Blaggard's Moon

by George Bryan Polivka

  “Just reach in the water there,” Belisar said, almost gently, the fat flesh under his eyes rising up with dark pleasure. “I’m sure you’ll find it if you just reach your hand in.”

  Then Lemmer’s head jerked upward as his pinpoint eyes searched his captain’s, recognizing only too well the dancing gleam he saw there. “But Cap’n…”

  “You lost it, Mr. Harps. You left our dear Mr. Delaney to die without a fighting chance. So just reach in the water, and fish it out for him.”

  “But…there’s them Chompers in there…” Lemmer said pitifully. The Hants had called these fish the Jom Perhoo, but never explained what that meant. Lemmer had translated it directly into a word he recognized. It certainly fit.

  Belisar leaned back against the small boat’s high stern planking, quite at ease. “Blue, you may need to help our reluctant Mr. Harps.”

  Blue Garvey had the oars in his calloused hands. He was a big man, master at arms aboard Belisar’s ship, and just the sort of man a pirate captain would trust with all his ship’s weapons. He was loyal as a collared bulldog, though it was rumored aboard ship he had no heart at all. Word was he’d lost it in a poker game with the devil. Delaney didn’t believe that sort of talk. Still, if ever there was a man who would hand his heart over on a bet, Delaney figured it would be Blue Garvey. He was merciless as sunrise on execution day.

  Blue took Lemmer’s arm above the wrist in an iron grip.

  “No!” Lemmer squawked.

  “You’d rather your hand, or all the rest of you?” Belisar asked with a satisfied sort of smirk. “Mr. Garvey won’t be letting go his grip till one side or the other of you goes in the drink.”

  Lemmer couldn’t parse the meaning of that, so Belisar explained it patiently, like a schoolmaster. “Do you see where Mr. Garvey has his grip on your wrist, Mr. Harps? Well, he can put the short side in, which would be from your wrist to your fingertips…Or, he can put the long side in, which would be from your wrist to your heels. It’s your choice, but I suggest the former. I’d hate for you to lose that nice pair of boots.”

  Blue emitted a guttural hiss, sounding like a snake with poor sinuses, that Delaney knew from experience to be a laugh. “I’ll take ’is boots, Cap’n, then chunk all the rest of him in for ye!”

  “I’m sure you would, Mr. Garvey, and I thank you for the offer. But Mr. Harps will make the right choice. Won’t you, Mr. Harps?”

  And he did. The Chompers were in fact exceedingly vicious, or exceedingly hungry, or both. Inside of sixty seconds of blood frenzy, Lemmer’s hand was nothing but white bone and gristle, still attached at the wrist.

  Delaney shuddered. It was Lemmer’s face, for some reason, and not his hand, that stuck in Delaney’s mind. It wasn’t pain there, not really. It was more like…amazement. And at the same time…sadness. It was odd. It was as though Lemmer was amazed to be losing his hand, and grieving for the loss of it at the same time.

  Delaney shook his head to clear the image, which didn’t work very well, because after the shaking he wondered if that’s what his own face would look like when the end came, when the mermonkeys took out his bones. He looked at his knobbled knees, his scarred knuckles, and he flexed his fingers. He’d broken several of them, plus an arm and a leg and a toe over the years, but they’d all healed fine. Gnarled and rough as his bones might be from the hard labor of hauling sheets and tying off lanyards and climbing ratlines in the rain, fighting and falling and rising up again bruised and bleeding and battered, they were still good bones, with a lot of years left in them. He’d be sorry to see them go. Sorrier even than he was about his knife.

  Then he looked up through the hole in the cloud canopy to the sky above. He needed to find a better place to put his mind. His whole life had come down to a post, a pond, and a few hours of daylight, and all he could do was think on the worst possible things, both what had already happened and what was yet to happen. He squinted against the sun that flamed down into this dank hole. It looked like a torch against a blue background.

  Yellow light in a blue sky.

  A blue-eyed little girl in a yellow dress. Eyes shining.

  Now there was something to think on! Delaney brightened and inhaled the dank air as if it were suddenly fresh and pleasant. Her face came back to him now, and it was a mercy. Her eyes were sad, but not like Lemmer’s had been sad. Hers were blue and sweet and made you want to pick her up, protect her, take her back to her mama. How could anyone see such a sad, sweet face as that little girl’s and remember his orders? It’s no wonder he didn’t obey. Those eyes had little white specks in the blue parts, like she had inside her a whole world of sky and clouds, all shining out.

  She’d be dead now if he hadn’t done what he’d done. He knew that. She’d be dead if Delaney had followed Belisar’s orders the way Belisar had meant them. But now she was alive. He grinned, showing the piranha the gum line above his teeth. She was alive, and he was the reason. That was a good thing.

  But now Delaney was dead, or nearly so. And that was a bad thing.

  His grin faded. His face bunched up, and he scratched behind a ragged ear. There was something all akilter in the world when obeying orders would have got her killed and disobeying would get him killed instead. And it was doubly akilter when neither he nor the girl deserved such a fate. He hadn’t been given his orders aright. Go take care of the girl, was what Belisar had said. If he had wanted her dead, he should have said so plainly.

  Delaney hoped she was running far away now, far away and safe aboard the Flying Ringby, running from the pirates, far north out of the Warm Climes, north toward the Havens Tortugal where the Kingdom of Nearing Vast held sway, and at least some sort of law could be counted upon. She’d be safe there. She’d be out of the Warm Climes, where nothing was as it seemed.

  How she got mixed in with pirates, and how Delaney got mixed in with her, and how she got away, and how he got here on a post in a pond way upriver among the Hants, so far away from his home in the Kingdom of Nearing Vast…that was a story. That was the kind of story Ham Drumbone would be telling for years to come, speaking soft and low to silent sailors deep in the forecastle, as they swung in their hammocks at the end of a long day’s watch.

  “Good old Ham,” Delaney announced, happy again for another pleasant turn of mind. Hammond Drumbone. Oh, Ham would tell this tale. He’d already told much of it, up to the point where the little girl came in. These last parts now, he’d have no way of knowing. That wouldn’t keep him from making something up, of course. But the rest of it, what had led up, that was a bigger story. That went back years. It was a big tale, too, with pirates and pirate-hunters, and fights at sea and on the land, and then of course that whole tale of love and woe. Some was a famous story, known by all, but some wasn’t. Some Ham picked up from bits and snippets that Delaney and others told him. Ham filled in a lot of it himself, no doubt. But no one ever minded. No one ever asked which parts were true and which parts weren’t. Didn’t matter. It was all true, the way Ham told it.

  Delaney could almost hear Ham talking now, a shade of melancholy in his deep voice, calling up both lonesome longing and high hopes at the same time, painting those word pictures like only he could paint them. He was as good as the Hants were at conjuring images. He’d wait until there was quiet, there under the decks, quiet but for the creaking of the ship’s timbers. And then he’d begin.

  Where did it all start? he’d ask. Where do such tales ever start? It was what he’d always ask at the outset of a story. Then Ham would answer himself. Deep in the darkest part of the heart, where men don’t know what goes on even inside their own selves. That’s where every story starts.

  That Ham. He could tell a tale.

  “Dark and clouded it was,” Ham began one evening below decks, “with the sky iron gray and restless, the misty sea churning beneath it, throwing off white foam as far as the eye could see.” Smoke rose from his pipe as the men lay silent, hammocks in tight rows swaying together with the movement of the ship
. “A storm was brewing, aye, and a big one, too. And then a thundering came, and it echoed, and then a voice came, carried on the thunder. But the voice was not like the thunder. The voice was high and beautiful. The voice was a girl singing sweet, and lingering on every note, a pure voice from far away, from out of the rain, out of the storm, out of a dream.”

  “How old was the girl?” a young sailor asked in hoarse whisper.

  “Don’t matter her age,” Ham answered easily.

  “What’d she look like?” asked another, bolder.

  “It was just a voice, gents. A disembodied voice, as they say.”

  “Ye mean she ain’t got a body?” a third asked, somewhat shocked. “It’s a ghost, or what?”

  Ham sighed. “It’s all happening in a dream. The ship, the singing, the girl…I’m telling you about a dream that Mr. Delaney had. When he wakes up you’ll know where he is, for some of you were there. But I’m trying to build some mystery into it, so shush and let me tell it.”

  The pirates went silent again, and Ham continued. “And then the lightning flashed, and there was a ship. An enormous, sleek thing, sailing toward our Delaney at uncanny speed, sails full and billowing white in the sudden gale. And the voice sang words, radiant words that almost seemed to make sense, if only one could listen aright. But they didn’t make sense, not to Delaney, and he was listening close. ‘A true lang time,’ she sang in the dream, as sad and distant as lost love.” And now Ham’s big bass voice sang out a melody, and Delaney imagined it many octaves higher, the way he’d heard it in his dream:

  A true lang time,

  A lang true la,

  And down the silver path into a rushing sea,

  Where moons hang golden under boughs of green,

  And the true heart weeps

  As she sings her song…

  Ham’s voice echoed into silence.

  “What does it mean?” the young sailor asked. He was a boy of “almost thirteen,” the youngest of these cutthroats, and with his older brother, the newest.

  “Mystery, Mr. Trum. Let there be mystery.”

  “He means shut yer yap,” an elder added helpfully.

  “Thank you, Mr. Sleeve. Though you do take a good bit of the poetry out of the language.” The others laughed. “But the song is done, for you see, just then a gruff voice broke that dream all to bits, like a gunshot shatters the silence of a night watch. ‘Time to pay for your sins!’ ”

  Delaney closed his eyes, and he remembered being there, then. He remembered how those words had pierced through hazy, cluttered layers of deep sleep, and how he had jolted awake that day, up to the harsh and grating recognition that this voice had an owner, and the owner was a jailor, and the jailor was glaring down at him from the other side of grimy black bars.

  The jailor clanked a tin cup along those bars, an angry clatter penetrating Delaney’s pounding skull. The jailor was dark-skinned, bald, with arms like a bull’s forequarters, a round brass cuff tight above his bicep. “What, you think you kill a man then sleep ’til noon?” he asked. “Not in this town! Judgment in Mumtown comes at dawn!” And the dark man’s skin glistened and his eyes were afire. Then he laughed, all echoing and hollow.

  “Who’s kilt?” Delaney asked him, sitting up painfully, his own voice screeching in his head.

  “You don’t remember? Why, the Stellat man, what you would call mayor! And so it is death to the lot of you.” His sweeping gesture went beyond Delaney.

  “Hang on, now,” another sailor piped up. Delaney turned his head, wincing with the accompanying pain. There were half a dozen shipmates here with him. His heart sank when he saw the two boys, the young Trum brothers, here among the newly condemned. The sailor who spoke was in his twenties, not quite as big as the jailor but probably as strong. Nil Corver, trembling amid his complaint, continued. “We din’t kill no ‘stellar man.’ We din’t kill no one, not till we was fired upon!”

  “Aye!” his fellows added. “Defendin’ our own selves!”

  “The mayor? The mayor fired first?” the big jailor asked, teeth blazing at the absurdity of such a suggestion. “The mayor of Mumtown pulled out a gun, and fired on you?” The nods were universal, if not terribly confident. “Through the floor of his room above your heads?”

  Now there was silence. Then all eyes swung to the gaunt man leaning back against the corner of the cell. Spinner Sleeve met their accusing gaze with disregard. “Didn’t know about no mayor up there,” he said coldly. “How could I?”

  “We’re real sorry about what Mr. Sleeve did, then,” offered another, a kind-faced man of middling age, hoping to win some pity.

  “You shut it, Avery!” Then to the jailor, Sleeve said, “We ain’t admittin’ to nothin’! None of us!”

  “Fine. Tell it all to the Horkan man. What you call the judge. Oh wait, that’s me!” He showed them his teeth again, and several sailors groaned audibly. “Clean yourselves up as best you can. You’ll want to impress me. Trial right after breakfast!”

  “Yer givin’ us a trial?” Sleeve asked suspiciously.

  “Yer givin’ us breakfast?” Nil asked hopefully.

  Their jailor and judge, the Horkan man, just raised an eyebrow.

  “His breakfast, ye ninny,” Sleeve grunted from his corner.

  “Oh.” Nil grew glum again.

  “Delaney, do somethin’!” Nil pled, as soon as the jailor had left them alone again.

  “Are we really going to die for our sins?” a Trum boy asked.

  Delaney blanched. The men looked to him because he could fight. But he was weaponless. “I don’t even recollect rightly what happened.” His head pounded some more and he closed his eyes. But as soon as he did he saw that ship again, heard that sweet song. A true lang time…

  “Well, it was like this,” a somber voice interrupted. Delaney kept his eyes closed, but recognized the gentleness that was Avery Wittle. He was a deliberate and thoughtful man who always worked within his abilities, large or small though they may be. Mostly, they were small. “We anchored Tomorrow in the bay for a little shore leave. Found a nice little tavern. Remember? We were singin’ to King Reynard. There were a few foreigners around, I grant that.”

  Delaney opened one eye. Avery had his cap in his hand. His expression was more earnest than any man over ten has a right to wear, as though Delaney could absolve them all if only the events were recalled in sincere enough fashion. “We sang songs. You remember that?”

  “Them foreigners didn’t take to it,” Nil suggested. “Not our fault!”

  “They ain’t the foreigners,” Delaney countered crustily. “We are.”

  There was a pause as the men considered that possibility.

  Delaney remembered the songs. He recalled the bitter faces at the other tables as a dozen careless men from a far northern port stood up, puffed out their chests and raised their mugs, singing out their own superiority. A proud moment for Nearing Vast. But this was Mumtown, in the island nation of Cabeeb—a dangerous port if a man had any money, and more dangerous if he didn’t.

  “They fired first!” Nil insisted.

  “Sleeve fired first,” Delaney said. He remembered that part clearly. “Didn’t ye, Spinner?” It all came back now, in a rush. His heart sank like a lost anchor. The mayor left, headed upstairs with a wink. Then the shouting commenced. Accusations. Threats. A fistfight. Shots fired. Then more gunfire. The haze drifting over the silent room. A man’s leg propped up on an overturned table. Another man facedown, draped over a chair.

  More than one man had died last night.

  “There’s a trial!” Nil offered. “Cap’n Stube will come. Cap’n, he’s a good man. He’ll vouch fer us all!” His eyes brimmed with sudden hope.

  “The Tomorrow has sailed. Stube’s gone and left us.” A bald man spoke, not much above a whisper. His deeply tanned skin was lined with hard years, his head was wrinkled and dry. Silence fell as they all looked to Mutter Cabe.

  “Is it true?” Dallis Trum asked Delaney. “Did t
he Captain leave us?”

  “Naw!” his older brother told him, punctuating the statement with an elbow to the ribs. “Cap’ns don’t do such as that!”

  Sleeve harrumphed.

  Delaney’s heart sank further. “Ye don’t know he left us, Mutter.”

  Mutter’s dark eyes were blank with certainty. “He came. Stube came in the night. He spoke to the warder. Paid gold. Took Blith. Took Peckney.”

  The men in the cramped cell looked around them. Blith and Peckney were the first mate and the navigator. They had been here last night, had been a part of it all. Now they were gone.

  “May their souls writhe in red blazes,” Sleeve hissed.

  “Don’t say that!” Avery blurted.

  Sleeve looked Avery up and down. “May they all writhe in the red blazes a’ hell, until the end a’ time. And you right with ’em.”

  “Look,” Avery offered, “I don’t want to die any more’n you do. But if it’s dyin’ we got to do, then we got to be of a forgivin’ sort of mind. I don’t want to go to my Maker otherwise. Do you?”

  “I ain’t goin’ to no Maker!” Sleeve stood. “I’m gettin’ out of here if I have to kill every last Cabeeb on this rat-infested pile a’ sand.” He scratched at a bug bite for emphasis.

  The other men looked back and forth between the two voices, hovering in their opinion.

  Time to pay for your sins!

  “Not the startin’ place,” Delaney explained to the fish. He felt a crick in his back, and straightened up a bit. The sun was hot, the post was hard, and he’d been slouching over as the story ran through his mind. But it had suddenly occurred to him, as he got to the hard part, to that point in time when a life of crime had seemed the only honest way out, that Ham had not started the story there. He hadn’t begun it with the dream and the jail. That was just the place where Delaney had gotten caught up in it. Those were things Delaney himself remembered. But there was a whole lot that had gone on before. It had wound its way around for many years, having nothing to do with him until it met up with him there in Castle Mum. Those earliest things, the ones Delaney had had no way to know, those he’d learned from Ham Drumbone and his stories.