Amidst the cascades of water, among the broken remains of ships, a turtle shell.
Big as it is, it is tiny in the maelstrom, launched upward by the force of the rising waters, a watermelon seed spit from the closing mouth of the sea. It rises into the sky, the darkness fading away like steam all around, the sun catching the gleaming surface of the ancient yellow pattern on its shell. It reaches its zenith and hangs motionless for a moment, a dark shape in a freshly blue sky.
And then it falls.
It lands with an unceremonious slap in a hollow in the sea. All around them a towering wave, moving away, growing. A ring-wave expanding out from Blackfog Island’s demise. The water rolls back, throwing the shell about, playfully skipping it across the waves, tossing it into the air then catching it again, spinning it round and round in eddys and swirls.
At last it comes to something of a stop. As best it can, in any case, whilst bobbing in the waves.
Sadly, no one was there to see.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Inside, Thud was hoping that the liquid he was sloshing through was seawater and not whatever had come out of the numerous retching dwarves he could hear in the darkness. Ween was going to be swabbing for days.
“Anyone have a notion where the hatch is? Lost track of it somewhere during all o' that.”
“I might be sitting on it,” came a voice. Ginny’s.
“Naw, that’s me head you’re sitting on.” Cardamon’s voice.
“I ain’t sitting on a head!”
“That’s me sitting on your head,” said Dadger. “Think you may be on the hatch.”
“Think I’m sitting on the cat.” There was a rustling noise, followed by an angry yowl. “Yep.”
“Well,” Thud said. “Try opening whatever you’re sitting on. If light comes in we’ll know it wasn’t Cardamon.”
A moment later and a brilliant line of light appeared, then a square as the hatch was thrown open. Their faces were gray and blinking in the light.
“Everybody in here alive?” Thud called.
This required some brief discussion before general agreement was reached that this was the case. The turtle was stuffed with enough people that there hadn’t been too much space to get bounced around in.
He reached the hatch and poked his head out through what had once been the turtle’s neck. They were floating, pattern-side down. Bobbing through the waves. The air was crisp and the sunlight warm. He climbed out onto the rough surface of the shell’s underside. Skulk crawled out behind him. There was debris all around, floating in the water. And there, a half-mile or so away, the pirate ship. It was listing seriously to one side and the masts were broken. It looked like a ship that was considering heading back under the sea.
“Never thought I’d sail on a turtle,” Skulk said.
“Lotta firsts on this trip,” Thud said.
Mungo’s head emerged from the turtle.
“What sort o' locomotion might we have on this boat?” Thud asked him.
“Limited,” the gnome said in his squeaky little voice. “Time was in short supply. We went for seaworthiness over navigation potential and didn’t quite have the time for that either. The right leg aperture is leaking badly.”
“So by ‘limited’, you mean ‘none’? And we’re sinking? Just wanted to make sure I got the gist of the message there.”
“We have an oar.”
Thud looked over the side of the turtle.
“Is the oar fifteen feet long?”
“No. If we don’t repair the leak then it’s conceivable we could sink just enough for it to reach.”
“Lots of stuff floating around,” Thud said. “Maybe we can rig a mast and sail? Make a longer oar? We only need to cover a short distance.” He pointed at the pirate ship. “If we can get over there before that thing gives up then it might be our ride back.”
Skulk shook his head. “Or we will be trading one sinking ship for another.”
“Think of it as an engineering challenge,” Thud said to the gnome. “Building one floating ship from the bits of two sinking ships that are also your work platform.”
Mungo’s eyes gleamed and he ducked back inside the turtle.
“Hello the turtle!”
Fifty yards to starboard, a hogshead ale barrel bobbing in the water. The upper half of Leery poked out of the top, arms waving.
“Hello yerself!” Thud shouted back.
“Got that book here!” she yelled. She held up the Tome of Gr'bl-Neb'gthrb.
“Don’t you drop that,” Thud yelled.
“Got the elf here too,” she yelled. “He’s in the bottom of the barrel. He’s unconscious.” She paused and looked down into the barrel. “He’s not unconscious anymore.” She kept talking but now to the contents of the barrel and Thud couldn’t hear. It appeared to be one half of a rather spirited discussion.
Leery disappeared down into the barrel. The barrel bobbed energetically for a minute then both Leery and Catchpenny appeared from the top.
“We’re paddling over,” Leery called. “Be there in a bit!”
“Ahoy!”
More barrels, off to starboard. Durham and Clink.
Head count came back with no zeros. It was a good day.
***
A half hour later they were climbing a rope through the neck of the shell. Four dwarves holding the top end of the rope made for a suitable anchor point. Catchpenny’s hair looked semi-fried. His clothes were scorched and frayed. Leery appeared to have had at least a couple of significant wounds and maybe a broken bone or two but was almost back in form.
The turtle had been packed solid with people and adding two more did not improve the rate of the leak. Keezix and Rasp were using helmets to bail the water back out through the same hole it was coming in through, for lack of a better option. It was easy to imagine that the water going out was immediately turning around and coming back in to repeat the ride.
Ruby appropriated the tome as soon as Leery was aboard. “How did you ever manage to get a hold of this?”
“A pirate kindly dropped in with it,” Leery said. “We let him use the other barrel. Didn’t seem right leaving him down there.”
“Next time I’m on top,” Catchpenny said.
Thud’s head appeared upside-down in the neck hole.
“Gammi? Have any beer?”
“Aye, gettin' thirsty up there? We got a cask o' Rook tucked away down here.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have a sandwich also, would ye?”
Gammi arched an eyebrow. “No. Got some dragon-mustard but all the bread went moldy a few days back.” He fumbled at his belt. It was an ordinary sort of tool belt only Gammi kept it full of condiments, utensils and snacks.
“I expect the bread is optional. Any meat for it?” His face had turned raspberry red from hanging upside down. His top-hat, however, was securely in place.
“Fish.”
“Apart from fish.”
Gammi searched through the dozen or so bags, sacks and pouches in his pack.
“Got some more fish.”
Thud’s face had moved from raspberry to blueberry.
“Fish won’t do. Which of you smells the most like ham?”
There were a few seconds of snuffling sounds in the gloom then a long silence.
“What’re you all looking at me for?” came Durham’s voice.
***
Durham had been pretty pleased with how things had gone, over all. He was alive, for one. There had been quite a few precarious moments but it still seemed to have been the right employment choice compared to guarding a sheep gate or being king of a lake. But now he was slathered in mustard, hanging from an oar by a rope and being dipped up and down into the ocean. Gammi bobbed next to him, wearing a bladder-buoy and bearing a pot of mustard to reapply as he felt necessary.
“Pour some more beer!” Thud yelled. A splash of beer accompanied Durham down on the next dip. He came back up, snorting seawater and dangled, spinning slowly as
Gammi dabbed enthusiastically with the mustard brush.
“Oi there!” came a nearby voice.
The merman, bald head gleaming, water glinting on his mustache.
“It’s the mustard smell, ain’t it?” Thud called. “Figured it couldn’t have been the bread.”
The merman was examining Durham, perplexed.
“This ain’t what I was expecting to find,” he said thoughtfully.
His wife surfaced nearby with a splash.
“Oooh,” she said. “Is that one of those deconstructed gourmet sandwiches?”
“Could use a favor,” Thud called. The merman frowned up at him.
“Came here expecting a sandwich. Now there’s no sandwich and you want me to do something for you?”
“There’s beer,” Thud said. “And the little matter of that island of darkness that you didn’t like. Got rid of it for you. That’s worth a favor, ain’t it? Just need a bit of a push over to that ship.”
The merman squinted in the direction Thud was pointing.
“That ship?” he asked. “The one that’s sinking as fast as yours?”
“We’re planning on a lot of improvisational maintenance.”
“How about we just give you a push to land?” he asked. “I can round up some of the boys. Won’t take more than a day or so to get you to the coast of Kemal and the missus and I can stop for groceries along the way. There’d best be beer and sandwiches for everyone when we get there, though. Standard price for helping move.”
***
Laughing Larry lay low in the rowboat, watching as the giant turtle shell began moving away. It was moving fast with no visible sail or oars. The parrot stood on the bench next to his head, hopping from foot to foot in a delighted little dance. As best it could tell, absolutely everything had gone sour for Larry and it was having the happiest day of its life.
“How do you think they be doin' that?” Raggins said from the other end of the boat. Larry had fished him out of the water earlier. Resuscitating Raggins was not an experience he wanted to dwell on for long but he still needed to decide just how many demerits the experience warranted.
“Maybe,” Larry said, “they’re using the book they took away from you.”
Raggins was silent, visions of lost merit points swimming in his eyes.
“Unlikely, however,” Larry continued. “More like some bit of strange engineering from that little dwarf with the calico beard. Do try and figure it out, however. It will save you a lot of work. In the meantime, grab the oars. One merit point per stroke getting us back to Stilton.”
***
“I hope,” Gammi said. “That this don’t become a trend.” He watched, frowning, as Thud, Ruby and Nibbly gathered in a semi-circle around the cook-pot, boiling water mumbling inside. They’d built a small fire in the center of the shell-belly top-deck. “I’m not a fan o' me cook-pots bein' used for disposin' of eldritch magery. Puts the soup right off for days afterward.”
Thud coughed out a laugh that sent a jolt of pain through his collection of wounds. “Next time we’ll try to go after something that’ll go in the forge instead.”
“The book is the key to that dimension,” Ruby said. “And the key is alive. Kill it and it will just be a book of instructions for a Focus that no longer exists.”
“And we still got a book to bring back to complete the contract,” Thud said. “Everyone wins.”
“Except the people eatin' soup tonight,” Gammi said. He watched as Thud lowered the book into the bubbling water. There was a hiss of steam and a thin scream at a frequency only an elf could hear. The book turned bright red in the boiling water.
“Hmmm,” Gammi said. “Maybe with some lemon and a bit of butter I can make that work. You sure we’re going to get paid for a boiled book? We didn’t exactly leave this one with much more than pocket change.”
“Are you kidding?” Nibbly asked. “Durham’s got the whole thing marked on the navigation charts and I’m already writin' up the contract to outsource the salvage fleet. There’s enough down under the sea there to finance an entire kingdom.”
“Marking this one up as a win,” Thud said.
He stepped away and went in search of the elf. It wasn’t much of a search. The turtle was only so big. He found him sitting on the edge of the turtle’s bow, leaning back with his feet dangling over the side.
Thud clapped him on the shoulder. “Ya did good, elf.”
“Thanks, dwarf.” Catchpenny looked up at him, the corner of his mouthing twitching into a grin. “Next time you get a stowaway do them a favor and toss them over the side.”
“If that was too much adventure for you, imagine how I was feeling. Hoping our next job is a bit smaller in scale. Maybe some basement rats.”
“How’s your leg?”
“I’ll have a nice scar there to show the dwarflings but it’ll be fine. You?”
“Mostly bruises. Have to regrow some hair as well.”
“Glad to have you along,” Thud said . “You more than earned your share. What’s yer intent?”
The elf was silent for a long while, watching the waves. “South, maybe,” he finally said. “I’ve heard stories of a place there where the entire land is sand, like a giant beach. Great piles of it everywhere. I think that’s something I’d like to see.”
“Well, mebbe we’ll run into ya again someday.”
The elf nodded. “That’s pretty much a given in these sorts of affairs. I’ll try and show up just in the nick of time to save the day.”
Thud nodded. He pulled the last bedraggled cigar out of his vest, gave it a sad look then laid it out on the tortoise belly to dry. He stretched out next to it and closed his eyes, warm sun on his face and the giggle of waves against the shell as they moved through the seas toward the shores.
***
“That’s really how you want it to read?” Ruby asked. “A catapulted parachuting bomb with a dwarf strapped to it?”
“Your journal?” Thud asked. “Got no say in what you write in there but that’s my accountin' o' things, yeh.”
“What I write in there,” Ruby said. “Is going to be the historical record of the events that transpired. I am appealing to your respect for the historical record. I’m going to have to note it as a second-hand account, of course. I wasn’t there to see any of the final battle.”
“A second-hand account from a first-hand accountee?” Thud asked. “Something I learned in me circus days. ‘The Rule of Rockham’s Amazer: The wildest account that fits all the details is the one the bards will find worth repeating.’ What’s already happened can’t be changed so why not remember it as it shoulda been?”
Ruby’s jaw looked capable of cracking nuts. “Because, Thaddeus Waterstone, the tiniest detail regarding something as dangerous as this could be the answer to a future problem. Accuracy underpins the usefulness of historical research. And your philosophy on the matter, not to mention basic physics, leads me to believe your account to be highly suspect.”
“Yer riding on a giant turtle being pushed by mermaids and you’re questioning me plausibility,” Thud said. “T'was as I saw. Ask any o' these other fine dwarves wot was there about what they saw and yer gonna get a similar accountin'.”
Ginny nodded hard enough her beard flapped. “That’s what I saw. Some of it, exceptin' the parts when I couldn’t see over the shield or I wasn’t lookin' on account of the melty faces.”
“I ‘member some of that,” Dadger said. “But there were parts when I wasn’t looking too. Were you looking, Max?”
“Sometimes I was looking at an owl,” Max said.
***
Stilton was gone. Or, not so much gone as ‘enthusiastically rearranged’. The ring-wave from the passing of Gr'bl-Neb'gthrb had rolled across the islands of The Mosaic, scouring some, crashing against the cliffs of others. By the time it had arrived in Stilton it had been reduced to a fifty foot wall of water looking for a final place to go. The harbor had been swept clean of everything save the piling
s that gave the town its name. They stuck up from the water now like whisker stubble, shaving-cream sky smeared above. The rest of the town was in a large untidy pile on the shore.
Laughing Larry limped his way up the long winding cliff path to the keep above. The evening sun baked against the remnants of his captain’s coat. There was enough sweat pouring off of his face to have dampened the parrot. It clung to his shoulder, hunched over, feathers ragged and eyes hollow. It looked like it had seen things. It had just spent an entire week in a rowboat as the honorary recipient of the ‘most likely to become an entree’ award. Larry suspected it was also annoyed that they were at rock-bottom and that things were only going to go up from here.
Raggins shuffled along behind him. His arms hung from his shoulders like noodles.
“This is scarcely an issue,” Larry said, talking to himself as much as to Raggins. “We left good crew here. Not many, but a few. Hand picked, able to watch over things. Have the gold too, hidden away in the keep. Enough for a ship. Enough to rebuild.”
Raggins was silent behind him, perhaps overcome with vision.
“Cap'n?” he finally said. “How many demerits I got left?”
“None at all, my good man! That was some fine rowing and now we’ll have a fresh start.”
“Ah,” Raggins said. “Well, in that case, I quit.” He turned and started up the path to the trade road that ran along the cliffs above.
Larry watched him go in silence.
Fine.
Raggins had no vision. He’d come crawling back soon enough. The parrot seemed to have perked up a little. Larry turned and resumed the climb to his keep.
All was silent when they reached the top. The great door to the courtyard was shut, which was odd, but a ribbon of smoke curled up from behind the walls, about where the kitchen chimneys were. He walked to the door and pushed on it. It was barred from within.
“Ahoy in there, you lice-ridden scallywags!” he shouted. He kicked the door a few times. “I’m back! Open up!”
The Dungeoneers: Blackfog Island Page 27