Hello, everyone! And thank you for your reviews, your follows, and your favs! I can't begin to tell you how much I appreciate your support! To my two Guest reviewers: I'm really glad you liked Meg! And you will be glad to know that there'll be a lot more cursing in Italian before the story is over ;) As for what Izzy will do during the attack... Well, you're about to find out.

The title is a play on a line from "Drunken Sailor", a sea shanty. My favourite version is the one by the Irish Rovers. You can find it on Deezer and Spotify, probably on Youtube too. It's very fun to listen to!

Isabella was torn from her sleep by an explosion that shook the whole house. She sat bolt upright on the bed, wide-eyed, and was very surprised to find the room bathed in the unmistakable orange glow of firelight. Which, since there was no chimney and she hadn't lit any candle, was more than a little disturbing. A second explosion propelled her out of bed like a mighty kick to the backside and, spitting out a volley of curses that could have stripped barnacles off a ship's hull, she started getting dressed as quickly as she could.

So, Port Royal was being attacked. By what—pirates? It had to be. And not the Code-abiding kind, judging by the gusto with which they were firing at the town. But who would be crazy enough to take on Fort Charles' cannons and garrison? But, wait, simple pirates couldn't possibly be the source of that darkness she'd felt... Unless they weren't simple pirates at all.

Isabella hopped on one foot as she pulled on her boot, stumbled, banged her hip against the corner of the chest of drawers, cursed again. She could hear people screaming outside as cannonballs smashed through houses and set them ablaze. She had to find Meg and get her to safety before the pirates swarmed into the streets. Then, she would go after Jack; together, they'd decide on their next course of action. One thing was certain, they couldn't steal a ship until the pirates were gone or they'd get caught in the crossfire.

Finally, Isabella jammed her hat on and ran out of the room without forgetting to snatch the manacles when she passed them. She hurtled down the stairs... and had to stop dead in her tracks before she could barrel into the four women in white nightgowns huddled together in the hallway, their terrified chatter turning into shrieks at Isabella's sudden appearance. It took a second for the pirate to assess the situation and dismiss it as inconsequential, during which the women stared at her with wide eyes, clinging to each other. When Isabella strode to the door, they scrambled out of her way like frightened hens.

"If you want to live," the pirate said abruptly, her hand on the doorknob, "run to the fort before the pirates land."

And then, she was gone. Outside, it was utter chaos. Isabella worked her way up the street through a swarm of panic-blind townspeople, the air shuddering with screams and the crackling rumble of the fires, the acrid smell of smoke catching at her throat. She remembered Meg telling her that the Prancing Prawn wasn't too far from the boarding house, remembered that there had been a tavern in the wider street she had come from hours before—she just hoped it was the right one. Right when she emerged from the side street, a cannonball crashed into a house behind her, showering the shrieking villagers with debris. Isabella had instinctively ducked, her hands flying to her head, but she didn't get hit. She wove through the stampede to the other side of the street, her eyes darting around in search of a pretty blonde head... and suddenly, Meg was right in front of her, covered in dust and gripping a long wickledly sharp knife in her scraped hand, a wild look in her eyes.

"There you are!" Isabella exclaimed, her voice full of relief. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Meg shot back, her eyes regaining some of their focus. "The tavern got hit, so we had to clear a way to the door, but I'm fine."

"Bene. Now come on, let's get you to the fort."

The barmaid scowled but, before she could say a word, a savage clamour rose behind them—half a dozen pirates were storming into the street, their teeth bared and their eyes feral, killing everyone in their path with pistols and cutlasses. At this sight, anger roared through Isabella's veins—those men weren't pirates, they were butchers, they were breaking the Code, and they all deserved to be executed.

"We've got to help these people!" Meg shouted, grabbing Isabella's arm.

The pirate shook her head.

"Meg–"

"Don't you dare say I can't, Bella!" the young woman spat fiercely, her eyes glinting with determination. "I can fight well enough. I won't cower behind stone walls. This is my home now, and I'm defending it!"

Isabella realized then that she had no right to try and dictate Meg's actions. The barmaid was a strong, intelligent adult, perfectly capable of making her own decisions. To pretend otherwise would be a grave insult to her. Still, that didn't mean that Isabella was going to leave her to fend for herself.

"We stay together," the Brine-Tongue stated in a tone that brooked no argument, drawing her cutlass.

"Fine by me."

And, with these words, they two women charged the closest pirate, a bald broad-shouldered brute with a little silver hoop in one ear who was about to plunge his cutlass into the chest of the villager he'd flung to the ground. Isabella's blade intercepted his and pushed it aside, a kick to his gut sent him stumbling back... right into Meg's knife, which slipped between his ribs and pierced his heart. He crumpled to the ground with a pained gasp and didn't move again.

Minutes blended into each other as they fought and killed among fleeing townspeople, Meg surprising Isabella by her nimbleness and her quick reflexes. Still, the barmaid wasn't an experienced fighter and she received a couple of shallow cuts when she tried to take advantage of what she erroneously thought were openings. Isabella had gotten rid of her shackles by flinging them around the throat of a pirate she had caught chasing some unfortunate woman, before running him through. At some point, they found themselves fighting next to a young man armed with a cutlass and a boarding axe—and handling himself quite well, Isabella noticed. Then she and Meg moved away to take care of a pirate who was busy trying to torch a house, and she didn't see him again until much later. Cannonballs hit the town only rarely, now, from which Isabella deduced that the ship was concentrating its fire on Fort Charles. At least they wouldn't have to worry about falling rubble so much.

When the fighting brought them to the edge of the town, near the beach, the Brine-Tongue took Meg on a detour to the bridge under which she was supposed to meet Jack, but her friend wasn't there. Worry tied reef knots in her guts, the dull ache dampening the thrill of the fight that skittered along her nerves like sparks. She hadn't seen him anywhere in the streets, but then, she'd been slightly busy, so she might have missed him... Maybe it wasn't midnight yet. Oh, who am I fooling? He's not coming. She could just feel it.

"What if he's been caught and imprisoned?" Meg questioned.

Her tone was laced with concern, because she already knew the answer and she didn't like the idea of Isabella walking right into the lion's den one bit.

"Then I'll get him out," the pirate replied with finality.

Not tonight, though. Firstly, she wouldn't venture into Fort Charles without being absolutely sure of Jack's capture. Secondly, searching the fort while volleys of cannonballs hammered at it would be utterly stupid. It wasn't as if they could sail away now, anyway. Besides, once the pirates were gone, Commodore Norrington would have better things to do than hanging a pirate, and he would need his men for more important tasks than guarding a prison. If she was clever about it, she'd manage to slip in unnoticed. Maybe she could steal a red coat off a soldier's body...

The two women made their back into town to continue fighting. The first pirate they stumbled upon as he came out of a house with a small cask in his arms, almost right under their noses, was... a bald broad-shouldered man with a little silver hoop in one ear. The familiar sight stopped them dead in their tracks and they stared in confusion at the pirate, who froze when he spotted them standing in his way.

"Didn't I kill him?" Meg wondered aloud.

"You stuck a knife in his heart," Isabella confirmed, eyeing the pirate warily.

The latter stretched his lips into something that could only be called a smile if you considered that a shark showing its teeth was smiling.

"Ye pox-ridden wenches took me by surprise last time," he growled as he put his booty down and drew his cutlass. "That's not goin' to happen again."

Isabella lifted her cutlass, ready to fight. This time, she'd cut his head off and see if he could still rise from the dead after that.

"Then come and get us, you scabby, fish-kissing wretch."

The pirate charged at her, his sword arcing downward only to tip sideways at the last moment into a backhanded slash that would have cut Isabella's stomach open if she hadn't jumped back. She parried his next strike, riposted, and her blade traced a long red line across his chest. The pirate flinched back, grunting in pain, and Meg took this opportunity to attack but he was faster than her—his fist slammed into her cheek, sending her crashing to the ground with a sharp cry. Isabella moved to use his brief distraction to her advantage. At that very moment, the moon showed itself through a gap in the clouds and poured its wan light onto the town.

Isabella froze with a horrified gasp; a stab of pain shot through her chest when her heart banged against her ribs before crawling up her throat, as if trying to find a way of escape.

A few screams of terror pierced the air, one of them coming from Meg.

It was as if the moonlight had stripped the flesh off the pirate's bones, turning him into a skeleton dressed in tattered clothes, with only a few shreds of grey decaying skin still clinging to his skull and his rib cage.

It certainly explained why a knife through the heart hadn't killed him—he was already dead. All at once, Isabella remembered Jack telling her about Barbossa's mutiny and, more to the point, what had brought it on. A chest full of gold coins given to Cortès by the Aztec people, allegedly cursed by the Aztec gods so that anyone who took even one coin would be punished for eternity... unless they returned the coin and paid the gods back in blood. Neither Jack nor Barbossa had believed the story but Isabella was in a particularly good position to know that there were superior powers at work in the world. She would bet her life that those pirates were none other than Barbossa's crew, cursed for stealing the treasure.

And then, it hit her like a spanker boom across the face. Dio mio! Aztec gold coins– that strange medallion of Elizabeth's! That's why they're here!

Taking advantage of her state of shock, the pirate lunged at her. Her training was the only thing that saved her life. Without thinking, she spun out of his way and stuck out her foot. The pirate tripped, fell on his hands and knees... and quite literally lost his head when Isabella's cutlass severed it neatly from his body. The Brine-Tongue took care to promptly kick it away from him. A wise precaution, too, because, this time, he didn't bother playing dead and kept moving. More specifically, he stumbled around with outstretched arms and groping hands in search of his head, which was shouting directions from somewhere off to the side in an effort to guide him to itself. For a few moments, Isabella couldn't take her eyes off the grotesque sight, her lips twisted in an incredulous grimace and a slightly hysterical laugh bubbling in her throat. Then she remembered Meg. Her searching gaze quickly found the barmaid still sitting on the ground and staring at the skeletal headless pirate with a look of utter revulsion on her face.

"What kind of demon is he?" she hissed as Isabella helped her to her feet.

"Oh, he's no demon. He's just a pirate who stole the wrong treasure. He's under a curse," the Brine-Tongue clarified at Meg's questioning glance. "The whole crew is. Which means that we didn't actually kill anyone tonight."

"So what do we do now?"

Isabella didn't have to think about it for more than a few moments. There really was only one thing to do—making sure that Barbossa got what he wanted in Port Royal, namely Elizabeth's medallion, so he could leave and break the curse, which would make him and his crew a lot easier to kill. Therefore, she had to find Elizabeth.

"Do you know where the governor lives?" she asked Meg.

"In a mansion just outside the town," the barmaid answered with a quizzical look. "Why?"

"I'll explain on the way. Unless this," the Brine-Tongue gestured at the headless pirate, who was still fumbling around for his head, "has made you reconsider fighting."

Meg closed her eyes, took in a long steadying breath, and exhaled slowly. When she opened her eyes again, her fear was contained behind a hard veneer of determination.

"I'm ready," she said.

"Va bene." Isabella picked up the headless pirate's cutlass and handed it to Meg. "If we have to fight, don't get too close. Let me handle the decapitating. Use that to cut off their sword hands if you can but be careful—you're not used to the weight, which means you won't be as fast as you were with your knife."

"Understood," Meg replied with a nod, dropping her knife and gripping the cutlass firmly.

"Bene. Let's go."

Isabella and Meg had only walked a few steps when the moon disappeared again. They froze. Looked at each other. And resolved by tacit agreement not to even glance behind them before going on their way. They quickly noticed that the streets had been abandoned to the pirates, who were now mostly busy carrying off their loot; the townspeople, Isabella supposed, were either dead or hiding. A good thing, that—she was getting tired and wanted to avoid fighting unless absolutely necessary.

She got her wish, but not in the way she had expected.

A cannonball, the last one that the Black Pearl would fire at the town, wooshed straight over the two women's heads and slammed into the facade of the house they were just passing. The deafening noise forced startled screams from their throats but they had no time to dodge the chunks of brick, plaster, and wood that rained down on them. Pain exploded inside Isabella's skull and her consciousness was snuffed out like a candle flame.

Isabella came to feeling as if a gull were pecking at her head, which wasn't a particularly pleasant sensation. For a few moments, she floundered amidst the pain to recall what had happened, then it came back to her all at once. Making her way to the governor's mansion with Meg. The cannonball. Getting knocked out by falling debris. Merda, she thought sluggishly. Meg. She tried to call out her name but all she could manage was an unintelligible groan.

"Bella? Are you awake?"

Meg's voice came from somewhere abover her. Grazie a Dio, she's still alive. Judging that the question deserved an articulate answer, she swallowed—it felt like gulping down nails—and gave it a try.

"Yes," she managed to croak.

"Oh, good. You've been out for a bloody long time. I was starting to think you'd never come round."

The idea that she should perhaps try to open her eyes drifted on the surface of her headache for several seconds before she decided to put it into action. She cracked open an eyelid and the daylight stabbed into her brain like a needle. She promptly screwed her eyes shut, cursing silently, and waited a few seconds for the pain to subside. Wait, daylight? Accidenti... How long have I been unconscious? Slowly, she opened her eyes, squinting until she got used to the light. Finally, she saw the dirt street, part of the houses across it, a pair of legs hurrying past her... but everything was rocking like a ship caught in a storm.

"Ugh," she groaned, closing her eyes again.

"Are you all right?"

"Oh, just fantastic."

"If it's any consolation, you're not bleeding. I checked. I think you can thank your hat for that."

"What about you?"

"Oh, I was bleeding but not anymore. And I woke up maybe twenty minutes before you did. I must've got hit by something a lot smaller."

Isabella carefully peeked through her lashes and, when she found that, much to her relief, the world had finally gone still, she slowly sat up, gritting her teeth as the aforementioned gull pecked even harder. Meg was sitting cross-legged next to her among the fallen debris, watching her with concern; a large bruise marred her right cheek and her hair hung in matted strands around her tired face. She let Isabella examine the wound at the back of her head without protest and was visibly relieved to learn that it wouldn't require stitches.

"You'll have to wash it, though," the Italian pirate warned her. "And your other wounds, too. They're not serious but better not risk an infection. "Do you remember–"

"Boiled water, wine, and vinegar," Meg cut her off, smiling even as she rolled her eyes. "Yes, I remember."

Isabella gingerly probed the right side of her head with her fingertips and hissed in pain when they met a bump the size of a periwinkle—the sea snail, not the flower. There was indeed no blood, a stroke of luck which, like Meg, she attributed to her hat.

"It was dented but I just... poked it back into shape," Meg specified, handing Isabella her hat.

The felt was a little scuffed but that was the extent of the damage. Small miracles, the Brine-Tongue thought as she put it back on, mindful of her bump. For the first time since she had regained consciousness, she took a good look around. Dawn had come and gone but it was still early in the morning, judging by the pale blue sky. The smell of charred wood hung in the air. In the street, the survivors of the attack were picking up the pieces. Some twenty yards away to their right, four men were busy clearing out the rubble, loading it into a cart drawn by a robust chestnut horse. Across the street, a couple was trying to put a badly damaged little wooden stand back together. People were returning to their homes, exhaustion engraved on their faces; some were wounded—one man was limping badly and had to lean on his wife, another was clutching his bloodied arm to his chest. And, at only a short distance to their left, three corpses—two men and one woman—had been lined up on the side of the street. A young woman was kneeling beside one of the men, her hand laid over his chest and her shoulders shaking with her sobs.

Obviously, the pirates were long gone, which meant that Barbossa had gotten what had brought him to Port Royal. Elizabeth was probably dead, then. Isabella very much doubted that the pirates had bothered to politely ask her for her medallion. After all, the easiest way to rob someone was to kill them first. She felt a pang of regret at that thought—Elizabeth was, what, twenty? Twenty-one? Much too young to die.

Still, the Italian pirate couldn't pretend that the death of the governor's daughter didn't serve her. No doubt Commodore Norrington and Governor Swann would be busy preparing to give chase to the Black Pearl. Such an act couldn't remain unpunished, right? Not if Norrington valued his reputation and his job. It was already bad enough that Fort Charles' cannons and garrison had been powerless to repel the attack of one pirate ship... But the bottom line was that they had much bigger fish to fry.

"Right..." Isabella murmured before continuing out loud. "I need to go and see if Jack made it to our meeting point."

Meg pulled a sceptical face.

"That seems unlikely, don't you think?"

"I agree, but I have to be certain."

She got to her feet, not too quickly so her head wouldn't start spinning again, and Meg followed suit.

"Will you be all right?" the barmaid asked while Isabella dusted herself down.

"I have a bad headache and a big bump," the Brine-Tongue said dismissively. "It'll take a lot more than that to stop me from breaking my friend out of prison."

Meg didn't resist when Isabella drew her into what she knew to be a parting embrace, which she returned with equal warmth. She elected not to ask the pirate if she needed her help to free Jack, thinking that it would be very hypocritical of her when firstly, she had no desire to defy the Royal Navy further—it was one thing to hide Isabella, to whom she had owed a life debt, but quite another to risk imprisonment and perhaps even execution for a pirate she barely knew; and secondly, she knew full well that Isabella would refuse her offer for exactly the same reason.

"I wish you a wonderful life," the Italian pirate said earnestly.

"And I wish you luck," Meg replied. "You'll need it."

With these words, they went their separate ways. As she had expected, Isabella didn't find her friend under the bridge. She did, however, see something that confirmed her theory—and her hopes—as to the commodore's current preoccupations: the Interceptor was being prepared for departure.

"Splendido," she sighed, anxiety burrowing into her guts like a shipworm.

Tugging nervously at the brass button strung on a thin gold chain around her neck, she looked up at the massive fort towering over Port Royal and blew out a sharp breath.

"Fort Charles, here I come."

And... cut! Well? What did you think? Meg's one tough woman, isn't she? At first, I was going to have Isabella bring her back to the boarding house but she wouldn't hear of it. So, here she is. I don't think we'll be seeing her again, though.

Yeah, I know, knocking them out is a bit of a cheap trick, but I couldn't have Isabella free Jack before Will talked to him. Speaking of which, the next chapter will mostly be following the movie script. I'm afraid I can't always write completely original chapters...

You may be wondering what a spanker boom is. Remember the scene aboard the Interceptor when Jack tells Will that his father was a pirate? Well, the boom is that big spar Jack uses to sweep Will off the ship.

I'll update in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, I'll be eagerly waiting for your reviews ;)

Translation:
- bene = good
- va bene = all right
- merda = shit
- grazie a Dio = thank God
- accidenti = damn it
- splendido = great