The deck of The Iron Cormorant became a battleground of wood, rope, and cold iron.
The physical shape of boarding defense on a heavy-duty barge favored the defenders, provided they held their footing.
The bulwarks of The Iron Cormorant were four feet high, built of six-inch heart-oak backed by heavy iron support posts riveted directly to the deck beams. An attacker climbing over that rail was fully exposed for three critical seconds. His arms raised to clear the coaming, his boots scrambling for purchase on the slippery timber rub-rail, his balance point thrown forward. Meanwhile, his feet were still four feet below his hands.
Tomas Reed understood those three seconds down to the tiny fraction of an inch.
He didn’t fight with the wide, dramatic swings of an arena gladiator. He used the short, bone-shaking, low-flight path thrusts of a warehouse porter clearing a jammed cargo chute. Every strike of his seasoned hickory staff was directed at the body joints: the wrist, the elbow, the collar bone, and the kneecap. When an attacker lunged over the timber rail, Tomas’s staff met the man’s knee-cap with a sharp, sickening crack that sent the mercenary plunging back into the black water before his axe could fall.
