"Stations for tacking! Helm's a-lee!" Derec's heart beat fire: a bloodthirsty demon howled in his soul. He wanted the enemy smashed.
Birdwing pivoted on its heel like a dancer, running along the purple ship's larboard side. Two full broadsides lashed out; the enemy timbers moaned to the impact of shot. The mainmasts and mizzenmasts fell: the enemy rudder hung useless from its gudgeons. Nothing but small arms replied: the Liavekans hadn't reloaded their larboard guns after the first broadside, either because they hadn't the crew or hadn't thought it was necessary. Now they paid for their neglect.
The enemy flagship was left astern, a near-wreck pouring blood from its scuppers. Birdwing tacked again, heading for the smaller enemy; the lighter galleass had bravely turned toward the fight in an effort to succor its admiral. Useless: Birdwing forged ahead and yawed to fire one broadside, then the other. The guns smashed enough enemy sweeps to stagger the galleass in the water; the next broadside brought the mainmast down along with the enemy colors.
Derec saw the third enemy vessel's colors coming down--the xebec had surrendered, even though it had stood away from the battle and might have got away.
Then there was silence, filled only with the gusting wind and the eerie sounds of the dying. Wreckage littered the sea: broken sweeps, jagged splinters, torn bodies of the dead. The enemy were drifting toward land: Derec would have to order them to drop an anchor, till he could juryrig masts and get them under way.
Suddenly the silence was broken by cheers, Birdwing's crew sending roar upon defiant roar into the sky.
Derec looked down at the capering men, laughing and dancing in the waist of the ship, dancing in the blood of their crewmates who lay where the enemy's shot had flung them.
Then he remembered the mutiny, the way the men had danced in the blood of their countrymen, and the taste of victory turned to bitterness in his mouth.
)
