The Two Artefact Discs: Azabar's Icicle Part 1

by Jem I Kelley

  “Good… I’ll be two cabins away… and I’ve got to get back there now. I’ll pop in regularly to check on you. If you need anything, just shout.”

  “What about the court in Haverland,” said Bliss.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll plead that you thought you were just returning stolen Haverland artefacts. Considering all the artefacts ever found have been on Haverland soil the beak’ll go with it. Of course, if Sardohan proves the Dazarian’s have found their own cache of discs, your two’ll have to be returned.

  Bliss rolled her eyes.

  “Returned! I knew I wasn’t destined to be a disc-man. That’s what’ll happen they’ll be returned, you mark my words. Still at least we’ll be home and free.”

  “Exactly,” said Plumbert.

  Aden remembered the caskets. “There’s something else.”

  “What?”

  “The drug, Yeccozin, we told you about.”

  “Yes... ”

  “We think we’ve found some in the hold.”

  Plumbert’s expression became intent.

  “Show me tomorrow, when you’re ‘stretching your legs’.”

  “What about Bran? He’ll be with us too.”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  Chapter 18: The Front Hold

  Next day, Bran escorted them to the front hold.

  The friends stood, looking a bit lost.

  “What do we do?”

  “Stretch yer legs, like the Captain said. Walk around and shake the knots out of them.”

  Aden didn’t feel any knots in his legs. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t straighten his legs in the cabin. He wondered if adults got ‘knots’ a lot and so liked to go on walks. What the heck, he thought and ambled along the alley between cargoes. Bliss joined him.

  The fourth time they passed, Bran, who sat on a consignment of Daz-Ale barrels, spoke.

  “So, what’s all this yer coffin business then?”

  Aden thought the story would come out anyway, with Sardohan involved, so he told the sailor about the artefacts. He didn’t mention the drugs.

  “Shiver me a wooden leg! You got the artefacts with ya?”

  “Plumbert’s got them,” said Aden

  “I wouldn’t mind seeing one. Sounds like you’ve been on a right adventure?”

  “Not half,” said Bliss.

  “If you like that sort ‘o thing you should sign onboard a ship. I’ve had more adventures than you’ve had hot dinners. Shiver me an eye patch if I didn’t even sail with the Buccaneer ‘Long Knife Carter’, when he battled the pirate Black Hand’s ship.”

  Aden thought back to one of the tales Bliss’s granddads had told the friends.

  “I heard that story. Ten years ago wasn’t it?”

  Bran pulled a clay pipe from his pocket and pushed tobacco from a leather pouch on his belt, into the bowl.

  “Aye.”

  “Happened...” Aden screwed his face up, trying to remember.

  “Just off the Dazarian coast.”

  Aden nodded.

  “That’s right. Long knife Carter and his crew were runaway Eastern slaves, though. The tale didn’t mention a westerner.”

  Bran pulled out a flint, and struck sparks into the tobacco from a knife he extracted from his right boot. After a bit of salty cussing, and blowing on embers, a snake of smoke curled up from the pipe and Aden smelt a pungent aroma.

  “Them stories about Long Knife and his crew being Easterners; well, they is true. ‘Ceptin they forgot to mention a young Haverland sailor which Long Knife took pity on and accepted aboard the ‘flying ghost’.”

  Bliss put her thumbs in the waistband of her trousers and puffed out her chest.

  “I wonder why they forgot that bit then.”

  Bran leant forward to cough, before squinting at Bliss.

  “There’s plenty them stories forget. See it depends on who starts a story. Long Knife, bless his soul, were a good skipper to I but he and them Easterners probably thought it sounded a whole lot better to leave out the complicated bit of it being a young Haverland sailor who salvaged half Black Hands cargo. Without me the whole lot would have floated away.”

  Bliss’s face held a look of disbelief, which Bran didn’t appear to notice.

  “Oh I’ve had adventures all right, more than most. Only sort I ain’t experienced, and probably won’t now, is an adventure on another world. But then not many have.”

  “Kurt, Sally,” said Bliss.

  “Aye they’re the famous ones. That Plumbert of yours he dallied in his time too. But nowadays it’s all professional disc-men.”

  “Plumbert?” said Aden.

  Bran nodded gravely and blew a hoop of smoke from his lips.

  “Didn’t you know? He’s a war hero.”

  This revelation caught Aden by surprise and judging from his expression, Bliss too.

  “No-one ever mentioned Plumbert was a hero to me.”

  Bran took a puff on his pipe and kept his face blasé.

  “Happened a long time ago, he keeps quiet about it.”

  “What did he do?”

  “You know the second artefact world found, Arachnie, that there spider-world?”

  “Yes.”

  “Our early relations with the hour-glass clan weren’t exactly what you would call buddy buddy. They launched an attack against the Haverland expedition's base camp on the third day. Plumbert and a squad of soldiers held back the spiders with Kurt whilst reinforcements arrived using the artefact disc. Thanks to them, it wasn't a massacre.”

  Aden stood in shock; as long as he’d known him Plumbert had been the crusty old Police Sergeant who had policed the area of Haverland where the friends lived, catching kids who scrumped apples and making people pick up litter.

  “Wow! He has kept quiet!”

  Bran nodded.

  “Modest like me, Is why you ain’t ‘eard. I never got a chance to go across to a disc-world meeself; shame. I’d have stood shoulder to shoulder with ol’ Plumbert if I’d been there.”

  The door to the hold opened and it was the Sergeant who came in, wearing his blue uniform and helmet; Aden wondered if he ever took them off. Bran greeted Plumbert.

  “Jus’ telling the kids about the little set too you ‘ad with the hour-glass clan, you an’ I aught to get a scribe to write down our adventures: make a killing I reckon.”

  Plumbert fidgeted with the chin-strap of his helmet. Aden thought he looked uncomfortable with the release of the news.

  “From what you’ve told me Bran, I think you’ve been involved in enough adventures for a whole book to yourself.”

  Bran beamed and puffed on his pipe.

  “Too true. Not to be rude, but that spider business ain’t nothing to the things I’ve seen. Have I told you about the goblin mines of South Dazarian?”

  Plumbert came over to the group.

  “No. I’d like to hear it. How about you tell me at dinner?”

  “I can tell you now, Plumbert. I expect the kids would like to hear too.”

  Bliss caught Plumbert’s attention and rolled her eyes.

  “Course they would. Only I’ve just been speaking to Marti Bart. He’s looking for you; wants your advice on what Novogoradian goods he can sell, and where. Apparently, his new business ain’t doing well.”

  Bran blew out a long stream of smoke.

  “That a fact? Well I knows quite a thing or two about trade after all my time onboard merchant vessels. Trouble is the Cap’n said I has to stay with these two.”

  Plumbert winked.

  “I’ll look after them for ten minutes.”

  Bran stood, whacked his pipe against the Daz-ale barrel and tipped his head towards Plumbert.

  “You’re a gent. I won’t be long.”

  “Poor Marti, whoever he is,” said Aden, as Bran left.

  Plumbert lowered his voice.

  “Show me the drugs.”

  The friends took him to the rack with the caskets in. Plumbert lifted one down, rem
oved the leather strap and took off the lid.

  “Yellow powder,” said Plumbert, “it looks just like the ground up bird shell drug you described.”

  He replaced the lid and rebound it.

  “What about the one Bliss broke?” said Aden. “What if someone should notice it’s broken?”

  “Where is it?”

  The caskets were about the size of an adult fist. There were dozens of them. Aden found the damaged one.

  Plumbert examined it.

  “It’s just a small crack. If I shift the strap like this….”

  He refastened the leather so that it covered the hole where the Yeccozin seeped out. He blew away the Yeccozin scattered onto the shelf, and then replaced the casket.

  “There, it’ll be a while before anyone realises it’s damaged.”

  “I just don’t get it,” said Aden as he watched Plumbert. “Couldn’t the smugglers find a better way to hide drugs than this? The customs men are bound to find it.”

  “Sometimes the best way to hide things is to keep them in open view,” said Plumbert. “This Yecozzin isn't such a well known drug to Haverland authorities. My guess is that the smugglers thought the customs men would have seen the stuff, thought it some sort of exotic spice, and let it pass. Faint hope of that though. Our men aren't that stupid.”

  Plumbert stared at the caskets and stroked his beard in thought.

  “Don’t mention this to anyone else. When we reach port we need to see where these drugs are taken.”

  Chapter 19: Marti Bart

  The days that followed were good: Plumbert visited their cabin, they spent time in the front hold with Bran and they stared out the porthole dreaming of home.

  On the third day of being in the hold with Bran, they’d managed a few strolls around the cargo before the first mate collared them for another of his exploits.

  “You know,” he said, “South ‘O Dazarian is the Issyrian marshes. Vast stinky place; got them lizard men too.”

  The friends stopped their walk and exchanged glances of helplessness. Aden wondered what tall tale they’d be told today. He rested back against a consignment of Daz-Ale barrels.

  “Lizard men? We had some of those in prison with us.”

  Bran took out a strip of beef jerky from a pouch and offered it to the friends. They declined. Bran shrugged and tore off a piece with his teeth.

  “South of Issyrian the jungle starts,” he said, between chews. “Ships from Haverland don’t sail down that way much: too little trade and too much trouble.”

  Bliss stifled a yawn.

  “I bet you’ve been down there.”

  Bran flicked a glance at the girl, but Bliss’s expression was innocent.

  “Yes I have been down there. Bin times in me life when I’ve been low on the readies, needed to take what I call a ‘money trip’, that’s a dodgy job. About fifteen years back I joined such a voyage takin’ quality crossbows to a tribe down on the jungle coast. We thought them natives would be a primitive bunch, not ‘aving crossbows and all. So, we tried to con them.

  “Let me tell you, just because they didn’t ‘ave crossbows and went around buck naked didn’t mean they was stupid. In fact they were the craftiest buggers I’ve ever met. The crew and I ended up inside a bamboo cage fer four months until a ransom was paid; thought I was going to be killed, stewed and eaten any moment. Turned out they was vegetarians, but I didn’t know that then.

  Anyhow, they was at war with a tribe which got its advice from some oracle called an Azabar. Mad as hatters that tribe were. If they’d got hold of us, they’d have sucked out me bone marrow as soon as I was done and cooked... .”

  The door to the hold creaked open and a man with a riot of blonde hair slid past it; shoulders as wide as cart and a jaw like a bear-trap, Aden had never seen anyone more fit for a life as a blacksmith. The man shut the door and with a furtive manner looked around the hold. His eyes widened on seeing the three sitting by the Daz-Ale barrels.

  Bran waved a hand.

  “Marti? What yer doing skulking around down here? The hold is off limits to normal passengers?”

  “Ah. I am sorry. I go yes?” said the man with a Northern accent.

  “No. Come on over.”

  The man approached until he loomed over the group; despite his intimidating size Aden’s apprehension faded as he found himself looking into eyes lacking malevolence.

  “I intended to having a look at cargo,” said Marti.

  Bran nodded at the friends.

  “This yer is Marti Bart. He used to be a farmer in Novogorad, but he sold up and become a merchant. Only you ain’t doing too good are yer, Marti?”

  The big man’s mouth turned down at the edges and he gave a shrug.

  “Merchant life not as easy as I thought it would be. I take goods down to Dazarian and only about half sold. I just break even. I am going now to Haverland.”

  “Marti’s asked me what sort of goods from Novogorad would sell well in Dazarian,” said Bran swelling his chest. “I told him he’d be better off going to Haverland, buying some disc-world stuff and trying to flog that somewhere.”

  He turned to Marti Bart. “I expect you was going to have a sniff round see what merchants are taking from Dazarian to Haverland eh, so you can trade both ways?”

  Marti flicked a glance at Aden before nodding at Bran’s question.

  “Yes, yes that is it. Is exactly what I wish to do when I come here. Having a look to see what others trade.”

  “Well you have a sniff round; we won’t say anything will we kids?”

  Aden and Bliss shook their heads whilst continuing to stare at the giant northener.

  “These two been involved with artefacts lately.” said Bran.

  Marti’s eyes opened wide and he regarded the friends with interest.

  “Aden Green and Bliss Todd, yes? Bran he has told me about you and your artefacts. You have been in prison, yes? I know your parents; they will be relieved to hear you are free.”

  Aden’s jaw dropped, he hadn’t expected this.

  “How do you know my parents?”

  Marti lifted one of the Daz-Ale barrels down onto the floor and proceeded to sit on it.

  “I used to sell farm goods to Haverland Embassy in Novogorad. Your mother used to pay me for them. Sometime I sit and take tea with your mother and father before I continue delivery. They will be glad that you are free from Dazarian. They so worried.”

  Aden was stunned; here inside the hold of a ship miles out at sea, he’d just met someone who knew his parents from way up in the icy wastes of Novogorad.

  “They told you they were worried?”

  “It is so. Your mother talk about you often, she is so proud of you; partly she blame herself that you are in prison; blame herself that she did not take you with her to Novogorad.”

  Aden pictured his parents with worried expressions and felt a pang in his chest. He missed them terribly. It wasn’t entirely his parent’s fault that he hadn’t gone with them to Novogorad; He hadn’t wanted to leave his friends in Haverland.

  He dropped his head.

  “And now I can’t visit them because of those monsters near the city.”

  Marti’s voice held sympathy.

  “You have heard about the Bugbears surrounding the Capital?”

  Aden’s nodded miserably. “Plumbert has filled me in on a lot of the details.”

  “Do not worry, the walls, they are strong. Bugbears will never get inside.”

  “Have you seen any?” said Bliss excitedly.

  “Yes indeed.”

  “What are they like?”

  “Hairy and nasty,” said Marti making claws out of his ham size hands and imitating one of the creatures.

  “Wow!”

  “The kids like to hear me tales,” said Bran, “S’pect it’d break the boredom o’ their trip if ya popped into their cabin and told ‘em a few things about life in the North too. They could tell ya about Haverland in exchange.”

&nbs
p; “Yes, we would,” said Bliss excitedly.

  “I will then; I look at cargo now; tomorrow I come to cabin and talk.”

  Marti kept to his promise and told them tales of life in the vast icy north. About the bugbears raiding Novogorad: the large white-furred monsters almost as strong as ogres. The stories entranced Bliss; but, left Aden worried, after all, his parents were there.

  According to Marti, a few months ago, a rampaging army of bugbears pillaged and looted their way to Ice Holm, Novogorad’s main city. ‘They are stronger than strongest man,’ he’d told them, ‘but they argue amongst themselves; they don’t have armour, can’t make or use weapons more, um, nasty, than clubs or poles; and don’t plan attacks well.’

  “That’s why Aden’s parents are safe then?” said Bliss; hanging on Marti’s every word.

  The merchant nodded soberly.

  “The bugbears, they cause terrible damage to farms and villages, but Ice-Holm walls are strong and monsters have no siege engines. The city, she has many supplies too. The bugbears will never get in; they will run out of food in month or two and leave.”

  Aden and Bliss told Marti about Haverland, about the disc-worlds and about the market, they’d worked on. He asked them all sorts of questions about what things sold well and why.

  Aden wondered why someone who’d been by all accounts a good farmer, decided to become a merchant. Marti said he’d been bored.

  Four days later they neared home. Aden watched the approach of Haverland through the porthole: The Grey Hind passed the green Haver hills and teams of rowing boats towed it into the bustling harbour. Each sight released in him a surge of excitement and anticipation. What would the market be like? Would it have changed? How would people treat them after all this time? How would Grimus react, and how much would they have to pay him for the loss of his jewels: how many years would it take to do so? What would happen in the court case brought against them by Sardohan? So many feelings and images swirled around inside Aden’s head.

  Bliss joined Aden at the porthole. After an initial enthusiasm about coming home, she too appeared to grow in anxiety.

  Aden peered at her.