The Tides of Avarice (54 page)

“They wouldn't,” said Jasper, “try very hard to catch us and, if we just lived quietly somewhere and made lives for ourselves, they'd turn a blind eye. But if we sailed the Bugbear into port they'd have to take action, action of some kind.”

So the slaves had steered the ship in an erratic course round the ocean, avoiding the major inhabited nations for fear of being arrested or re-enslaved, or being slaughtered by pirates. Wherever they found a fertile but uninhabited coast or island where they could safely stock the ship with provisions, they did so. For the most part, though, they were caged by the shores of Sagaria's seas. Some were content with this fate. Some resented it but learned to live with it. A few, sooner or later, found they could bear it no longer and took their own lives.

“I can't tell you how often I came close to that myself,” said Jasper, “but each time I drew back from that dreadful final precipice. I had a wife and child whom I wanted one day to be with again, and there were villains I wanted to see pay for their crimes.”

When, after years at sea, they came by chance close to a new island they had no reason to think it would be different from the others.

Some of the inhabitants rowed out to greet the Bugbear as if they were long-lost friends. Only later that night did the folk who'd risen against the tyranny of the slavers' lash discover they'd been the victims of treachery.

Pimplebrains gulped. “You all ended up in the pot.”

“All except me, obviously. I managed to escape; I sneaked into a big cave that I later discovered was called the Larder. To me, it was just a cave, although I was made sick to my stomach by the bones littering its sandy floor. At the back of the cave was a narrow passage through which I fled, thinking it might lead me only to the bowels of the world. But even that I would prefer to being slaughtered for someone's banquet. As you know, instead I found my way into this ship and it's been my home ever since. In a place this big, it was easy enough to hide any time a posse of cannibals ventured in here in search of me. Then, as I … changed, I was able to take more effective measures to conceal myself, such as close off the route that led from the back of the Larder to here.”

“You're a brave fellow,” said Pimplebrains. “I'd like to shake your paw.”

The grizzled old beaver held out a hook and Jasper took it.

Sylvester just stared at his father, his heart filled with awe.

I knew you'd turn out to be a hero, but I never guessed how much of a hero you'd be.

At some point they slept, even though Sylvester could have sworn he'd be too excited ever to sleep again after having discovered his father. Pimplebrains was the first to light out, as it were, leaning slowly over sideways at a greater and greater angle until finally, he was asleep on the metal deck. Viola soon followed. Sylvester and Jasper remained awake quite a while longer, talking about this and that, mainly about Hortensia. Jasper was amused to discover her cooking hadn't improved any over the years. Sylvester would never know which of the two Lemmingtons succumbed to sleep first. There seemed to be a smooth transition between drowsily conversing with his dad and being woken up by Viola putting her foot in his ear.

“Clumsy oaf,” she said, and not to herself.

Ablutions completed and a breakfast partaken of some curious fruits that looked like blackcurrants and tasted a bit like the smell of roses, the three lemmings and the old hook-handed beaver looked at each other with what Sylvester soon recognized as a sense of anticlimax. Conversation was desultory and forced. Yesterday had been a day unlike any other, one of those days to be remembered for a lifetime. Now, Sylvester and Jasper were beginning to realize that there was so much they didn't know about each other, so many shared years they'd lost, and that now was the wrong time to start repairing that gaping emotional wound.

“We'd better see what Cheesefang and the gang are up to, I suppose,” said Pimplebrains at last.

The other three pounced upon the idea as if it were the product of genius. Anything to be doing rather than just hanging around searching for threads of conversation that seemed always just out of reach.

With Jasper in the lead, the little party headed for the massive hole in the vessel's hull. Unlike yesterday, they had no need of torches. As they entered each massive room, Jasper clapped and that strange, cloudy light came on. Sylvester suspected there was no need for Jasper to clap his paws, that his dad was just doing this to make the switching-on of the illumination less unsettling for the others.

Sometimes their course followed the path the three newcomers had scuffed up in the dust; more often it didn't. Sylvester realized Jasper knew his way around and was following the most direct route. Yesterday, Sylvester and the others must have wandered considerably as they explored the unknown territory.

Eventually, their trek brought them to the dark gash. This time, Jasper smacked his paws together to switch the light off.

“No sense in alerting anyone out there to the fact we're on our way,” he murmured tensely.

Even Jasper stumbled on occasion as they made their way through the last fifty yards or so of darkness to reach the tear in the hull.

As they did so, Sylvester slowly became aware that there was a commotion outside.

“What's that?” he hissed to no one in particular.

“How should I know?” three voices replied as one.

When they reached the mouth of the perforation it was all too obvious what was going on. The colossal cavern surrounding the vessel was not entirely dark. More than one bonfire had been built while the lemmings and the beaver slept, and the flicker of their flames lit the distant cavern walls fitfully with a vexed dark redness. There was no one in sight as Sylvester and the others peered at this ominous scene, but it was clear that somewhere very close there was an all-out battle in progress. The air was filled with the clash of steel on steel, with the yells of angry creatures, with screams of pain that were all too often abruptly stifled or worse, that continued endlessly in an almost pleading fashion.

To the friends in the opening, it was as if two armies were fighting on the cavern floor in front of them, but armies made up of invisible warriors.

“They're round the far side of the ship,” murmured Jasper after a few moments. He repeated the sentence more loudly, obviously realizing there was no point in keeping his voice low. Whoever was in the fray wouldn't hear him even if he shouted at the top of his voice.

Pimplebrains stood with one ear cocked to the air. “I recognizes a few of them voices,” he said slowly. “Them's men from the fine ship Shadeblaze.” He felt at his waist for a sword that wasn't there, a sword that had never been there since he'd lost his paws. “I need to go and join 'em, fight alongside of 'em. Them's my shipmates. I owe me hearties that much.”

Jasper put a paw on the larger animal's shoulder. “Don't be a fool.”

“It's honor.” Pimplebrains's voice indicated that was explanation enough.

“I thought there was no honor among pirates.”

“Then you thought wrong.”

Sylvester shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. In a way, those were his and Viola's shipmates too, even though by force. He felt a certain obligation.

Jasper was eyeing him. “I know what's going through your head, son, and I also know it's damnfool stupid, but you wouldn't be a son of mine if you weren't thinking it.”

“Really?” said Viola sweetly. “You mean you're both idiots?”

The older lemming turned his gaze to her. “Sometimes you remind me of his mother when she was your age.”

Pimplebrains was jumping down to the sandy floor of the cavern. He held up his hooks to them.

“I'm sure you understand.”

Then he was gone, running toward the prow of the Zindar ship, his feet kicking up little puffs of sand.

“I hope we see him again,” said Viola somberly.

“Me too.” Sylvester squeezed her paw.

“We better go find out what's happening, I suppose,” said Jasper. He sniffed. “When you've been in here as long as I have, you learn that the best thing intruders from the outside world could do is kill each other and save you the bother, but it sounds like some of these are friends of yours?”

Cheesefang, a friend? thought Sylvester. All those other cutthroats and vagabonds, my friends? Well, I suppose some of them are. Maybe. In a way.

“I think so,” he told his father.

“Before we go, then …”

Jasper vanished as suddenly as Pimplebrains had, but into the shadows of the ship. He returned within moments, clanking as he moved. In his arms were three not very rusty swords and an ax that looked blunt enough that the greatest threat it offered to victims was probably blood poisoning.

Jasper saw Viola looking skeptically at the ax.

“Just for show,” he assured her. “It impresses people.”

He gave each of them a sword, then jumped down onto the sand. “I'd offer to help you down,” he said to Viola, “but as you can see, I've got my hands full.”

“If you offered to help me down,” Viola replied so quietly only Sylvester could hear her, “I'd bury your own ax in your skull. Even if it took me all day,” she added.

Sylvester laughed. Jasper looked at them in puzzlement.

“Nothing,” Sylvester told him, jumping down beside his father. In a flurry of ragged skirts, Viola joined them.

The three lemmings moved cautiously along close to the sheltering bulk of the great ship. The light of the bonfires didn't reach here. The darkness seemed even deeper than inside the ship. Sylvester could see Viola ahead of him as just an impression of presence in the gloom. Beyond her, leading the trio, Jasper couldn't be seen at all. Sylvester reassured himself that even if a group of combatants did spill around to this side of the ship, they'd be unable to see the lemmings in the stygian shadows. He clutched his sword very tightly, enjoying the way it balanced itself in his grasp.

Yesterday, all I knew to do was wave a sword around in the air vacantly and hope its sharp edge hit somebody else before theirs hit me. Now, I'm appreciating the weapon's heft, knowing that if I have to use it I'll be able to give a good account of myself. Dad was right. There's something in the air of the ship, or maybe in the Zindar crops, that changes the way we think, that makes us sharper, more alert, more clever.

Suddenly Viola stopped. With difficulty, Sylvester kept himself from running into the rear of her. He shook his head. He'd been so lost in his thoughts he hadn't realized they'd reached the front of the ship. There was a little more light here, just enough for him to be able to see the faces of his companions.

Jasper was looking worried. “I don't want either of you trying to be heroes.”

“We won't,” said Viola.

“Good.”

Inching forward, they peered around to the far side of the cavern.

At first, Sylvester couldn't understand what was going on. That there was a savage battle underway was obvious, but it just seemed to be a chaotic sea of barbarity without any rhyme or reason. Who was fighting whom? Was everyone just trying to kill everyone else? Then, as bloodied blades rose and fell in the darting red light from the great pyres, and as the screams of mortal agony and snarls of wrath rose to an impossibly high crescendo and then rose farther still, he began to distinguish the different parties involved in the fierce and feral fray.

Over there was Cheesefang, surrounded by the dead bodies of his comrades. Sylvester couldn't be sure, but it seemed to him that Cheesefang must be the only one left of the party of pirates that had escaped from the rear of the Larder – except, of course, for Pimplebrains, who was hacking his way to Cheesefang's side.

Cheesefang's sword arm was a vicious blur in the air, the sword itself almost invisible except when it chopped into the neck of an adversary, or paused briefly in the act of running one through. Sylvester had always thought the sea rat's boasts about his fighting prowess were just arrant braggartry. Now, he could see they weren't. The rat was a formidable warrior. The dead and dying all around him were proof enough of that.

As was Pimplebrains. The hooks, where once the beaver's paws had been, were moving as swiftly and lethally as Cheesefang's sword. Sylvester watched, not knowing if he should turn away, not knowing if he wanted to carry on watching or if he just wanted to throw up. The beaver sank a hook deep into a swarthy raccoon's throat and pulled back with a mighty yank, ripping out flesh and esophagus amid an explosion of blood. Even as the raccoon sank to his knees, the life already fleeing from him, Pimplebrains was moving on, working his way toward where Cheesefang was battling grimly.

Battling grimly against cannibals.

Last night, Jasper had told Sylvester and the others that, while the cannibals had lost all awareness of the narrow rocky passage that led out of the back of the Larder, they still knew of the shore entrance to what Sylvester had begun to call, in his own mind, the Cavern of the Zindars. A party of them – a large party, to judge by the body count – must have strayed in here within the past hour or two, perhaps just by chance, perhaps searching for the “food animals” that had miraculously escaped from the Larder despite the guards placed at the cave's mouth. Whatever the reason, the cannibals had arrived and found Cheesefang and his cronies engaged in the futile task of trying to dig up a treasure chest that was buried not here, but half a world away.

They'd been led by the one-eared black and white terrier Kabalore. The dog, his flanks bloodied by a score of shallow wounds and by the gore of the pirates who'd put them there, was fighting as ferociously as Cheesefang. Where the sea rat was wielding a sword and dagger, Kabalore was armed only with a cudgel, but so skilled was he in its use that Sylvester wouldn't have liked to judge which was the more effective weapon. The pirates seemed to think the same because, while they were making short and ruthless work of most of the cannibals, they seemed leery of Kabalore. The terrier was having to take the fight to them rather than beat off their attacks.

And the pirates the terrier was attacking? To go by the disposition of the various battling parties, Jeopord must have come ashore with the skeleton crew he'd retained, then followed the cannibals in through the shore entrance to the Cavern of the Zindars. Seeing Cheesefang and the rest under attack, Jeopord and his henchmen must have weighed in to go to the rescue.

Sylvester felt his grip on his sword tighten even more.

“I can't just stand by and watch this,” he told his father.

“Don't be such a fool.”

“Stop acting like a father. I grew up while you were gone. I have friends there.”

Sylvester pointed with his sword. A small part of him was surprised the blade was hardly trembling at all.

“They're all rapscallions and rogues.”

“True, but—”

“They're our rapscallions and rogues.”

Sylvester started. The voice that had interrupted was Viola's. She too was holding her sword out in front of her.

“You're a good person, Jasper,” she said, speaking in quick stuttery phrases, “but the years you've lived in hiding have turned you into someone who thinks the only important thing is self-preservation. There's more to life than that, more to living. Join us, don't join us, it's up to you but your son and I aren't going to watch Cheesefang die because we were too cowardly to go to his aid.”

Back in Hangman's Haven, Sylvester had discovered the knack of running faster than the eye could see. He still didn't know how he did it. Maybe it was a Zindar talent he'd somehow inherited from ancestors who'd been alive when the Zindars were still here on Sagaria. Who could ever know? It had always been a case of running from something, something that terrified him.

Now he discovered he could do it while running toward danger too.

And so could Viola.

They ran shoulder by shoulder into the throng of fighting creatures.

Sylvester found he was yelling, although the words he was yelling weren't words at all.

Almost without volition on his part, his sword stabbed forward to jab into the flesh between a cannibal rat's ear and jaw. The rat let out a great scream and dropped his own sword, putting up his paw as if there might be some possibility of staunching the spurt of blood.