Galleons & Gangplanks
a pirate anthology by Rob Knight
Torquere Press
Pirates! Rapiers! Cannons and flintlocks! These are all the idea
behind Galleons and Gangplanks. Bringing back the days when pirates
ruled the high seas, this collection of stories has no shortage of
adventure, danger, and excitement.
From Sean Michael
comes Searching the Seas, a story about an honest man kidnapped by
pirates, used as collateral for a trade between the pirates and the
seaside village at their mercy. Things are not always as they seem,
though, and soon the constable and the pirate Captain are learning to
love, and live, with the past and the future.
Julia
Talbot’s The White City takes on the Barbary Coast, with a legendary
privateer meeting his match in an Algerian sheik. But who is the captor
and who is the slave in this game of cat and mouse that runs from the
sun baked streets of Algiers to the waves beyond the shore?
Mychael
Black’s Fool’s Gold is a romp in the best pirate tradition. Searching
for his father’s lost gold, a young man teams up with a salty veteran
to follow a treasure map. Can the two of them find something in common
besides a lust for coin?
In Willa Okati’s Of Boats and
Bluebeards two young men are pressed into service on a pirate ship, one
of them slated to be the Captain’s new toy, the other set to
backbreaking work. Can Kit and Paul find a way to escape, and to share
the budding love they find with each other?
Get your arrr! on. Grab Galleons and Gangplanks today!
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Excerpt from Fool's Gold:
"You would think that after swallowing the captain's cock twice a day
for a little over a year would earn his trust, yet he still saw me as a
rogue who only had eyes for the mountain of Spanish gold he had sacked
away somewhere. It didn't matter that it was true. It mattered that the
trust of his peg didn't equate to the trust of his horde."
"Keep talking like that and they'll 'ave your head."
I held up one hand and smirked. "And piracy gets me what? A slap on the wrist?"
My neighbor just snorted and shuffled across the dirty floor, kicking
at the bits of torn cloth and the occasional bone, most likely picked
clean by the rodents with which we shared our cells. Thus ended our
conversation, I assumed, and my woeful tale of sinful love. Well, maybe
not love, so much as lust. I bore no ill feelings toward my former
captain, 'tis true, but I certainly did not profess to love the man.
When at sea, without women, men can become randy and desperate, caring
little as to what hole they fuck.
"And what of the ol' cap'n's gold, eh?"
I turned my head, not bothering to turn much else from my rather
comfortable position against the cold stone wall. "Itching for it,
Mathers? Lot of good it will do you here."
"I's just curious," the old man grumbled from his corner.
He was far older than the neighbor to my right. If I recalled
correctly, ol' Mathers had lost his left eye to the tip of a sword, and
the right leg--from the knee, down--to a lead ball. Out of the three of
us, I was the only one who retained full function of every bit of
anatomy. So far.
I yawned dramatically and tipped my head back just enough to peer
upside down at the barred window above my head. "Half moon tonight," I
observed quietly.
I heard Mathers grunt, the noise a familiar but nauseating warning .
Then came the foul stench that usually followed. I caught my breath and
stared at the half-moon, fighting the urge to breathe. When breath
became a necessity, I gasped and sucked in a lungful of putrid air. I
promptly gagged.
Dobson, on the right, was much luckier than myself. The old sod had
lost his sense of smell years before, though to what I didn't know. I
wasn't sure I wanted to know, really. He did find my discomfort
amusing, however, and his cackles soon broke out, filling the stale
air. I merely gave him a crude gesture, which only incited further
outbursts of coughing fits of laughter.
Such was my plight, as I waited for the governor to pass down my
sentence. Branded as a pirate, I fully expected the rope. What I did
not expect was a rescuer.