DOGS. Legacy Saga II

66

All the Spaniards at the main deck rushed to repel the pirates. Marina unleashed all her fury and her fear to be too late to rescue Morris alive. She fired all her pistols, wielded sword and misericorde and stabbed her way toward the hatch leading below. Her men followed her, dragged by her drive, and soon they left a heap of dead bodies behind.

"Yours, Sorensen!" Marina ordered. "Brethren of the Coast, with me!"

The girl left the redcoats to cover her back as she led her man below. More pirates kept coming from the Phantom. Maxó and Oliver stopped Marina when she tried to head down the first. They preceded her with three more men, pushing out of the way all the Spaniards trying to block the access.

While they fought their way down to the second deck, another clash shook the Holly Avenger, this time from larboard, and the shouting grew louder above their head. But Marina and her men were too busy to wonder what was going on up there. They kept fighting, forcing the Spaniards back step by step.

"Jean! You're up!" she shouted, as soon as they controlled a few yards around the hatch to the hold. "Let's get our men, Maxó!"

Once more, Maxó and Oliver took the lead down the ladder, but they soon stopped sharp. Instead of the usual smell of gunpowder and food, a nauseating stench of urine, blood and burned meat filled their noses. A continuous murmur of suffocated groans came from the hold.

"Stop the pearl!" Maxó told Oliver, hurrying down the second ladder.

But Marina was already there. She hesitated, her eyes widening in horror. Then she pushed Oliver out of her way and rushed after Maxó.

The scene they found at the hold made her eyes well in a heartbeat.

The magazine seemed the backroom of the most cruel of butchers. The prisoners were there. Arms chained to thick logs that hung from the beams, their feet in the air, pretty much crucified. Their clothes had been flogged to rags, their bodies covered in the blood pouring from countless wounds. In those scarce eight hours, the Spaniards had tortured all of them to the brink of death, leaving only agony and pain, in some cases past any hope of healing.

Marina managed to control herself and turned to her men. "We must secure the hold! Don't let anyone here until the rest of the ship is taken! Maxó! We have to bring them down!"

She was still speaking when she had a glimpse of a shadow hiding behind the gunpowder barrels. She snatched Maxó's last loaded pistol and spun on her heels.

The pirates stepped back, scared, when they saw her shoot in the magazine. And they exhaled in relief when, instead of blowing up, they heard a muffled cry.

"Move!" the girl thundered.

Oliver took a dozen pirates and ran back up the ladder, to secure the only access to that side of the hold. Maxó and the others set to release the prisoners, laying them down on the floorboards, slippery with blood.

Marina circled the barrels, found the Spaniard she'd just killed and hurried to put out the fuss he still held in his hand. Then she spotted the door to the stern locker. It was ajar.

She headed there, remembering the awful name the Trinidad crew gave to that place: the riving. She tightened her grip on her sword and kicked the door wide open.

Her scream made all the pirates scamper to her.

Marina had fell to her knees, dropping her blades to cover her mouth with both hands. Before her, covered in blood from head to toes, was Morris. He had shackles around his wrists and ankles, and hung up the base of the mizzenmast, just like she had back on the Trinidad. But they'd chained his ankles to the floor, using the mizzenmast like an improvised rack.