“And decide which side we should take,” Krysty added.
“If any.”
“Winners might be grateful for our help,” she reminded.
“Or they may ace us for getting in the way of a private feud,” he retorted. “We recce first before doing anything else.”
“Safety first, lover,” Krysty agreed with a grin.
Slipping and sliding down the red clay of the hillside, the companions crawled through the bushes until reaching the stonework wall. Several bodies lay in pieces on the sandy soil, obvious victims of the blast that opened the wall. Silently they crept to the gaping hole and peeked inside.
Mutilated corpses lay everywhere in bloody disarray. Most had black holes in their chests, some with arms missing, and a few were decapitated, the heads nowhere in sight. The snow-white sand of the beach was crimson in spots from the fresh spilled blood of the bodies hacked into pieces in the shallows. Most wore plain garb of crude tan cloth, the hems only ragged threads. But prominent among the dead were men in good clothing, black boots, pants with patches, white shirts and wide leather belts. Swords lay near the corpses and what looked like crude muskets. One of the sailors had an arrow through his neck, while the other was literally cut in twain from the head down to the ax buried in his groin.
Above the tide marks, laughing men in boots and wide belts were whipping a crowd of men and women whose heavy chains shackled them ankle and neck. Other sailors moved between the prisoners roughly cutting away their clothing, leaving the people stripped naked. One man fought against the treatment and was lashed to the ground by three of the cold-hearts, until his back was a raw mass of bloody flesh hanging loose on his bones.
Oddly the clothing didn’t seem to fit these cold-hearts well.
Off to the side, several young women had been stripped and waited weeping in line as the sailors cut the ropes on a woman tied to the table and shoved her to the ground. She lay there without moving, her thighs streaked with fresh blood, her face battered and bruised. Krysty muttered a virulent curse as she helplessly watched the next girl dragged to the table and lashed down.
A sailor ran his hands along her flanks and said something the wind carried away. The rest of the men waiting in line laughed at the comment and began to undo their belts.
Only a few dozen yards off the beach was the great wooden ship, the name Constellation masterfully carved into her bow. The ancient ship was fat and wide, the gunwales high above the water. A single titanic mast stood in the middle, supported by a confusing maze of ropes. A squat cabin sat on the rear deck. The vessel was colossal, maybe two hundred feet long by fifty wide. This close they could see that a section of the hull was made of greenwood planks, unlike any other part of the beautiful vessel.
“No,” Mildred muttered. “Can’t be.”
“But it is, madam,” Doc growled in barely contained rage, rubbing at the scars on his wrist. “And they’re using her as a godforsaken slave galley!”
“The bastards have to die,” the physician spit.
A small boat rowed to the ship, a group of the chained prisoners cowering under the watch of the coldhearts armed with huge-bore pistols. The curved hammers of their blasters were set on the side of the barrel and were bigger than a man’s thumb.
“Flintlock pistols,” J.B. whispered, adjusting the focus on his Navy telescope. “I’d say .75 caliber. Takes thirty seconds to a minute to reload, depending on how good they are.”
“Same with the muskets on the ship,” Krysty said, squinting into the distance.
Ryan took her word on the matter, knowing that her vision was sharper than most people’s.
A well of laughter on the beach caught his attention. A jeering coldheart in fancy clothes was pissing on a chained man being dragged to a roaring fire.
“You can’t do this!” the prisoner raged, fighting the chains on his wrists. “We are freeborn!”
The leader of the coldhearts laughed, while another backhanded the skinny man across the face.