12 Ash 112
Those who expect betrayal at every turn are seldom disappointed.
Northland outskirts,
“Cap'n, y-you don't understand! Let me just explain w-” The man was cut off when one of his crewmates slammed a fist into his gut. He doubled over, trying to grasp his stomach despite his bound hands. Two men continued dragging him toward the rear of the airship where Vanessa was waiting.
She stood like a gargoyle, stone faced and grim as the condemned man was dragged before her and shoved down to his knees. He was the bastard son of some Zaichaeri noble. He'd been part of he crew less than a year, and had been a nuisance ever since he'd been let aboard. Though tolerances were different for pirates, that did not mean she was entirely without her limits.
“She was trying to pick my pocket, she was!” The man tried to explain, the words coming out too quickly to be convincing. He refused to meet Vanessa's iron gaze, so she grabbed him by the collar and forced it upon him, and he withered into silence under her imperious stare.
“She was a girl!” Vanessa snapped, backhanding the man so hard she split his lip. He would have collapsed to the deck were she still not gripping his collar. “Not ten years old, and you broke her fucking back!” She hit him again, with the other hand this time. She still did not let the man fall even though he was limp in her grip. “I paid a king's ransom to her father for what you did.”
“She's one of the lowborn,” he said reflexively, and knew immediately it was the wrong thing to say. Vanesaa was atop him in a moment, and the back of his skull met the deck with a crunch.
"A lowborn, the bastard says! What, you think you're different?" She lifted the bastard's head and slammed it back down again. Her thumbs dug into his eyes, and gods how he howled when she pushed down. “Consider this a lowborn's justice, then. You fucking whoreson.”
He tried to beat her away with his bound hands, slamming them down against her elbows, but it was no use. His wordless screams turned into cries as her nails dug into his eyes, piercing into the irises and tearing them into distended shapes. She could have killed him there, a few more good slams would have seen pieces of his skull scattered across the deck, but she had something else planned. He was instead left half blinded and dazed when she stood up off of him, and she slammed a heel into his sternum for good measure.
Fetching a long rope with a wicked hook on the end, Vanessa made her way back to the bastard. She shoved the hook in the gap between his wrists, catching the manacles and making a decent anchor point. He thrashed impotently, but she simply laid her boot on his stomach to keep him still until the rope was secured. Once it was, she grabbed the man and dragged him over to the edge of the Queen Bitch, looking down a hundred or so feet above the ground.
The ship floated lazily, brought to a stop above a rocky, mined out quarry that had been long abandoned. Smashed stone still lined the bottom of the large man-made pit, and steep walls on either side stretched on for acres and acres. Water pooled in some of the deeper areas, but below them it was still bone dry.
The bastard still tried to threaten and blubber to her in equal measure as she tossed him overboard, the rope reel groaning under strain as one of the crewmates, Jorge, took to lowering the man slowly down the ground.
“Bring out the witnesses.” Vanessa said sharply, and her crew scrambled to obey her,fetching the other men from down below deck.
There were three of them in all, sleep deprived and under-fed. Each of them had their wrists bound with thick rope, and each of them had their excuses for why they had not told Vanessa about what the bastard had done. Their excuses mattered little, only that they were punished.
When one of Vanessa's crew acted out of line, it was the responsibility of every soul aboard to either notify Vanessa or handle the insubordination themselves. Failure to do so was seen as tolerance for the improper behavior, and there were not words of gods or men that could dissuade Vanessa from meting out justice.
“You'll watch the punishment from over the side of the ship. Want you to get a good look at what happens to people like 'im.” Vanessa barked, and Jorge stepped forward to loop more hooked ropes through their bindings. These ropes were tied to the taffrails at the stern of the Queen Bitch. The knots were pulled tight, and the men were guided at sword-point over the edge. The men were relieved, having gotten off easily all things considered. They had considered themselves dead men walking, but now there was hope they would see the next dawn.
They dangled down like refuse a few feet past the hull, hands above their heads and shoulders already beginning to ache. By now the bastard had reached the ground, and was struggling to try and slip the manacles off the hook. An ordinarily easy task was made more difficult now that he was blinded, and Jorge reeled in the line once he noticed the bastard's efforts. The rope was pulled taut, the bastard's hands forced above his head so even with frenzied thrashing there was little hope he might even accidentally free himself.
Vanessa looked over to the bos'n who stood with one hand on a lever and the other on the captain's wheel.
“Drag!” Vanessa bellowed, and the Queen Bitch lurched forward. The pace was slow at first, and the bastard was able to keep up at a light jog. Vanessa stared at him over the rails and gripped the bars in fury. “Faster, you fuck!” She screamed, and the bos'n shouted his acquiescence, straining the merchant sloop into a sprint.
The bastard was running now, the ship outpacing him slowly but surely.
“Give 'im more line, Jorge!”
The hawkish faced, grim looking quartermaster nodded,and let out more rope so that the line lost tension and drooped. All the while the Queen Bitch continued gaining speed, and the rest of the crew looked on in a mixture of horror and fear.
He was fast, but the Queen Bitch was built for speed. He could never have hoped to keep it up forever, but something in the hearts of men forced them to hope against hope, even if it merely delayed the inevitable.
Finally, it happened. The bastard tripped on a rock, and fell onto his stomach. The Queen bitch did not stop, and the blinded lowlife was raked across the loose gravel and stone of the quarry floor. It first shredded his clothing like paper. Even rolling on his back made things no easier as the larger stones begun catching on his skin and opening up his flesh as easily as blades.
He screamed. The wails of agony echoed through the quarry, and could even be heard over the laboring of the Queen Bitch as she approached her top speed. First defiant, then pleading, and finally gurgling and incomprehensible through the blood and bile. The bastard's body bounced like a stone now, lifeless and comprised solely of dead weight. A trail of bloody gravel marked his path, and he left bits of skin, meat and muscle in his wake.
He had stopped thrashing long ago by the time the run was finished, Vanessa having dragged him across multiple acres of jagged, toothy stone. Finally the line was reeled in, and Vanessa looked upon her works.
He was little more than an assortment of wounds. His jawbone was exposed and an empty eye socket stared peerless back at her. The skin on his arms was hanging off in strips, and rocks had gotten embedded so deeply into his skin they would have somehow been more agonizing to remove. Blood covered his body and deep, ragged, gouging wounds still wept crimson ichor. If he was alive, he would not be for long.
Jorge tossed the rope calmly over one of the airship's battens, and heaved the body over to the side of the ship to present it to the rest of the crew. Vanessa crossed over to stand in front of the mangled bastard while she addressed her shipmates.
“You're all on my crew because I allow it.” She seethed, her voice cold. “I will not hesitate to make any one of you look exactly like him if you cross me.” She pointed back to the man like a teacher at their chalkboard. “Defy me at your own peril. I've got no joy in my heart for shit like this, but I'll be fucked in the ass if I let my own crew go around beatin' children. We're pirates, not lunatics. Have some respect for the profession or you'll be next.”
No one met her gaze. They all understood that he had pushed her too far. Every crew had a code, and he had broken hers when he had seen fit to snap a child's spine for the crime of looking suspicious. There were drunks, dullards and misfits among her crew, yet even they seemed to hold the man in contempt.
Vanessa then produced the key to the manacles and unclasped the man's wrists. He fell one hundred feet down to the ground below and his body ended in a crumpled heap surrounded by gore.
Stepping over to those that had witnessed his crime and had done nothing to stop it, Vanessa drew her cutlass. There was a darkness that covered her now, expression steeped in cold, analytical hatred.
They begged when she approached with her weapon drawn, pleading with her for a mercy they had been unable to extend themselves. She strode with an easy confidence, light on her feet, back straight, and hard eyes focused forward. The confidence made the men struggle ever more violently, their pleas growing more desperate. Fruitlessly they offered her anything they thought might stay her hand, but she cared little for their gold or their promises of future loyalty.
“No room for cowards on my crew.” She leered down at one of them, stooping down onto her haunches. “I'll let you in on a secret afore the end. It was my damn cabin boy that finally told me what happened. I want you to greet the end knowing that you've got less spine than that hobbling prick. He's gonna warm my bed tonight, and you'll be fuckin' dead.” she barked a laugh. "Disloyalty's a fuckin' bitch, huh?"
She cut the first line, and the man fell screaming to his death, body broken upon the rocks below. The remaining two spat insults now, knowing their fate was sealed, but Vanessa had heard all of them before. 'whore, 'bitch', 'cunt', various exclamations of what they ought have done to her sexually. Pirates were not a terribly creative bunch, and none of the insults so much as made Vanessa quirk a brow.
Two slit lines later, and four bodies lay in the quarry, bodies smashed like a bowl of rotten eggs.
She stood, and looked back to her crew. “Back to your stations. We make for port. We'll find a prize along the way. Jorge, you have the wheel. Akrom, with me.”
Akrom was her cabin boy, though 'boy' wasn't an accurate term. He was younger than Vanessa by some years, but was still a man of nineteen. He was small and walked with a limp, but he trotted over to her diligently when she called. She looped an arm over his shoulder and drew him close, towering over him by almost a foot. He looked up at her through his messy mop of black hair with borderline reverence welling up in his deep violet eyes.
“That's a good lad.” Vanessa said not unkindly, and she led him to the captain's quarters with no attempt at being subtle. They would not emerge until the following morning with Vanessa blessedly in a far better mood.