The Caldera

by John Flanagan

  The Herons exchanged a quick glance. This was the sort of information they were looking for, and now—thanks to Kloof’s friendly nature—it seemed to have fallen into their laps. The fisherman, intent on his nets, didn’t notice their reaction.

  “Where’s that?” Thorn asked, keeping his tone casual, and the man waved a hand in a general southwest direction.

  “An island called Santorillos,” he replied. “It’s a huge caldera that forms a natural lagoon.”

  “Caldera?” said Lydia. She had never heard the term before.

  The fisherman glanced at her. She was a warrior, he thought. But a real beauty as well.

  “It’s an old volcano that blew up about a hundred years ago. It formed a huge circular lagoon when it did. Some of the walls have collapsed since, but it’s an amazing sight. The island—at least the eastern side of it—clings to the cliff tops, which drop away into the lagoon. The lagoon itself is deep—too deep for an anchor to find bottom. Myrgos has his base on the top of those cliffs. He moors Vulture in against the base of the cliffs and has a lifting device to get him and his men up the sheer drop.”

  “And what’s at the top?” Hal asked, storing all this information away for later use.

  “He has a fortified villa there. A walled compound with his living quarters inside. He has a crew of seventy to eighty men and they live there.”

  “You seem to know a lot about it,” Thorn said.

  The fisherman shrugged. “There’s good fishing in the lagoon. If the fishing’s poor elsewhere, I sometimes sneak in there when they’ve gone raiding.”

  “Do they all go?”

  The fisherman paused, looking curiously at Hal. The young man seemed to want a lot of information about Myrgos and his movements, he thought. Then he shrugged mentally. It was none of his business, and if these tough-looking Skandians managed to give Myrgos a bloody nose at some time in the future, that would be all to the good. He shook his head.

  “The Vulture carries a crew of fifty. The others remain behind, guarding the compound.”

  Hal rubbed his jaw thoughtfully, trying to picture the layout of Santorillos. He realized there was one piece of information missing.

  “So the compound is at the top of the cliffs on the eastern side of the island. What about the western side? That’s not another callidera, is it?”

  “Caldera,” the fisherman corrected him. “No. The land slopes away to the west for about three kilometers to a normal coastline.” He took his fishing knife and traced a quick outline in the damp sand beneath their feet. One side formed a deep curve, obviously the site of the lagoon. He pointed to it.

  “This is the lagoon. The cliffs here are eighty to ninety meters high. Myrgos has his compound here.” He touched the knife to a point beside the deep, curving cliffs. “Then the island slopes away here through cliffs and broken rocky ground to the west. There’s a small village on the western edge of the island, but nothing between them.”

  “Would it be possible to reach the compound from the western side?” Lydia asked, forestalling Hal with the question.

  The fisherman shrugged. “It wouldn’t be easy. The cliffs are steep and the ground is rocky. And of course, guards at the compound would see you coming long before you got to the top. They’d be waiting for you.”

  He studied the three strangers as they all stared intently at the sand map. They were definitely planning something, he thought.

  “There’s another thing,” he said, and they all looked expectantly at him. “The villagers on the west coast know which side their bread is buttered. If they saw you heading inland, they’d most likely raise the alarm and warn the pirates you were coming.”

  “I imagine they could do that with beacon fires and signal rockets,” Hal mused.

  The fisherman leaned back and spread his hands in a conclusive gesture. “It’s a pretty difficult spot,” he said. “On one side you’ve got sheer cliffs eighty meters high. On the other, you’ve got several kilometers through broken ground and more cliffs—with the added fact that if you’re seen, the alarm would be raised.”

  Thorn nodded soberly. “Sounds like the sort of place we should avoid.”

  The fisherman looked at him keenly. “I’d say so,” he said. But he would have been willing to bet that avoiding Santorillos was the last thing these Skandians had on their minds.

  chaptertwenty-five

  The Herons split up that evening as they headed into the town looking for somewhere to eat. Hal reasoned that if eight or nine of them turned up at the same establishment, the chances of getting a table would be slim. The beach was crowded with ships, and the small town buzzed with people. Accordingly, they broke up into two groups.

  Hal, Thorn, Stig, Olaf and Lydia went one way. Ingvar, Stefan and Jesper branched off in a different direction. Ulf, Wulf and Edvin remained on board as a harbor watch. Edvin had replenished his stores that afternoon. His last stop had been the fish market, and now he was baking a large snapper in the coals of a fire on the beach. The fisherman had readily agreed to join them when invited. Edvin had rubbed the fish with olive oil and salt, and stuffed olives and slices of lemon into the cavity. The smell of the fish cooking was mouthwatering. As they left, Thorn looked regretfully at the fire in the sand.

  “Maybe we should eat here,” he said.

  Edvin glanced up at him. “I bought a fish, not a sea monster,” he said. “I’ve seen how much you can eat.”

  Normally, Kloof would have remained with the ship. But Hal felt she’d been cooped up for a long period and let her come with him. She trotted obediently beside him, and the tavern they selected for their meal made no objection to her presence.

  She lay quietly under the table while Hal spread out the sheet of parchment on which he’d reproduced the sketch of Santorillos. They’d chosen a table where there was no one nearby to overhear them.

  “Sounds like the cliffs here are the best way to approach the compound,” he said. “And the odds are that’s where Myrgos is holding young Constantus prisoner.”

  “How will you get up the cliffs?” Thorn asked.

  Lydia made a moue with her lips. “Cliffs can be climbed,” she said. “I’ll climb to the top and let down a rope.”

  “You haven’t seen the cliffs yet,” Olaf pointed out.

  Lydia shook her head dismissively. “I haven’t seen a cliff I couldn’t climb,” she told him.

  He raised an eyebrow at that. “If they were that easy, somebody would have done it before this.”

  Lydia gave him a long, piercing look. “I didn’t say they’d be easy,” she said. “I said I could climb them. And who’s to say someone hasn’t already done so?”

  “I just—” Olaf began.

  But Hal interrupted them. “It’s a moot point anyway,” he said. “Kostas said there was some sort of elevator at the mooring. We’ll use that.” Kostas was the name of the fisherman who’d befriended them.

  He sensed the waiter approaching with their food and hastily folded the chart that he’d drawn. The fewer people who knew of their interest in the caldera at Santorillos, the better.

  The waiter set their food down on the table between them. There were two sizzling shallow iron bowls, set in wooden platters. On each was a generous helping of baby squid, with the bodies separated from the tentacles and sliced into rings, and the two parts grilled on hot iron griddles set over charcoal. The squid was generously seasoned with garlic, lemon juice, red flakes of chili and olive oil. The pieces spat and sizzled on the hot plates.

  A second waiter placed a large bowl of green salad, dressed with a sharp mixture of lemon juice and more olive oil. Olive oil seemed to be an essential ingredient for just about everything in this part of the world, Hal mused. A platter of fresh flatbread loaves rounded out the meal.

  The first waiter returned with a large bowl of raw beef pieces, which he set dow
n for Kloof, who was stretched out on the floor beside Hal’s chair. She wagged her tail gratefully, then rose and leaned forward to sniff the meat. Hal held up an admonishing forefinger.

  “Wait,” he said, and Kloof fixed an anxious gaze on him. Every dog knew that if you didn’t eat beef the moment it was set before you, it had a tendency to escape. “All right,” he said, taking pity on her, and she thrust her snuffling muzzle into the food.

  In the meantime, Lydia had placed a generous portion of the squid and salad onto Hal’s platter, and now he attacked it with vigor.

  “Delicious,” he mumbled, through a mouthful of squid and salad. Then he added “Ow!” as the hot squid burned his incautious tongue.

  “They certainly know how to cook in this part of the world,” Stig agreed. Prior to this, he had always disdained squid as a form of food. But there was no doubt about it. This was delicious. He tore off a chunk of bread and mopped up the oil and juices from his plate before spooning another large portion of squid onto it.

  “The cooking down here in the south is one of the big attractions,” Olaf told them. He’d had dishes similar to this one before, but that didn’t make it any less mouthwatering.

  The table went silent as they fell upon the rest of the food, rivaling Kloof for the speed with which they demolished it. Like Stig, the others finished their meal by tearing off strips of bread and sopping up the oil and juices with it. Thorn eventually thrust himself back and patted both sides of his belly, emitting a loud sigh of pleasure.

  Kloof emptied her bowl of beef scraps and licked it experimentally, the expression on her face showing that she wondered where the food had escaped to. When the waiters cleared the platters away and brought jugs of coffee and pottery mugs, Hal heaved a sigh of contentment.

  “It’s occasions like these,” he said, “that make all the cold, wet nights at sea worthwhile.”

  The others mumbled agreement, helping themselves to the bowl of dessert that had been placed beside the coffeepot. It was a sweet, gelatinous substance, colored pink with rosewater and cut into small squares.

  Hal took a deep sip of coffee, set down the cup and reached inside his jerkin for the chart once more. He laid it out on the table but, before he could unfold it, Thorn placed his hook over the parchment, keeping it shut. His eyes were fixed on the entrance, and Hal twisted in his chair to look in the same direction.

  A momentary silence, followed by a soft buzz of conversation, had run around the room, greeting the entrance of the two newcomers who stood just inside the door, surveying the tables and their occupants.

  Some instinct told Hal that he was seeing Myrgos, the pirate captain, and one of his subordinates. A low muttered comment of “Myrgos” from one of the nearby tables confirmed his guess. The single word contained a mixture of fear and dislike, and Hal glanced curiously at the man who had uttered it. Obviously a seaman, judging by his clothes, the speaker rose hurriedly, tossed a few coins on the table and headed for the rear door of the tavern.

  The man who had entered first, and was obviously the leader, was short in stature—barely a meter sixty in height. But he was barrel-chested and broad shouldered, with a powerful physique to make up for his lack of height. His arms were unnaturally long for his body. His head sat on a thick neck and was surmounted by a mass of unruly gray-black hair that seemed to grow in all directions. It fell over his shoulders and down the back of his neck. The face was broad, with flat cheekbones and a large hooked nose that had obviously been broken, set, then re-broken, several times. His wild beard matched the volume and unruliness of his hair. It grew long and untrimmed, framing a mouth of discolored, misshapen teeth.

  But it was the eyes that were the most striking features. Set under wildly growing eyebrows, they were dark obsidian, almost black, and were wide-open and staring, giving the man a manic, unpredictable look. The man’s gaze darted round the room, settling on the Skandians at their table for a few seconds. Then Myrgos, for Hal had no doubt that this was he, turned and muttered something to his companion.

  This man was a study in contrasts compared with his leader. He was completely bald, his head shaven and gleaming with oil. He was tall and broad in build, towering over this leader, and most of the men in the room. He sported a gold ring in the lobe of his right ear and, as if to compensate for the lack of hair on his head, he affected a long, drooping mustache.

  Both the newcomers were dressed in black leather—sleeveless belted vests over stained white shirts and black leather trousers shoved into knee-high boots of the same material. And both wore long, slightly curved swords in scabbards that were adorned with silver facings and decoration.

  The taller man replied to Myrgos’s comment, nodding his head. Then, at a gesture from the pirate captain, they both started across the room toward the table where the Herons were seated.

  The room was crowded and there wasn’t a lot of space between the tables. But Myrgos and his henchman didn’t deign to thread their way carefully between the benches. They shoved roughly past the seated patrons, causing them to spill food and drink as they came. As one man remonstrated loudly over the wine spilled down his shirt, Myrgos paused and uttered a brief word.

  The man hastily backed away, rising awkwardly from his bench, and the two pirates continued on their way.

  Hal swiveled his chair so that his back was no longer to the approaching pair and his way to stand was clear. The others shifted in their seats, coming a little more upright, their bodies and legs tensed for quick action. Only Olaf wore a sword, but the others all had their saxes, and in a confined space like this, they could be more effective than a long-bladed sword.

  Kloof, sensing the tension in her master and his companions, stopped searching her empty food bowl and sat up, her hackles flaring. She grumbled a low warning growl deep in her chest.

  “Be still,” Hal told her. She looked quickly at him, then back at the two approaching men.

  They stopped a meter away from the seated Skandians—just a little too close for politeness, their proximity issuing an unmistakable threat and a challenge. Hal looked calmly up at the wild-haired man.

  “I’m Myrgos,” the newcomer said, and jerked a thumb at his companion. “This is Demos.”

  “How pleasant that must be for you,” Hal said, not offering his name. He noticed that while Myrgos’s gaze had roamed the table, assessing all its occupants, Demos was staring fixedly at Olaf. Maybe it’s because he’s the only one armed with a sword, Hal thought. But a tiny worm of worry began to eat away at the back of his mind.

  Myrgos scanned the table quickly to see if any of the others were laughing at Hal’s words. They had been said without a hint of sarcasm, merely as a statement of fact. He looked back at Hal.

  He’s been briefed by someone, Hal thought. Usually, on first encounter, strangers assumed that Thorn, the oldest member of the group, was the leader. But Myrgos had singled Hal out immediately. The pirate reached into his leather jerkin and produced a heavy purse, which he dropped on the table. It clinked musically—the unmistakable sound of gold hitting wood.

  “That’s a good-looking dog,” Myrgos said, his voice harsh and grating. “I want to buy her.”

  A low, rumbling growl emanated from Kloof’s massive chest. Her lips peeled back momentarily to reveal her fangs. Hal soothed her with a hand in her mane of hair.

  “Problem with that,” he said evenly. “I don’t want to sell her.”

  He picked up the purse and held it out to Myrgos. The man made no move to retrieve it, so Hal shrugged and let it drop to the floor. All eyes around the tavern followed it, listening greedily to that repeated chink of gold coins—lots of them.

  “I could simply take her from you,” Myrgos said.

  Thorn moved his chair slightly to one side. “You could certainly try,” he replied.

  Myrgos’s eyes darted to him, then his hand dropped to the hilt of his sword.r />
  But Thorn moved with blinding speed. One moment he was seated, the next, he was standing facing Myrgos, a full head taller than him, and his wooden hook had dropped over the pirate’s sword arm at the wrist, twisting sideways to lock the man’s hand in a solid, relentless grip.

  Stig was a heartbeat behind Thorn. Watching them, Olaf was impressed by their speed. His son had his saxe out—the shriing of steel on leather ran around the room. Its razor-sharp point was at Demos’s throat, even as the tall pirate was thinking of reaching for his own sword. The pirate’s eyes widened with surprise and fear. He had barely seen the young Skandian move. They faced each other now, as tall as each other. Demos’s eyes were still startled. Stig’s were calm and confident.

  Demos moved his hand away from his sword, spreading both hands wide in a gesture of submission. Stig withdrew the point of the saxe a few centimeters. Demos looked again at Olaf, a memory stirring somewhere.

  “Who are you?” he said. “I know you.”

  Olaf shook his head. “We’ve never met,” he replied, but Demos seemed unconvinced.

  Throughout all this, Hal hadn’t moved from his seat. Now he rose casually and, placing a hand against Myrgos’s chest, moved him back a pace. He felt a recurrence of that thrill of worry that he’d experienced earlier. Had Demos recognized Olaf as the former commander of the guard? He decided to muddy the waters a little.

  “Well, now you have. Demos, meet Grundig.” He smiled at Myrgos. “Now if you’ll excuse us, we should get back to our ship.”

  “I’ll kill you,” Myrgos said savagely. “I’ll take your dog and I’ll kill you all.”

  Hal studied him for a few seconds. “Not a wise thing to say when my friend is in a position to break your arm,” he said, and as he did so, Thorn twisted and applied more pressure to Myrgos’s trapped wrist and forearm. The small bones in the arm grated together, and Myrgos uttered a low grunt of pain.