by neetha Napew
They secured the zodiac to a large hollow fastump and concealed it with palm fronds and moss. Then they started into the woods. Jon-Tom had the usual hard time ducking branches and stepping over protruding roots and was glad it wasn’t far to the pirate encampment. They heard it before they could see it.
Drunken laughter, shouts, blithe obscenities filled the air. Cautious gestured for them to slow down as they neared a place where much of the underbrush had been cleared away. It was an ideal anchorage. Morgels and cypress gave way to a wide sandy beach. The action of the current had cut a small inlet into the shore and a crude dock had been built out into the water. The ketch was moored to this ramshackle jetty. On the beach a single large one-story structure had been erected. It had the look of an old warehouse. Perhaps at one time some hopeful entrepreneur had tried to start a plantation in this part of the world, only to eventually abandon it and several smaller outbuildings to the unyielding swamp from whence it had subsequently been reclaimed by the pirates.
A few of the brigands were much closer than the beach. All were in an advanced state of intoxication. They were lying or standing around an isolated wepper tree, playing paddle ball with something hanging from one branch. Jon-Tom had to physically restrain Mudge from rushing forward.
Weegee’s wrists and ankles were bound together by a single rope. Her head hung toward the ground. She had not been gagged. As far as her tormentors were concerned this only added spice to the game. As they swung her dizzily back and forth she tried to take a mouthful of flesh out of each of her persecutors, who would dance aside as her teeth neared them, laughing and taunting one another. Two of them were utilizing long paddles both to protect their fingers and enhance the sport. The solid bang of wood on fur and flesh echoed across the clearing.
“Rotten bloody bastards.”
Jon-Tom kept his hand on his friend’s trembling shoulder. “Easy, Mudge. We’ve rested ail day. They haven’t. At the rate they’re collapsing they’ll all be asleep soon enough. Then we’ll get ‘em. Don’t look.”
“I ‘ave to look, mate. I ‘ave some faces to memorize.”
Jon-Tom’s appraisal of the pirates’ condition proved correct. Half an hour later the last one erect took a wild swipe at the swinging body of Weegee before crumpling to the ground. The onlookers waited another ten minutes to be sure the corsair’s stupor was all-encompassing before Cautious gave the word.
“We go get her away fast, you bet.”
“Right.” Jon-Tom rose and broke through the remaining brush. “And remember, Mudge; no unnecessary killing.”
The raccoon frowned at the man, then looked to the otter. “He always talk like that?”
“Don’t pay ‘im no mind. ‘E can’t ‘elp it. The poor sod’s the victim o’ a deformed set o’ ethics.”
Staying close together they emerged into the clearing. There was no sign of Sasheem or the rest of the crew. Probably sleeping on board the ketch or inside the main building, Jon-Tom reflected.
Weegee was unconscious, exhausted and dazed from hanging upside down for too many hours. Mudge greeted her with that delicate rapid-fire succession of kisses otters employ as he put a paw over her mouth to keep her from shouting out in surprise. She bit him gently.
“About time you got here.”
Mudge worked on the knots securing her wrists and ankles. “Wot made you so sure I was comin’?”
“Because I’m your only true love. You told me so, at least four dozen times on the ship.”
“Right, but I’ve an ignoble memory.”
“It’s good enough for me.” Mudge reached for his knife to cut the main rope and she hurried to protest. “Better not, unless you’re prepared to catch me. If I fall on my fundament it’s liable to shatter, considering the pounding it’s taken the past couple of days.”
“Creeps.” He used the point of the blade to work the knots free. Jon-Tom finished the job as the otter set her gently on her feet. Her muscles were so cramped she could hardly stand, let alone walk. As she fought for balance an old seadog came limping out of the main building. He was missing one leg and walked with a crutch. Jon-Tom recognized him as an original member of the pirate crew from their earlier sojourn on Corroboc’s ship; this was the one who had tried to warn the unfortunate captain of the danger Jon-Tom and his companions presented.
There was no time to retreat. The veteran saw them and began yelling at the top of his aged lungs. “Up, everybody up! By my tail, the water rat and the magician have come back for us!”
Mudge let Weegee balance against the raccoon, slipped his longbow off his back, and put a feathered shaft into the alarmist’s neck. Too late. The cry did none of Weegee’s recent tormentors any good because Cautious, utilizing a wicked little curved knife, rapidly made the rounds of the inebriated and cut their throats where they lay.
The only survivor was a lynx who had passed out unnoticed beneath a bush. He reached out to trip the retreating Jon-Tom and send him sprawling.
“Clumsy man,” Weegee chided him, “get on your feet!”
Not enough time, as pirates erupted from the warehouse. “This way quick or we are lost.” Cautious beckoned frantically from the undergrowth.
Jon-Tom rolled to his knees and stood, holding his ramwood staff out in front of him. Weegee and Cautious had already vanished into the vegetation and Mudge wasn’t far behind. He was alone in the middle of the clearing.
A great calm settled over him. Perhaps it was better that it end this way. Mudge had helped him so many times it seemed only fitting that Jon-Tom should perform a final service for the otter. After all, this was their world, not his. Better Mudge and Weegee should live out their lives where they belonged than sacrifice themselves in aid of an alien. He flicked the concealed switch in the staffs shaft and six inches of steel snapped out of- the base. “Come on then. What are you waiting for?” The onrushing brigands slowed to a halt, eyeing him warily. “I know “im.” The speaker was a muscular beaver with a patch over his left eye. “That’s the spellsinger, it is.” Murmurs of recognition came from those around him.
None wanted to be the first to challenge the tall human. Those who had sailed with Corroboc remembered the havoc Jon-Tom and his companions had wrought. They rapidly enlightened those newer recruits who hadn’t been on that earlier expedition.
The stand-off was purely mental. The instant Jon-Tom turned and tried to run they would realize he was afraid of them and cut him down in a minute. If he charged they might scatter in panic—but if just one stood his ground and fought back, the others would realize they had nothing to fear from their taller opponent. Nor could he allow the stalemate to continue indefinitely. Time favored numbers. Carefully he set the ramwood aside and swung the suar around in front of him. He was relying on the hope that enough time had passed for the pirates who remembered him to have forgotten the details of what his duar looked like. If he could conjure something, anything at all, even a small cloud of harmless gneechees, it might be enough to frighten his opponents away.
But before he could commence playing a new figure, taller and more massive than anyvof the other brigands, forced his way through the line. He halted a safe distance from the spellsinger. Half a dozen stilettoes were sheathed in the bandolier that crossed his broad chest. His tail twitched back and forth, back and forth, and only the first half was flesh, fur and blood.
“Greetings, man. I never expected to see you again.”
“Hello, Sasheem. Roseroar sends her regrets.”
“Regrets? What regrets would the tigress leave with me?”
“That she wasn’t able to bid you farewell in person.” The leopard chuckled, quite able to appreciate the bloodthirsty humor inherent in Jon-Tom’s remark. “I’m sure the big lady would have made a coat out of me if she’d had half the chance.” He examined the clearing, the rope dangling empty from the tree, the several sailors lying sprawled on the ground with their lives leaking from their slit throats. “You’d risk your life for a single female?”<
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“I see no reason to trouble you with my motives, which I doubt you’d understand. You remember me. You remember Roseroar. You should remember the others as well.”
“Ah, the otter with the touchy manner and toilet mouth. One arrives, two depart. A relationship?”
“Weegee was his,” Jon-Tom struggled for the right word, “fiancee.”
Sasheem nodded. “Some sense at last. Not a bad swap; a spiteful and sharp-toothed female for a spellsinger.”
“Who said anything about a swap? I’ll be leaving now.” He took a step backward.
Sasheem kept the distance between them unchanged. “No, I don’t think you will, spellsinger, or you would have gone already.” Sure enough, the sharp-eyed leopard had spotted that which had escaped the notice of his colleagues. “That’s not the same instrument you carried before. I know that a spellsinger must have a certain special instrument else he will be unable to perform his magic. Can it be that you have misplaced both?”
Jon-Tom strummed the suar, smiled thinly at the big cat. “Take another step closer and find out.”
“Careful, mate,” said the lynx on Sasheem’s flank. “Remember how he betwitched us the last time. Maybe he’s just taunting us. Mayhap this stringed snake he holds is as dangerous as the other.”
“If it is, then why is he standing there wasting his time talking to us while his friends put space between them?”
Jon-Tom was staring at him. “ ‘Mate.’ He called you mate. Aren’t you the captain now?”
Sasheem seemed surprised. “Captain, me? Of course I’m not the captain here. I’ve never aspired to captaincy.”
There was a commotion among the brigands in back. Jon-Tom watched as the pirates parted to let someone through.
“No. It can’t be. I saw Roseroar take you apart.”
Recent memory notwithstanding, it was a three-and-a-half-foot tall parrot that hopped out in front of the semicircle of respectful, edgy buccaneers to glare sourly at the dumbfounded spellsinger.
VII
Jon-Tom realized he was not going mad. The parrot was not Corroboc, though the relationship was unmistakeable. Though no expert in the distinguishing characteristics of fowl, there were too many similarities of aspect and posture between this bird and the late pirate commander for coincidence. At the same time the differences were as blatant as the similarities. Corroboc had boasted one false leg and an absent eye while this new arrival was missing neither. He was quite intact save for his left wing, which was splinted and bandaged.
“Captain Kamaulk.” Sasheem favored Jon-Tom with a toothy smile. “Brother to our lamented missing captain and inheritor of his titles and property.”
“Better he should’ve left you alone,” said the parrot, “and I could have stayed with my ledgers. Or did you maybe think my featherbrained fool of a brother ran this business by himself? Because pirating is a business, make no mistake of that. Corroboc was clever with a ship and a sword but not with figures. That end I handled. Now I am forced to manage both. So a mutual acquaintance of yours took him apart, har? We wondered what had happened to him. What a nice surprise that the guilty parties should choose to drop in. It seems we will have vengeance out of this last raid if not much profit. Your death will salve my poor brother’s heart.”
“He didn’t have a heart. Corroboc was the most vicious, evil, sadistic, venal low life it was ever my displeasure to encounter.”
Kamaulk looked pleased. “I’m sure that wherever he is now he’s delighting in your flattery, but it will do you no good. He’s dead and it’s up to me to decide your fate.” He rubbed his beak with his unsplinted wingtip. “What do you suggest, Sasheem?”
“Sell him in Snarken. Money’s better than vengeance. A spellsinger will bring much more on the open market than an ill-tempered lady. A fair trade, I calls it.”
“If he can be induced to cooperate.”
Jon-Tom listened dazedly to the conversation. He felt like a participant in a bad dream. There couldn’t be two Corrobocs. Nature wouldn’t permit such a dual abomination. Of course, Kamaulk wasn’t the same bird as his brother. Already it was clear that this more bookish of the unholy pair was less impulsive and more stable than his deceased sibling. That didn’t mean he’d hesitate to have him drawn and quartered if he decided it was in the best interest of the “business.”
“You claim he is a spellsinger. I don’t doubt your story, but if that is the case then why hasn’t he turned us all into toads or himself into an eagle?”
“I believe he has lost his instrument of power, sir.” Sasheem nodded toward the silent Jon-Tom. “The device he carries is not the one he used on us when he was a prisoner on your brother’s ship.”
“I don’t like these uncertainties. Figures are always certain. I cannot believe he is confronting us in this fashion without purpose.”
“I see what he up to!” A lanky dingo pointed frantically toward the inlet.
Everyone turned. Kamaulk flapped his wings, settled down on Sasheem’s shoulder. From this high perch he was able to gaze out across the river.
“I’ve never seen a small craft like that,” the leopard commented. “It must belong to the magician.”
“Broken loose from its moorin’s,” suggested one of the other pirates.
“No,” insisted the one who’d raised the alarm, “see, ‘tis all camouflaged like, filled with moss and twigs and such.”
“A diversion, designed to distract us?” The parrot cocked a querulous eye at Jon-Tom who, knowing nothing, said nothing.
“The others are hiding under there,” said the dingo. “The female prisoner and the others who helped her. It has to be.”
“Trying to slip past right under our noses. Be damned. An extra ration of grog for you, Gorswont.” Kamaulk snapped orders. “Oreyt, Tomooto: take down the ship’s boats and we’ll cut them off. They’ve no sail.”
The pirates rushed toward their ship, but not before the parrot instructed a lynx and three others to stay behind to watch Jon-Tom.
“Ware close the spellsinger. If he attacks, defend yourselves and call for aid. If he tries to flee, hamstring him.” Sasheem’s eyes narrowed. “How much power you have left I do not know, man, but we’ll most surely find out when we return with your companions. A little cooperation on your part may be all that keeps me from having your lady friend disemboweled before her lover’s eyes. Remember that.”
Jon-Tom watched as the leopard raced to join the rest of his mates with his captain riding his shoulder. Then his eyes fell as he examined his guards. They held their spears and swords uneasily.
Could he bluff them? Clearly they were discomfited at having been left behind to guard this master of unknown abilities. All four would have been much happier chasing after the drifting zodiac.
“Beware!” This admonition, delivered in his best courtroom tone, caused two of the guards to retreat a couple of steps. “My patience is at an end. Run while empathy lives in me or I will truly turn you all into toads as the first mate suggested.”
The lynx looked to his companions for support and held his ground. “Better a dead lynx than a dead toad. Sasheem and the Cap’n will kill us sure if we let you go.”
Jon-Tom studied the quartet. In addition to the lynx there was a broad-shouldered wolf carrying a razor spear that was half blade, a squirrel with a scimitar, and a spectacled bear who wielded a massive club. Spikes projected from its business end.
He could outrun the bear but not the wolf or the lynx. On the other hand, he could probably overpower the squirrel and maybe the other two, but the bear could fell him with one swipe. Kamaulk had chosen the group of guards with care.
A bold try on Mudge’s part to disguise the zodiac and try drifting past the pirate’s camp, but it hadn’t worked. Kamaulk and his crew would run them down before they could reach the sea and raise sail. A gallant effort. Feeling slightly giddy, he raised the edge of his right hand to his brow.
“I salute thee, Mudge, but even the master of t
ricks and ruses can’t win ‘em all.”
As the side of his hand touched his forehead a small tree fell square on the bear’s head. Bruin eyes rolled up like small window shades and he toppled over in a heap.
“Magic!” The squirrel let out a squeal and turned to run—right into a knife thrown from the bushes. Never one to squander a heady opportunity, Jon-Tom slammed the butt end of his ramwood staff into the side of the wolfs skull. Mudge brought the lynx down with an arrow before he could get ten yards toward the jetty.
Cautious and-Weegee emerged to greet him. Hardly a minute had passed since his unexpectedly efficacious salute. Meanwhile the rest of the pirates were paddling furiously down river in their exuberance to overtake the drifting zodiac and its cargo of leaves and moss.
“Thanks,” he told Cautious. “Hi, Weegee. Short time no see.”
She smiled up at him. “I’d like to put this habit of getting separated behind us, tall man.”
He looked over his friends’ heads. “Pretty damn smart. I thought you were out there trying to sneak past, too.”
Her eyes dropped. “Actually, we had kind of a noisy argument about it. I’m a little ashamed to admit I tried to talk Mudge out of trying to rescue you.”
“Don’t give it another thought. I know how otter minds work. I once had to journey across half a world with a dozen of your kind. I figure if I survived that, I’m the next best thing to invulnerable.
“You’re a dear thing, for a human.”
Mudge rejoined them, having lingered over the dispatching of the unfortunate lynx. He was panting hard. “Aye, tried to talk old Mudge out o’ savin’ ‘is mate, she did, but I wouldn’t think o’ leavin’ you to the tender mercies o’ Sasheem and ‘is bird-boss. ‘Avin’ blown a dozen opportunities to abandon you to a well-deserved fate before today, I figured I might as well keep me record consistent.”
“You all crazy, you people. Ever’body know otters crazy, but not humans.” Cautious was shaking his head dolefully.