Anne Dray's Arc

Chapter 11 of 28

A week north, Anne found Kate's ship at last. It sat moored in a narrow strait, iron plating bolted over its hull. Crown guards paced the deck. Anne watched from her own vessel through the dawn haze. She had come to take the ship back. But her cannon fire would bounce off that plating like stones off a wall. She had no way in. Grimjack stood beside her, the old navigator who had steered her fleet through waters the Crown could not follow. He did not soften things. He never had. "Guns won't touch it," he said. "Iron all the way round." "Then we find the seam," Anne said. She sent for Emily. Emily Deepwood climbed up wiping grease from her hands. The Crown had exiled her for building hulls too strong. She knew their plating better than the men who bolted it on. She studied Kate's ship a long moment, then spat over the rail. "They call it armor," she said. "I call it lazy work. They never seal the rudder seams. Fire won't get through the hull. But the rudder's soft." "Soft enough to sink her?" Anne asked. "Soft enough to jam her," Emily said. "Wedge the seam, she can't steer. A ship that can't steer isn't guarding anything." Anne looked at the current running fast through the narrow strait. A plan formed. "We drift in at the stern. Emily works the rudder. We take the deck before they know we're aboard." Grimjack frowned. "Guards will see you coming." "Not if they're looking the wrong way." Anne turned to the small figure at her elbow. Tom Harker, the cabin boy, had followed her up without a word. He had kind eyes and a habit of watching everything. "You can row?" "Yes, captain." "Take an empty boat past their bow. Slow. Look lost. Make them watch you." Tom did not flinch. "They might shoot at me." "They might," Anne said. "I won't order it." Tom looked at Kate's ship, then back. "I'll go. She's worth it." They moved at first light. Tom's boat drifted into view off the bow. The guards crowded the rail, shouting, aiming. Anne's ship slid in at the stern on the current. Emily went over the side with a mallet and an iron wedge. She drove it deep into the rudder seam. The metal shrieked and split. The rudder locked hard. Anne's crew swarmed the deck. The guards turned too late. Steel rang. Within minutes the Crown men were down or overboard. Tom rowed back grinning, unhurt. Kate came aboard her own ship and pressed her hand flat to the mast. She said nothing. She did not need to. Anne had kept her promise. The fleet would follow her now, all of it. But the Crown guards who fled would carry word. They would report where Anne was, and that she had taken a Crown-marked hull by force. The whole navy would know her heading by nightfall.