The Heir Who Wouldn’t Drown
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 11: Under the Enemy’s Guns
Orders rang through the cruising warship Severe as officers at every level readied the ship.
“All hands to battle stations!”
“Take in the course sails! Prepare for cannon fire! Clear all flammable materials from the weather deck!”
“Dismantle the living quarters on the lower gun deck! Clear for action...”
A group of junior officers and midshipmen in neat uniforms escorted Commander Cedric, the ship’s captain, and Baron Valentin to the command position on the quarterdeck. They glared at the pirate vessel a short distance ahead.
How had those damned pirates managed to keep running for so long? This battle should have been over half an hour ago. Once they caught the bastards, they would crush every bone in their bodies, one by one.
Most of the officers shared some version of that thought.
A few days earlier, the moment the struggle for the throne had been settled, the Channel Fleet’s cruising warships had received orders to blockade the coastal waters and seize all property belonging to House Ravenshaw and its vassals.
Severe was far from the only fifth- or sixth-rate cruising warship carrying out that assignment. Every one of the others was a competitor.
Every extra mouthful someone else swallowed meant one less for them.
They had expected to catch Maneater Shark within two hours. Yet something had gone wrong. The pursuit had begun at 1:35 p.m., and it was now past four before they had finally closed within the guns’ one-kilometer range.
The chase had left the navy men impatient and irritable.
The fifth-rate warship Severe was thirty-nine meters long, with a complement of two hundred. Her gun deck ran the length of the ship and carried twenty 12-pounder cannons. Another twelve 6-pounders stood on the weather deck, bringing her total to thirty-two guns.
In both manpower and firepower, she could easily crush her opponent.
The officers had never considered a lone pirate vessel a serious threat. By now, they had thrown all thought of tactics aside. They wanted nothing but to bring overwhelming, brutal force to bear and teach these damned pirates who ruled these waters.
“Load the guns!”
Led by their gun captains, the crews on both decks loaded every gun along both sides as quickly as they could, then ran them out through the gunports on their carriages.
A sailing warship was a large, mobile gun platform, but although her cannons could reach a kilometer, their effective range was only one or two hundred meters.
Cedric waited until the sailors aboard the two ships could make out one another’s faces. Then he swept his gilded command saber through the air.
“Prepare a broadside to port! Three, two, one! Fire!”
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!...
White powder smoke billowed upward. Orange-red muzzle flashes lit the sea.
Sixteen hot cast-iron cannonballs screamed toward Maneater Shark. The rolling waves spoiled most of the shots, sending them into the water in enormous bursts of white spray. Only a few struck the pirate vessel.
At such close range, the cannonballs punched straight through her oak hull. They bounded across a broad stretch of the lower deck, sweeping clouds of wooden splinters before them.
Fortunately, the pirate vessel’s lower level held cargo holds and crew quarters. No fighting men were stationed there.
One cannonball, however, struck a 6-pounder bronze cannon near the edge of the weather deck before its crew had a chance to return fire.
The wooden gun carriage shattered.
The bronze barrel, weighing tonnes, broke loose like a wild horse. It rolled from side to side across the deck, crushing the lower bodies of two gunners beneath it.
Their piercing screams carried through the ship.
“Aaah! Aaaah...”
Since his spiritual awakening, Julian’s five senses had become exceptionally sharp, as had the awareness of danger bound to his sixth sense. He had already hurled himself aside, avoiding not only the cannonballs and flying splinters but also the heavy gun tumbling across the deck.
He snatched up an anti-chafe mat made of cotton and wool, its rough weave offering considerable friction. With a deft throw, he sent it skidding across the deck and finally checked the rampage of the blood-red gun.
Several brave pirate gunners rushed forward and lashed it down with thick rigging lines, bringing the “wild horse” under control.
Without its carriage, though, the gun was out of the fight.
The strong wind continued to drive the ships closer.
While the enemy reloaded, a savage, murderous crimson light blazed in Captain Oswald’s eyes. At last he brandished his cutlass and roared:
“Fire!”
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