched as the men happily looted the ship.
Anger bubbled up inside Astryd, and it seemed to positively boil. She was revolted that she had to witness such a thing and be helpless to do anything about it. She was ready to snag a rope and swing across to the other ship and kick Kincade in the gut. How could he have possibly brought her along without telling her such a very important detail like this? Astryd now realized she was no more free here than she was back in Esterbell. In fact Esterbell seemed like the more appealing of her options at the moment.
She heard the sound of fabric flapping in the wind above her head and looked up. A black flag bearing white markings was being displayed above her head.
Pirates.