16 The Cargo

The merchant ship was approaching.

The pirate ship refused to give way, instead, Captain Black gave the order to show a signal that suggested nautical distress.

To that, no flags were raised as a reply. Instead, someone cried out a bad word, shouting so loudly that everyone aboard the Maiden's Mercy heard it clearly. The women snickered.

As the merchant pulled closer, Captain Bastian lied down on a high table that they had placed near the bow so that everyone aboard the merchant would see what would happen soon. Once they were close enough, Bastian gave out the order to light the lanterns.

The girls began to sing.

The singing was not of the beautiful sort, rather, it brought to mind horrible scenes of cults and ritual sacrifice. Some of the women were drumming. Bastian had a cow heart inside his already a bit bloody shirt.

He wished that he could have seen the faces of the sailors.

A male screamed.

"Look, the captain's dead, those crazy women have killed him!"

But Bastian cried out, pretending to be in pain.

"Hold your horses, men!" responded an authoritative voice that had to belong to the first mate or the captain. "He is still alive! We may be able to save the poor hapless man!"

The drumming intensified and Amanda, wearing what was probably the equivalent of corpse paint in this universe all over her face, raised a huge sword and pretended to cut through Bastian's chest.

The cow heart felt hot, gross and wet against his skin.

He let out the most bloodcurdling scream he could.

Amanda cut through his shirt and pulled out the bloody heart, screaming inhumanly, raising the organ high above her head.

"MY GODS! EVERLOVING LORDS ABOVE! THEY RIPPED OUT HIS HEART!"

Bastian held back laughter, trying to remind himself that even in the best case scenario, someone would get killed tonight.

"They are madwomen!"

"Halt - halt what you are doing, men, and come see!"

And when Bastian was entirely sure that the entire crew of men was watching him, he started to climb back onto his feet, pretending that doing so caused him great pain. It was easy; he had sprained something while climbing onto the table.

"What - HE IS - A ZOMBIE!"

Bastian turned towards the merchant crew.

He saw their horrified, pale faces, he saw the terror that had taken a hold of them. Putting on his most menacing, most unhinged grin, he raised his right hand. Slowly.

"RAISE THE BLACK!" he called out to his own crew.

And it was only then that the full gravity of the situation started to dawn on the poor merchant crew.

It would have been hard, if not impossible to describe the feeling of elation a man got from seeing his own pirate flag raised up towards the starry sky.

He had apparently been good at that optional graphic design class he had taken last summer, because the new Bastian Black flag looked even better in reality.

It had the traditional skull motif, but instead of swords, it had a single sword and a quill, in a style that looked almost prophetic, and the mouth of the realistic cartoon style skull was dripping red paint. The paint was fresh - Amanda, who seemingly shared some silly sensibilities with Bastian himself in the realm of aesthetic preferences, had taken to wetting the fabric with the remaining red paint some poor artist had left in their hold.

"Come take them down, girls!" Bastian shouted. His blood was hot and powerful in his veins, and though his body was not as strong as many other men were, it still felt like the most vicious flesh prison to inhabit. It felt raw. It felt good. He was even a bit manic right now, seeking to overthrow the rest of his fears as he grabbed a rope with the courage of a panther or a lion and swung himself over to the other ship.

He saw, from the corner of his eye, that all the rest of the men were too horrified and puzzled by having to fight a small horde of what they could only interpret as female cannibals. The captain, though, was his problem to deal with.

The man looked scared to death, yet he was brave enough to hold a circle-shaped amulet that probably presented something holy and draw his sword. Guns were not too good in situations like this one, for flintlock pistols were highly unreliable and left their users in trouble every other day.

Even with his hands trembling like crazy, the captain nearly cut Bastian's head off. He did manage to wound Bastian, but he failed to calculate for one thing.

Bastian, having endured abuse all his life, could care less about a flesh wound on his shoulder.

He lunged forwards without his expression changing one bit and pierced the forearm of his enemy. The captain screamed in terror and pain, falling down and begging for mercy. The scare had worked. All the men were too afraid of the women and too gentlemanly to do anything to this bunch of crazy ladies. The captain, succumbing to the superstitious nature that was the plague of these times, was a blubbering wreck on the deck, bloody and crippled by now as Bastian made sure he would not be able to defend himself.

If the man would get proper treatment immediately from a doctor who understood the meaning of washing his hands, he could survive without getting an eventually lethal infection or sepsis or something, but in a world like this one, that was not a given by any means.

"Surrender!" the captain cried out in his painful panic. "Please, do not send these poor men to hell! Honest sailors, all of them, on my life do I swear, on my Circles do I swear, I swear, I swear in the names of all holy things!"

"Ah…" Bastian still pretended to be a walking dead man, so he had to groan a bit louder than he would have wanted to. "What…is the cargo?"

"Prime quality, tea, lots of it, and fabrics, fine silk!"

That was the equivalent of a mini jackpot on these waters.

Bastian held back an impressed whistle.