The Ruthless Redhead's Revenge Read Online Free

as
cutlasses. The sounds died away as one side or the other slowly edged
towards victory.
    Roberta glanced out the porthole and was sorry that she had. There
were many men in the water, men from both sides. Some were wounded
and the blood had drawn sharks. She turned her head away from the
sight as a man thrashed and went under, the fin of a shark showing
that he wasn't simply drowning.
    Now, silence ruled the cabin. For several minutes there was no
noise to be heard. Then heavy footsteps echoed from out in the
hallway. Someone was coming down into the belly of the ship. The dull
thud of wood on wood filled the cabin again and again as someone
threw open door after door. Roberta positioned herself beside the
doorway, on the side that the door would not open into, drew her
dagger, and waited.
----

Chapter
4 – Captive
    The door flung open, smashing into the wall, yet still Roberta
held her strike. As she suspected, a pirate leaned into the room to
look around, his throat exposed like that of a shoat ready for
slaughter. Just as she would have with a shoat, she quickly drew her
dagger's keen edge across his throat. She stepped back to avoid the
spray of blood that followed. The habit was ingrained in her from the
last several years. During these years, if the family were to have
meat on the table, she or Geoff would have to butcher it themselves.
Her father had angered the local butcher with non-payment of a debt.
    The pirate collapsed in a heap at the threshold of the door, her
cut having been deep enough to prevent him from drawing breath to
yell. She used a foot to push him back out into the hallway, closing
the door behind him. This would only buy them a few minutes, but she
couldn't think of what else to do.
    “Jonsey! Where are ya? ya pustulent pig!” a voice rang
through the hall. The insult fit well as the face of the corpse was
covered in boils.
    “Ah Jonsey ya bastard, ya owed me money.” the softer
sound of the voice came from right outside the door, “now
where's the right bastard that put ya down? Maybe in here?”
    The voice stopped as the door swung open once again. This time
there was a pause before anyone entered.
    “Well, what have we here? A wench all in tears. I guess she
knows what's going to happen next.”
    The pirate had seen Annabelle on the bed. She'd been crying now
for several minutes. He had not, evidently, seen Roberta. He stepped
through the door eagerly, heading for Annabelle.
    Roberta waited as he passed her and hoped that she remembered
Geoff's lessons correctly. He had told her that stabbing someone in
the kidney was painful enough to give you several seconds before they
would react. The pirate's right side was facing her so she struck
just above the waist, slightly towards the back portion of his torso.
She was worried about the strike penetrating deeply enough as the man
had rolls of fat on his lower torso.
    Geoff had been correct though. The pirate stiffened with pain and
he even drew a deep breath as though to cry out. Instead of yelling,
though, he remained rigid, at least for the two seconds it took
Roberta to, once again, draw her dagger across a throat. This time
the spray of blood filled the small cabin, reducing Annabelle to an
even more hysterical state as she was coated by the spray. Roberta
had been standing behind the pirate and remained blood free. The
pirate's body fell and this time it was in a position where Roberta
couldn't easily clear it from the cabin and the door.
    She resigned herself to not being able to surprise any more
pirates and set herself a couple of feet inside the doorway, the door
held in her hand to swing in front of her as a shield should someone
try to stab her. Once again she waited. It was a brief minute or two
before she heard voices:
    “Smythe! Jonsey! Where are you two bastards? You trying to
get your own bits of loot before we split out? Captain'll have your
heads if you try that and you know it!”
    “Jonesy, Smythe!”
    The voice was