The Perils of Archipelago

by B A Simmons

  Jacob began to draw the falchion from his belt. “You little carrion slug!”

  A flash of light erupted from the Duarve weapon. With the falchion in his upraised arm, Jacob flinched. The light flashed again, silent and quick. Tom looked from Piers to Jacob. He saw two dark marks on Jacob’s tunic, close to his heart.

  The falchion dropped to the sand, followed by its owner.

  “Noooo!” Tom shouted, and he jumped for the harpoon. A flash of light passed over his head. When he raised himself up again, Piers had moved back from the ship. Tom threw his weapon anyway, sticking the point in the sand an inch from Piers’s leg.

  Another flash from the weapon, and Tom felt a searing pain in his left shoulder. He dropped to the deck and examined his wound. It was a burn, but a burn that pierced from the front of his body through to the back. The pain was excruciating.

  A few moments later, Tom heard Piers climb aboard.

  “Ah, I clipped you. Let that be the end of it, Tom. I won’t kill you if I don’t have to. I warned you both. Jacob didn’t listen and now he’s gone.”

  “Why are you doing this? You were one of us.”

  “Actually, I never really was. I serve the Baron Frederick Somerhays and the island of Fallen Dome. No hard feelings, but your little band of insurgents doesn’t hold a candle to the might of Fallen Dome. Now, are you well enough to work the steering oar?”

  With the weapon still pointed at him, Tom felt he had little choice but to comply. He raised himself up and climbed upon the quarterdeck. Piers followed him with the weapon all the way there.

  “Good,” Piers said. “Now, I was really hoping to have Jacob to do the rowing, after all a crew of three handles this vessel better than two, but we’ll have to make do.”

  Tom watched as Piers set down the weapon. He took hold of one of the oars and used it to push against the sand. Though he had his back to Tom, he was at the far end of the ship and the weapon was still within arm’s length of him.

  The Entdecker’s bow had barely entered the water when they heard a cry from the shore. A half-naked Rob came running out from the vegetation and made straight for them. He kept running even as his feet entered the water. In an impressive physical feat, he leapt up and caught hold of the railing at the port bow.

  Rather than use the oar to knock him off or the Duarve weapon to kill him, Piers reached out and pulled him aboard. No sooner was Rob over the railing and sliding onto the deck than Piers picked up the weapon and brought it to bear on him.

  Rob erred on the side of caution and did not try to attack Piers. Rather, the two remained motionless, staring at each other for a long moment.

  “You escaped? How . . . oh, you figured out how that Duarve you’re obsessed with escaped. I’m impressed, Rob. Now that you’re aboard, you can help Tom and me sail the Entdecker out to the rendezvous point.”

  “You set fire to the hut to signal another ship?” Rob said.

  “Yes. They should be here in a few hours. I gave them approximate coordinates. The signal should bring them the rest of the way.”

  “You killed Jacob?”

  “He gave me no choice. I didn’t want to.”

  “Did you kill Doctor Morris too?!”

  Piers scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. The man was dying all on his own. What I did was merciful. Now man the oars, Rob.”

  Piers kicked the oar toward Rob who scowled back with laser-intense eyes. Rob had run headlong into a trap. Tom figured he knew that struggling further would only cause them more pain without gaining any freedom from it. As much as he hated to concede, Piers held all the cards.

  Rob fixed the oars in their locks and used them to turn the bow toward the gap in the reef. Piers ordered them to wait in the lagoon until his rendezvous ship appeared. The hours lagged, as all Tom could do was run possibilities through his mind, determining what course of action might produce the best results. He waited for Piers to look away long enough for Rob to swing an oar at his head, but his cousin never tried.

  An opportunity to act never showed itself. Piers was too diligent in keeping the Duarve weapon trained on them. It seemed, however, that Rob chose another tactic to employ.

  “How did you get that to function when there’s no satellite above us?” Rob asked.

  Piers shrugged. “I have no idea. I was going to use a crossbow, but as I was carrying this down to the beach, I pressed the trigger and it worked. Like magic.”

  A residual charge. Tom remembered Rob and Doctor Morris talking about K’ork-eatop and how the Duarve flying machine hadn’t died all at once. Tom asked himself, how many shots are left?

  “Do you even understand what you have in your hands?” Rob said.

  “I don’t know Rob. Do I have a weapon capable of killing a dozen men before they could lay a finger on me? Do I have an ancient artifact that will fetch me a king’s ransom on the black market? Do I have a personal heirloom I can keep on display in my mansion and tell my children about how I plundered a Duarve tomb to get it? Which of those suits you?”

  “Do you have any honor? Do you have a conscience? Do you have the nerve to tell us that you betrayed us for anything but money?”

  Tom looked down. Just below where he stood with the steering oar, Jacob’s copper-studded club lay propped against the hull. Tom began to formulate an idea.

  “For all your learning and studying, Rob, you’re a naïve boy,” Piers sneered. “You think you understand the world you live in? You want to save Engle Isle from the Falcon Empire and make peace between humans and aliens? You and your dead teacher are the only people who care about such things. The rest of us are just trying to live. Some of us are willing to do what it takes to live better. That’s me. I kill when I have to because I have orders from Lord Matthew Somerhays. He wants the Duarve artifacts you’ve got here and doesn’t care one bit about your war with the Falcons.”

  “You’re a spy for Fallen Dome. Why would they send you to sabotage us? Fallen Dome is no friend to the Falcon Empire.”

  “Your old friend Minister Tremblay ordered me to infiltrate your group. Seems he didn’t quite trust you after John Cooper chose you over him. Yet even then, Tremblay just wanted to know what you were doing with the tools he gave you.”

  “Tremblay was sacked and the new minister changed your orders,” Rob said.

  “Well, you are a smart one after all. That’s all I’m doing, Rob. I’m following orders.”

  Piers looked up and out over the waves. He smiled and adjusted the weapon in his hands.

  “Get rowing. Our escort has arrived.”

  Tom looked to starboard where the low-hanging sun outlined the shape of a grand caravel. The ship furled its sails and drifted to a position about three hundred yards from the gap, just as Rob rowed the Entdecker through it.

  Tom’s opportunity came when Piers turned himself to see the ship lowering a dinghy into the water. He reached down and snatched up Jacob’s club, returning to his position at the oar before Piers looked back. It was difficult with the pain in his shoulder to hold the steering oar, but doing so allowed him to wield the club in his right hand. He began to tap the club against the outside hull, matching the rhythm of the oar strokes. Gently at first, but as Piers seemed not to notice, he tapped harder, like a drum beat.

  “Halt your rowing!” Piers ordered as the dinghy came alongside them.

  Tom stopped beating the side.

  Piers leaned over the bow and shouted at the men in the dinghy. “Get a tow line attached to the bow of this ship.” He tossed the mooring lines to them and turned back to Rob. “Follow them.”

  Rob placed the oars back in the water, and Tom again matched the rhythm with the club. He scanned the water around them, but the glare of the orange sunlight off the waves made it impossible to see below them. He could only hope the creature heard, or perhaps felt, the vibrations of the hull.

  The dingy rowed back to the ship, attached the mooring lines to a thicker hawser and ran that back to the Entdecker. Two o
f them climbed aboard and fixed the rope to the bow, commenting on the odd device Piers held. He ignored them and kept his vigil on Rob until they were done.

  “Now, you stay aboard with him,” Piers ordered, pointing at Tom. “I’m going to introduce this young man to the captain. Rob, stow those oars and get in the dinghy.”

  Rob looked at Tom with an expression of love and pleading. At least, Tom hoped those were his thoughts. He followed Piers into the dinghy where the other men began rowing back toward the ship.

  Tom began thumping harder and faster against the hull. The copper studs left dents in the boards. Yet, as his cousin’s face got farther away, Tom knew that even Rob understood. Death was better than to allow Piers to carry out his plan.

  Tom looked again down the side of the ship just in time to see a shadow pass under it. A moment later, the car-dun pierced through the waves beneath the dinghy. Rob, Piers, and the men inside it flew into the air. Screams and shouts sounded from everyone but Tom. The tears in Tom’s eyes streamed down his face for a moment before the creature came back down. The wave it created slammed into the Entdecker with enough force to upend the bow and send the whole craft careening into the reef.

  ***

  Rob felt the water surround him, pushing and pulling at his body, and for a moment, considered letting it all end. However, he thought of his family, of Pete and Trina, Edwin and Anna. He thought of the sacrifices Mark, Doctor Morris, Jacob, and now Tom had made for him and he swam. He pushed back against the water and reached the surface.

  He saw the dinghy a few yards away and made for it. Because the boat was so small, it hadn’t broken against the waves after being lifted twenty feet into the air. Lifting himself up and into the boat, he then looked around for the Entdecker but another spectacle caught his eye. The water between the island and ship was disturbed. The car-dun swam just under the surface, causing a wake of water to form. The men on the ship fired their swivel guns and hand cannons at the beast, but it did not stop.

  Just before impact, the massive head lifted itself above the surface and opened its jaw. The grand caravel’s hull cracked open like an eggshell. Thrashing from side to side, the beast tore open the entire portside, from bow to stern. The hull buckled, and the ship began to fall apart under the strain.

  A dozen men went into the water. Rob watched as they were picked off by a school of rayfish that attended the car-dun. The scavengers feasted on man-flesh even after their lord and master retired from the field.

  A sailor reached the dingy, screaming and flailing about. Rob took hold of his arms and pulled him up, only to realize that he was missing both legs below the knee. He bled out a moment later, and Rob dumped him back into the water. Another man reached the boat and pulled himself on board. Rob stared at him in the fading light and recognized the drenched form of Piers sitting across from him.

  The screams and cries died away quickly as the rayfish were thorough in their cleaning up. Only debris from the ship floated in the waves near them.

  “Did you find the oars?” Piers asked Rob.

  Rob said nothing, did nothing, but glared at his enemy.

  “The current is taking us away from Hellhound Isle. Away from the Entdecker.”

  “The Entdecker is gone,” Rob said. “You killed them all.”

  “I didn’t kill them. The car-dun did that. I . . . I didn’t kill them.”

  Rob continued to glare at Piers through the night, even as the silhouette of Hellhound Isle diminished. He knew from that image that they were drifting southeast on the current, though that could change at any time.

  The morning dawned, and the two men sat at opposite ends of the dinghy still glowering. The palpable fear and hatred between them gave them strength to continue their vigils. That afternoon, Piers gave up.

  “I’m going to sleep now. If you want to try strangling me, go ahead. Otherwise, just keep staring,” he said.

  Rob could not bring himself to such an attempt. He may have killed men in battle and in self-defense, but he was no murderer. Part of him felt the coward for it, but a deeper part knew that it made him noble.

  In the evening of the third day, as their need for water began driving them mad, a ship appeared on the horizon headed their way. They stood and waved their arms at it. They called for it, their croaking voices barely audible. As it closed in, Rob recognized the heraldic device painted on its sails.

  It was the double-headed falcon coming to their rescue.

  The End

  About the Author

  B.A. Simmons grew up roaming the mountains of the western United States. He still finds time to explore and run the trails. He started writing when only 11 years old and hasn't stopped since. His love of science fiction is only rivaled by his love of history, or his love of food.

  He attended Utah State University from which he graduated with a degree in English Education in 2011. He teaches junior high school English and social studies. He is a self-professed sesquipedalian ludditish renaissance man. He currently resides in Ogden, Utah, with his amazing wife and kids, two dogs, a cat, and myriad imaginary worlds.

  The Perils of Archipelago is his third book.

  About the Publisher

  Glass Spider Publishing is a hybrid publisher located in Ogden, Utah. The company was founded in 2016 by writer Vince Font to help authors get their works into shape, into print, and into distribution. Visit www.glassspiderpublishing.com for further information.