The Hellhound Consortium

by B A Simmons

  “Yes, I know your voice. Your face is older, but voices do not change.”

  “I am glad to know you remember.”

  “Come to our chambers. We invite you out of obligation.”

  “We accept.”

  Rob felt a bit odd walking with the short, blue-black creatures through the castle. Yet, even the guards they passed seemed to take no notice of them. The whole affair must look natural, he concluded, though it didn’t feel as such.

  The Duarve’s living chamber was not what Rob expected. He thought it would have looked more like the Duarve House on Hellhound Isle. Of course, it wasn’t. The chamber was made for humans but was given to the Duarve by the previous baron. It was Poulustus Sahko himself who had petitioned to be ambassador for the Duarves on Aruth.

  “Why you return to Ah-ruth, Geoffrey?” Poulustus asked Morris.

  “I have come to ask for your help,” Morris said, and he took from his tunic the paper upon which was written the Duarvish word he had seen flash across the screen of the tablet.

  “Can you translate this?”

  Poulustus’s black eyes looked at the paper. Its Duarvish expression was impossible to read. The slight flexing of the large nose, the unblinking eyes, and the small lips set around the wide mouth made for an interesting study, but Rob did his best not to stare.

  “It is not Du-arvish.”

  “Are you sure?” Rob asked, bringing him the attention of the unsettling eyes.

  “I am Du-arve. I know my language. This is not my language . . . but, it is like my language.”

  “Can you, perhaps, figure it out?” Rob asked.

  “Why you need know this?” the Duarve asked.

  “We wish to learn,” Morris said.

  “Learn what?”

  Rob answered, “We wish to know about the history of your people.”

  For a moment, Rob thought he saw it smile before saying, “Why then, you not ask me history. I know much history, going back in time until your people come to world.”

  “We know this history,” Morris rebutted. “We are looking for history from . . . before that.”

  “What history before that can be useful to you?”

  “All history is useful,” Rob said. “But to be completely honest with you, we saw that written on a Duarve device. We don’t understand the device, and so we’re hoping you might be able to tell us what those markings mean.”

  “What is de-vice?”

  Rob reached into his tunic and produced a bundle of cloth, inside of which was the tablet. He held it out and Poulustus immediately took hold of it. It examined the device thoroughly, pressed buttons as Doctor Morris had and then gave it back to Rob.

  “You opened it,” it said.

  Morris said, “Yes, we needed to connect it to a power source to see if it would work. That’s how we found that word, before our power was used up.”

  “The word come here?” it said, pointing to the screen.

  “Yes, just long enough for me to write it down.”

  “You think this word tell you history of de-vice?”

  “Do you not?” Morris asked.

  “I know it not.”

  “Then, what is the word?” Rob inquired.

  “First, you tell where you get this.”

  It had come to it—the issue Rob had been hoping to avoid. Yet, what damage could telling him about Hellhound Isle do?

  “We discovered it on a small island to the south of here. We happened there by chance in a storm.”

  “There was more on island?” Poulustus asked.

  “Yes, an entire house built into the ground.”

  “You found Du-arve there?”

  “They had been dead a long time already,” Rob said. “This is the only thing we took from there. And only because we want to know about it.”

  “The word is starvoice, in your Engle talk. It is written in old Duarve language. We only find words like this on Du-arve ruins.”

  “We know the Duarve history on this world extends thousands of years back,” Morris said. “Yet, there is so much we don’t know about it. It would seem there was a Duarve civilization that collapsed before humans ever came to this world.”

  Poulustus looked again at the tablet. “You no more have power to make de-vice work. What if you have more?”

  “What do you mean?” Rob asked. “Do you have electricity?”

  “I do not understand elek-tri-city, but I know of power. Not on Ah-ruth.”

  “Do you mean to say you know where we could get power to make this tablet work again? And we could get more of its information out and translated?”

  “Yes, I say this.”

  “Where?” Morris was giddy.

  “You are honest man, Geoffrey Morris. This I know,” Poulustus looked at Rob. “I do not know you.”

  “Rob is as honest as I am, if not more so.”

  “You say you will never tell other hu-mans about power. Then I tell you.”

  “I swear to you, Poulustus Sahko, on my life,” Rob said, “that I will never tell another soul, human or otherwise.”

  “You are honest,” Poulustus turned to the assistant. It spoke in Duarvish, handing it the staff and then, placing fingertips to fingertips, they hummed.

  The assistant left the chamber and Poulustus again turned his black eyes on Rob and Morris.

  “I work to better my people. I work for them, not for hu-mans. Most of you are not honest. This is why I go with you to Kudo. There, we find power to make de-vice work again.”

  “You know that going to Kudo Isle means traveling by ship,” Morris said. “Are you going to be able to do this?”

  “I can travel between islands. I did before now.”

  “We’ll have to find a ship that will accept you as a passenger,” Rob said.

  “I will arrange this,” the Duarve said, “but I do not know if humans on Kudo will accept me.”

  “There is just a small town called Kudham, on the southern shores. They are allied with Aruth and Fallen Dome, if only nominally,” Morris said. “However, if what I’ve heard about them is true, they won’t like seeing a Duarve in their town. They’re even wary of human strangers.”

  “I can fit in luggage,” Poulustus suggested. “Though, not happily.”

  “I think we can limit how much you’ll need to be stowed away. Though, you’ll need a private cabin,” Rob said.

  “Come back day after this one. I will be ready.”

  Rob left the Duarve’s chamber feeling as excited at the upcoming journey to Kudo as he had been about leaving Engle Isle the first time. He knew that he would not get much sleep again that night, though he hoped for better dreams.

  18 – Max’s Isle

  The Alphina was proving to be a more difficult repair than Jasper Turl was used to. He’d made his living on Engle Isle repairing fishing skiffs and occasionally larger vessels like Isaac Rutherford’s ship. None of these was as large and complex a vessel as the Falcon-built Alphina. Ensuring the sheets and stays were placed correctly became extremely difficult when he was completely unfamiliar with the vessel.

  Pete was not happy about the delay. He wanted to get out again to continue his harassment of Falcon ships. However, there was still one task he needed to accomplish while at Engle Isle. Mark had asked him to check on the Falcon prisoners left on Max’s Isle.

  The immediate problem was that because Max Claythorne had never told anyone about his small getaway island until they had the prisoners, neither Pete nor anyone on Engle Isle knew where it lay. No one except Max, that is. Max was drunk; slightly more this time than was common for him. The cure that Pete had given his mother hadn’t worked. She had successfully administered the contents of the bottle to him in his food, increasing the dosage when the first few had no effect. It seemed only to increase the amount he slept after drinking.

  Pete apologized profusely to Missus Claythorne and in return, received a long and harsh lecture about fulfilling promises.

  Pete loo
ked her in the eyes and said, “I’ll yet fulfill this promise, ma’am.”

  With Charlie’s help, Pete threw Max into the cargo hold of the Old Man to sober up. Bill Turl, the island’s apothecary, provided them with an elixir of his own to help Max deal with the withdrawals. After two days, Max was lucid enough to curse Pete and provide them with the same instructions he’d given Mark and Edwin. Pete was still not satisfied and decided that Max needed to come with them.

  “Is that a wise decision?” Tim asked. “He’s still not completely sober.”

  “He’s been back and forth from this island hundreds of times while drunk. At this point, giving Max some ale would probably help his navigation skills.”

  Trina insisted on coming along with Pete, Tim, and the Old Man’s crew. She seemed to Pete to dislike Engle Isle now that Rob had spurned her, not that anyone dared talk to her about that subject. Everyone, even Pete, was extremely intimidated by her; a fact that Trina knew well and used to her advantage as the boatswain of the Alphina.

  They set sail on the morning of their third day back. The Old Man was a fine ship. Almost as fine, Pete thought, as the Alphina. It was just her age. She moaned and creaked a bit more, and she answered the helm with a little less grace, but otherwise she was yare.

  Despite his many protests about having been forced along, Max stood on the quarterdeck relaying instructions to Pete at the helm. They zig-zagged a bit and Max swore that if they were in his skiff, they’d have been there two hours earlier. However, as the sun reached its zenith in the sky, the small pile of rocks and sand rose and came into view.

  “Let’s make a pass around the island to see if we can spot them,” Pete ordered. “If they see a Falcon-made ship coming, they may come out to signal us.”

  “They’re likely at that copse of trees near the northern shore,” Trina said.

  Pete turned to make their pass counter-clockwise around the island. Freddy, one of their Isle de James recruits, stood at the crow’s nest with a far-see. As they passed the trees, he called out, “I can see a water barrel, but there’s no one in there!”

  “Tim, take the tiller,” Pete ordered and he took his own far-see to the port gunwale. They passed around the north and tacked around the west side of the craggy island. As they came around the southern edge, where a small peninsula jutted out, Tim made the adjustment to move around it. He did not see, nor could he have avoided, the sandbar that had built up just below the surface.

  Without warning, the Old Man came to a lurching halt. Freddy nearly fell from the crow’s nest and everyone else was thrown off their feet. Pete lifted himself up and glared at Tim.

  Max laughed maniacally, “I told you to beware the sandbars!”

  Pete ran to the bow and found Trina had already lowered herself down to knee-deep water.

  “She’s stuck fast, but I don’t see any fractures!” she said.

  “Come back up. We’ll check down in the hold,” Pete replied, then turned to the man Tim had made his boatswain. Logan, he thought his name was. “Get the dinghy ready with hawsers to take us off this bar.”

  “Ay, sir!” Logan saluted. Pete remembered now, he’d served aboard a military vessel employed by the Humphrey household.

  Pete ordered crewmembers on the dinghy to row against the westerly wind and current while a few others tried shoveling the sand away from the prow of the ship. Both efforts seemed futile and after two hours they gave up, exhausted and frustrated.

  “Well, while we’re stuck here we might as well go ashore and find our prisoners,” Trina suggested.

  “Yeah, maybe they can help pull you meechers off this sandbar,” Max chided.

  “Shut it, Max! You’re as much stuck here as we are and we’ve no ale aboard this ship.”

  Max shrugged, “I’ll drink wine in such desperate situations.”

  Pete and Trina led four others, including Max, on an expedition across the small island to the grove of trees while Tim and Logan continued the efforts to free the Old Man from her prison of sand. The expedition made good time over the rocky ground, and in only a few minutes found themselves in the trees, staring at an empty water barrel. There was no sign of any Falcon sailors . . . anywhere.

  “This is not a big island,” Pete said. “How are they not here?”

  “Might they have tried swimming away? Perhaps with a driftwood raft?” Freddy suggested.

  “These trees are the only wood on this island. I’ve never seen more than a few scraps of driftwood here. Not enough for a raft,” Max said.

  “They obviously didn’t cut down any trees. They obviously didn’t fly off the island. The only conclusion is that they were rescued,” Trina said.

  “Max, are there any small caves, any place they could be hiding?” Pete asked.

  “No. I’ve never really searched for any though. I mostly just sit up on some of those rocks and drink. Sometimes I take a nap on that sandy part just there or go fishing off the eastern shore. There’s a good place to catch mullet.”

  “Michael, you and Oliver work your way along the coast to the west and then south. Trina, take Freddy and go around the eastern shore. Max and I’ll look over the interior of the island again. Look for anything that might give us a clue as to where they’ve gone.”

  The party split and Pete soon found himself wishing he’d selected a different partner. He knew it would have been heartless to put Max with one of his new crew, and Trina would likely end up killing him. All Max did was grumble, complain, and follow Pete. No matter how many times Pete told him to spread out and help him look, Max just sneered and looked at the ground where he stepped.

  “This place is barren, Pete. They’ve caught a lift off this place from some passing ship.”

  “What ships would be passing this way? In all the time you’ve spent here, have you ever seen one?”

  Max thought for a moment and said, “Well, no. But if there were a Falcon ship searching for them—”

  “Such a ship would have gone by Engle Isle, and the watchers have reported no ships in the area.”

  “Sure, well, you’d be the expert then.”

  “Max, if you spent half the time you spend drinking on anything else—you’d be an expert in that too.”

  Max stopped, “Why would I want to do that?”

  Pete turned on him, but before he let out the next rebuke, he noticed that Max’s expression had changed. He just stood, staring at the ground between them. They were between two large boulders, where the winter storms blew the sand into soft banks. At first, Pete only noticed his own footprints in the silty sand. Then he noticed grass. Brown grass. It was not the color grass turned in the high summer when deprived of moisture. It was a dark brown tuft, jutting up from the loose sand a couple of fingers high.

  The grass alone was strange enough to make Pete kneel and examine it. It was then he realized that it was not actually grass. It was human hair.

  Carefully, and not without trepidation, Pete began clearing the sand away from the hair. Before long, he uncovered the head to which the hair belonged. Pete turned it to see the face. Max shrank back in horror. The skin was desiccated and shriveled, exposing the teeth and cheekbones. The eyes were missing, allowing them to peer into the dark sockets.

  “Max, get atop that rock and call for the others,” Pete ordered.

  “What in the name of Ayday—”

  “Now, Max!”

  It was the first order Max followed. He half ran, half stumbled his way to the top of the boulder and called out for the others. When they arrived, they saw that Pete had uncovered more of the body and the arm of another.

  “I’m betting they’re all here,” he said.

  “What did this?” Freddy asked.

  “Selkies”

  “Selkies?” Oliver said.

  “Those are real?!” Michael said.

  “Of course they’re real,” Max said. “You didn’t know they were real?”

  “My mother used to tell me about them. I just thought they
were stories to keep us kids from sneaking out at night.”

  “Selkies can do that to a man?” Oliver said.

  “They’re known to crawl into boats in lagoons or when they’re at anchor. They find a sleeping sailor and suck him dry.”

  “They’ll do more than suck blood,” Max said. “I’ve heard they jab a hole in you and eat your innards without removing the skin.”

  “Is that true? That can’t be true.”

  Pete pointed to a small slit at the base of the dead Falcon’s skull. “See for yourself.”

  “How was Max able to come here so often and survive?” Trina asked.

  “How did you not even realize there were selkies here?” Freddy said.

  Max looked sheepishly at the others. “I’m usually three sheets to the wind.”

  “You’ve never stayed here overnight, have you Max?” Pete asked.

  Max seemed to be searching his memory. He shook his head, “No.”

  Pete climbed out of the crevice and joined the others on the boulder.

  “Selkies are nocturnal animals. They’re as big and as strong as a man and can breathe both in and out of the water. They’re stealthy too. Won’t hear them coming, so we have to be alert.”

  He paused and looked down at the bodies again.

  “We’d best get off this damned island before the sun sets,” Trina said.

  The expedition party headed back to their stuck ship seeing imagined selkies in every crevice and crag they passed. Once on board, word of the prisoners’ fate spread like a wildfire in high summer. Murmurs of fear and whisperings of doubt were heard and passed on by nearly all the crew.

  Pete held council with Tim and Trina as the sun hung low over the horizon. Tim expressed his concerns and frustrations.

  “We’ve been trying for hours to free ourselves. Pulling with the dinghy just wears out the rowers and every scoop of sand we shovel out is replaced almost immediately by the waves. I almost suspect we’re setting the prow deeper into the bar.”

  “What can we do that we haven’t already tried?” Trina asked.

  “Nothing, except wait,” Pete said.

  “Wait? Wait for what?”