Excerpted from
"The Island of the Pirate Gods"
Appearing in Wilde Stories 2008
Tempests and Teacups
Black leather boots a-smoke with powder-burns from the big gun of my beloved Pride of Kentigern, I hurtle through the rain, a human cannonball, balloon-sleeves of my pink silk shirt frilling in the wind as, arms a-flap like a panicked duck, I do my best to come out of the head-over-heels tumble, screaming a prayer out to the pirate gods in the hope that I won't hit the foremast of the Determination with a head only as thick as iron in the sense of witlessness and obstinacy.
-- Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!, I scream.
It's not a prayer as any man of the cloth would be proud of, I grant you, but to my renegade deities, Matelotage and Mutiny, it's the sentiment that matters, not the subtlety; and bless them if they don't look out for their beloved son.
As I reach the zenith of my trajectory, I straighten out face-forward, find myself in an arc that should take me nicely past the Determination's foremast and towards the rather softer target of the main topgallant. Or at least towards where the main topgallant would be if the bloody bastards weren't furling it for the storm.
My prayer becomes a chant as I hurtle through the air.
-- Fuck fuck fuckety fuck fuck fuckety fu-
Que? Sat on the railing of the crow's nest, I notice, dangling his legs as casual as can be, a peachy young lad in stripy top and knee-length breeches is stirring the contents of a china tea-cup with one finger. I could swear the saucy bugger winks at me, before I blink and he's gone.
An almighty crack of lightning shatters my curiosity as it shatters the air, forks blasting all three masts of the ship simultaneously, shattering the mainmast and bringing the tip of it down in a mess of splintering timber, burning canvas and whiplashing ropes. My trajectory suddenly acquires a lateral dimension as the twisting topple of mast and rigging nabs me neat as a ball in a lacrosse racket. I catch glimpses as I swing down, sailors on deck, waves crashing over the port side, jibs flapping loose from the foremast where the Pride of Kentigern's cannon have blown the bowsprit to bits. Serves you sodding right, I think, as the arc of the tangle brings me round, upside-down and facing back the way I came at the burning wreck of my beautiful brig, almost swallowed now by the tempestuous ocean.
They sank my favourite ship, the bastards.
-- One little cannonball, I yell down my outrage as more ropes give and I swing back over the deck, where Black Joey staggers through the carnage, hauling sailors to their feet, hacking ropes, pointing this way and that. He stops suddenly, looks up directly at me, pulling off his black leather tricorn and shaking rain from his eyes and his dreadlocks. Gaze as black as his skin and his skirted coat, even from here I can see the hatred in his deadlights.
-- It was only meant to be a warning shot, I shout.
There's fury on his face as he pulls his flintlock out, tries to hold aim on me against the yaw and pitch of his ship. Bollocks. And I can't even reach me own twin pistols, caught in the rigging as I am like Saint Ahab on the whale. The boat lurches wildly to starboard and I hear the whine of his shot; then we lurch to port, and Black Joey reels, turns to curse the pilot.
-- Hold her steady, you scabrous... what the...?
Up on the poop deck, the saucy sprite from the crow's nest is whirling the wheel this way and that with gay abandon. Actually, it's the fact that he's doing so with his monkey-tail that's truly queer. Again, though, there's not much time for curiosity as the boat jolts hard as a horse-hoof in the head. There's a scream of splintering wood--a reef, I reckon--and then a lightning crack hits what's left of the mainmast, courses down to the deck (tingling my tongue with a nutty taste), and sends a searching spear right down into the hold. Big hairy bollocks, I think, as the powder magazine of the Determination blows the whole ship apart.
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© 2008 Hal Duncan
Hal Duncan is a Scottish speculative fiction writer based in Glasgow. A graduate of Glasgow University, his first book, Vellum, about a war between heaven and hell, was released by Pan in summer 2005. It has since been translated into several other languages and nominated to the Gaylactic Spectrum, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards. Ink, the follow up, was released in February 2007. "The Island of the Pirate Gods" first appeared in Postscripts #13.
