Read Chapter 35: The Phantom Fleet

The storm died as suddenly as it had come, leaving a grey dawn broken by shafts of pale light falling onto a sea that heaved like a dying beast. The Raven rolled sickeningly, her patched sails snapping in fitful gusts, her hull groaning at every shift. Hartley stood at the bow, gripping the splintered rail, and counted what the night had done to the Armada.

There—two miles off the starboard quarter—a galleon lay dismasted, her decks awash. Farther south, three more hulks drifted with no perceivable purpose, their flags torn to ribbons. Others limped eastward in small, ragged groups, their formation broken beyond any hope of rapid reassembly. The storm had done what no English fleet had dared: it had shattered the Spanish into a hundred separate wounds.

Hartley turned to the helm. "Bring her about. Course northwest, through the thickest of them."

Ned Fowler, the sailing master, blinked through salt-crusted lashes. "Through them, Captain? We'd be mad to—"

"We'd be madder still to let them reform." Hartley's voice carried no heat, only the finality of a decision already made. "They're scattered and they're hurt. If we go round the outside, we lose the day. If we go through the middle, we take their flagship while there's still no one close enough to answer."

Isabel appeared at the companionway, a short sword at her hip, her hair bound tight beneath a strip of cloth. Fowler glanced at her, then back at Hartley. The question sat unspoken between them.

"She's earned her place," Hartley said. "We don't have hands to spare."

Isabel moved to his side. "Which ship?"

Hartley pointed to a great black galleon nearly a mile ahead, her lanterns still burning despite the dawn. Her bulk was immense, her banner the royal standard of Spain. She moved sluggishly, her course unsteady—the storm had clawed at her, too.

"That one," he said. "Medina Sidonia doesn't hide among the small. We go straight for his throat."

The Raven's crew moved with the grim efficiency of men who understood that their captain's madness was also their only hope. The damaged mainmast had been fished and braced, and with the storm's last breath fading, the wind sat fair enough to give them three knots, perhaps four on a good surge.

Grim watched from the chains where he'd been shackled, his face hollow and grey. "You'll die," he called across the deck. "You know that, don't you? You'll die and your warning dies with you, and Cecil's letter drowns in that wreck you call a ship."

Hartley did not look at him. "If I die, Isabel burns the letter before they take the ship. If she dies, the ship's boy does. One way or another, that letter reaches Plymouth or Baltimore. Your Cecil will hang either way."

Grim's laughter was thin and broken. "You're a fool. The Armada doesn't scatter. It regroups. By noon there'll be forty sail between you and any hope of England."

"Then I'd best be quick about it."

The Raven gathered speed, sliding through the grey water with her patched hull complaining at every stroke. The Spanish ships saw her coming—those with guns still mounted began to shift their aim—but they were slow, wounded, and constrained by their own disarray. Hartley gave them no time to sort themselves. He steered the Raven close under the stern of a dismasted galleon, using her drifting hulk as a shield, then cut hard across the bow of another that tried to bring a broadside to bear.

Shots began to fall. Cannonballs skipped across the swells, throwing up white fountains of spray. A musket ball whistled past Hartley's ear and buried itself in the mizzen. He didn't flinch.

The Spanish flagship grew in his vision until she filled the world—towering, black-sided, bristling with the muzzles of culverins and demi-cannons. She was turning, slowly, ponderously, trying to bring her guns to bear. But her rudder was slow, and her captain was unschooled in the chaos of close action.

"Grappling hooks!" Hartley shouted. "On my word!"

The crew lined the starboard rail, hooks coiled in their hands. The Raven closed the gap. Fifty yards. Thirty. Twenty.

The Spanish opened fire. A full broadside, but in their haste they fired high, the shots tearing through rigging and canvas above the crew's heads. The Raven shuddered, and a scream went up from somewhere aft, but Hartley held the course.

Ten yards.

"Now!"

Hooks flew across the narrow gap, biting into the galleon's rail and bulwarks. The Raven swung hard against the larger ship's hull with a grinding crunch of timber. Spaniards appeared at the rail, shouting, levelling muskets, but Hartley was already over the side, a cutlass in one hand and a boarding axe in the other.

The deck of the Duke's flagship was chaos. Sailors scrambled to repel the boarders, but they'd been caught mid-repair, their own decks littered with storm débris, barrels, and cordage. Hartley's men crashed into them with the fury of cornered animals, and for a moment, the Spanish line buckled.

Isabel fought at his shoulder, her short sword dancing, parrying a thrust and opening a Spaniard's throat in the same motion. She moved like she'd been born to it, and Hartley had no time to wonder at that.

"Where's the Duke?" Hartley shouted to a man he'd caught by the throat, a young officer with a terrified face.

The man pointed toward the aftercastle. "The great cabin—he's with his captains—"

Hartley dropped him and ran. Behind him he heard Isabel call his name, but he was already through the waist of the ship, leaping over coils of rope and the bodies of the fallen. At the foot of the stairs to the aftercastle, two guards levelled pikes. Hartley feinted left, then drove the boarding axe into the first man's shoulder, shoving him backward into his companion. The Pike went wide. Hartley was past them and up the steps before they could recover.

The great cabin was a wide, lantern-lit space, its windows still streaming daylight. The Duke of Medina Sidonia stood at a table weighed down with charts, encircled by a dozen captains in the finery of the Spanish nobility. They all turned as Hartley burst through the door.

For a moment, no one moved. Then Hartley saw the map—the one thing he needed beyond all others—and he threw himself forward, cutlass leading.

"Take him!" the Duke shouted, and the cabin erupted into steel and noise.

A sword came at Hartley's side. He parried, felt the shock run up his arm, and shoved the man back into the press. Another blade sliced across his forearm, drawing a line of fire, but he didn't stop. He crossed the space in three strides, cutlass raised, aiming for the Duke's throat.

Medina Sidonia was no coward, but he was no duelist either. He grabbed the nearest captain—a stout man with a grey beard—and shoved him into the path of Hartley's blade. The captain went down screaming. Hartley lunged again, but the Duke had already stepped back, his hand closing on a hilt he drew from a scabbard at the waist of a fallen man.

Then Isabel was there, her short sword flickering, holding off two attackers who'd come through the door behind them. Hartley pressed forward, but the Duke was retreating toward a door at the far side of the cabin, his captains forming a wall of steel between them.

There was no time for finesse. Hartley sheathed his cutlass, snatched a powder keg from a rack beside the navigator's station—small, six pounds, meant for signaling—and lit the fuse with the taper burning in a sconce overhead.

"Fire in the hold!" he shouted, not to anyone in particular, and hurled the keg through the open hatch that led below.

The Duke's eyes went wide. Then he was gone through the far door, his captains pouring after him.

Hartley grabbed the map from the table—the great, unwieldy chart of the Armada's dispositions—and was about to pursue when Isabel seized his arm.

"He's gone," she said. "We have no more time."

Below them, the powder keg detonated with a dull thump that shook the deck. The groan of tortured timber rose from the depths of the ship, and Hartley felt the galleon lurch beneath his feet.

"They're running," he said. "We're done here."

They fled the cabin as smoke began to billow up from the hold. Behind them, the Duke's flagship began to list, her rudder shattered, her steering gone. She would drift, crippled and useless, while the rest of the Armada reformed around her absence.

But the Duke himself was already gone, rowed away in a launch that had been lowered from the far side, leaving his broken flagship and a smoke-dark dawn behind him.

The Raven had been cut free by Ned Fowler and now lay a hundred yards off, her sails trembling in the light breeze. Hartley and Isabel jumped from the galleon's tilting deck and struck out through the cold water, dragging themselves up the Raven's chains with the last reserves of their strength.

When Hartley stood on his own deck again, water streaming from him, he held the Duke's map in his fist.

"Isabel," he gasped. "Get me to the cabin. I need to compare these watermarks."

She looked back at the burning galleon, at the scattered Spanish ships already beginning to turn back toward the smoke.

"Whatever that map shows," she said, "they know you have it now. Every sail in this fleet will be hunting us by nightfall."

Hartley nodded. "Then we'd best learn what it hides before they find us."