Free The Barbary Pirates by William Dietrich

sashay by but one particularly delectable and tawny beauty, hair high as a tower, dress cut to the outermost precipice of her bosom, and skin as flawless as a flower petal. I hoped for a wink or even a word of invitation, but instead she reached tantalizingly to the hem of her dress, gave us a glimpse of ankle, and impishly plucked something from her skirts. Was it an apple? She held the thing to our tavern torch for a moment and it sparkled like a pixie’s wand, and then she rolled it in our direction with the sweetest of smiles.
    “Is this Italian custom?” Smith said, belching from drink, as the object stopped between our chairs.
    “If so, she bowls with the grace of Aphrodite,” Cuvier slurred.
    “What is it, Ethan?” Fulton asked, looking in curiosity at smoke drifting up from the smoldering sphere. “A festival invitation?”
    I bent to look under the table. “That, my friends, is a grenade.”

CHAPTER NINE
    I don’t know why beauty disappoints so regularly, but I daresay women usually don’t pitch bombs in my direction until we’ve been acquainted for an hour or two. This one was galloping away before I could even say hello, and her sole purpose seemed to be to shred our lowest and most vital extremities. With the instinct that comes from being misunderstood so frequently in love, I scooped up the smoking grenade, looked wildly about, and pitched it into the only depository I could spot—our tavern’s brick oven.
    The resulting explosion, which coughed out a spray of brick, bread dough, charcoal, and fragments of rotisserie duck, could still have lacerated our top halves if I hadn’t tackled my comrades into a heap, our table toppling over as a shield. We were enveloped in a cloud of brick dust, but fortunately the oven had absorbed the worst of the blast and the patrons we shared the place with escaped with just a fright.
    “It’s the Egyptian Rite!” I cried, my ears ringing and my brain addled by the explosion. “To the horses!”
    “Ethan, we’re on an island,” Cuvier said, coughing. “We have no horses.”
    “Aye.” I shook my head and blurrily saw caped men entering the other side of the Campo, dressed in black and brandishing things that glinted in the dark. One was waving his arm to direct the others. “To the gondolas, then!”
    “I don’t think they’re giving us bloody time,” Smith said.
    We picked ourselves up, grabbed our scattered weapons and bags, and bunched to run as the strangers charged toward us. People were screaming, I realized as my hearing returned.
    Then there was a roar that made everyone in the piazza jump and Smith slammed backward against the half-ruined oven. He’d fired his blunderbuss, packed with eight balls, and three of the attackers went sprawling. Bullets ricocheted like fleas in a bottle. The other scoundrels yelped, ducked, and broke toward cover.
    “By thunder, Englishman, there’s a naval broadside!” Cuvier cried.
    Agreeing that our rock hound had set a good example, I took up my longrifle and aimed for the man who seemed to be the leader. I stilled my breath, aimed to lead him as he sprinted for the shadows, squeezed, and fired. He went down, too, skidding on the cobbles, and I was rewarded with cries of dismay.
    “Always load before dinner,” I said.
    “And with a blunderbuss, it doesn’t matter much how much you drink during it,” Smith said, and burped.
    We retreated, me halfheartedly clawing at the rapier strapped to my back and cursing that I hadn’t bothered to carry it on my hip after all. The good thing about swords is you don’t have to load them with powder and ball. The bad is you have to get damnably close to people trying to kill you. Now bullets came our way, making a smacking sound as they chewed into wood and stucco. We ran faster.
    At the Giuffa Canal we didn’t hesitate. A gondola was sweeping by with a paying client, its gondolier warbling a song, and so we sprang like pirates, crashed aboard, and pitched the poor