The Dungeoneers: Blackfog Island

by Jeffery Russell

  “Is what flat?” Ruby asked in an absent-minded way. She was squinting out at the horizon, brow furrowed. She had her hand up to shade her eyes which seemed a bit redundant considering her hat.

  “The world.”

  “No,” Ruby said. “Does the water out there look different to you? My eyes aren’t what they used to be. Too many years of reading histories written in bad penmanship.”

  Leery looked, Ginny alongside her. The sea was murky green around them, shifting to gray further away. Waves scurried across its surface, crowding each other, splashing, there one moment, gone the next. Out along the misty horizon, though, the color deepened to indigo. The overcast sky lay heavy along it, streamers of mist trailing across the waters.

  “The water looks darker, maybe,” Ginny said. “Not sure if that’s unusual, though.”

  Leery nodded agreement.

  “Hmmm,” Ruby said. The teapot whistled. Ginny snatched it up and began making the tea. Ruby’s tea was crimson in color and tasted of raspberries and wine. It was one of Leery and Ginny’s favorite things in the world.

  “Is it something to be worried about?” Leery asked.

  “Probably not,” Ruby said. “My understanding, though, is that the sea’s dangers are a bit like those on land in that the farther you travel from settled places, the wilder and more dangerous it becomes. And the sea is much larger, and the settled places much further away.”

  “You mean there’s fae mounds and daemon hollows out here too?” Ginny asked.

  “The sea has its fae,” Ruby said. “The merfolk come in almost as many varieties as those on land, perhaps even more. I don’t know that they have fairy mounds though. It might be different beneath the sea. As for daemons…well, there are dark stories of things from the deeps. Huge, horrible things.”

  “Well, that’s me feelin' better ‘bout things,” Ginny said.

  “I wish I could be more reassuring,” Ruby said. “The sea is full of secrets. Perhaps we will learn a few on this trip.”

  “Not if we’re lucky,” Ginny said. “I prefer my dangers to be sensible things like pits full of spikes. Those I know how to manage.”

  “Strange waters,” came a voice from behind them. They turned to see Skulk’s hollow grin. “We be passing from the trade routes and into the wild seas. The merchant routes go through the islands there, see, where the channel is wide and slow. We’re heading further along the rim of the Mosaic and taking one of the smuggler’s ways. Most likely direction the Black Knife went. Beyond that we don’t know but she’s a whale of a thing and many of the passages are narrow. May help us to follow her.

  “The things in the deep steer clear of the traveled ways but out here…well, out here ain’t the sorta places that civilized folks be knowing. Ye’ve seen on maps where at the edges they says, ‘Here there be monsters’? Well, that’s where we be sailing to now.”

  “So,” Ginny said, “We’re all going to get eaten?”

  “Mayhaps but not too likely by my reckoning. See, nothing out here has much interest in eating a ship. Made of wood, ain’t she? Not particularly savory. Sailors, though, sailors be tasty to their mind but it ain’t generally worth the trouble to crack open a ship to get at them when there’s plenty of fishes that ain’t surrounded by wood. We’re like the sea’s version of a pomegranate. Way too much work for all but the most enterprising of sea monsters. Some of them is clever though. They try to lure us from the boat or pluck us from the decks. Those be the biggest dangers.”

  “What do we do to defend against those?” Leery asked.

  “Try to stay on the ship,” Skulk said with a wink. “You see anything out there that ain’t water, though, be sure and give a holler.” He spun on his heel and headed off, boots thumping as he went. How had he managed to get close enough to eavesdrop without her hearing him? Leery began to suspect that the thumping was deliberate and optional. She turned back to look at the horizon, Ginny standing beside her in worried silence.

  “Round,” Ruby said.

  “Wot?” Ginny asked.

  “The world. It’s round like a ball.”

  “Why don’t we fall off?”

  “That,” Ruby said, “is still one of the world’s secrets.”

  “Like what’s out there beneath the water.”

  “And on top of it,” Ruby said. “We’re a tiny little speck in a place we don’t belong.”

  Leery took a deep breath.

  “We gave away one of your journals,” she said.

  Ruby’s eyebrow raised enough to cause her hat to list to starboard. Leery rushed on before she could say anything.

  “To the ghouls. We had to in order to get them to help. We needed their help and they wanted something to read. I’m so sorry.”

  “Which journal?” Ruby asked. Were her teeth clenched? Was her voice quieter than normal? Did her eyes always glitter like that in the shade of her hat? Leery couldn’t tell for sure. Ruby was generally an odd mix of grumpy and cackling laughter. Leery had rarely seen her angry.

  “The last one. You wrote it when we were at the crypt.”

  “Ah,” Ruby said. She nodded then took a sip of her tea and looked back out to sea. Ginny was staring wide-eyed at Leery. Terror? Horror? Both? Terror in one eye, horror in the other? That would be a neat trick. Leery realized her brain was babbling.

  “You’re not mad?” she asked.

  “Mad?” Ruby turned back to her, both eyebrows raised this time. “Oh, I’m sorry. Of course you’d think that. No, I’m not mad.” She looked back out to sea and sipped at her tea. “Inconvenienced, perhaps, but I applaud spreading books into the world. Some books follow paths that lead through many hands, hearts and minds. It will find its own way through life. There’s a part of becoming a scribe at the Athenaeum that isn’t commonly known. At least unless you’re aspiring to the position. It’s not a secret, just something not talked about often.” She pointed out to sea. “Do you see that bit of seaweed floating out there?”

  Leery did. A lengthy whip of kelp, browned with age. How many hundreds of miles might it have traveled to be there?

  “Tomorrow,” Ruby went on. “I won’t remember that piece of kelp. Nor will I remember this conversation. Unless I write it down in my journal. And then-” she turned to Leery, the very corner of her mouth twitched up into a smile. “-I will remember it forever. Word for word. It’s part of our initiation ritual. It changes the way our memory works. We record anything worth remembering and keep those memories until we die but everything else, little moments good or bad, we lose. It will just take me an evening or two to rewrite that one. Another benefit of our initiation. Writing never, ever tires the hand. In my opinion, that alone makes any memory inconveniences worth the price.”

  Leery knew she was going to spend some time in her hammock that night considering having one’s memory changed like that. She had no intention of becoming a scribe but found the question intriguing. Price versus benefit. What would life be like without the moments from yesterday but with clarity of the events of decades?

  “And you’ll be able to fix that paragraph we talked about!” Leery figured that delivering more upsides to the situation was called for.

  “I avoid that,” Ruby said. “I’d be literally rewriting my own memories and that is the sort of thing that one does with extreme caution. Apart from spelling and punctuation, naturally.”

  ***

  Thud had felt quite honored when Skulk had offered to let him take the wheel. After about five minutes the honor was tinged with the feeling of being patronized. The ship was going straight which didn’t leave a lot to do at the wheel other than hold it steady. It was a job that could have been accomplished with a rope. It was a fine thing, though, he had to admit, standing on the deck, hands on the wheel, wind snapping at his coat. The deck was laid out below him, his team scattered across it, some at tasks, others relaxing. More than a few were below decks in the hammocks, fighting off seasickness. The hammocks swung against the ship’s motion,
providing a calm resting place that allowed spinning heads and rolling stomachs to settle.

  “How do you keep the top-hat on when the wind blows?” It was Catchpenny. He seemed to have a sixth sense regarding when to show up and ruin a nice moment.

  “Hairpin cantrip,” Thud said. “An old charm I learned once.”

  “Is that a common need among dwarves? Magical hairpins?” The elf’s expression was a shifting balance between bemused and not wanting to get punched

  “No, we mostly go in for helmets. I used to work in the circus. Picked up an odd collection of tricks. Lotta different trades in the circus. Learned that one from a costumer. Comes in handy more than you’d expect.”

  “How long were you in the circus?”

  “I know what you’re doing, elf,” Thud said. “Pitting my dislike of talking to you against my love fer talking about meself.”

  “You’ve got a mixed species team. Why the issues with elves?”

  “Got no problem with elves,” Thud said. “It’s thieves and liars with unknown motivations I take issue with. You shootin’ a few dock-scum for us only tells me that you weren’t with them. Or ya are and you’re running a double or triple-layer lie. I expect you’ll be useful right up until the point where it behooves you to not be. And if I survive the choice you make when that happens then know that I will apply every appropriate consequence within me power.”

  “Excellent!”

  “Eh?”

  “I look forward to seeing the appropriate consequences for me being a stellar member of the team.”

  “You ain’t a member o’ anything,” Thud said. “But yeh, you plays yer part you’ll get yer cut, just like everyone else.”

  “Want you up top in the nest!” It was Skulk, finishing his round of the deck, making his way up the steps. “You climb better and see better than everyone else and you got a head for heights. If the Black Knife is out there you’re going to be the one to spot her.”

  Catchpenny nodded, adding a second nod of farewell in Thud’s direction. He leapt lightly onto the rail then sprang up into the rigging, catching onto a line and swinging up to land on his toes on another. He sprinted up into the spars as if he were running along a path. Thud stopped watching out of disgusted envy.

  “Got an idea,” Skulk said. He stood at Thud’s side, arms crossed, looking out over the deck below, a stance Thud thought of as ‘quartermaster position’.“There may be a way of getting a few more specifics on just where we be sailing to. These be merfolk waters. If any ship has been through here they’ll have noticed. And if anyone can tell us where Blackfog be, they’ll be the ones.”

  “What’s the catch?” Thud asked.

  “They ain’t by nature gonna be inclined to part with information to landfolk. There’ll need to be a bargain struck, and that’s if they don’t just outright decide that we be more interesting as a meal. They move about in clans of a type. Never know which ones we’ll get. If we find ourselves in a pod o' ningyo or get noticed by an oceanid then negotiations are gonna take a bad turn.”

  “Dunno what those are but I’ll take yer word for it. What about sirens? Them’s the ones I’ve heard of.”

  “They’re more kin to the harpys than the merfolk. Only see them near land where they have somewhere to roost. Obnoxious seagulls, really.”

  “What kinda odds we lookin' at?”

  “Not too bad,” Skulk said. He winked and laid a finger alongside his nose. “I be knowing the right sorta bait.”

  Chapter Seven

  The ship was stopped, more or less. The sails were furled, though some still had dragging edges or corners that flapped in the breeze. The Squiffy drifted, the waves slapping at the hull, jostling it about. Thud and Skulk sat in a rowboat, hanging over the waters below. Dwarves lined the side of the ship, crossbows cocked but held out of sight. The ballista was armed and ready. It didn’t have a line of fire to where the boat would be lowered, but Thud figured if their bait attracted something unexpected that it couldn’t hurt to be over-prepped.

  He gave a nod and Max began spinning the wheel to lower the rowboat. He grinned up at the row of dwarven faces peering down at him, getting smaller and smaller as they descended. The rowboat hit the water with a light splash, bobbing and tapping against the ship’s hull as the waves caught it. Skulk pulled on the oars a few times, moving them clear of the ship. Thud pulled a basket out from under his seat and held it as Skulk knotted a rope around its handle. The other end of the rope was tied to a ten foot pole. Inside the basket was a bottle of rum and a large roast beef sandwich with extra horseradish. Skulk took the bottle and splashed a bit of the rum out into the water.

  “Merfolk be like sharks with their noses. Every one of ‘em between here and the horizon is gonna get a whiff o’ that before long.”

  He took a swig of the rum himself and passed the bottle to Thud. Thud took a swallow. It wasn’t on a level with Dwarven spirits but he understood the appeal. A clump of mushrooms in the aging barrel would have added the right funk to the sweetness. He put the open bottle in the basket next to the sandwich and Skulk swung it out over the water, letting it dangle just above the dancing waves.

  “Now we wait,” he said. “Shouldn’t be takin' too long.”

  It was about fifteen minutes later when Skulk pointed.

  “There!”

  Something in the water, gliding past just beneath them. A glint of light on scales, something fast and large as a man. Just a glimpse and then it was out of sight beneath the ship.

  “Giving us the eye,” Skulk said, eyebrows wiggling. “If it’s gonna attack it’s gonna be on the next pass. Brace yourself.”

  “How do you know it’s a mer and not a shark or some such?”

  Skulk shrugged. “Never heard of a shark what came for a jigger of rum. Could be, though.”

  Something thumped against the bottom of the boat and Thud yelped like a little elf. His face flushed. Fortunately Skulk’s full attention was on the water and the bait.

  There was a splash as the creature surfaced.

  It was a merman. He was balding with a fringe of black hair connecting his ears around the back of his head and a mustache that lay across the center of his face like a minus sign. Gills ran along the side of his neck. His chest hair lay tangled and wet on his pale skin. A pair of scallop shells covered his nipples. He gave them a suspicious squint then began digging through the basket, pulling out the sandwich and taking a large bite.

  “Ahhh,” he said, closing his eyes as he chewed. “Hard to find a good sandwich beneath the seas,” he said a few seconds later once he’d swallowed. “We aren’t much in the baking department. And the sandwiches are usually tuna.”

  Another splash from the other side of the boat. A mermaid with a wet mop of brown hair and a pair of halved coconut shells. One arm was raised with a trident, ready to throw.

  “Peace!” the merman called. “They’re some sort of food service. Sandwiches.”

  “Of course, and me allergic to landfood,” she said in a voice of regret. It switched rapidly to hope. “Is that rum there?” She disappeared with a roll, resurfacing a moment later next to the merman.

  “It’s beefjay.” Thud said. “So it’s airfood. We even made it up traditional, hot on the edges and frozen in the middle.”

  “Ooh, I can eat that! My husband…” she said, then made a gurgling noise in her throat. “And I’m…” Another gurgle. Thud realized the gurgles were their names.

  “A pleasure,” he said.

  “Would you like to buy some caviar?” she asked. “I made it meself.”

  “No, I’m ok,” Thud said.

  “Had some questions for ye,” Skulk said.

  The merman sighed. “It’s never just a free sandwich delivery, is it? Always have to want something. What is it?”

  “We be following a ship that came this way,” Skulk said.

  The merman squinted at the empty horizon. “Doing a fine job of it, eh?”

  “We ain’t so mu
ch followin' ‘em as racin’ ‘em.” Thud cut in. “We ain’t even seen the ship. We just know it kinda came this direction, maybe.”

  “Is that a dwarf?” the merman asked Skulk. “Heard of them but never seen one on the seas before. Do they always interrupt conversations?”

  “He’s to thank for the horseradish, so don’t be rude. And I be knowin' you got merdwarves down there. Seen ‘em meself.”

  “The ones we have are half anchovy; a little bigger than what you’ve got here.”

  “Was that a shot at me size?” Thud asked. “You expect me to be insulted by you thinkin' there should be more o' me?”

  “Half of what you do have would be eliminated by a bath and a shave.”

  “Careful,” Skulk said to Thud in a low voice. “Remember how the mer work. Goading be a form of enticement. He be wanting you to jump in and fight.”

  “Ain’t gonna work,” Thud said, at full volume. “I been insulted by much bigger things than a surf and turf combo that’s just waitin' for its lemon wedge.”

  The merman grinned. “Well played, dwarf!” He gestured a toast with the rum bottle and took a pull then handed it off to the mermaid. “So, you think this information is worth a sandwich and a bottle?”

  Skulk flourished his gums in a grin. “If yer information be good there be another bottle in it for ya.”

  “Big fan o' the rum, eh?” Thud asked.

  “The only liquor the merfolk produce,” Skulk said, “is Hjork. Made from fermentin' oysters.”

  “Tastes worse than you expect it to,” the mermaid said. She had requisitioned the other half of the sandwich. She picked the lettuce off. “Not a fan of landweed. Now, as to your missing ship. I did see a hull go over yesterday, around darkwater time. Heading that way.” She waved the rum bottle at the horizon. “If that’s the ship you’re racing then you are losing. Badly. What’s the wager?”

  “First to find Blackfog Island,” Thud said.

  The merman snorted rum out of gills which was followed by a fit of coughing. If Thud never saw gill-coughing again for the rest of his days he could die a happy dwarf.