A Motley Sisterhood of Pirates!  (Part Eight: Blog Forty-Nine)

By Dan Watt and Taylor Norris, co-authors of the Rita Walker series

Very little shocks Oli but Amelie’s both daring and simultaneously stupid attack, has.  She unsheathes her dragon claw katana and peers over the gunwale.  Well, that’s amazing she thinks.  Amelie is standing atop the body of one of the attackers, cursing the few still alive.  Meanwhile, Amelie’s friend, the dixopus, is fighting one sailor with the wooden practice sword and another with a steel sword; probably taken from one of the corpses.  She squints to see through the thinning mist and finds what she’s looking for.  There’s a pile of bodies.  And lucky be it, one of the corpses is holding a Miquelet pistol. 

“Hold the ship lasses,” she says before leaping down onto the pile of corpses.

She slips the pistol through her sword belt and joins the remaining fray.  She has no qualms about killing these men.  She doesn’t do it with quite the aplomb Amelie is.  Slashing, dodging with both her ninjato and dagger that looks vaguely familiar, while screaming out insults in French.  The dagger definitely looks like the one “Dizzying Blade” wears sometimes.  She leans back as a wooden trident with stone tips flies through the air piercing one of the male sailors.  The distraction is good enough to let her slit the throat of a sailor staring dumbfounded at the trident sticking out of his comrade’s chest.  

With a quick scan of the pinnace she realizes there are no enemy remaining alive.  “Let’s take what goods they have and heave them overboard,” she says when Amelie starts arguing with someone.  Oli squints into the dispersing mist and sees Amelie yelling at a very bright red dixopus.

“Leave the steel sword,” Ameilie is admonishing.  “It will rust in the salt water.”  Oli is quite intrigued when she sees the dixopus raise a central limb in Amelie’s direction and invert it so the suckers face up.  The dixopus slides into the water almost causing her to lose balance.  Once in the water one tentacle slaps the surface causing a spray to cover Amelie.

“Idiote dixopus!” Amelie screams at it.  Amelie starts picking through the corpses’ bodies, dropping anything worthwhile on the floor of the pinnace.  She notices that if Amelie doesn’t find anything worthwhile she kicks the corpse.  Oli finds this so amusing she sits on her own pile of corpses and watches.

Amelie finally notices her.  “How did you get here First Mate? Should we just toss the useless ones over?”

“Let’s make sure we thoroughly check them for goodies first,” Oli says jumping to her feet.

After they search each corpse they throw the corpse into the ocean.

“Do you know which girl?” Amelie asks her.

“Gazala,” she replies with a heavy sigh.

“Dead?”

“Not so far,” she replies with a weak smile.  “If Canneta and Areso can get the bullet out and sterilize the wound in time she has a chance.”

“Where?”

Oli can see the expression of failure on Amelie’s face.  If Gazala dies, and that breaks Amelie, Amelie will never become a full commander in the sisterhood.  “The forehead, to the left side.  Our amazing surgeons believe it’s lodged in the bone of her forehead.”

“I hope she lives,” Amelie says and continues searching.

“Good news,” Oli says.  “”Unibrow’s” arrow struck true and we can pull the other pinnace in.

“We did good,” Amelie says with a beaming smile.

“We did extraordinarily good,” Oli says, her own smile widening as she pockets a pewter jar full of gunpowder, and a leather bag containing ball bearings.  

Dan Watt is the author of the epic dark fantasy fiction book BARD

Taylor Norris, RMT, as First Mate ‘One Eye’ Olanis:  taynorris@gmail.com (Kitchener-Waterloo)

With thanks to Joanne Gosling (Navigator ‘Storm Caller’ Master Jo Anne): Joanne is an Interior Decorator who specializes in closets: Jgosling@calclosets.com Calclosetsjoanne or Joannegosling22@gmail.com

Leah Weir (Helmswoman ‘Wheel Turner’ Synthia): model and cover editor;

Andraya Watt as Assistant-Master-at-Arms, Amelie

With Thanks To:

Fire & Steel for the Medieval Rapier:  http://fireandsteel.ca/

Alex Watt for background pictures

Daiana Duca for background pictures

Krissy Karmaschek for background pictures