The Tides of Avarice (56 page)

Sylvester put up a paw to wipe the sticky hot liquid out of his eyes.

Although Jeopord was clearly in agony, that didn't seem to hamper him much. He pulled his blade out of the ground and tossed it to his other forepaw, catching it neatly and beginning to twitch it threateningly. The ocelot put his injured paw up to his mouth and clamped his teeth over the wound to stanch the flow of blood. His eyes flared yellow in insane fury.

Viola and Jasper got themselves out of reach of that feverishly scything, bloodied but razor-sharp blade and scrambled for cover. The rest of the fracas had fallen into a lull as the combatants stopped to watch the fight between Jeopord and Sylvester. Out of the corner of his eye, Sylvester could see Pimplebrains looking at him with an expression that could almost be pride. The old beaver had managed to get himself alongside Cheesefang, and the pair of them had dealt out death to cannibals until the survivors had turned and fled.

So that's what Pimplebrains thinks of his skipper, thought Sylvester, darting to one side and then the other, as Jeopord's sword sought him. Evading the slashes would have been hard enough had the footing been just the cavern floor, but Sylvester was having constantly to readjust himself as the scattered bodies of pirates and cannibals got in the way. What made it even more difficult was that most of the dead and mortally wounded animals were larger than Sylvester, some of them considerably larger. Large or small, the dead and wounded had blood that was slippery and Sylvester was wading through far too much of it.

He balanced on the outthrust leg of a dead dog, and realized it was Kabalore's.

Kabalore was a lot bigger than me. He didn't fare too well, did he?

Jeopord's sword was a river of silver exploding toward him.

Sylvester sprang away to his left, somersaulting through the air and continuing to roll after he hit the ground. He hammered into the side of a dead stoat and lay there for a second, winded, the world performing crazy dances in front of his eyes.

When things came back into focus, he saw Jeopord advancing toward him once more, his face fixed in a crazy grin. The ocelot had let his wounded paw fall to his side, and seemed not to care that his lifeblood was still pouring copiously from it.

Uh-oh, this is it.

Sylvester didn't know where he got the strength, but it came from somewhere and allowed him to twist away, kicking up a cloud of sticky wet sand into Jeopord's face.

The pirate screamed a terrible oath.

“I'll get you, you—”

“Not in front of the fairer sex,” said a voice that Sylvester had never expected to hear again.

“Rustbane!” Jeopord gasped.

The gray fox bowed with a flourish of his cape. “At your service.”

Whatever the fox's attempts at suaveness, he was looking the worse for wear. His costume was faded, wrinkled and a little shrunken and the same could be said for his face, but there could be no doubting the assurance with which he held himself.

“So sorry,” said Rustbane with a nod to Viola. “I meant to say ‘fairer gender.'”

“You're dead!” cried Jeopord.

“Not so you'd notice.” The fox pinched himself as if to check. “Still here.”

“But I—”

“Killed me yourself? Yes, I thought you'd think that. But you were wrong. Wrong, as you've been about so many things, Jeopord, my old Jack o' Cups.”

“You were dead!”

“I was. But then I wasn't. Confusing, isn't it?”

“And now you're—”

“Exactly. Now I'm here, and I find you about to impale my very good friend Sylvester Lemmington, one of the finest – perhaps the finest – hamsters Sagaria has ever been lucky enough to know.”

“Lemmings,” said Sylvester hoarsely. Still winded, he felt as if his throat had been used as a cheese grater.

“Pardon?” said Cap'n Rustbane, turning to look at him.

“Lemmings. I'm a lemming, not a hamster. I've told you before.”

This is crazy, thought Sylvester. I want to laugh. I'm just about to be skewered six ways to yesterday, and the main thing I want to do is roar with laughter. I think my throat would burst if I tried it.

“Quite so,” said Rustbane gravely. “I'll try to remember that in future. I don't mind so much if it's hamsters getting impaled, but lemmings – that's different.”

He faced Jeopord.

“You and I, we have a score to settle, my Jack o' Cups. If it were merely a matter of a lemming or two I could possibly find it in my heart to forgive you, but it's me you tried to kill and I really do take the most profound exception to that.”

Jeopord's eyes moved shiftily. “I don't suppose it's any use tellin' you it was only a joke?”

Rustbane answered with deceptive mildness. “No, I'm afraid that won't wash.”

“That I was jus' doin' it for your own good?”

“That neither.”

“That I was doin' it out of loyalty? That I knew you'd escape the jaws of death somehow, you bein' Cap'n Terrigan Rustbane, after all. I thought it might be doin' you a good turn to let you lie low while me an' the lads” – Jeopord gestured around him at the scene of carnage – “tackled these here cannibals? A special nasty breed of cannibals they was too. I thought to myself, I thought, ‘Jeopord, me old cully, your ol' drinking bud and lofty skipper, to wot you owes the greatest love an' respect a man could 'ave – well, an ocelot, but same thing – the greatest love an' respect an ocelot could 'ave, you've got to—”

“Nope,” said Rustbane. “Good try, but nope.”

“Then defend yourself, scumbag!”

With a roar the ocelot leaped at Rustbane, his sword singing in a lethal arc.

Sylvester didn't know where Rustbane's sword came from. One moment the gray fox was seemingly unarmed, the next his blade was clashing against Jeopord's, forcing the ocelot back on the defensive.

Jeopord gave a howl of frustration as he was thwarted by the savage resistance the gray fox offered.

“Why can't you just go ahead and simply die?” he said with exasperation.

“Actually, I'm not really the ‘dying' type,” Rustbane said calmly. “To put it another way, it's not my style.”

“Kill that bloody vulpine!” Jeopord shouted to the nearest pirates. Only two were within earshot, a toothless skunk and a one-eyed wolverine, but they seemed very reluctant to carry out the order.

“Or by the devil's grandmother's underwear, I'll kill you two meself.” This threat seemed to spark little enthusiasm to obey the new skipper. Nevertheless, they slowly advanced toward the gray fox, their cutlasses drawn.

Two silvery flashes appeared abruptly in Rustbane's paws. He fired the flintlocks at the same time, making it sound like a loud single bang. The two pirates crashed against the cavern wall and fell to the sandy floor, where they lay motionless.

“Two black spots mended,” said Rustbane. He stuck his smoking pistols back into his belt, then drew his sword again. “Now, we can continue undisturbed me, ol' Jack o' Cups.” Rustbane gave Sylvester a cocky little grin. “Maybe I'm just a ghost, not a flesh-and-blood fox after all. Wouldn't that be a fine and fancy turn up for the books, eh? Take that, you cur!”

This last was to Jeopord, who'd renewed his attack. Fending off his foe's sword with his own, the gray fox kicked out unexpectedly. Jeopord had just been sneakily drawing a dagger from the folds of his trousers. Rustbane's foot caught the ocelot's paw in the act, driving the blade back into Jeopord's flesh.

The ocelot howled again, this time in agony as the sharp serrated blade tore into him.

The fight was actually over in that moment, although it took a couple more minutes for Jeopord to realize it. His face twisted in pain and with his injured leg uncertain beneath him, the ocelot didn't stand a chance. Sylvester could see temptation crossing Rustbane's face, the temptation to toy with the ocelot's anguish and misery, to protract the process of finishing Jeopord off, but the emotion was only a fleeting one. The two pirates went back a long way. They'd been friends much more than they'd been foes. The gray fox owed it to his Jack o' Cups to make this as rapid as possible.

Sylvester, frozen where he lay, watched in fascination and with a certain amount of grudging respect as the ocelot, despite everything, fought back viciously against his old skipper. His curses filled the air. His sword seemed almost liquid, so swiftly did it change direction as he sought each new angle of attack against the gray fox. For his part, Rustbane was doing the minimum possible, just defending himself when he needed to, attacking whenever he judged that Jeopord's guard had dropped. The fox was barely breaking breath.

“I can't bear to watch,” Viola whispered in Sylvester's ear. At some point, she must have wormed her way unnoticed across the gory terrain to snuggle up against him.

“Me neither,” said Sylvester, but he carried on watching anyway as Viola buried her face in his shoulder.

Finally, Jeopord's resolve was breaking down. The movement of his sword arm lost its fluidity, becoming a series of jerks. The power with which his weapon clashed against Rustbane's audibly decreased. Those moments when Rustbane could stab through Jeopord's guard became more and more frequent.

“Throw down your weapon, my old comrade,” cried Rustbane at last. “Let me make this quick.”

“I'm not done with ye yet, y'old bastard,” grunted Jeopord.

But it was clear that he was. His chest was heaving like the waves of stormy sea. Blood was streaming from the deep wound in his hip. He could scarcely limp. That his damaged leg hadn't already collapsed beneath him was a miracle. Even the effort of keeping his sword held out in front of him seemed to have become too much because suddenly, in spite of the defiance of his words, the weapon turned groundward, slowly falling from his grasp as Jeopord toppled to his knees.

“I never thought it would come to this,” said Rustbane, seeing his adversary helpless before him.

Jeopord just cursed him.

“And I wish it hadn't, old friend, but you betrayed me, you cast me to the sharks and there's no way Cap'n Terrigan Rustbane could let such a heinous crime go unpunished. No choice about the punishment either. It has to be death, don't you agree, eh, me old Jack o' Cups?”

Jeopord cursed again.

Rustbane's voice was almost tender. “Fare thee well, my friend.”

Moving faster than sight, the tip of his word slashed across Jeopord's throat.

Blood sprayed.

The ocelot crumpled in a ghastly silence, not even lifting his paws to the wreckage of his neck.

His face now empty of all sentiment, the gray fox looked down at his dying comrade-in-arms and slowly sheathed his sword.

“So die all those who would attempt to see the back of Cap'n Terrigan Rustbane,” he remarked to no one in particular. “It's a terrible thing to contemplate how many have died because of the lack of learning that lesson.”

The gray fox turned his head and stared straight at Sylvester. “Hamsters included.”

“I'm not a—”

“My little joke.”

“Okay.”

None of the other combatants showed any inclination for fighting after witnessing the demise of the ocelot. The few surviving cannibals who hadn't yet fled did so now. Cheesefang and Pimplebrains began clambering toward their skipper with big goofy grins of welcome on their battered faces. The other pirates were pretending as best they could that, despite their having pledged allegiance to Jeopord after the mutiny, their loyalties had really lain with Rustbane all along. Sylvester heaved himself to his feet, pulling Viola beside him.

The only person who seemed still to be eyeing the gray fox warily was Jasper.

“You're probably the only one who's ever bested me and lived to tell the tale,” Rustbane said conversationally to Sylvester.

Sylvester's mouth dropped open. “Me?”

“You. Don't act the innocent to me. At every turn, you've done almost exactly the opposite of what I wanted you to do. You've annoyed me to the point where I didn't know whether to nail your head to the wall or just drown myself. Somehow, I restrained myself, with that admirable self-control upon which, over the years, so many gentlemen and scholars have favorably commented. I've come, despite myself, to like you. Like you quite a lot. What d'you think of that, eh?”

Sylvester looked at the sprawled, bloodied corpse of Jeopord, whom Cap'n Rustbane had also liked quite a lot, and couldn't think of anything to say.

“Too embarrassed to answer?” said Rustbane, misconstruing. “Well, I can't say that I blame you. Who can tell how many folks are wandering the Seven Seas and wishing that Cap'n Terrigan Rustbane could like 'em, or even just say a kind word about 'em? You must be the fortunatest hamster – lemming – in the whole of Sagaria to have been blessed by—”

“'E does go on a bit, doesn't 'e?” said Jasper in a histrionic whisper that echoed all the way around the walls of the cavern. “Big-headed too, this friend of yours, Syl.”

The echoes soon reached Rustbane's ears. The gray fox paused and his eyes flickered red with fury, then focused again in a gimlet gaze that would doubtless have pinned Jasper to the spot, had Sylvester's dad been looking.

“And who,” said the gray fox in a menacing whisper, “is this?”

“My dad.”

“I thought he'd fled the Lemmington nest long ago.”

“He did, but now I've found him again.”

“Like something you've scraped off your shoe and promptly stood on again?”

Sylvester bristled, but kept himself in check. “Like, for example, you,” he said.

Rustbane looked as if he were about to snap an angry retort, then he seemed to swallow the unspoken words and nodded. “Point taken, and well spoken. He's your beloved pater and I shouldn't have talked of him that way.” The fox stepped toward Sylvester and Jasper, holding out a paw. “Any friend of young Sylvester is a … well, put it this way, I'll not slit your gizzard without so much as a by-your-leave. The name's Rustbane, Cap'n Terrigan Rustbane. You may have heard of me as Doomslayer, or Deathflash. Warhammer, perhaps?”