Siuro = Sea-euro
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Somewhere in the middle of the Caribbean, August 1721
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As she had often heard her brother say in the moments before the first broadside was fired : 'Twas a fine day to die.
The sun was a searing white eye in a sky so blue and clear it pained the soul to stare upward too long. Staring anywhere for even the briefest split second was not an option, however, for in the blink of an eyelash there was another flash of cold steel, another shock of contact as the two blades clashed together, sliding their full length in a shower of blue sparks.
Siuro Dalzeel was beginning to feel the strain in her wrist. She withstood her opponent's enraged offense as long as she could, then broke away, spinning and crouching low in one fluid motion, letting instinct take over where strength was failing. A second shadow loomed behind her, the face bloodied but the eyes focused with lethal intent, and Siuro cursed. She sprang to the side but found herself cornered, the flames of a burning spar on one side, the fat barrel of a twenty-four-pounder demi-culverin on the other. The two Spaniards, desperate for their own lives moments before, saw her predicament and closed rank, crowding her against the rail. One of them muttered under his breath and grabbed his crotch. The other laughed and licked the filthy tips of his fingers in agreement.
Siuro's sword slashed out in a brilliant flare of sunlight. The laughing Spaniard saw those fingers fly off his hand and land with a skitter of red splashes on the deck. While he was busy finding the breath to scream, she swung on his cohort and cut a wider grin on his face, one that went from ear to ear and severed the jugular clean through. She used her boot to kick him aside when he started to fall forward, then leaped gracefully over the twitching body as another snarling attacker rushed to take his place.
Siuro raised her sword, her slender body braced to meet a mighty downward stroke intended to cleave her skull in half. The impact shuddered through her arms and jarred her shoulders, bending her back over the gunwall. The savagery of the blow drew a grunt, then a curse, but she was able to deflect the blade long enough to reach into her belt with her left hand and unsheathe her dagger. The blade was eight inches long, sharp as a needle, and it went through the Spaniard's leather doublet like a finger through lard.
She barely had time to regain her balance when she caught the glint of a steel-pot helmet. The arquebusier stood just out of reach of a sword thrust, calmly balancing his weapon on a handy length of broken timber, the fuse smoking, the trumpet nose aimed squarely between her eyes.
Trapped against the gunwall, she could do little but watch as his finger squeezed the trigger to release the mainspring. She saw the serpentine lock trip forward and touch the fuse to the priming pan. The powder ignited in a small puff of smoke, lighting the main charge and sending the two-ounce iron ball exploding down the barrel.
Out of nowhere, a streak of midnight blue and gold cut across her path. A slash of steel knocked aside the snout of the blunderbuss just as it discharged its round, and the shot went wild. The stranger's sword glittered again, finding a vulnerable gap between the arquebusier's iron cuirass and the exposed band of skin beneath his helmet, and the Spaniard heeled backward in a gout of bright red blood. Siuro saw the flash of a grin as her rescuer turned and extended a gloved hand to lift her away from the rail.
"Are you all right, boy?"
Siuro found herself staring into the deepest, darkest green eyes she had ever seen. They were partly shadowed by the brim of an elegant cavalier's hat, the one side cocked up at a jaunty angle, topped by a plume dyed the same shade of blue as his doublet and breeches.
"Boy?"
Instead of answering, Siuro drew a pistol out of her crossbelt and fired it, her finger squeezing the trigger before the surprise could register on the stranger's face. The shot was propelled past a broad shoulder and thudded into the chest of a Spaniard who was about to slay one of her crewmen at the opposite side of the deck.
The green eyes followed the shot, then flicked back to Siuro. The grin reappeared, wide and very white through a neatly trimmed mustache and imperial.
"A fine shot. And yes, I can see you are very much all right."
He touched the brim of his hat in a salute, then was gone, leaping over what was left of the taffrail to rejoin the mêlée taking place on the main deck. He was not two heartbeats out of her startled sight when a massive, ear-shattering explosion rocked her off her feet and threw her hard against the barrel of the cannon.
Siuro averted her face as a blast of heat laden with particles of stinging debris swept across the deck. A huge pillar of red and orange flame rose to the sky, and the accompanying screams of those men caught in the open seemed to take the last of the Spaniard's resolve with them. By twos and threes the soldiers began dropping their weapons and spearing their hands upward in surrender. Some fell onto their knees; others raised their steepled hands to pray for mercy.
She scrambled to her feet and ran to the rail. The waist of the galleon was a shambles, with bodies littering the deck from stem to stern. The explosion had not come from the Spaniard's powder stores, as she had initially feared, but from the deck of the much smaller English carrack that was bound to the galleon's hull by grappling lines.
It was this distraction, when the Spaniard had closed for the kill and boarded the English merchantman, that had allowed Siuro's ship, the Devil's Chariot , to emerge almost unseen from the banks of haze and drifting smoke. She had come in under full sail and poured a series of crippling broadsides into the exposed side of the galleon before snaring it within her own cobweb of thick cables. A cry of "up and over" had sent the crew of the pirate ship swarming eagerly over the side to join the fray. The crew of the beleaguered English vessel, perilously near the brink of defeat, had rallied as well and now, despite the fact that the two smaller vessels were shockingly out-manned and outgunned by the behemoth warship, the Spaniards were surrendering!
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