Individual Turks grew visible along the corsair’s deck, but they weren’t in range yet. Gil handed Eudocia one of the crossbows. When she first met us, she hadn’t had much experience with crossbows—just with swords, knives, and daggers. But in the last decade, she’d become almost as accurate as I was and more dependable than Gil, though that was only because she could see better than he could. I wasn’t sure how accurate she’d be while fighting seasickness, but I trusted her not to waste more than a bolt or two if the motion hindered her.
Captain Ignatios had been giving orders to his men almost nonstop, but he paused long enough to address me. “We’ll run from them until they’re alongside us, then we’ll try to turn away from them. You’ll be able to hit them soonest from the stern.”
I nodded. The ship had a raised deck in the front and in the back, so I went to the aftercastle. My friends and brother joined me.
“Keep down.” I directed my warning at Aban—the others already knew. “I’m not sure what type of weapons they have. They mostly shot arrows at us when we were swimming away from them, so we’ll be able to hit them before they can hit us, but once they’re in range, they’ll be able to fire a lot faster than we can.”
Gil hauled cargo barrels up from the lower deck to better shield us. Aban helped him, but he wasn’t as fast—he didn’t have sea legs the way Gil did.
“Almost in range.” Eudocia crouched behind a barrel.
“Are you feeling any better?” I asked.
“If you can fight with all your leg pain, I can put aside a little nausea.”
That wasn’t the information I was looking for, but it was fair. I rarely gave her or Gil a direct answer when they asked about my malady.
The enemy rowed within range. After our first shots, they were likely to take cover, so I picked out a man with a turban who looked much like the man who had threatened Cecilia and stolen my brigandine, one of their leaders. I waited until the swell of the sea raised the ship so the angle of my shot would be down, and then I aimed and released the bolt.
Eudocia handed me Gil’s loaded crossbow, and I found another man to aim at. The first had disappeared: wounded, dead, or evading. My second shot was solid—it plowed into the man, and he fell forward over the corsair’s rails. Eudocia’s shot hit home too. Aban and Gil reloaded for us—both of them needed to wait until the targets were closer. Gil, because of his eyes, and Aban, because of his inexperience. We had a good supply of crossbow bolts, but it wasn’t unlimited, so we had to make each shot count.
I got off another three shots, as did Eudocia, before the arrows came. A slew of them flew in an arc from the Turkish vessel, heading into the sky before raining down on us. One pummeled into the barrel right in front of me.
“How many men are on that ship?” Gil asked.
“About six fewer than there were when they tried to make me a slave. And at least that many less again since they attacked this ship.”
Gil pulled the string back on a crossbow and handed it to his wife. “That doesn’t tell me how many might board the ship when they catch up to us.”
“I know, but I don’t have a better answer for you.” I shot another enemy, then ducked behind the barrel to reload.
Aban missed his first shot but had better luck with the second. Gil still held off—he was more useful loading crossbows for the rest of us. The Turks steadily closed the distance between us, but they were still far enough away that they would be blurry for him.
“I’d guess about five of the sailors will be useful in a fight.” Eudocia aimed and hit another Turk.
Five of Ignatios’s men. Four of us—and that was a stretch since Aban was still so unpracticed. I shot another Turk. That was our best strategy—to thin them out before they could board. If we did it thoroughly enough, they might give up.
“We could arm the galley slaves.” Eudocia ducked behind a barrel and barely missed a shower of arrows that plowed down around her. “If we had enough weapons, and if we could free them.”
The boy who’d shown us the armaments ran toward us.
“Get down!” I told him. The Turks had mostly been firing volleys of arrows. Now they were close enough to aim at targets, and they were unlikely to show him mercy, despite his youth.
He crawled next to me. “They’ve hit three of our men. When they come alongside us, the captain will try to steer away at the last moment, but we’re down on manpower, so it will be hard to maneuver the ship, especially if they come on board and kill more of us.”
I nodded. “We’ll do all we can to prevent their boarding. At the very least, we’ll delay it, but we are few in number.”
The boy nodded. “So are they, now that you’ve been shooting at them.”
I hoped he was right. But we couldn’t have caused massive damage yet, or they would have turned away. They still thought they were strong enough to take the ship, even knowing there were trained crossbowmen aboard.
We kept firing our bolts at them, but they were getting better at dodging. The ship pulled closer, and their prow came even with our stern. Even Gil picked up a crossbow now. But their arrows were getting more deadly. One of Ignatios’s men cried out, and another ran to take his place at the helm.
Eudocia reached for the boy’s hand. “Come with me.”
“Do I want to know what you’re planning?” Gil asked.
“It’s not really a plan yet—I’m still filling in the details.” Eudocia dashed away with the cabin boy.
The rest of us shot more Turks. The enemy ship slowly gained on us. That meant new targets appeared with each stroke of the corsair’s oars. It also mean that every single Turk could shoot at us as they passed. None of us stood anymore. We crouched low and fired our shots through the space between barrels.
When half the corsair was aligned with our ship, Ignatios yelled out a string of orders, the sails shifted, and the ship sheered away.
I reloaded my crossbow, but the lurching and turning of the ship made it hard to fire, so I held off. Aban stumbled toward the rails, but I grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back. He’d have to hurl on the deck because if he tried to vomit over the side of the ship, he’d end up with a quiver’s worth of arrows sticking out of his back. It was mostly dry heaves anyway.
The corsair caught us again but not without losing another handful of men to our crossbow bolts. Maybe if we kept it up long enough, they’d grow too weak to take us. We turned again, sharply. They tried to match our direction, but we gained more of a lead. It would only be temporary, so Gil and I aimed the best we could. I took two shots, but the ship rocked, and the sea sprayed, and the Turkish deck had its share of places to hide.
They seemed reluctant to call off the attack. Maybe anger drove them even when logic told them they were growing weaker and weaker.
The next time they caught us, the reason for such tenacity became obvious. More men lined the deck than I’d thought. Maybe that was part of the pull to be a pirate—the crews were larger because they were expected to fight, so the normal work of seamanship was divided among more men. More men who looked eager to board Ignatios’s ship.
“Please tell me my eyes are playing tricks on me,” Gil said.
I let out a curse instead. I hadn’t seen that many Turks when Cecilia and I had escaped from them. Maybe they’d picked up more in the days since then.
“That’s what I thought.” Gil aimed and hit one of the pirates.
“They’re pulling away.” Aban’s voice held shock and hope.
“No, they’re coming at us from a different angle.” Gil reloaded his crossbow and held his fire.
“Will they ram us?” Aban asked.
Gil gritted his teeth. “Not if we can prevent it.” He ran to the helm. “Let me steer.” He said to the helmsman. Then he turned back to Aban. “I need you to be my eyes.”
Aban looked bewildered. “But you don’t know how to sail a ship, do you?”
“I practically grew up on a ship. It just didn’t look like this one.”
“I thought you were a fisherman.”
“The whales we chased might have been smaller than that corsair, but they were far more maneuverable and harder to predict. The wind is steady—we’ll make sure it works with us and against them.”
I tried to stay on the part of the ship nearest the enemy, a task complicated by the way the Turks were maneuvering and Gil was steering and Ignatios was calling out orders that shifted the sails. Enemy arrows rained down on the deck of the ship, but all the movement impeded the enemy archers as much as it impeded me.
“They’re going to catch us eventually,” Gil said as I passed the helm. “If we make them catch us with their prow, it will funnel their boarding party through a smaller space. We’ll have a better chance of fighting them off.”
I nodded. We might all be dead or slaves by the end of the day. Trying to flee the corsair felt like trying to outride the wind. Eudocia tied a rope to the railing not too far from me. She’d said more than once that she would rather die than become a slave again. Cecilia had said much the same thing the last time this group of Turks had caught up with me. I wanted neither death nor slavery, not now. I wanted victory and freedom and life.
Gil and Ignatios had a heated discussion while Aban called out every change in direction that the corsair made. I waited, ensuring every crossbow was loaded and praying God would protect the people I cared about and the poor sailors who’d taken us onto their ship.
“Now!” Gil shouted.
Ignatios repeated the order, and the sails swung. The ship followed, tipping at a sharp angle that had the barrels rolling and me grabbing for something solid to hold on to.
“You can’t vomit now!” Gil’s call to Aban carried over the swish of the waves and the howl of the wind. “I still need your eyes.”
In a swirl of ships and seawater, the corsair and the tarida met. Our bow rammed into the side of their vessel, crashing through the rail and part of the deck. Oars scattered. A wounded man cried in pain. Grappling hooks flew from the Turkish corsair to Ignatios’s tarida. And the boarding party came for us.