Shane smirked. She held her hands out to the sides as the two men got in closer thinking she was surrendering, but before they could lay a single finger on her Shane pulled her cutlass from her side and with one fluid motion, slit a deep gash across the one mans neck causing him to fall to the ground immediately.

The tavern stood quiet for a moment as all the men looked on at Shane’s defiance. The second man simply stared at the body of his fallen brethren in shock until he felt a sting through his chest as Shane’s cutlass pressed into his jacket caught for just a second and then passed freely into his flesh. He froze at the feeling but the moment Shane jerked the blade back out he fell helplessly to the ground in a heap.

“I’d rather fight like a man than be hung like a dog!” Shane yelled and her men cheered. Even those already bound by their shackles. “We are free men! We don’t sail under the Crown, nor shall we die because of her!”

The men rally cried along together and reached for their cutlasses, their pistols, their boarding axes and even their half full mugs of grog in defiance.

“Come and get us!” A large, dark haired and oily man yelled grabbing an axe from the back of his belt. A devious expression etched across his face… filled with overconfidence from a night of heavy drinking.

Shane knocked her head back once again into the large main mast behind her. The hempen ropes tied tight around her body making the trip South through the Windward Passage to Port Royal torture. The sun was hot and the thick ropes acted much like a blanket making her even hotter. She groaned inwardly as she watched a thin English seaman adjust her tricorn hat on his head.

She had known the fight would be tough and quite possibly in vein. It wasn’t until her men charged at England’s finest did she realize how incredibly intoxicated they all had become. When three of her men simply tripped on their own feet and fell to the ground before even making five steps to the enemy, she knew it would be hopeless.