Pirate Curse

by Kai Meyer

  The gruesome rain ended as abruptly as it had begun. Suddenly no more corpses fell from the sky. It was as if the Carfax had reached the other side of a storm from one minute to the next—or the eye of the storm, and the worst was still ahead of them.

  Walker gave loud vent to his disgust and surprise, while Jolly and Munk merely looked at each other, silent and anxious.

  Griffin shook a dead fish from his boot toe and looked incredulously out to sea. “Is there someone here who can explain this to me?”

  Meanwhile Soledad had succeeded in disengaging the horny legs of the spider crab from her hair. She angrily flung the repellent thing over the railing.

  Walker interrupted his recitation of oaths. “That happened because of you, right? Of course—it would be you!”

  “Nonsense!” cried Soledad. “How would they—”

  “He’s right.” At first Jolly spoke softly, almost guiltily, but then with all the resolution she could muster. “Munk and I have experienced something like this before. But—”

  “I knew it!” Walker swore again. “I sensed right away that you’d only make trouble for me.”

  “But” Jolly repeated emphatically, “it gets even worse.”

  Walker fell silent and looked at her darkly.

  “The same thing happened before Munk’s parents were murdered. I think this fish rain is something like a warning.”

  “Warning of what?”

  Jolly looked searchingly around, but the sea was still lying there quietly. Suddenly, she had a thought: Whatever approached in the protection of the fish rain did not come over the sea.

  “From underneath!” she exclaimed. “It comes from underneath!”

  “What?” Walker snatched his saber from its scabbard; however, he probably didn’t know himself whom he intended to threaten with it. “What by all kobalins is going on here?”

  “Kobalins, that’s right,” whispered Munk, who’d realized at once what Jolly meant, “When the Acherus appeared, there were also kobalins in the water”

  Griffin laid a hand on his arm reassuringly, “I’ve fought with kobalins. There’s nothing else to do if one … falls over-board now and then.” But his grin was halfhearted and didn’t hide that he was just as uneasy as all the others.

  “Wait!” cried Soledad from the bridge. “Do you feel that?”

  All became quiet. Buenaventure’s nose was pointed to the air, scenting, with only his jowls fluttering slightly with every breath. Walker’s eyes wandered frantically over the deck, while Munk kept his eyes closed, as if concentrating on another spell. But the mussels had already been returned to his belt purse.

  Shudders ran through the Carfax’s hull. They had nothing in common with the usual swaying and vibrating of a ship on the waves. It was a fine, almost delicate trembling, which crept from the deck up into the feet and legs of the crew.

  “Footsteps,” said Walker tonelessly. “Those are footsteps!”

  But none of them moved. And the ghosts, who were going about their work unimpressed, floated weightlessly without even touching the deck.

  “It’s coming from the underside,” said Buenaventure—the first complete sentence Jolly had heard from his dog mouth. His voice was deep and growling, with an almost unnoticeable speech defect, which in someone else would have been taken for an accent. But in Buenaventure’s case, it was because his jaws really were not created for speaking: He couldn’t say a sharp S; from him, it sounded strangely soft, almost humming.

  Walker cast a glance at Munk. “You’re right, boy. It is kobalins. But since when does it rain dead fish when they turn up somewhere?”

  “There must be something else with them.” Jolly’s voice sounded so subdued that she was afraid no one else could understand the words.

  “Acherus,” murmured Munk.

  “What?” asked Walker. “What did you just say?”

  “My parents … they were killed by an Acherus.”

  Soledad tied the wheel with a rope and leaped down the steps to the main deck. She had drawn two of her throwing knives. “What’s that supposed to be, an—”

  “Acherus,” said Munk once more.

  “A huge beast,” said Jolly, bringing an end to the discussion. This was no time for useless explanations about the Maelstrom and all the other things the Ghost Trader had said.

  “I have a really lousy feeling about this business,” said Walker.

  The pit bull man growled in agreement.

  “A weapon.” Griffin looked around. “I need a weapon!”

  Walker pointed to a chest that was bolted to the deck right next to the entry to the cabins. “Look in there!”

  Griffin hurried over, flipped open the lid, grabbed a saber and tested its weight in his hand, then chose another. “Jolly? Munk?”

  Munk exchanged looks with Jolly, then shrugged. “A pistol wouldn’t be bad.” He walked over to Griffin, found what he was looking for, and immediately began to stuff powder and balls into the barrel. “I never learned swordplay, but I’m a pretty passable shot. I think, anyway”

  Jolly likewise seized a saber, while Buenaventure pulled from his belt a knife that was twice as wide and much longer than usual; it was toothed on both sides, like a saw. Jolly shuddered at the look of it.

  “Something about this isn’t right,” said Munk when they’d all taken places in a tight circle, back to back.

  Soledad, standing beside him, gave him a questioning look.

  “If it really was an Acherus,” he said, “he would have attacked long ago. Jolly and I fought with one, and he could hardly wait to tear our heads off.” He shifted the loaded pistol nervously from left to right and back. “An Acherus wouldn’t wait so long to attack.”

  Jolly thought that the creatures of the Maelstrom might differ from one another, like people, and that they were certainly not as predictable as Munk obviously assumed. Besides, the Ghost Trader had spoken of the Acherus, not of an Acherus. Nevertheless, she would almost rather that Munk be right—if it was an Acherus, they would at least know what they had to deal with. But the thing underneath them might be a thousand times bigger And a thousand times more murderous.

  “Maybe he’s waiting for reinforcements,” said Walker.

  Jolly shook her head. “A creature like that doesn’t need reinforcements. Besides, the deep-sea tribes are on his side. These tremors, they’re—”

  “Kobalin steps.” Walker nodded. “They’re swarming underwater on the hull and now sticking to us like ticks. But that doesn’t mean they’re actually attacking. Sometimes they just hang on for a few miles, before they’re suddenly gone as if they’d vanished from the earth. Most kobalins would never dare to attack anything that’s bigger than they are—especially not a ship.”

  “But there have been attacks on trading ships,” Jolly countered.

  Walker shrugged. “I’ve heard those stories too. Nevertheless, there could have been pirates behind them to make it look as if the attackers were kobalins.”

  Soledad wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. “My father would have known of that.”

  “Your father wasn’t all-knowing, sweetheart.”

  Soledad was about to flare up, but Munk calmed her with a hand and gently shook his head. Let it go, his look said. There’s time enough for that later.

  Jolly found it admirable that Munk remained so in command of himself in a situation like this. They both knew what a creature of the Maelstrom was capable of Jolly could scarcely feel her legs with fear, even if she tried to keep it from showing.

  The waiting was almost intolerable.

  Jolly looked up at the solitary albatross looking down at her from the edge of the crow’s nest. She imagined what it saw: six figures who’d formed into a tight circle, faces and weapons turned outward, in fixed, tense expectation, and around them a deck empty of human life, across which busy misty beings wafted like a miraculous cloud of pipe smoke.

  No sign of attackers. No indication of danger.

>   And yet …

  “Jolly,” said Munk suddenly. “The Trader did give you command over the ghosts. They could help us now.”

  “I already thought of that.” She grimaced. “Unfortunately, he forgot to tell me what I have to do.”

  “Good to know.” Walker looked as if he’d bitten into a rotten banana.

  “Just tell them to stand around us in a circle and fight anything that comes near us.”

  Jolly nodded halfheartedly and sought the right words, when Munk added, “You don’t have to speak the order. Just think it.”

  “But on the island, you used some words … in a foreign language….”

  “The Ghost Trader explained it to me. But there’s no time for that now.”

  You said it, thought Jolly. “Then you say the words.”

  “These ghosts obey you, not me.”

  “But I don’t know the damned spell!”

  Munk sighed. “It’s not that simple. The words have to come from you yourself; you have to catch your thought and your concentration into syllables that come deep out of your insides—”

  Walker rolled his eyes. “Could you two just keep your mouths shut? This is blather like the stuff in church.”

  Jolly gave him a poisonous glare. “As if you had ever in your life seen the inside of a church.”

  “I plundered one once.”

  “There!” cried Soledad. “It’s stopped!”

  No one breathed. Everyone listened.

  The pirate princess was right. The scrabbling and scraping on the hull of the Carfax had stopped. Only the hissing of the waves was to be heard, the foaming against the bow of the ship, the creaking of the planks and the shrouds.

  “Are they gone?” whispered Griffin.

  Walker made two quick bounds to the railing, looked into the water, and made a commanding gesture with his hand. “Quiet!”

  Again they were silent. Listening. And waiting.

  Soledad was the first to relax. “No kobalin holds still for that long.”

  Buenaventure nodded, but Walker directed them all to their places with a gesture.

  Munk stared at his pistol as if he’d suddenly forgotten how it had come to be in his hand. “I’m coming over to the railing.”

  “No!” Walker’s voice allowed no contradiction. “There’s nothing to see here. Kobalins always stay below the surface of the water. If they attack, they do it through the hull. But we’d notice if we already had a leak.” He grinned crookedly. “Besides, the uproar from our friends in the cargo hold would warn us.”

  The stories claimed something else. Every attack of the deep-sea tribes on a ship—when they ever dared one—began with the leaders climbing over the railing. Only afterward did the other kobalins start to break through the hull. The most important rule in a kobalin attack was therefore always, above all, to keep an eye on the deck. As long as none of the especially large and ugly kobalins turned up, the hull was safe.

  Walker must know that. But then why did he try to keep Munk back from the railing? Jolly couldn’t make any sense out of it.

  It must be that Walker had seen something—and wanted to keep panic from breaking out!

  An ice-cold hand moved down her back. Her knees, almost completely numb, nevertheless began to tremble.

  She left the formation and dashed over to the railing.

  “Toad!” bellowed Walker. “Don’t do it!”

  She no longer heard him. Her fingers clenched the wood as if she wanted to tear it out of its fastenings.

  The water of the Caribbean Sea, so they say, is the clearest of any of the seven seas. But at this moment Jolly wished for the gloomiest broth in the world.

  She could look some twenty, twenty-five feet down, and what she saw almost turned her stomach.

  Kobalins were moving through the water. The sea was full of them, directly under the surface as well as in the darker, colder depths. Jolly didn’t doubt that there were also more kobalins swimming where she couldn’t see them. Thousands of them.

  It was an army. Hundreds of armies.

  The deep-sea tribes were gathering and moving in a south-westerly direction—on the same course the Carfax was taking.

  “Why don’t they attack?” Griffin asked.

  Jolly was still numbed. She hadn’t noticed that he’d moved over beside her. Now Griffin was standing on her left, Munk on her right. The others were also bending over the railing.

  “It’d be better if none of you had seen that,” murmured Walker. “It’d be enough if only one person never closed an eye for the next few days.”

  Jolly had too much else in her head to marvel now at Walker’s consideration. Possibly she’d judged him unfairly, though. Not entirely unfairly. But at least a little.

  The stream of the kobalin armies did not cease. As far and as deep as Jolly could see, the undersea hosts were moving. A muster of the deep-sea tribes such as there had never been before.

  The Ghost Trader had been right: Things were in motion whose dimensions they were all still unable to evaluate.

  “They aren’t attacking because they have different orders,” Jolly answered Griffin’s question. “Before, when the dead fish fell from the sky, one of their leaders must have been passing the Carfax. The kobalins aren’t creatures of the Maelstrom, and so the rain stopped. But the one who leads them comes from the Mare Tenebrosum. Just like the Acherus.”

  Walker, Soledad, and Griffin exchanged uncomprehending looks; only Munk agreed with a thoughtful nod.

  And still the swarms of kobalins moved along beneath the Carfax, as if the ship weren’t there.

  “They must have scented the pigs,” said Munk. “So a few of them broke ranks. Their leaders must have called them back before they could do anything to the hull.”

  “There must be ten thousand of them,” said Soledad in a hoarse voice.

  Walker stared spellbound at the water. “Maybe even more. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  All were fascinated by the inconceivable spectacle under their feet. Fear lay in the air like an evil smell, and still none of them could tear their eyes away. Only after half an eternity, it seemed to Jolly, did the kobalin swarms begin thinning out and finally disappeared completely. Soon afterward the depths of the sea were again azure blue and clear.

  Walker grabbed Jolly roughly by the shoulder and pulled her away from the railing. “Looks as though you owe us a few explanations. What’s this Maelstrom you spoke of? And that other thing—Mare …”

  “Mare Tenebrosum.” She avoided his eyes, but only for a moment. Then she looked at him defiantly. “Munk and I don’t know much more about it than you do. The Ghost Trader spoke of it, of an endless ocean in another world … and of a maelstrom that is probably something like a gate into it. Sometimes creatures come out of the Mare Tenebrosum over to us, creatures like the Acherus. Somehow the Ghost Trader wants to keep things from getting worse, from this gate opening and—” She broke off and angrily shook Walker’s hand off her shoulder. All the rage she’d kept bottled up since the death of Munk’s parents broke from her in an instant and poured out onto the one who just happened to be standing next to her—Walker.

  Not that it was falling on an innocent, she thought angrily.

  “The Maelstrom is after Munk and me because we two are the last polliwogs,” she went on furiously. “No idea why he wants to kill us for that. But I’ve lost my crew, Munk has lost his parents, we’ve been in flight for days, Kendrick’s men have chased me through Port Nassau, and then we’re almost roasted alive, too. Do you really think if either of us knew anything that would help us along, we’d keep it to ourselves?”

  Walker looked at her, flabbergasted. “I’ve heard a lot of crazy sailors’ yarns in my life, but this really beats all.”

  Jolly uttered an exclamation of fury, turned away, and went back to the railing. “This is just a waste of time.”

  Walker smiled. “You didn’t let me finish.”

  “I’m sure I’ve missed
some nasty witticism.”

  His smile turned into a broad grin. “I was going to say that until a few minutes ago I’d have thought anyone was crazy who told me that a boy could conjure gold doubloons out of a few mussels. But I saw with my own eyes what your friend did before. And if that’s the truth, then perhaps all the other stuff that you’ve just laid out for us is too.”

  Jolly looked at him appraisingly. “And that means?”

  Walker exchanged a look with the pit bull man. “That Buenaventure and I will help you. We’ll take you to Tortuga. And also farther, if necessary.”

  Munk raised a suspicious eyebrow. “Why this sudden change of mind?”

  Soledad stepped in front of Walker. “Because of you, Munk. Our selfless captain scents greater riches. He’s selected you to be his personal doubloon mint.” She gave the pirate a reproachful look. “Isn’t that so?”

  “Well, yes …” Walker sighed and lifted both palms as if to ward her off. “I admit, yes, I haven’t always been a great friend to mankind. But who could resist the charm of a princess and her two young friends?” His white teeth flashed, and he bowed in Soledad’s direction.

  She shook her head. “I have nothing to do with this business … with strange seas and creatures and a gateway to another world. This here is my sea, and I’m content if I succeed in establishing my claim to it. The rest can go to hell, for all I care.”

  “There won’t be much left of the Caribbean Sea and the pirate kingdom if the Maelstrom opens wide enough.” Jolly suddenly heard herself talking as if it were the Ghost Trader himself who spoke through her. But they were her own words, and if she possessed any power to convince, it was only because she was now beginning to believe in all these things herself. First the Acherus, then the armies of the deep-sea tribes. The world was in turmoil, and in the center of these changes, somewhere in the breadth of the oceans, a gigantic maelstrom was turning.

  Soledad thought over Jolly’s words. “The Ghost Trader knows more about this, you say? And he’ll meet you on Tortuga?”

  “That’s what he said, anyway.”

  “Then I’ll stay with you until then. I’ll hear what he has to say, and whether the situation really is so serious.”