Gareth and th Lost Island

by Patrick Mallard

  Izzy stepped close to Gareth, and held his hand, intertwining their fingers. “And that Professor, is one of the many reasons why I fancy you,” she whispered in his ear. “That and your adorable rear end. I could watch you walk for hours,” she added playfully.

  Izzy laughed as Gareth tried to look over his shoulder at his own butt. Her heart soared when he faced her again, and there was a hint of a smile on his lips. With an exaggerated motion, Gareth leaned back, and ogled her derriere. The sight of her curves underneath her work pants cheered him up immensely. “Feelings mutual, I assure you,” he told her in a sultry voice. He straightened up, and leaned in to kiss Izzy.

  “Mythical gods above and below, I have terrible timing!” Tralnis swore from behind them.

  “Yes, yes you do!” Izzy agreed wholeheartedly.

  “The Captain wants us to meet her in her ready room to come up with a plan before we interrogate our prisoner,” Tralnis informed them.

  Izzy rested her forehead against Gareth’s. “Raincheck?” she requested softly.

  “Most definitely, my lady,” Gareth replied. He stepped back, and his eyes lost focus again for a moment. When he came back to the here and now, he knew what they should do to get the Scaled One to talk. “Head back and tell Elizabeth to meet us in the galley instead. I have an idea, and we’ll need Henry’s help to pull it off,” he suggested.

  The Scaled One was not in anything remotely like a good mood. Not only had he awoken tied to a chair, but his jaw throbbed in agony after the Dwarf doctor had reset it. The chair was in a large cleared out section of what he assumed was the Leyship’s cargo hold. Hearing the Dwarf mutter about the futility of patching someone up, just so they could beat the hells out of him again lowered the former pirate captain’s mood even more. The door the Scaled One was facing opened and in walked the two demons that would haunt his nightmares. ‘Strike that – three demons’ he thought as the human female with the short red hair followed the other two into the cargo hold. Behind her was an orange furred Chim holding a large black sack, and grinning like the Winter Solstice had come early for him.

  “Captain, I must formally object to what you are planning. As ship’s surgeon, this man is now my patient, and I am bound by my oath as a healer to do no harm,” Tralnis said, reciting the lines they had come up with earlier.

  Elizabeth didn’t respond for almost a minute. Instead, she spent that time staring down the Dwarf who dared to question her orders. “You are dismissed for the next hour or so, Doctor. After that, depending on what the prisoner is willing to tell us, we may have need of you again. That is of course if he lives until then,” she said coldly.

  “Riiiiight,” Tralnis muttered, drawing out the word. He turned, and lightly tapped the Scaled One’s chest. “Sorry Lad, but she scares the living hells out of me. You’re on your own,” he whispered. The Dwarf gave the prisoner one final look over, and then walked out of the cargo hold. With his back to the Scaled One, Tralnis gave Gareth a huge grin and a wink.

  Gareth walked past the prisoner on his way to a table where Henry was setting up shop. At the moment, the Chim was making a show of checking the straps they had recently (and quite hastily) installed on the galley table. Gareth picked up a chair near the table, and sat it down in front of the Scaled One with the back of the chair facing him. The chair was placed just close enough to make the pirate feel uncomfortable as his personal space was invaded. With a nod from Elizabeth, Gareth sat down backwards on the chair, and rested his arms along the top of the chair’s back. “Greetings, my name is Professor Mintel,” he hissed in the Scaled One’s native language.

  The pirate captain was shocked to hear the Sand Tongue come out of the mouth of a human. “What do you want, hairless Chim?” he spat back in the same language, trying to keep up his bravado.

  “I want to give you an option – tell me what I want to know now, or I let my friend over there play with you for a while, and then you’ll tell me what I want to know,” Gareth replied, switching back to Trade.

  Even though it hurt his jaw almost as bad as when it was originally broken, the Scaled One laughed at the threat. “Is that it? Am I supposed to be scared by a hairless Chim threatening to turn me over to his hairy cousin?” he scoffed. “Let me go now, and I’ll make sure you are all sold somewhere other than an Aetherium mine,” he offered.

  Gareth shook his head sadly. “To be fair, and to help you make an informed decision, I should probably tell you a little bit about my friend. Henry is a free Chim born on IRD soil. His parents however were a different story. They were both former slaves who managed to escape from the labor camps on Skirrth,” he said, mentioning the continent where the Scaled Ones came from. “They died early in Henry’s life from the abuse they received at the hands of your kind, but not before telling him every horror story of their time as slaves. Those stories led Henry to acquire a hobby that would be seen as odd at best, and revolting at worst, in polite society,” Gareth informed him.

  “What’s that? Picking lice off of non-Chims?” the Scaled One responded with a sneer.

  Gareth slowly turned his head to look at Henry. When out of the corner of his eye he saw the Scaled One had turned his head to look also, Gareth went on. “Nothing like that, I’m afraid. You see, Henry likes to torture Scaled Ones. I know I should try to discourage him, but there’s a sick sort of beauty watching an artist like him work,” he said.

  Henry heard his cue and started taking items out of the sack, and lay them lovingly on a crate near the table. The first “torture” tool he pulled out was a simple corkscrew with a wooden handle. Holding the handle in his hand with the metal screw sticking out between his fingers, Henry closely examined the tool. With the index finger of his other hand, he touched the pointy tip, and quickly withdrew his hand. He sucked on his injured finger as he laid the corkscrew on the crate.

  The next tool he took out of the bag was a long, two pointed meat fork. Of course the Scaled One had no idea that the meat fork had never been used for anything other than turning meat in a hot oven. With a quick jab, Henry buried the pointy end of the meat fork into the wooden crate next to the corkscrew.

  Henry paused and turned around to look at the Scaled One. Instead of meeting the lizard’s eyes, Henry leaned forward and squinted as if he were appraising the pirate. Nodding his head to himself. Henry turned around, and pulled out a medium sized melon baller out of the sack. He held it up to his mouth, breathed on it, and polished the inside of the scoop with his vest.

  The garlic press Henry pulled out of the sack made the Scaled One cringe as his imagination worked overtime on how those wicked looking tools might be used. The final item Henry pulled out of the sack had the Scaled One’s imagination throwing up its hands in defeat. The Chim was holding what looked like a human skull with metal teeth. When Henry turned the skull to “look” in the pirate’s direction, it began clacking its jaws together slowly.

  “What in the hells is that?!” the frightened pirate begged to know.

  “That old thing? That’s just the enchanted skull of a temple guard that died during the Second Great Apocalypse. We call him Chompers. He said he’s looking forward to seeing how chewy you might be,” Gareth replied. The skull then started opening and shutting its jaw at a furious pace.

  Henry pretended that the skull was pulling him towards the prisoner. He then continued to pretend that he was fighting with the skull, moving his outstretched arms all over the place. The skull stopped clacking its jaw when Henry finally placed it down on the crate. He held up one finger in front of it as if telling a dog to stay.

  Gareth fought hard to keep a smile off of his face. He was amazed at the how close Henry and the skull had become with just a simple system of one clack for “yes” and two for “no”. Gareth schooled his expression, and turned to face the now properly frightened Scaled One. “Like I said, you can either speak with me now, or… Henry can get his play time in, and then you’ll speak with me. You have my word that if you cooperate, I
won’t let Henry near you,” Gareth promised.

  A forked tongue shot out and wet lips that were suddenly very dry. “What do you want to know?” the pirate inquired.

  “Let’s start with what you lot did with the human child who was on board this ship,” Gareth replied.

  “Unlike the rest of your crew, I knew we could get a heavy purse from selling the girl instead of your engineer,” the Scaled One stated. With a quick glance at the human who had ruined his knee and jaw with her hands tied behind her back, he added, “No offense intended.”

  Snapping his fingers, Gareth retrieved the pirate’s attention. “Where is the girl now?” he inquired.

  “The next shipment of slaves out of Chimia isn’t due for another month, so she’ll be at our camp. Considering it’s our headquarters for operations in Chimia, you should probably just write her off as a loss and move on. There’s no way you’ll get out of the camp alive, even if you do manage to figure out a way inside the most heavily defended outpost this side of the Sacred Sands,” the Scaled One said.

  Elizabeth stepped forward and glared at the pirate with her one eye. “And why is that?” she asked, her voice cold enough to flash freeze an entire lake.

  The Scaled One managed a weak smile around the pain of his jaw. “The camp is in a box canyon with only one way in. It’s guarded by sentries with rifles covering the entrance, and three of our dirigibles are moored to the cliff sides above the camp. The sentries will shoot anyone without the proper password, and the airships will decimate any ship other than ours that are foolhardy enough to fly into a blind canyon,” he explained.

  “Where will they be keeping the girl?” Gareth inquired.

  “She’s probably being kept in the high value cages at the rear of the camp. Not that it will help you. There’s no way you are getting into the camp,” the pirate replied.

  Gareth leaned forward, invading the pirate’s personal space even more than he had before. “What’s the password to get into the camp?” he asked simply.

  “I don’t think so. If I give you the password and you all get yourself killed, I’ll starve to death on this horrible excuse for an airship,” the Scaled One stated.

  To change the prisoner’s mind, Gareth silently pointed at Henry. Chompers, having the most fun since he had died, obliged and clacked his jaws loudly.

  “Lizards rule, mammals drool,” the pirate said quickly in fear.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Izzy asked.

  The Scaled One craned its neck to look at her. “It’s not likely that I’m going to lie to you knowing the punishment is being handed over to a psychotic Chim and his possessed skull,” he snapped back.

  Nodding his head, Gareth said, “He’s got a point there. He knows Henry would let loose Chomper on his groin if he lied to us.”

  Elizabeth shuddered in disgust. “Thanks for that visual, Professor,” she said sarcastically. “Can you think of anything else to talk to this bastard about?” she asked Gareth.

  Gareth stood up and slid the chair to the side. “Nope. He’s all yours, Captain,” he stated with a bow.

  Elizabeth stepped up so her scarred face was only a foot from the Scaled One. “Be glad Professor Mintel convinced me to be polite. Had it been my choice, you would still be facing ‘Happy time with Henry’, with me handing him his instruments. As it is, I’m just going to have you thrown off of my ship,” she told him.

  “Wait!! You said you weren’t going to kill me if I told you what you wanted to know!” the Scaled One complained.

  Elizabeth shook her head, and gave him her best evil smile. “The Professor said nothing of the sort. He said he wouldn’t turn you over to our cook if you did what we asked,” she corrected. Elizabeth straightened up, and said, “Sheldon, if you would please.”

  After the Kwa-Kwa-Ur turned a crank mounted on the wall, the Scaled One saw the cargo hold flooded with light from the outside. The sudden chill running down the pirate’s spine had nothing to do with the breeze which blew in from the open cargo ramp behind him. The Kwa-Kwa-Ur grabbed the back of the chair the pirate was tied to, and started dragging it towards the open ramp.

  “Wait, Sheldon!” Izzy called out. The Scaled One swallowed in relief, thinking he had been given a reprieve from the least likely source. “I really don’t think we want to toss one of our chairs off the ship,” she chided him.

  The left eyestalk twisted around to look at Izzy. “It’s not one of ours. We picked it, and a couple others like it, up when we emptied the other ship’s cargo hold,” it explained.

  “Oh… carry on then,” Izzy said cheerfully.

  As they reached the open ramp, the right eyestalk bent over to look the pirate in the face. “Have a nice trip!” it said.

  Not to be let out, the left eyestalk added, “Yeah… see you next fall!” Sheldon grumbled something, and covered his face with his massive palm.

  Using both hands, Sheldon lifted the chair occupied by the terrified pirate over his head. The Scaled One screamed as the Kwa-Kwa-Ur tossed him off the ship. The scream cut off far sooner than the pirate expected when he hit the swamp less than ten feet below the end of the cargo ramp. The force of the impact was enough to smash the chair, giving the Scaled One a chance to free himself. He glared up at the Leyship, and saw the Dwarf doctor standing at the edge of the ramp smiling at him.

  “Unlike you worthless goat molesters, we only kill when we have to,” Tralnis scolded him. The Dwarf stepped aside as Izzy and Gareth led their other prisoners down the cargo ramp. The rest of the pirates were wearing burlap sacks over their heads like the ones they forced Izzy and Pilot to wear. Not wanting a good gag to die just yet, Tralnis gave a low whistle, and said, “Will you look at that. The trees look like tiny little blades of grass from way up here.” The pirates were thoroughly confused, and kept screaming when they hit the ground almost immediately after being tossed from the ramp.

  Izzy stood at the end of the cargo ramp, and admired their handiwork. A bubble burst loudly next to one of the pirates, causing him to scream again. Izzy looked closer at the pool of viscous liquid just a few feet off their starboard side. Another bubble burst, and Izzy started to smile. She had been an engineer for far too long not to recognize the acrid smell of naphtha. Turning to face her friends, she stated cheerfully, “I think I have a way to take care of the other pirate ships.”

  Chapter 22

  Gareth and Henry lay on their stomachs on a large boulder that overlooked the entry into the box canyon where the pirate captain said the camp was. Rain was pouring down and soaking them to the bone. After over an hour of debate in the captain’s ready room, it was decided that two or three people would have a better chance of infiltrating the pirate’s headquarters than a larger group. The crew of the Glorious Dawn were needed onboard to offer air support and a way of leaving quickly once they found Teesh. Tralnis wanted to go on the away team, but Gareth pointed out that there was a good chance one of them would get hurt in the upcoming battle. They needed him in the sickbay. That left only their resident languages expert and cook to break into the pirate’s camp.

  Aside from wishing he was dry, Gareth also wished they had done something worse than just dropping the Scaled One captain off in the middle of a swamp. The pirate had failed to mention a few details when he told them about the stronghold they were trying to break into. Not the least of those omissions was a pair of pirates wearing matching waxed rain cloaks patrolling the jungle about 50 yards from where Gareth and Henry lay.

  Gareth silently motioned with his hand for them to fall back to the other side of the boulder. When they had plenty of stone between them and the patrol, Henry sighed and scratched his head while he thought. Not being able to think of a way of getting past the patrol, he shrugged his furry shoulders in frustration.

  A sudden flash of inspiration hit Gareth, making him perk up instantly. Motioning for his friend to lean in closer, he grinned evilly, and said, “I have a plan, and I think you’re really going to enjoy this.” />
  The pirates stomping through the wet jungle at night were a pair of humans who cursed their luck for accidentally offending one of their Scaled One superiors. They had been assigned a full month of the mind numbingly dull duty of night shift patrol. They were into their third week, and were praying that something would happen to break up the rain soaked monotony. They got their wish when a human wearing a dirty, burgundy colored jacket stepped out from behind a large boulder. He held one hand behind the boulder, while he waved a cheery greeting to them with the other. “Hey boys, look what we got here!” the stranger called out with an accent that clearly marked him as being from the Southern Continent. He yanked his other hand into view, and dragged an angry looking Chim from behind the boulder.

  The Chim snarled, hooted, and gave the pirates a universal rude hand gesture. He pulled hard on the man’s arm, and dragged them both behind the boulder again. The two pirates looked at each other in astonishment, smiled, and ran towards the boulder so they could teach the Chim a thing or two about how to treat his betters.

  Several of the birds who hadn’t turned in for the night flew off after being startled by odd sounds coming from where the pirates had just run to. A loud metallic clang and the sound of something hard striking flesh came from behind the large boulder. They were followed almost instantly by two simultaneous thuds. A few minutes later, two figures wearing waxed cloaks walked out from behind the boulder. The taller one looked down at the other, and said cheerfully, “See, I knew you’d enjoy yourself.” The other cloaked figure just nodded his head enthusiastically.

  The head of the gate guard walked along the parapet of the reinforced wood gate that blocked the narrow entrance into the canyon. He was making sure the two man crew manning the gate were still awake. He swore profusely when he saw the night patrol stagger up the trail in their waxed rain cloaks. The head guard was about to yell at them to get back out where they belonged when he realized one of them was leaning on the other for support. Their staggering looked to be from injuries, rather than the drunkenness he expected. When the night patrol was finally within earshot, the head guard heard one of them call out, “Open the bloody gates! My partner’s hurt!”