Kal Moonheart Trilogy: Dragon Killer, Roll the Bones & Sirensbane

by Rob May

  ‘You promised to break the curse,’ Lula said ‘And the curse ends with the Magician. We can’t leave my people caught between him and that bastard Azul. We have to help them!’

  Kal shivered. A horrible memory stirred; one that was always at the back of her mind. A freezing mountain. The pungent tang of monsters. ‘When I interfere and try to do good, then people die,’ she said.

  Dogwood, however, was on Lula’s side. ‘If we can get to Port Black before the Armada, take out the Magician, and take back the fort, we can claim the Islands for the Republic again. The Armada wouldn’t dare attack then. Especially if we can man the cannon on the fort walls.’

  ‘We can rescue Che!’ Lula added.

  ‘In case you hadn’t noticed,’ Kal said, ‘we’re in a cage heading away from Port Black.’ She had no energy to argue any more, and curled up in a corner. All she wanted to do was sleep forever.

  ‘Well, if you won’t think about helping people,’ Lula said, ‘then think of the adventure! Or would you rather spend a month cooped up in here?’ Kal heard what sounded like digging. Curiosity got the better of her, and she rolled over to look. Lula had her arm up to her elbow in the bucket of parrot seed.

  ‘They put me in here once after I accidently chopped a man’s finger off in a knife-throwing contest,’ Lula said. ‘After that, I swore I’d never let myself get locked up again.’ Her hand came up out of the bucket, her fist clenched. ‘This could be the beginning of a great adventure, Kal,’ Lula said. ‘And every great adventure begins with one small step.’ She opened her fist and held out a small brass key.

  Something stirred in Kal’s chest, and she slowly got to her feet.

  ‘Back to Port Black!’ a parrot squawked. ‘Back to Port Black!’

  * * *

  Kal donned an old military jacket of Dogwood’s (that was twice her usual size, and fit her like a trenchcoat), grabbed her bag (which had been conveniently left on a hook in the hold) and exited the Swordfish via the aft gunhatch. She clambered up the beams and windows of the transom—the superstructure of the captain’s cabin—and gained the quarterdeck unseen by any of the crew. The ship’s doctor was standing with his back to her, overseeing the deck below. What was his name again? Oh yes …

  She crept up behind him and put a knife to his throat. ‘All hands on deck, Mister Tooth. Smartly now!’

  The doctor gave a nervous cough, but he didn’t argue. ‘All hands!’ he shouted in as calm a voice as he could manage. The depleted crew were just the ten men and women who had survived the zombie attack at the Blue Mahoe. They hove the ship to, and then gathered in a small bunch between the mainmast and the forecastle.

  Kal jabbed the doctor in the arse with the point of her knife. ‘You too, matey,’ she said. ‘Your place is before the mast, not up here.’

  The man had no choice but to obey, because across the deck, sitting on the forecastle rail and toting a long musket, was Dogwood. His evil grin suggested an itchy trigger finger.

  Kal leaned against the mainstay, trying to project an image of cool confidence. In truth she was deadbeat and—despite the heat of the sun—covered in goosepimples. She gripped the thick rope for support and looked out over the crew. ‘Who is the captain now?’ she asked them.

  All eyes fell on the doctor. ‘I am,’ Doctor Tooth said. ‘Dead Leg is confined to his cabin, on account of him being a zombie and all now, so we had a vote.’

  Kal swallowed a brief flicker of regret for Dead Leg’s fate. ‘Wrong answer!’ she said. ‘Captain Dogwood assumed command of this vessel with the authority of the Senate. You don’t get to vote. Locking your captain away is an act of mutiny!’

  ‘We don’t recognise no Senate at sea,’ the doctor grumbled. ‘Never have.’ The crew all nodded in agreement.

  Kal shrugged. ‘Then that makes you lawless pirates, not mutineers,’ she said. ‘Either way, the punishment is the same, isn’t it, Captain?’

  ‘Indeed,’ Dogwood agreed. He looked up. ‘If you would, Quartermaster.’

  The hapless crew were surrounded on three sides. Lula was halfway up the mainmast, armed with a crossbow. She lobbed a rope up and over the topsail yardarm. It fell and then stopped and dangled just five feet off the deck. The end was looped and coiled around itself thirteen times.

  It was a hangman’s knot.

  ‘The punishment for mutiny and for buccaneering is death,’ Dogwood said cheerfully. ‘But I can’t afford to lose all of you, so we will just hang one man today. The rest of you will get a flogging! So … if you would, Mister Tooth, just slip your head in the noose for me now.’

  There was a stunned silence on deck. The doctor took off wire-framed spectacles he wore and rubbed them, as if hoping that when he put them back on his situation might have changed. The crew casually moved away from him, leaving him standing alone. They obviously figured a flogging was a better option then leaping to the doctor’s defence.

  ‘I’m … sorry,’ he spluttered.

  ‘So am I,’ Dogwood said. ‘Now let’s hurry up and get you swinging. We need to crack on if we’re going to reach Port Black before the Armada.’

  The doctor fell to his knees, a quivering wreck. ‘No, please,’ he moaned. ‘I won’t mute— … mutinise— … I won’t do it again, I promise!’

  Kal laughed and clapped her hands, breaking the tension. ‘You bet you won’t!’ she said. ‘Alright, enough messing around. The show’s over. Let’s get back to work.’ The crew breathed an audible sigh of relief, and Lula started to haul up the noose.

  ‘No,’ Dogwood said. He hadn’t lowered his gun. ‘This man gets hanged. Now.’

  ‘What?’ Kal said.

  ‘Senate law is not a joke, Moonheart,’ Dogwood said. He pointed his gun directly at the doctor. ‘You can either have a quick death by hanging, or a slow death by lead poisoning.’ To demonstrate he was serious, he swung his gun left and fired. A section of the rail exploded, and a block broke free and swung across the deck. Dogwood calmly reloaded the gun, taking a cartridge from his belt, ripping off the end with his teeth and filling the priming pan and muzzle with powder and shot. He then returned his aim to the doctor.

  With a hopeless, wretched look on his face, Doctor Tooth put his head in the loop, and Lula drew in the slack. The rest of the crew held their breath. In the distance, the Eldragoran cannon rumbled on.

  But Kal drew a deep breath of clean sea air. She knew something like this would happen when they all escaped the cage; but she had a play, and it was now or never. She raised her voice: ‘Belay this nonsense!’ she shouted, choosing her language carefully. ‘There’s another course we can take here. No one has to die.’

  Dogwood looked annoyed by her interruption. ‘What are you talking about, Moonheart?’

  Kal took a scrap of paper from her bag—a scrap that had gotten wet several times, as well as having been torn in several places over the course of her adventures. ‘I’m taking command of this ship,’ she announced. ‘I have Senate authority, too.’

  ‘You?’ Dogwood scoffed. ‘What do you know about captaining a ship?’

  ‘Well,’ Kal said, striding back and forth along the quarterdeck now that she had everyone’s attention. ‘It’s true that when we started this journey, I had no sea legs. But unlike you, Dogwood, I didn’t spend my time hiding up in the crow’s nest.’

  She addressed the crew directly: ‘I worked hard, and I reckon I can now hand, reef and steer with the best of you. But of course, that’s not what you want in a captain: what you need in a captain is leadership, trust and reward. It’s true that I’m going to lead the Swordfish into danger, but you can trust me not to put you in any situation where I won’t be at the front of the action. And although we’re going to spend the treasure we found on guns, equipment and help, there will eventually be a reward. Think of it as an investment; if you sail with me then the Silver Sea will be ours to plunder forever more. And here’s why …’

  She opened her letter and read aloud: ‘In discharge of the great
trust which the Republic hath placed in me, I do by virtue of full power and authority derived unto me, and out of the great confidence I have in the good conduct, courage, and fidelity of you, the said Kalina Moonheart, to be Master and Commander of the vessel the Swordfish, which hereafter shall be fitted for the public service and defence of these islands, and also of the officers, soldiers and sailors, which are, or shall be put upon the same, and to cause—’

  She paused to take in air.

  ‘—and to cause the vessel to be well manned, fitted, armed and victualled, and by the first opportunity, wind and weather permitting, to put to sea for the guard and defence of these islands, and in order thereunto to use your best endeavours to surprise, take, sink, disperse and destroy all the enemies ships or vessels which shall come within your view.’

  ‘Given under my hand, Benedict Godsword, Consul of Amaranthium in the year one thousand and six.’

  ‘In other words,’ Kal clarified, ‘sail with me, and we have the Republic’s permission to be the scalliest pirates who ever put to sea.’

  Everyone cheered, except Dogwood who threw down his musket in disgust. Kal stepped among her new crew, taking the noose off from around the doctor’s neck, and captain’s hat off his head. She put it on herself, and took a long spyglass from the hands of another sailor. She pretended to scan the horizon, but in reality she was trying to remember the advice that Lula had given her earlier.

  ‘Turn twelve points to starboard and run all the canvas out. Get us on a course for Port Black. Let’s not drag our anchor: I want to see what this tub can do!’

  As the crew rushed to their stations, Kal looked up at Dogwood.

  He winked back at her. The plan had worked.

  ‘Shall I dump the water supplies, Captain?’ one of her crew called over. ‘We’ll go faster if we lose a few tons of deadweight.’

  ‘What’ Kal said. ‘Oh yes, damn straight! Er, I mean … make it so!’

  IV.iii

  Cat o’ Nine Tails

  As the Swordfish raced through the night towards Port Black, Kal tried her damned hardest to mug up on being captain. Right now, too alert and too excited to sleep, she was sat at Dead Leg’s great hardwood desk flicking through the ledgers. The ship’s accounts were a sorry mess—a confusing scrawl of debts and loans. It was impossible to determine if and when the crew had last been paid. Mixed in with the financial records, there were other figures, too: the number of lashes a crewmember had received as punishment for crimes such as ‘sleeping on watch,’ ‘stealing rum,’ and even ‘kissing a goat.’

  Kal went to the leaded windows at the back of the ship and tossed the ledger out to sea. Might as well start from scratch; the treasure in the hold would provide for the ship and crew for years and years, never mind paying for new hands, weapons and equipment. There was so much loot that Dogwood was down there now, on permanent guard duty. In her mind’s eye, Kal could imagine gleaming new cannon—perhaps long brass bow and stern-chasers—a new lick of paint and even a new mainsail and flag: black, with a red heart inside a round white moon …

  A sound broke through her fantasies—a drawn-out moan and a thumping on the wooden walls. It was Dead Leg, chained up in the galley just along the corridor. When Kal had pulled him out of the water following their leap from the fort, he had momentarily regained his senses, and his humanity. But now the captain had relapsed, and was apparently nothing more than a groaning zombie. Kal had been putting off going to see him; she could hardly bear to see him. Dead Leg had been one of her few real friends among the crew, and she knew that when she did go and visit him, it would most likely be to put him out of his misery.

  ‘You bring calamity and death. Let us see how many lives you will take …’

  Kal shivered despite the hot night. How many of the crew would she lead to her death before she had seen this adventure through? She had never been responsible for anyone’s life before but her own; now every death would be on her head. The Magician’s prophecy was in danger of coming true.

  In the bunk in the corner, Lula was sleeping (and snoring) like a baby. Some comfort she was to Kal now. Kal tried to shrug off all gloomy thoughts and went up on deck. The sails were all full—the Reaping Wind was speeding them toward their fate at a rate of knots. The cabin boy was hanging above her like a monkey, drawing in the ropes on the spanker, the aftmost sail.

  ‘Looking trim, Pip,’ Kal said.

  Aye, Captain,’ the youth said. ‘There’s hardly an inch of slack in her lines.’

  The ropes were indeed all taut like a cat gut guitar. They hummed with a melancholy lilt as the Reaping Wind plucked them. Kal almost imagined that she could hear a melody in the sound, until she realised that someone was up in the crow’s nest playing an accompaniment on the fiddle. Kal decided to climb up.

  She entered the nest via the lubber hole—so named because only non-sailors actually used it. Everyone else would take the scenic route up the futtock shrouds and over the lip. But Kal wasn’t prepared to take that many risks to prove she was worthy of being captain.

  Doctor Tooth was in the nest, his fiddle jammed under his chin. He stopped playing when he saw Kal, and gave her a warm smile that was free from any animosity.

  ‘I heard one of the crew call you Sawtooth,’ Kal said. ‘Is that because of the way you play the fiddle?’

  The doctor shook his head and patted another instrument at his belt: a surgeon’s bone saw. ‘This beauty produces screams even more discordant than my fiddle,’ he said proudly.

  Kal winced and looked out to sea. She could see a faint chain of lights that marked the beacons that ran the length of the reef. An almost constant flickering to the north indicated the position of the Eldragoran Armada blasting their way through.

  ‘They’re breaking through the narrowest part of the reef,’ the doctor said. ‘But luckily for us, it’s miles from Port Black. We’ll beat them there for sure. The wind is our side; we should make town as dawn breaks. We’re lucky with that, too; without Jako, we need all the help we can get.’

  Kal nodded grimly. Jako had been their star navigator, sailor and swordsman. But Kal had accused him of being the Magician’s spy, and he had left them. She wondered where he was now. Would she have to fight her way past those dual scimitars to get to the Magician? Would the person wielding them even be human any more?

  ‘You’re a doctor,’ Kal said. ‘Do you think there’s any way to cure them once they’ve turned? Dead Leg, Jako … the hundreds of Islanders that the Magician has under his spell?’

  The doctor just shrugged. ‘The only cure I know of is amputation of the head.’ He stroked his saw fondly.

  Kal sighed. ‘I have to go and see Dead Leg,’ she said. ‘One last time.’

  * * *

  Kal hung around in the corridor for ten minutes while the doctor and two of the stronger lads went into the galley and made sure it was safe. While she was waiting, Lula passed by. Kal’s friend had finally woken up, and was now looking as fresh as a flower, despite her ordeal on the island. If she had as bad a headache as Kal did, she was hiding it well.

  ‘Waiting for breakfast?’ Lula said brightly. ‘I’m so hungry I could eat a whale.’

  ‘I’ll bring you something,’ Kal said. ‘Go and check on the crew, Quartermaster. Make sure everyone has weapons. We’re almost there.’ Lula nodded and swaggered off. The doctor and the others reappeared and motioned for Kal to enter the galley.

  ‘Will you need this?’ the doctor said, offering up his saw.

  ‘I’m good,’ Kal said. She held up her cleaver. Its blade had remained razor sharp since the day she threw it in her sea chest. The doctor flinched and stepped aside.

  The galley was dark, lit by a single swinging lantern that threw moving shadows around the walls, and it smelled of curry and mould. Pots left unwashed since Che had cooked down here lay strewn about. Kal almost jumped out of her skin when the light fell on a gruesome trophy nailed to the wall: Che’s two giant rats that he had caught in the
one big trap. The cook had made a bodge job of stuffing and displaying them.

  In the corner, Dead Leg moaned.

  The Swordfish’s ex-captain was hunched over on a stool. Chains secured him to a meat hook on the wall. His wooden leg tapped spasmodically on the floorboards.

  Kal cautiously approached. ‘Hey, Dead Leg. It’s me. It’s Kal … Kal Moonheart—’

  Dead Leg lifted his head and growled at her. His round face and bald head were ashen grey, his one good eye a milky globe. He rattled his chains violently.

  All hope died inside Kal. There was no point in drawing this out any longer. She raised her cleaver and advanced on the sad creature.

  ‘Let us see how many lives you will take … Ten … Twenty … Twenty-nine!’

  Dead Leg suddenly lunged forward and the hook popped out of the wall. Before she knew it, Kal was jammed back against the worktop with Dead Leg’s bulk crushing her ribcage. With one hand, she managed to hold his head away and keep his gnashing, frothing jaws from her neck. Her other hand was free, so she brought the cleaver to the zombie’s neck …

  … and then paused.

  She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t kill him.

  ‘Lula!’ she screamed. ‘Get in here! Quick!’

  * * *

  Kal and Lula watched over the hapless crew, who they had herded at the narrow end of the forecastle, while Dogwood searched the bunks. The only person not present was Dead Leg, who was safely chained up again in the galley.

  ‘Are you sure about this, Kal?’ Lula said. ‘You’re going to look paranoid and weak if you’re wrong.’

  ‘I’m not wrong,’ Kal said. ‘I could see flecks of it all over Dead Leg’s clothes.’

  As if to confirm her words, Dogwood gave a grunt of satisfaction, and came out from under one of the bunks clutching a small package. He tossed it to Kal. She unwrapped it in full view of the crew; it was Sirensbane, of course. Someone had been drip-feeding it to Dead Leg, keeping him in his zombified state.