“I had the exact same thought you’re having,” Aldine said. “There are differences between the two. This line”, she said, pointing. “A word or two here. There the whole stanza is different.”
“I wonder if these two pages in-between tell us why…”
The sound of a horn from above. One of the look-outs. Someone or something was coming.
Ruby stood and went to the hull wall of the ship to peer through one of the splintered holes, face glowing in the gloomlight.
“I wish to speak to your leader.”
The woman’s face was as smooth as an oiled hinge. She stood half-shrouded in the mists, black save the glimmering blue light reflecting from her white face. There was a man dressed as a pirate captain next to her, complete with a parrot on his shoulder. The costume was so precise, down to tiny details like the stalactite of guano formed beneath the parrot, that Dadger was surprised that the man hadn’t amputated his own hand and leg to add a hook and peg.
“Speaking,” Dadger said. It was an encouraged lie. Dadger was the team’s spokesdwarf and Thud had long ago granted him autonomy in the team’s dealings, right up until Thud chose to step in. Thud liked to stand back and gauge the conversation before deciding where to insert some leadership. Granted, Thud was not, at the moment, present, as he was off supervising the construction crew working on the turtle shell. And while this pair looked the sort that Thud was going to want to get a measure of, Dadger felt that getting a notion of their business before sending them on might be prudent. They were guaranteed trouble and Dadger wasn’t about to just launch them in Thud’s direction.
“You seem to be alone,” the costumed man said. “I understood that there were more of you.”
“They’re abouts. Close by. How’d you come by an understanding like that?” Dadger was trying to place them. They didn’t look like shipwrecked sailors but there weren’t many other sources of people. Were they from the pirate ship? The man was, after all, dressed like a pirate captain. Costume aside, the man himself had more the look of a baker or a taxman. If they were from the pirate ship then he was some sort of decoy. The woman, however, gave off waves of authenticity. He wasn’t sure what she was an authentic version of but, whatever it was, she was the prime personification of it. She made Dadger think of a trapdoor viper. How had they gotten down? Had the pirate ship wrecked somewhere as well?
The man stepped forward and offered what looked to be his idea of a charming grin. At least he had a gold tooth, Dadger noticed. The parrot on his shoulder was making giggling noises.
“Quite a small matter, really,” he said, ignoring Dadger’s question. “We believe that a book belonging to us has come into your possession. Return it and we will gladly rescue you from this place.”
“Simple as that, eh?” A rescue? They had to be from the pirate ship and, unless they were lying, they’d found a way down without wrecking their ship.
The man nodded slowly. “Yes, it can be as simple as that.”
“And if we don’t have this book? No rescue? Ye’ll just leave us down here?”
“Of course not!” the man said, hands spreading in a placating gesture. “We’d naturally expect your assistance in searching before we could leave, however. We’d likely start the search right here with this ship and work our way out.” His tooth glinted.
Dadger shrugged. “Mighta found something like that. Need to ask our salvage team. They ain’t here at the moment though. Out salvaging.” He tilted his head and squinted. “You wouldn’t have happened to have run across a ship captain anywhere, did ya? See, we lost ours and we’ve been trying to find him.”
The woman lowered her hood. Her festival skull face was topped with hair in an elaborate twist, glinting with silver and pearls. Her teeth were pointed like an eeligator.
“I’m not interested in your pathetic attempts to delay,” she said. “Hand over the book or we will take it.”
“I figgered one pretense deserved another,” Dadger said.
Her lip curled into a snarl and she raised one hand then froze, looking past him.
Aldine stood in the entryway of the ship, torchlight flickering the shadows across her layered cloaks. The crystal atop her staff glowed with a blue light that hurt to look at. Brilliant sparks dropped from it, twisting and popping. Ruby stood just behind her. frowning.
The skull-woman’s lip curled. She gave the pirate-man a quick look of fury then redirected it at Dadger. “You’ll see us again soon,” she snarled. She raised her hand in the air and called something out in a loud voice. They weren’t words Dadger knew but the way they hissed in his ears was a giveaway. The woman had just done something magic. She strode into the mists without looking back.
The pirate called after her. “So glad you joined that conversation!” He looked at Dadger then shrugged. “Remember,” he said, “I offered a peaceful solution.” His voice was sad.
“Remember,” Dadger said, “that we’re the only ones here and none of us were fooled by your gobshite. There’s nothing to negotiate until we get Samona back.”
“Samona never even left port,” the pirate said. “We took him simply to keep all of you there instead of out here where you don’t belong.”
“Never left port? That a euphemism for killin' him?”
“Not at all! Samona is a fine smuggler. I’ve worked with him before and hope to do so again. Kidnapping him was just business. He’s probably wandering around Stilton as we speak, looking for his ship that you’ve stolen and destroyed. He did tell us quite a lot about all of you before we left, however. Mercenary graverobbers from the sound of it. This is not your place.” The pirate gave him a considering look. “Contrary to your claim of leadership, my offer is genuine. The book for rescue. Be sure and pass that offer along.” He turned and started after the woman.
“DISAPPOINTING!” the parrot screeched.
“I know who that was,” Aldine said after the mists had swirled back into place in the wake of their departure. “The woman.”
“Would have to think you’d remember meeting that one,” Dadger said. “Seems she knew you also.” He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted up at the ship. “Ring the bell!”
Leery and Catchpenny were posted as look-outs. There was a stream of answering clangs. They’d tested it earlier and knew that it was audible all the way to where the rest of the team was working on the turtle boat. Considering the visibility distance provided by the mist the look-outs were more there to ring the alarm than to actually see anything. The mist was thick enough they were lucky if they could see the ground from the top of the ship’s mast. Leery and Catchpenny had probably missed the entire encounter.
“We’ve crossed paths before. She’s called Obiya,” Aldine said. “She’s an archon of the Hermits of Roth.”
“An archon, eh?” Dadger asked. “Well, damn. Roth is one of the dodgy gods, isn’t he?”
“You could put it that way. He has a bit of a chaos theme.”
Archons. The champions of the gods. There were around a hundred of them, all told. They were the sort of beings that epic poems were written about. Their feats were told and retold, forming legends, blending together into a great muddled tapestry of folklore.
Having one snarl at you and make threats was an event worth paying attention to.
“Ween said she was the one they rescued. The weather wizard. How’s weather fit into a chaos god?”
“Have you never been in a storm?”
“Ah, fair enough. Now, what was that with your staff?” Dadger felt this to be an important detail that had not been addressed yet.
“Parlor trick,” Aldine said. “She had no way of telling but I wouldn’t be surprised if she suspected. Underestimating her seems a bad idea.”
“What was that she yelled?”
Aldine shook her head. “Hopefully another cantrip but I have my doubts. If something unusual happens then that’s probably going to be it.”
“Considerate of them to give us an advance wa
rning,” Ruby said.
Dadger nodded. “Tactical error on their part. ‘Spect they thought that conversation was gonna go different. One of 'em at least.”
“How long do you think we have?”
“Figure an hour at least. Unless they’re all waitin' around the corner. Don’t think that’s the case though or we’d already be full of arrows.”
“Ah,” Aldine said. “So much better to have to wait an hour first.”
Dadger snorted. “Defending a shipwreck from a pirate attack? Just another day on the job.” He hoped he sounded far more confident than he felt. Dwarves, as a general rule, held their own in a fight be they soldier or baker. The Dungeoneers team leaned heavily in favor of dwarves that had plenty of experience in surviving a fight. However, most of their injuries on this venture had come straight out of the vanguard and the vanguard was as much a core of the Dungeoneer’s defensive tactics as it was their offensive.
Not that any of them were here at the moment. Dadger squinted at the wafting mist, waiting for reinforcements to come.
Across from the ship something stepped out of the wall of water. It was a sailor…or at least it had been in the recent past. Now the sailor was bloated and pale and looked to have been partially ingested. Hair hung in wet clumps across its face and seawater dripped from its arms as it raised them and lurched forward.
Briefly.
One of its legs promptly fell off, leaving the rest to topple into a heap on the ground. Undaunted, the thing began pulling itself toward them across the sand, still occasionally leaving miscellaneous bits behind. At its current rate they had a few minutes of watching it crawl toward them to look forward to.
“A zombie?” Aldine asked. “Here?”
“That spell she yelled,” Dadger said. “And of course she’s a necromancer. Shoulda guessed by her skull paint.”
“Not a very good one,” Ruby said. “Or perhaps a desperate one.” She gestured toward the struggling zombie. “If that’s what she’s leading off with.”
Two more emerged from the water. One was more ambulatory than the first, having both legs. It was missing both arms, however. The third wasn’t much more than a barnacle crusted skeleton that appeared to be having difficulty getting its joints to bend more than an inch at a time. It moved forward in staccato jerks.
“Zombies work best if they’re fresh,” Aldine said. “I’m guessing she just animated whatever was around and available and this is what she had to work with.”
A dozen more emerged from the wall of water. They looked to be coming from the same place-a shipwreck beyond the wall of water, perhaps.
“Hmmm,” Dadger said. They watched as another score of zombies appeared, splashing their way free, plodding, shambling, crawling. The mists wafted around them. “She may have been on to something.”
“How is she controlling so many?” Ruby asked.
“She isn’t,” Aldine said. “They’re not like, say, skeletons, where the magic holds them together and moves them like puppets. Zombies are more of a ‘wake them up and let them do their thing’ sort of undead.”
“What’s the point of that?”
“A distraction, perhaps,” Ruby said. “We still have to deal with them, which will take time away from preparing for the attack.”
They watched for a few moments in silence. Some of the staggerers had almost overtaken the initial crawler. The floppers, skitterers and scooters were starting to lag behind.
“Should you walk out there and bash a few before they get here?” Ruby asked. “Might save some time once they arrive.”
“They’ll attack if you get close,” Aldine said.
“Naw.” Dadger stood and whistled up at the crow’s nest. “We got techniques for zombies.”
Leery arrived a few seconds later.
“That was fast.”
“Was already on my way down to see why we were ringing the…hmmm,” she trailed off, having noticed the creeping horde. “Think fifty feet will be enough?” she asked.
“They ain’t much more than soup on legs so I reckon they’ll squeeze together pretty tight.”
Leery cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled up. “Hey, elf!” She turned back. “Might as well put him to use. I’ll be right back.”
The zombies had progressed several yards closer by the time she reemerged, a coil of rope over her shoulder and Catchpenny close behind her.
Dadger grabbed one end of the rope and the two dwarves uncoiled it between them, walking in opposite directions to stretch it out.
“Am I supposed to be helping them somehow?” Catchpenny asked.
Ruby shrugged. “Get an arrow ready. If it looks like it might be useful for you to shoot something, shoot it.”
The dwarves reached their respective ends, pulling the rope taut between them. They gave a nod to each other then began advancing on the mob.
“I see what they’re doing,” Ruby said. “Make noise. Keep those things focused on us.”
Aldine began to sing.
“Ten apprentice mages,
drinking too much wine,"
Zombies had a long list of qualities that engendered fear. Nowhere on that list had the word ‘cunning’ ever appeared. The lead zombies and the rope met each other and both kept going, the rope catching them at the waist as they pressed against it, pushing forward.
“One flew his broom too fast
And then there were nine."
Dadger and Leery began circling back in toward each other, behind the horde, the rope tightening around them. The zombies to the sides stumbled toward the main group as the rope pressed in from the sides.
“Nine novice mages,
Divining their fate,"
The ones in front were stopped in their tracks now, the ones behind continuing to press in, pushing against them. The two dwarves met, passing each other and completing the circle of rope, bundling the zombie horde up like kindling. They were packed tight, shoulder to shoulder, shuffling against each other. The standing zombies, at least. There were still at least a dozen crawlers loose, too low for the rope to have caught as they slid across the sand.
“One got a short reply
And then there were eight."
“See?” Dadger asked. “We got fifteen feet to spare.”
The dwarves tied the rope off, looping the end around a stub on a driftwood log, tethering the zombie clump. They gave them a wide berth as they circled back around toward the ship.
“Can I stop singing now?” Aldine asked.
“Please,” said Ruby.
Dadger clapped his hands loudly from his side of the horde, Leery clapping from the other, drawing the attention of some of the zombies. The clump began trying to move in three different directions, progressing nowhere but relieving the strain on the rope. Most were hunting by sound alone. Eyeballs were a renowned ichthian delicacy and the zombies had done some time as a fish buffet.
The crawling zombies were still making slow progress, the speediest of them a mere ten yards from where Ruby and Aldine stood, arms folded. Leery stepped behind the slowest of the crawlers and gave it a sharp rap on the head with a stick. The zombie stopped, perhaps in shock at the sheer audacity. It looked back over its shoulder as Leery darted past it, tapping the next zombie upside the head. She danced between them, poking heads as she went, moving up on each from behind. The ones she’d hit followed in her wake, crawling over themselves in their eagerness to communicate their irritation to her. She reached the fore-crawler and stepped in front of him. He’d had a fine mustache in life, the wax having held the curl firm against the ravages of life under the sea. Her stick made a hollow thock noise on his head. She began moving backward in the direction that the pirates had left in, the crawlers flailing along after. Leery turned and put some distance between them, jogging forward until she’d moved far enough away to be out of the zombie’s detection range. She turned to the side then crept back past them, letting them crawl their way toward whatever adventure lay in store for them
.
“I didn’t see anything useful to shoot,” Catchpenny said.
Ruby nodded. “Sometimes that’s how it is when it comes to shooting things.”
By the time their huffing and puffing reinforcements arrived in response to the bell, Leery and Dadger were sitting on the plank in front of the ship with the others, watching their leashed zombies. Thud wasn’t the first to arrive but he was the first to come straight over to them without stopping to catch his breath first. Korak was at his side, much less short of breath.
“So,” Dadger said. “We met the neighbors.”
***
“What is this book that they desire? Did you know of this?”
Korak had pulled him off to the side but Thud was pretty sure that the volume the orc had asked the question at had included everyone a mile around in the conversation.
“There was plenty of pressing matters to discuss,” Thud said. “We just didn’t manage to get that far down the list. Finding it is why we’re here in the first place.”
“And this book is in my hold,” Korak said. “They offer rescue in trade.” His brow furrowed, an action that always had a dramatic effect on an orc’s countenance. It was like when a dwarf’s beard bristled to make him look larger. It meant trouble. “What do you offer, dwarf?”
Ah, so that was it. The orc was staking ownership. Thud deciding to let Ruby and Aldine study it rather than whisking it away and stuffing it in a pack was starting to look like it might not have been the best course.
“We got you a turtle boat half built already,” Thud said. “It’ll get us out of here. Believe me when I say you do not want them pirates to lay their hands on that book.”
“Why? Because of this witch the old women speak of? Let her have her book. Once we are rescued and ashore I will head the opposite way from her.”
“Someone else’s problem, long as your hide is safe, eh?” Thud asked.
“My goal is to get these people home alive, yes, including myself. The witch and her book can be a problem for another day. Maybe mine, maybe somebody else’s.”
The Dungeoneers: Blackfog Island Page 19