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Backups, sorta. Ever used a gun?”
    William shook his head.
    “No matter,” Smith continued good-naturedly, “’cause they’d not be lettin’ us landers have such a thing anyways. How’s about a hanger?” he asked nodding towards a wicked looking blade gripped by one of the sailors. Again William shook his head, never taking his eyes from the marines’ precise movements. “Ya’ had any weapon use at all?”
    “A skinning knife,” William replied. “I had my own knife back home.”
    “Didcha’ now?” Smith grinned as though he’d unearthed a secret. “A big one, was it?”
    William shrugged his shoulders. “Big enough.”
    “But not a hanger. Could ya’ do more with one than pick yer ear wax?”
    William thought back to his chores at home. For a few moments he imagined himself back in the shed with his father and brother. Slaughtering a pig or goat had been easy enough but a cow or a wild deer had always required much more strength in wielding the blade. And then there was the memory of the smell of the heme, and the warmth of the slippery organs and entrails. William and John had usually managed to turn a day in the slaughter shed into a contest of skills between them. Skinning the carcass as quickly as possible yet carefully enough that the hide was removed intact was William’s specialty. Such a hide could be sold to the tanners for far more than one that had any skinner lacerations through it.
    John had always bested William in the carving up of the carcass, being older and stronger. However, the end of each day in the shed had seen the boys finishing up their brotherly competitions with several rounds of knife throwing. At this, they had been evenly matched. The main difference had been that John was right handed, and William had preferred to use his left.
    His left hand however, bore a congenital peculiarity. His fourth and fifth fingers were webbed together from the middle knuckles to his hand, resulting in his remaining three fingers having developed the strength of a much more powerful grip.
    “ Me granddad had a couplin’ with a mermaid what he found washed up on the rocks along the shore, an’ she infused him an’ his future kin with her essence forevermore,” his Da’ had bragged in the pubs. The eloquence of his descriptive words and the outlandish story never failed to earn him a free drink from someone in the crowd. William’s mother had different ideas.
    A left hander was the sign of the Devil, his mother had declared, and she had determinedly insisted from the time he was small, that William learn to use his right hand. He had obligingly done so with a great deal of success but had also continued to use his left in most things, his coordination in both hands therefore becoming equally honed. His keen eyesight had allowed him to hit the target pole at the end of the shed nearly every time.
    “Well do ya’? Eh?” Smith broke into William’s thoughts with his question. “Do ya’ know how to defend yerself?”
    “I don’t know,” William answered truthfully. “Never had to.”
    Smith’s eyes narrowed into dark dangerous slits and he hissed through his lopsided grin, “That opportunity will come about ‘afore ya’ even see it comin’, I ‘spect.”

 
    The marines were now repeating their drills and William’s attention shifted to the other sailors around him. Several were on their hands and knees, wetting down and scrubbing the wooden planking with stiff brushes made of boar’s bristle; some busied themselves with mops and rags, wetting and polishing. Still others hoisted and adjusted the huge sails, hollering back and forth to their airborne mates overhead, all the while pulling on the riggings strung intricately from each of the ship’s two masts.
    The sailors wore knee length breeches and most were deeply tanned and shirtless; those who sported upper garments wore nearly identical linen shirts, bleached in various shades of white, grime, and sweat. All of the