A brutal fantasy tale of piracy, friendship, romance and revenge on the high seas…
Next morning, a meeting of a select group of the most feared and respected of pirates took place on the Pink Pig. Jack took the chair and laid out his plan. About halfway through, Mary laid her face on the table and groaned. He looked at her in some severity.
“Hush up now. You get your chance when I finish.”
By the time he had finished speaking, she had herself together.
“Okay,” she said. “It’s certainly a plan. And probably has at leat half a chance of working. And I know you have to kill this Spaniard with your own hand if you don’t want to be fighting your own kind forever. I just wish it wasn’t so fucking dangerous.”
“Me too.” Jack grinned fiercely. “But there is no other way to eliminate Don Esteban and come out of the deal with a profit.”
“So we do it then. The only alteration I’m determined to make is that the Pig will be hove to behind the jaws of Hell’s Maw, just in case you need help.”
For a moment it looked as if Jack was going to argue, but in the end he just ducked his head. “I guess it’s no good asking you to keep out of danger.”
“Not when you are running your fool head into a noose.”
The hashing out of the details took a surprisingly short time and once the meeting broke up the other pirates returned to their own vessels. Mary and Jack leaned on the taffrail and watched them go. Down on the ground one of the less intelligent prodded his captain with a grimy forefinger.
“Cap’n Teach,” he said in a voice that hovered between horror and respect. “Is them pair doing it?”
“What pair? Doing what?”
“Tall Jack and Bony Mary. Doing It.”
“Very probably.”
“But. But. He’s a shortarse. Don’t even come up to her shoulder. How can…” the voice tailed off and Teach laughed a short bark of genuine amusement.
“They probably don’t do it standing up.”
Mary took an unripe apple out of her pocket and flicked it ground-wards with unerring accuracy. It bounced off the head of the inquisitive sailor, who cringed.
“Mind your own business, nosy.”
She turned a laughing face to Jack, who favoured her with a wicked grin. “I think we now have to figure out a way to prove Teach wrong.”
For a moment she didn’t catch his meaning, but when she did her own eyes lit with unholy amusement. “Impossible.”
By way of an answer he grabbed her hand and dragged her into the forecastle cabin slamming the door firmly behind him.
Three weeks later and nobody was laughing. Mary sent up a silent prayer to the god who protects idiots and then set her mouth in a grim line as she manoeuvred the Pig into hiding under the overhanging rocks at the mouth of Hell’s Maw. Her crew obeyed her in unusual silence.
Out in the blue water of the bay, Jack and his crew were busy perfecting their performance. It had to look good or they would be sunk. Maybe literally. As the sun climbed towards its zenith all they could do was hope that all their confederates had done their parts.
As it happened, they had.
There will be more from Bony Mary and her crew next week…
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