The Captain blinked; shrugged. “We will comply with your demand,” he said into the radio, “As soon as we work out a technical issue with the winch. It was apparently...uh...not lubricated per the manufacturer’s maintenance schedule.”
Tol ran down to the lowest deck with balconies and headed for the aft-most access point. He slung a rope he’d picked up outside the bridge over the railing and rappelled down to the ocean’s surface, out of the sight of either sloop. On the way down he heard a voice from his overjack pocket.
“What, if I may be so bold, are you hoping to accomplish by this little episode of derring-do?”
“I’m going to stop these jloks from springing my prisoner. Did you think I’d just decided to go for a leisurely swim?”
“May I remind you that you are not a strong swimmer, especially in two-meter swells?”
“I know. But I can float like nobody’s business, and paddle while I do it. That’s almost as good as swimming, right?”
“Again: in calm water, perhaps. But this water is not calm. You will experience considerable difficulty floating on it without ingesting salt water.”
“I’ll manage. And I have an ace up my sleeve.”
There was a pause while Petey analyzed and cross-referenced the colloquialism. “What could that possibly be? Are you carrying a hidden collapsible dinghy?”
“You’ll see. I’ll give you a hint: check the ship’s blueprints.”
At that Tol released the rope and plummeted heavily into the briny drink, feet first. He went under for a longish while before bobbing to the surface like a cork on the trailing edge of a swell. He coughed and sputtered, flailing rather unproductively for a moment before finding his rhythm. He made for the Avvolli’s port hull and felt along it with one hand until he came into contact with something jutting out from the plating. He chuckled triumphantly as he firmed his grasp on the scraper’s bracket, a C-shaped piece of steel welded every three meters along the length of the hull on both sides to which netting was suspended. It supported scrapers who removed the accumulated marine life and rust from the hull in dry dock prior to periodic repainting.
Tol propelled himself from one bracket to the next until he reached one of the sloops. The pirate had made a tactical error from Tol’s perspective by staying so close to the hull of the cruise ship. It hid Tol’s approach and boarding quite well. He crept up the stern ladder and held Petey up to check for witnesses.
“I see no one on the deck. There appear to be several persons on board: two on the bridge and two belowdecks. So far as I can ascertain it is clear for you to come aboard if you do not tarry.”
Tol grunted in satisfaction and clambered up onto the wooden planks of the aft deck. He flattened himself against the exterior wall of the pilothouse adjacent to the entry hatch. He took a deep breath and then exploded onto the bridge. He had destroyed the radio even before the surprised occupants could react. The first one that came at him he tossed through the thick glass of the pilothouse, from which he fell to the deck and then rolled off into the pitching waves. The second drew a weapon, but Tol wrenched a navigational instrument from its moorings and hurled it at him, knocking the pistol from his hand and severely injuring his arm. Tol dragged the screaming kobold through the hatchway and heaved him overboard with his companion.
Tol looked around until he found the armory. Inside, to his grim delight, were a dozen fragmentation globes. He carried the crate over to an open access hatch for below decks, set the timer to fifteen seconds, pulled the pin, dropped it in, and then sealed the hatch. He ran back and dove over the stern just as one of the remaining crew came up from below via the other hatch and yelled at him.
The crewmember’s protestations were cut short by a rapid-fire series of dull thumps from deep within the sloop, thumps punctuated by the stern and bow being violently separated from one another. Tol grinned as the bisected ship rapidly took on water and sank, leaving only floating debris to mark the spot where a few moments earlier there had been an intact sloop. He turned and made his way as quickly as possible along the hull around the stern, thanking his lucky stars that the engines were at full stop as he walked across the housing for the huge screws, and forward to the other vessel.
“I see nothing but floating wreckage, sir,” reported the first mate, scanning the port side. He trotted over to starboard and focused his glasses on the other sloop. “The starboard ship seems intact...no, wait! There is heavy smoke pouring out of it!”
The Captain trained his own glasses on the remaining sloop. It was indeed belching thick, black smoke from the engine room area. The crew tossed an inflatable life raft over the side and leapt into it one by one as the sloop was consumed rapidly by the ravenous flames.
“Person overboard drill,” he commanded. The first mate passed the order along as the captain continued to watch the burning sloop and its erstwhile crew. The life raft suddenly began to droop on the sides and then the sea rushed in. Within seconds it was entirely submerged and the occupants treading water. There was no sign of Tol.
After the survivors had been hauled aboard and sequestered in the now-crowded brig, the captain considered how he was going to word the communiqué that a Knight of the Crimson had been lost at sea. He had certainly gone down in glory—saving the Avvolli from high-seas pirates—but that didn’t make the situation any less sticky. The Tragacanthans were very protective of their Knights and would insist on a full investigation. That might keep the Avvolli in port for days or even weeks, which would greatly displease her owners and possibly even endanger the captain’s job.
He was sitting at the desk in his quarters, pen in hand, when there came a knock on the door. He ignored it. The knocking came again, this time more insistent. The Captain scowled and slammed down the pen. He had left strict orders not to be disturbed: someone was asking for six weeks of grease trap duty. He yanked open the door and was poised to rip into whoever was on the other side, but stopped in mid-rip.
Tol was standing there, drenched and grinning. “Sorry it took me so long to get back on board,” he said, “Rope broke.” He held up a frayed piece of nautical cordage with obvious wrat tooth marks. “You probably ought to do some about the wrat problem in your storage lockers.”
The Captain looked at him with a mixture of incredulity and relief, mouth still hanging open. “Oh, and you were right about the torpedo-looking things being fuel tanks,” Tol added, “Went up nice and hot.”
Once in dock Tol escorted his prisoners to the nearest EE station and contacted Aspet on an encrypted comm channel.
“Frem is dealt with,” he said, without formalities.
“How do you know for sure?”
“She had the back of her head and chest cavity eaten away by some smekking powerful acid. I examined her myself. Quite thoroughly deceased. I didn’t have to use any of the...tools I took with me.”
“Where did it happen?” Aspet asked, munching on a slice of candied greatfruit in his office.
“The sewers beneath Erolossma. Some huge smekker of a beast. Looked like a giant wooleater worm with multiple eyes, tentacles, and acid for spit. Not even a smidgen cuddly. Downright vicious, in fact.”
“Did you kill it?”
“Possibly; I shot out everything that appeared to be an eye, anyway. The beastie didn’t take kindly to that, but it probably saved my life.” He sniffed his forearm. “Still can’t quite get all of that stench out, though.”
Aspet shook his head and smiled warmly.
“Tol, you’ve done a great service for your country and your family. We have considerable intelligence to indicate that Frem was hired to kill Boogla and quite possibly even me. She has a long history as a paid assassin.”
“I believe it. She was tough and smart. I found a book with stuff about you underlined in Frem’s hideout. She definitely was coming back for another shot.”
“I’m very glad you took care of her,” said Aspet.
“It more luck than skill, to be honest,” Tol replie
d, “She was just in the wrong place when the monster decided to hack a loogie.”
“Luck in this sort of endeavor, good or bad, is not a matter of chance. It’s ultimately a natural result of pre-existing conditions established by the actions of one or more persons.”
“Whatever you say, Your Majesty.”
“When will you be home, brother?”
“I’m in Lumbos now. Sometime tomorrow, I expect.”
“Come see me as soon as you can, please.”
“I am yours to command, brother.”
Chapter the Twentieth
in which an intrepid reporter uncovers a story she did not anticipate
Selpla glanced at her calendar again, just to make sure. It said her appointment to interview the newly-elected leader of the restored underground titan city of Hellehoell was the following day at ten in the morning. She looked at the name—Tartag—and realized it was the same titan she’d met the last time she was there. Tol was still on some secret mission; he didn’t expect to be back for at least two more days, which is why she’d scheduled this appointment now.
The rail carriage view from Goblinopolis to Dresmak was serenely beautiful, alternating between wild grasslands and copses of a variety of large-leaved northern hardwoods. There was wildlife in abundance here, with few settlements. The only one of any size, in fact, was the village of Upupa, and it was a good fifty kilometers east of the rail line, which more or less paralleled the T-1. Some of the flocks of avians were so extensive that they blotted out the sun for minutes at a time as they passed over. This was one of the few entirely natural places left in Tragacanth; Selpla enjoyed getting a glimpse of the way her country had appeared before civilization encroached four millennia previous. Not that she wanted to give up the convenience and cultural advantages of life in the big city, of course.
After Dresmak the landscape changed dramatically. Barely ten minutes west of the city limits the ground began to rise into the foothills of the mighty Masron range. As the rails climbed, the forests fell away; in their place were majestic, plunging crags and deeply gouged rifts that scarred the mountainsides like cuts from colossal blades. Grays, browns, blues, and intense violets dominated the color spectrum here, with only the occasional smear of dullish purple from isolated patches of montane scrub.
When the carriage chugged into Fenurian that evening, Selpla was asleep. She’d nodded off after the last gorge-spanning bridge on the west side of the Masrons and rubbed her eyes drowsily as the carriage eased to a halt at the Fenurian South Station. She pulled her overnight bag down and shuffled to a waiting shuttle from her customary inn, where she crawled into a soft bed no more than five minutes after she’d signed the guest register.
The next morning she woke early and took breakfast on her balcony overlooking the seaside cliffs of Amnil Bay. The Noorprid Sea was unpredictable here: tranquil and deep green one moment, angry and electric blue the next. Whirling saltchitters and waveskimmers formed aerial vortices at regular intervals along the shallow sublittoral waters. Sailing vessels were common from here around Neaux Point into Yohkla Inlet with Dresmak at its mouth. The protected waters of the Inlet were ideally suited for those learning to handle sailboats.
At nine o’clock she left the hotel in a rented pram, heading for Hellehoell. The titans had already accomplished an impressive amount of excavation and reconstruction: the approach and entrance—they called it Daludobris—were now lined with marble bas reliefs and fluted demi-columns. The roadway itself was paved with shiny variegated pink and orange shellstone mined from ancient sea beds now located in wide strata deep beneath the northern Masrons. The combined effect was quite stunning. She found herself glancing unwittingly at the sky from time to time, looking for the swooping phantasmagoric beasts she’d witnessed on her first visit. Selpla had not brought any support crew with her on this occasion, so she took a number of still photographs on her own to accompany the story.
The titan she was to meet and interview, Tartag, the former ambassador to Tragacanth, had been instrumental in reinstituting the titan government of Hellehoell and in gratitude the populace had elected him their first Chief Elder, or Odinial in Titanic. The new Odinial was the tallest titan in Hellehoell, owing principally to his status as the last of the Storm Titans. Goblins are large, substantial bipeds, but Selpla once more felt like a toddler staring up at the lean mountain of flesh and muscle that was Tartag. The Prayer for Protection from the Rock Titans kept running through her head. ...Pray, keep those titans far away.
Far from the willfully destructive creature proscribed in the Prayer, however, Tartag was in contrast charming, congenial, and quite erudite. He remembered Selpla and took her on an abbreviated tour of the revitalized areas to date, pointing proudly to innovations and construction that improved upon the original designs. Titan society had obviously not stood still despite the long centums of exile. All along the tour Selpla marveled at the scale of everything. It was a doll house in reverse: the doorways were easily tall enough for a goblin standing on another’s shoulders to pass through, while the benches required a boost up for her to sit on them.
Tartag related to her the tale of Tol’s incarceration and escape from his own vantage point, providing details Tol himself had left out or skimmed over in his recitation. She smiled to herself over his courage and strong ethics. He was a good person through and through: very different and, at least to her, much more desirable than the shallow narcissists she had dated in the past. Selpla decided right then and there Tol was a keeper, if only she could make things work out that way. She was nothing if not ingenious when her heart was set on a goal.
For now, she had an interview to wrap up and a story to compose. As Tartag escorted her back to the entrance and her rental pram, which he had valet parked in his private garage, she promised him that she would do her part to set the minds of her readers at rest concerning the intentions of the titans in occupying Hellehoell. The titans’ eventual goal was, of course, for the semi-autonomous Hellehoell to be designated a full sovereign city-state; generating goodwill amongst their Tragacanthan landlords was an important step along this path.
As she watched Daludobris recede in her rearview mirrors, Selpla could not stop smiling. Not only was she deeply impressed by the titan city and its charismatic leader, she had come to one of the most important and far-reaching decisions in her life while there. She wasn’t yet sure of the best route to take to her destination, but for now she figured she’d just keep going the way she had been going and see how far that took her.
A couple of kilometers south of Fenurian lay the largest of the tent colonies supporting the labor population for the city’s massive rebuilding effort. Sensing a possible story centered on primitive living conditions for the camped laborers, Selpla took an unplanned detour to see for herself. She left her pram in an area she assessed as relatively secure on the perimeter and hiked in toward what seemed, based on the density and arrangement of tents, to be the center of the temporary community.
She was looking for someone to interview, or at least from whom to pick up useable tidbits concerning life in the construction labor camp. She didn’t expect to find any sort of civic leader, of course, but she did hope to encounter someone who’d been there since the beginning and could chronicle both the current and past history of the temporary settlement. As she stood scanning the area a half-ogre approached from the direction of her parked pram, flanked by two scruffy-looking companions: a hob and kobold.
“Welcome to New Fenurian, madam. May we help you?” asked half-ogre, with what appeared to Selpla a disingenuous flourish. Unlike the other two, he was dressed in fairly nice clothes, albeit out of style and in curious combination. Something about him didn’t seem quite right, but he was the only person who’d bothered to give her even a second glance so far. She had to start somewhere.
“Yes, thank you. I am a reporter from Goblinopolis and I’m looking for a little history on this labor camp. Do you think you might be able to provide
that?”
“Sure, doll. We can provide whatever you want, for the right price.”
Selpla shook her head. “Sorry; not playing that game. If you don’t want to talk to me, I can find someone who will.”
The half-ogre shrugged. “Suit yourself. You get what you pay for out here. You give nothing, you get nothing.”
“Thanks for nothing,” she replied, walking away.
Sticker suddenly called after her.
“You said you were from Goblinopolis, right?”
Selpla stopped and turned back to him, hands on hips.
“That’s what I said, yes.”
“You know any cops there?”
Alarm bells were going off in her head. She chose her response carefully, picking her way through a thorny forest.
“I’m a reporter. You can’t be a reporter without occasionally interacting with edict enforcement.”
“I asked if you knew any cops. Personally.”
“One or two, I guess. What’s it to you?” She noticed that the hob and kobold had circled around behind her and she was now surrounded. She felt in her pocket for the reassuring mass of the comm unit Tol had given her. It had a panic button that used arcane heterodyning to broadcast a narrowly targeted signal to his own comm from practically anywhere on N’plork. It was priority linked using some form of entanglement she didn’t really understand, but her encounter with Ballop’ril had reassured her that it worked.
“What it is to me, doll, is a matter of...personal interest. You see, there is one particular cop in the capitol city I’d like to meet in person. His name is Tol. Ever heard of him?”
Selpla tried to hide her shock, but the tiny jerk she made at the mention of Tol’s name did not go unnoticed by Sticker. “Um, doesn’t sound familiar, but it’s possible. I don’t remember names unless I need to. If I haven’t written about them recently, I don’t usually remember them.”
Gathering of the Titans: The Tol Chronicles Book 2 Page 22