by Rachel Ford
He glanced between the cave and the ship, the ship and the cave. He licked his lips nervously. Gold, or mission. Mission, or gold.
So far, he’d ignored all the side quests and game world trivia he’d come across. But this was a pirate treasure trove. That made it somehow…different.
He squared his shoulders and marched toward the cave, his mind made up. He ducked under the topmost lip of the gaping stone mouth and shivered. A cool blast of air and an eerie sound hit him at the same time. He realized he’d stopped moving, arrested in place on the ledge.
Keep going. There’s pirate treasure in there.
He breathed in and out, and took a step, then another, and a third.
Then, quite suddenly, a voice reached him. “Ahoy! Who are you, then?”
He threw a nervous glance around and saw a pair of eyes watching him from the shadow. Options flooded his mind.
Death. I’ve come to collect a useless soul. Yours.
Me? Oh, uh, I think I took a wrong left turn somewhere.
I’m looking for the captain. He wants to see me, right away.
And
Who are you to be asking me questions?
Jack glanced behind him. He was too near the rest of the camp for combat to end well, so the first option was a nonstarter. He didn’t want to chicken out, so the second wouldn’t work either. He hesitated between the third and fourth. Both were bluster, but of a different kind.
He opted to go with the third option. “I’m looking for the captain. He wants to see me, right away.”
An eyebrow crept up the other man’s face. He could see it, like a dark, shadowy slug in the shadow, inching upward against a pale backdrop. “Does he, now?”
He chose, “He does. So you’d better not waste any more time.”
“That’s funny. Because I had no idea.” The man stepped out of the shadow. He was tall and broad and wore a navy blue tricorne embellished with red and gold. “And I’m Captain Tralane.”
Jack gulped. He had two options, now.
* Attack *
And
Oh, uh, I know that, captain. I’m just yarning.
He really didn’t want a fight, so he tried the bs’ing route. A thought flickered through his mind.
Failed attempt at a bluff. Your charisma is too low.
The captain, meanwhile, scowled. “Nice try, you bilge rat. But I wasn’t born a fortnight ago.”
Chapter Eighteen
Tralane drew a saber and attacked forthwith. Jack dodged the first blow and managed to get his sword out by the second. It didn’t do him much good, though.
Tralane attacked with a vicious combination strike – a kind of whirl and jump, and a thrust followed up by a slash. Jack’s health plummeted to fifteen, then negative thirty-five.
Jack was quite dead.
He loaded just inside the cave, and stood there, stunned. So far, he hadn’t encountered any enemies remotely that tough. Sure, the Susmala had given him a run for his money. But there had been a pack of them, and it had taken more than two hits.
He considered retreating when the query came again out of the shadows. “Ahoy! Who are you, then?”
He decided to bluster, but differently this time. “Who are you to be asking me questions?”
Tralane stepped out of the shadow and glared menacingly. “Yer bloody captain, that’s who.”
He found himself faced with three options this time.
Nice to meet you, Captain. My name’s Death.
Blimey, so it be. My apologies, Captain. I didn’t recognize ye in the shadow.
And
I didn’t recognize you, Captain. The shadow adds ten pounds.
He decided to go for the second option, and he was rewarded for his effort with a welcome thought:
Your bluff succeeded. You have gained a point in charisma.
At the same time, Tralane said, “Aye, well, be more careful who you’re talking to, ye hear me?”
“Ay, sir.”
“Be on your way, then.”
And with that, Jack headed off, deeper into the cavern. It was hewn into the same rough stone as the cliff face outside. Now and then, some kind of mineral shone in the dim torchlight that lit the path. Mostly, though, the way was dark except for the flickering orange flame.
That, at least, the pirates had seen to. They’d set crude sconces into the rock at intervals of ten or fifteen feet along the way, and most held flaming torches. So Jack could make his way through the passage.
It wound downward, deeper and deeper into the belly of a great, dark cavern. Then it ended abruptly in a round chamber.
An empty, round chamber, save for a man drinking a flagon of rum, and a crude kind of workman’s sled. Jack blinked, and the man glanced up. “Oi, who are you?”
“The new guy,” he lied.
The other man didn’t challenge the statement. “Alright, New Guy. What can I do for you?”
“Where is…everything?”
He laughed. “You been asleep for the last twelve hours, New Guy? We loaded the ship already. Why do ye think me back feels like it’s split in two, eh?”
“Oh…uh…right. So the…uh…goods are already on the boat?”
“Course.”
Jack sighed at the wasted trip, and began the long, slow trek back up the passage. He figured it was just as well that the treasure was already loaded, if they’d needed a sled to transport it. He wasn’t sure if even his magical pocket could accommodate that.
But he was annoyed that he’d wasted so much time in coming down here, and he was anxious to see exactly what kind of haul awaited him. So, lost in avaricious speculation, he missed the changing tempo of the ambient music. It had been slow and suspenseful on the way down. Now, as he neared the entrance of Skull Cave, it picked up a little, until it was tense and foreboding.
But Jack didn’t hear it. He was thinking about what he could acquire with a hold full of pirate treasure. So as he rounded the last bend, he ran smack dab into Captain Tralane. The force knocked him onto his duff. Tralane didn’t even flinch.
Half a dozen laughs filled the cavern, sounding smug and menacing. The laughs fitted to pirates of the same description. They all had weapons drawn. Only Tralane didn’t laugh, and only he hadn’t drawn a weapon yet. “You know,” he said, “I’m a man who doesn’t forget a face. Especially not if I hire a man onto me crew. And yours don’t look familiar.”
Jack gulped. “It was…back at port. You were a little…snockered.”
“Snockered, eh?”
“Just a little. Sir.”
“Funny.” He glanced at the roughs who accompanied him. “That’s funny, isn’t it boys?” They all obliged him with a laugh. “Anyone want to tell our friend here why it’s funny?”
One of the men nodded, and when he spoke it was a veritable growl. “Because Captain Tralane don’t drink none.”
Jack blinked. “None?”
“Not even a sip.”
“An absolute teetotaler,” another put in.
“So,” Tralane said, “I reckon I wouldn’t have been ‘snockered’. Would I?”
Jack stammered out a half-jumbled excuse that maybe it had been him who had been drunk, but the captain wasn’t having it.
“On yer feet, scurvy dog, and draw your blade, if he be man enough.”
He drew his sword, and Tralane lunged in, and with one almost effortless swipe, lopped Jack’s head off his shoulders.
Jack loaded just before the turn in the bend, and he approached more cautiously this time. He heard the music, too, and felt his pulse quicken.
Tralane was standing there, right where he had been before, and so were his six goons. Jack stayed on his feet, and this time the men growled instead of laughed.
The captain crossed his arms. “You know. I’m a man who doesn’t forget a face. Especially not if I hire a man onto me crew. And yours don’t look familiar.”
Jack considered his options. He’d run out of lies. Sure, he could taunt Tralane wi
th a cheesy line about death. But the captain had whittled him down to size twice now on his own. He hadn’t even been able to get any damage in.
He doubted his chances against the other man on his own. But seven to one?
Jack licked his lips. And then he bolted. He ran fast and hard, sidestepping Tralane altogether and ducking under the swinging sword of one of his minions. An arrow grazed him as he ran, and he felt his hit points bleeding out.
But he made it to the cave entrance, and then he ducked out into the late afternoon. The camp was in an uproar. The lazy drunks he’d seen before were all on their feet, and they all had weapons now.
He sucked in a long breath and ran like hell.
He took a few glancing blows, and the attendant damage. But he made it down the little incline, past the fire, and through the town. He made it up the gangplank and into the ship.
He’d drawn his dagger as he ran, and now he attacked the mooring ropes with a vengeance. The crowd of pirates was growing, with Tralane and his cadre spilling out of the caves, and the rest getting closer.
Jack felt himself sweating like crazy. He worked as hard and fast as he could, and finally the rope gave. He turned to the next rope. But he saw something he didn’t expect.
The rope had already been cut, and the culprit was none other than the lookout he’d met at the edge of the hutment. He flashed a toothless smile Jack’s way, and opened his mouth to speak, sending a wave of rum soaked breath toward him. “Ahoy again, New Guy Jack.”
Jack swallowed. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, I’m helping you escape. Helping us escape.”
“He is,” a third voice said. Migli’s voice.
The sentry grinned again. “Name’s Davey. Now then, Mister Jack, I reckoned you were full of what makes the grass green, if ye get my drift. But I said to myself when I seed ye, well now, maybe that lad will do me a right turn.
“And then I see yer friend there, huffing and sweating away and making all manner of racket.
“And I think to myself, now then, I were right, weren’t I? These lads’ll both do right by old Davey. Wontcha?”
Jack could only half follow the other man’s rambling – in part, because he was watching the ship catch the current, and drift away, its gangplank dropping behind it with a great, wet splashing sound. And in part, because he didn’t follow pirate speak particularly well. “Uh…what are you saying?”
“I’m saying, lad, we need to have us a parley – you and me and the little fellow that likes to sing.”
Jack glanced at Migli, and the dwarf shrugged. “He saved our life, Sir Jack. We never would have got out of there in time, had he not cut the rope.”
“We might have if you did,” he pointed out.
“And all it would have taken was one wee cry, and the whole camp would have done for ye,” Davey pointed out.
Jack nodded. He had him there. “Alright. What do you want, Davey?”
“Treasure, of course.”
Jack shook his head. “No way. That’s mine.”
“Ours,” Migli corrected.
Jack ignored him. “I stole it, fair and square.”
“An equal share, a third. That’s all I ask. You’d have none at all, Jack my lad, if not for old Davey. So what do you say? Will ye do right by an old man what saved your life?”
Jack had three options.
Never. The gold is mine. And my name’s not Jack. It’s Death.
He shook his head, deciding that whoever had programmed those dialogue options in needed a good slap. He considered the next two.
Alright, you scurvy dog. But I’ll be keeping an eye on you.
And
A quarter. And not a doubloon more.
He decided to go with the second option, and Davey cackled with delight. “Ay, ay, a fair and honest lad you are. Oh, I pegged you as such from the first, Jack. A good lad, bless ye.”
Grumbling, he turned back toward the shore. He could see the pirates still, tiny specks far away. They’d given the boat chase, but the current moved faster than their rum-soaked legs.
Jack breathed out a sigh of relief. They were safe. They had a ship, and a new crewman, and a hold full of pirate treasure.
“Alright, you great MacGuffin: I’m on my way.”
Chapter Nineteen
They made it out onto the great, open ocean. Jack went below and feasted his eyes for a long time on a hold full of gold and silver bars, on jewels and chests brimming with treasure. Davey took to singing lines from Derelict, Young Ewing Allison’s take on Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dead Man’s Chest. It wasn’t a cheery thing. The old toothless pirate gabbed on about death and brutal murder for quite some time.
Fifteen men on the Dead Man's Chest-
Drink and the devil had done for the rest-
The mate was fixed by the bos'n's pike,
The bos'n brained with a marlin spike,
And Cookey's throat was marked belike
But inevitably, it got back to gold.
There was chest on chest full of Spanish gold,
With a ton of plate in the middle hold,
And the cabins riot of stuff untold,
And they lay there…
And at this point, Jack started to grow uneasy. Every refrain of fifteen men on the Dead Man’s Chest sent a shiver up his back, more chilling than the stiff breeze coming off the cold water. Old Davey smiled a cheery smile as he worked, and he was a fair hand at sailing – there was no doubt about that, even to one as clueless as himself. The ship moved sure and swift, and stayed out of danger.
But for all that, the pirate droned about drink and the devil, and dead men and stolen treasure. Which set the wheels of Jack’s mind turning. Davey had already betrayed Captain Tralane for this gold. And here he is, singing about men murdering each other with a pike and a spike and the like for gold.
He shook the rhymes out of his head. This was serious. He ambled over to Migli and lowered his voice. “Hey Migli?”
“Ah, sir knight. A fine sunset, is that not?”
He frowned at the other man’s raised tones. “Shh. Listen, I’m not sure we can trust Davey.”
“Well, he’s a pirate,” the dwarf said, as if that summed it all up.
“Yes, with an obsession with gold.”
“Nothing wrong with that.”
“Look, don’t get defensive, Migli, but yes, there kind of is.”
The dwarf frowned at him. “Obsession with gold has been the single unifying thread of every great dwarven empire throughout history, Sir Jack. Every great empire at all, in fact.”
“Maybe, but every one of those empires has done a whole lot of killing and thieving for that gold too.”
Migli nodded, like he didn’t see anything wrong with that.
Jack shook his head and decided to move on. “That’s not really the point, Migli. What I’m saying is, he’s got an unhealthy obsession with gold.” The dwarf made a face, as if he wasn’t sure such a thing existed. “I mean, I think we have a problem on our hands. He might try to take the gold.”
Migli laughed, and Jack stared at him. “What’s funny about this? There’s nothing funny about getting your throat slit in the middle of the night.”
“Pardon me. I mean no offense. Only, I’ve never met the man who could rob a dwarf of gold.” He shook his head. “No, no you’ve no need to fret on that score, Friend Jack.”
He stared skeptically at the dwarf, then glanced over at Davey. The pirate flashed him a toothless grin and continued belting out his song.
Fifteen men on the Dead Man's Chest—
Drink and the devil had done for the rest—
We wrapped 'em all in a mains'l tight
With twice ten turns of a hawser's bight
And we heaved 'em over and out of sight—
With a Yo-Heave-Ho!
And a fare-you-well!
And a sullen plunge
In the sullen swell,
Ten fathoms deep on the road to hel
l!
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Jack didn’t sleep after the sun went down. He figured, whatever perks he might get from dozing, he didn’t want to risk waking up to a dagger in the back. So he prowled the deck with a weather eye open – and fixed on Davey.
The night ran long. Migli settled onto the deck and started snoring. Jack yawned and paced and glanced to and fro. The whole world seemed an endless, inky ocean in all directions. It occurred to him that Davey could be taking them anywhere, and he’d have no clue.
The pirate had slowed his singing to add in drinking, but every once in a while, he’d break into some kind of boisterous song. It always seemed to involve death, too.
Ten fathoms deep on the road to hell!
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Jack shivered and turned over their predicament in his mind. Assuming Davey was programmed to take them to their destination, he still had to worry about the dagger in the back – the proverbial one, and the real thing.
He watched the old pirate move. He clambered up and down the rigging easily, calling out things that made no sense to Jack. He furled sails, and hauled wind, and reefed sails. He told Jack he needed his sea legs and opined that Migli needed to show a leg. He urged his hearties to be on the lookout for scallywags. “These waters be crawling with bilge rats – and worse, the king’s navy. So unless ye be wanting to dance with Jack Ketch, ye better keep your eyes open, matey.”
Almost none of that made sense to Jack, but he nodded along with a stupid grin. “Right. Not Jack Ketch.”
“Aye.” The pirate put a hand around his neck and pulled a grim face. “The hempen halter ain’t be any man’s friend.”
“You mean…hanging?”
Davey glanced at him like he was an imbecile. “What else?”
“Right. I knew that.” He frowned. “So…Ketch is…the hangman?” Davey’s expression didn’t get better, and Jack flushed. “I mean, I knew that. Just, explaining for Migli.”