Werewolf pirates vs vampire ninjas

At eight bells, the crow’s nest sighted our two rowboats, sagged by gold and churned by explosions in the water.

Above them, black-clad figures circled on kites, dropping strings of firecrackers.

One of the explosives hit a boat, spraying arms and coins and splinters.

Captain Fangbeard ordered the ship’s cannons loaded with chain shot and aimed at the kites.

The cannons shook, and pairs of cannonballs linked with chains sliced the air.

One of them struck a kite, shredding frame and rider into tumbling streamers of silk and viscera.

At this, the other kites steered away, back to shore. The surviving rowboat reached our vessel, a few men from its demolished twin paddling close behind.

A rigger dangled a rope over the yardarm down to the rowboat, and the passengers knotted it to their craft’s block. A team then twisted the capstan to coil the rope and hoist the boat into the air. With a swing of the yardarm cheering pirates and plundered booty spilled onto the deck.

The cook rolled over a barrel of grog, rapped it with a hammer to loosen the plug, and inserted a spigot. The crew filled their tankards and drank deep. A few waggish pirates lifted delicate ceramic cups from the treasure haul to sip their ration. While the pirates quaffed and sang boisterous shanties, the quartermaster and his deputies picked through the treasure haul, organising it into tidy piles of similar goods. Any errant silver in the hoard was scooped into a bandanna and then pitched overboard.

One of the raiding party was dragged to me by his companions, his foreleg mutilated by deep lacerations.

On shore, a patient would haggle with me over the need for amputation, chancing gangrene rather than discarding the limb. Although their knowledge of hygiene is spotty, all pirates know that on a ship, death is certain if a damaged member is not promptly removed.

The injured man, one Eddie Finger, bit down on the handle of his dagger. His compatriots held him secure on the deck. I ripped off his shirt, and tied it around the limb to cut off the blood. Then I brandished my saw, and cut through the muscle and bone. Eddie struggled and sweat, but could not shake off so many gnarled and strong hands. With a final wet heave, the ruptured limb was off.

The celebrating pirates toasted the completion of the task, and plied their freshly unipodal comrade with mouthfuls of grog.

Some surgeons burn the wound with a hot poker to seal it. In my experience, this only makes the wound fester. The cabin boy brought me a prosthesis from my quarters. I strapped on the wooden pegleg. That would be enough pressure on the wound.

Eddie’s friends shouldered him as he limped towards a berth. The cabin boy splashed the scene of the operation with buckets of water, effacing any trace of the barber-surgeon’s art.

That left me with the disconnected calf and foot. Embedded in it, I extracted three curious star-shaped contrivances, small and made of steel, and sharp as shaving razors. Where they landed, they minced the flesh.

Of course, I had seen worse injuries in my medical training, to say nothing of the atrocities on the night these pirates raided the ship I was travelling on, the Felicity. From the passenger quarters of that ill-fated vessel, we heard cannon thunder, and felt the crack of our ship’s mast shattering. Then we heard the confused shouts and clamour of battle, as the boarding pirates cut through quailing sailors.

I had never held one before, but I took up a sword in my shaking hand, with some feeble idea of not dying without a struggle.

A lanky pirate found me and laughed, showing a mouth of cankerous teeth. He invited me to take a swing. I slashed with the sword, and he easily dodged it. Then he pulled out his flintlock pistol, and blasted the blade from my hand. He seized the shoulder of my jacket, and towed me up the stairs and onto the deck.

Never before had I seen such pandemonium, with each pirate following his own impulse, whether jabbing his blade at terrified sailors, fetching gilded clocks and birdcages from the lower decks, or carting our vessel’s paltry cannons back to their ship. In the eye of this chaos, the pirate captain stood proud. He was a giant in height and girth, with a single yellow eye, and ivory trinkets knotted into his beard.

I was thrown before him.

He lifted my head with a sharp fingernail under my chin, and asked me my profession. I told him I was a surgeon. He asked me if I would die here with the others, or live and serve on his ship.

I decided to live.

After a full day locked in the pirate ship’s brig, my soul curdIed by terror, I was escorted to dine with the captain. He introduced himself as Captain Bartholomew Fangbeard. Over wine and pepper chicken he explained that as a condition of my continued existence, somewhat free from pain, I would provide medical services to his crew. They had salvaged my medicine chest from the floundering Felicity, so I would have the tools and ointments of my profession. He told me that if I wished, I could sign the ship’s articles, and become an equal member of the crew entitled to a share of the plunder.

I had heard of unfortunates tasked to serve pirates, who elected not to sign the articles, to better plead kidnap and coercion. Secretly hoping for escape or rescue, I told the captain I would consider that offer, but agreed nonetheless to be his ship’s doctor.

The captain told me I would have my own quarters, and freedom of the ship. The exception was any full moon, where I would be locked in the brig.

I asked him why I would be imprisoned on the full moon. The captain laughed, and said I would find out, if I lived long enough, for life was uncertain on a pirate ship.

There was one final matter, a ritual for every new passenger. The operation was painful, but preferable to extended torture at the hands of the pirates. I lost one of my canine teeth, and the captain gained another ornament for his beard.

Over the next weeks at sea, I treated the petty injuries of the crew. It was easier to let my professional role swallow me, than to dwell on my horrible predicament. I came to see the pirates almost as children, for they listened to my instructions with the innocent trust an illiterate man shows a scholar. I could not reconcile the docile sea dogs who brought me their ulcers and bruises with the unleashed butchers I witnessed on the Felicity.

Then came the day of the full moon, and the ship anchored at the shore of a small island. I was confined to a cell, puzzled but too wary of upsetting my volatile hosts to question their whims. From a small porthole, I peered on as the crew rowed out to shore.

I assumed they wanted secrecy to bury treasure. I was wrong.

When night fell, I watched the pirates shed their clothes on the beach, and then undergo foul, extraordinary physical convulsions, accompanied by bestial cries.

Of course, I had read of murderers consumed by bloodlust, who claimed the devil-gifted power of transformation into a powerful beast. Here, although distant and dim, I had evidence of something I had hitherto believed impossible. That night I clutched the crucifix I wore under my clothes tightly, covered my ears to muffle the distant snarls, and huddled in a shadowed corner of the room, away from the caustic, treacherous touch of moonlight, reaching into my cell like a goblin’s corrupting hand.

Yet I had nowhere to escape to, save the ocean, and my fear did not make me brave enough to take my own life. And so I voyaged on with this cursed crew of werewolf pirates.

In this way, months passed, and I became accustomed to my hosts’ lunatic routine of mayhem and bloodshed, every day less a prisoner and more a confederate.

I presented the lacerating stars to the captain, and together we went to the hold, to interrogate our expert on this rich and unfamiliar country.

When we reached this chain of islands, our first stop was a Dutch trading colony, a pinprick of land with barely 30 buildings, linked to the mainland by a narrow bridge. A raiding party stormed this community and seized prisoners, seeking intelligence on promising targets and facility with the local language.

That was how Father Johan fell into the clutches of the pirates. With him was Hannah, the young child of a Portuguese father and a mother from these lands, raised as a devout Christian.

Father Johan spoke the language of this country, and was familiar with its regions and politics. Coerced by threats to Hannah's safety, he advised the pirates on promising locations to raid. For the last few weeks, the pirate ship had crawled north alongside the east coast of the islands, stopping at whim to massacre and pillage.

Of course, the government attempted to repel the pirates. Our first sight of these people’s warships, tall floating castles, gave the crew trepidation, but the pirates soon discovered their sloop could dance around such oar-driven behemoths. Soon after, they also discovered that despite our ship’s smaller size, we were far more generously appointed with cannons. After sinking one enemy ship, they vanished from the seas.

Only one raid went significantly awry, a night attack on a small castle. The few survivors spoke of an ambush in the gardens. Darts from unseen attackers stabbed the pirates, and they realised quickly from burning pain and swirling colours that they had been poisoned. But the constitutions of pirates are fearsome, and they went berserk, hacking and firing at wild. Their chaotic attacks injured a few of their opponents, revealing slender men garbed all in black. Quickly recovering from their shock at the pirates’ frenzy, these shadow warriors then kept their distance, swinging sickles on the end of chains, using them to harry the now helpless pirates. A few pirates fled, while the others fought on like madmen, drunk on the thrill of battle, determined to have company for any journey to Hell.

Now, it seemed the pirates had survived a second encounter with these mysterious defenders.

I showed the star to Father Johan, and he asked Hannah. Hannah quivered, and whispered to the priest.

He translated for Hannah, explaining that she knew the star as the mark of a spy and assassin - what these people called the ninja. Fearsome warriors trained in secret villages, raised from childhood in the refined practice of murder, disguise and sabotage.

Captain Fangbeard scoffed, saying that desperation was the only teacher a pirate needed, and they quickly learned to sink or swim.

No sooner had the captain given that pithy judgement, than we heard screams above us.

We raced back to the deck, in time to see a swarm of bats descend on the boat. Dark-garbed figures coalesced from the shrieking maelstrom, plucking errant pirates into the sky, plunging sharp fangs into their necks, and splattering the deck with spilled blood. Pirates hacked with their cutlasses, but their blows found only mist.

“More fangs for my beard!”, the captain roared, and tore off his human skin, to reveal the animal within. For it was now twilight, and a full moon hovered in the sky.

The pirates changed with their captain, howling with the painful ecstacy of rebirth. Now faster and stronger, they pounced on their demonic assailants, claws rending their black garbs, and teeth ripping chunks of undead flesh from their bodies.

Then with a great flash, the combatants were knocked asunder. The leader of the supernatural troupe, a head taller than the others with intense eyes, gestured with his hands, drawing occult symbols that lingered in the air like the burn of fireworks on the closed eye.

The captain lept at him, but then this fiend dissolved into multiple images, floating in a spinning circle around the captain. The captain clawed at the images but found only illusions, while his attacker slashed at his exposed back with precision.

I ran below deck, thinking of the ship's articles, for this cursed parchment bound the crew, and gave them their powers. I would sign my name, join their league, and partake of their curse. Then if I was to die, it would be in the thrill of a werewolf's bloodlust, not in the timid fear of a human.

My zeal wilted when I stumbled on the body of Father Johan.

Hannah snarled at me, fangs in her mouth, fire behind her. She had set the hold ablaze.

“Christianity was not the only thing to come to Japan with the Westerners… My kind were the true reason for the expulsion of foreigners… But some of us were allowed to stay, serving the government in secret…”

She lunged at me, but was repelled by something on my chest. The cross! I took it in my hand, and held it out to keep Hannah at bay. Even mired in atrocity, faith might still redeem my soul, and save my life.

I backed away from her, returning to the deck. The captain was holding out against the vampire ninja lord, but his body was etched with bleeding wounds.

I picked up a discarded cutlass, sprinted to the mast, and slashed the halyard rope.

The sail fluttered down, revealing a gigantic cross!

The vampire ninjas shrieked at this symbol of faith, for all such sacred marks are anathema to the undead.

The vampire ninja lord fell to the deck, pinned by the power of the massive Christian sigil. One of the werewolf crew charged at him - Eddie Finger, the man who lost a leg to their throwing stars! He hurled himself onto the monster, and his new pegleg pierced the demon’s heart.

At that, the monster wailed, and exploded into foul-smelling dust. The other vampire ninjas evaporated into the air, unwilling to continue this melee without their leader.

This battle was won, but there was still a fire in the hold to deal with, and in their werewolf form the pirates would not be able to carry any buckets of water.

Before I could resolve that puzzle, a trident planted itself in the mast.

Over the stern, I could see an old enemy of the werewolf pirates, blowing on conch shells, and firing their waterproof revolvers into the air.

Fangbeard and his crew leapt into the water, wanton in their ferocity.

For the moon was still full, and they now faced the mermaid cowboys.