Rise of the Ragged Clover

by Paul Durham

  Baron Nutfield’s enthusiasm set him off balance, and he toppled backward into the mud. After struggling unsuccessfully to remove himself from the muddy hollow, he resigned himself to his spot and promptly shut his eyes.

  “I’m going to miss the old nutter,” Rye said as they turned back toward the Dead Fish Inn.

  “Me too,” Folly added. “Although he better get on that ship before my father realizes he never settled his bar tab.”

  “Rye! Folly!” Quinn’s voice cried. His boots splattered mud as he leaped down the steps from the Dead Fish Inn.

  “I found it!” he gasped with excitement, his face beaming. He glanced around, then lowered his voice. “I know how to summon the Reckoning.”

  18

  Hogsheads

  Rye, Folly, and Quinn hurried back inside, Folly sticking out her tongue in reply to the twins’ reproachful faces as she rushed past. The three friends gathered around the table in the Mermaid’s Nook.

  “Rye had the right idea,” Quinn said.

  “What idea?” Rye asked.

  “I used your spyglass to see the words more closely.” He held up a small circle of glass between his thumb and forefinger. Rye frowned. The rest of her spyglass lay dismantled in pieces around the table.

  “Sorry,” Quinn said. “I needed the lens.”

  Rye waved him off. “Just show us.”

  Quinn reached into his pocket and carefully placed a small wooden stickman next to the open book—the Strategist’s Sticks, a charm given to him by Harmless. He gave a sheepish shrug.

  “It helps me concentrate,” he said. Then he held the lens over the page titled “The Reckoning,” placing it over the letter T in the heading. “Look.”

  Rye and Folly squinted.

  “That’s a big letter T,” Folly observed.

  “No, look closer. In the ink itself,” Quinn coaxed.

  Rye lowered her head until her eyelash nearly flicked the surface of the lens.

  “There’s a . . . word. In the letter T.”

  “That’s right,” Quinn said.

  The word was so small it looked like a straight stroke of a quill to the naked eye, but now, under the makeshift magnifying glass, the letters within the letter became visible.

  “B . . . l . . . e . . . e . . . d.” Rye looked up from the lens, a sour look on her face. “Bleed?”

  “Yes. Now the next.” He slid the lens over the letter h.

  There were two words in this letter. The ran vertically, and hogsheads arced around the bend in the letter h.

  “The hogsheads,” Rye read aloud.

  Quinn nodded enthusiastically. “You’ve been practicing, Rye. Look, each letter contains more hidden words.”

  He moved the lens along each letter in the chapter title, reading aloud as he did. Putting them all together, they formed a sentence. An instruction.

  Bleed the hogsheads under Ned Cooper’s mill, ’til the river runs with their froth and spill.

  “Brilliant way to hide a message in plain sight, isn’t it?” Quinn said with a smile.

  Rye winced. “I suppose,” she said. “But that’s awful. We have to find a hog’s head and bleed it? I think I’m going to be sick.”

  “No,” Folly said, jumping in with enthusiasm. “I think we’ll find that everything we need is already there.”

  “Where?” Quinn asked.

  “Ned Cooper was a barrel maker,” Folly explained. “His old mill is on a pier at the end of Little Water Street. It’s been closed for years, but under the pier, there’s a mountain of old casks they never removed.”

  Rye looked at her blankly.

  “Casks, barrels . . . hogsheads. They’re all the same thing, Rye.”

  Rye and Quinn looked at each other, putting it together.

  “See?” Folly said. “Sometimes it comes in handy to have a friend who’s a barkeep’s daughter.”

  Quinn insisted that Rye and Folly wait for him to check in with his father before venturing to the old coopery. It was late afternoon by the time he rejoined them. Folly tasked him and Rye with distracting her parents while she gathered supplies. It wasn’t difficult—Quinn peppered Fletcher Flood with questions about the shelf life of his malts and Rye accidently lit a broom on fire while helping Faye sweep one of the fireplaces. So when Folly emerged from the storage room and announced that they’d be conducting some experiments, Faye agreed that it was a wonderful idea, and didn’t even question the heavy sack in Folly’s hand. The three friends hurried upstairs. With the increase in vacancies around the inn, Folly had commandeered a large guestroom as her workshop.

  “Go on in,” Folly said. “I’ll be right there.”

  Rye realized that the concoctions she’d seen brewing in Folly’s room were only a fraction of her friend’s latest projects. She and Quinn looked wide-eyed at the makeshift laboratory, the floor covered with steaming vats and cauldrons connected by glass tubing.

  Rye took particular interest in a swirling mist in a stoppered bottle. She picked it up and eyed it closely, a thin layer of clear liquid bubbling at the bottom.

  “For the sake of the Shale, be careful with that,” Folly said, entering the workshop with a pile of ropes slung over her shoulder. It was the rope ladder Rye and Folly kept stashed under her bed. “If you get it too close to that blue flask over there, the chemical reaction is liable to blow the roof right off the inn.”

  Rye carefully placed the bottle back where she’d found it and took a healthy step away.

  “Are these mushrooms?” Quinn asked, jabbing his finger into a cluster of orange-red fungi growing in a flat tin.

  “It’s called deadly webcap,” Folly said. “And if you eat it your brain will melt inside your skull.”

  Quinn frowned and wiped his hand on his trousers.

  “Listen, you nosy nellies, there’s no time to play right now. Quinn, hold this.” She handed him the heavy sack and unfurled the rope ladder out the window toward the alley below. “If we hurry, we can still make it to Ned Cooper’s and back before dark.”

  “What are these for?” Quinn asked, removing a heavy mallet and wooden tap from the sack.

  “The hogsheads,” Folly said, stringing her Alchemist’s Bone around her neck and climbing into the window frame. “Those barrels aren’t about to drain themselves.”

  The rain had ceased and the late-afternoon sun now reflected crimson off the lingering clouds. Rye noticed that the Slumgullion Too no longer laid anchor at the mouth of the river. It must have set sail with the departing villagers, leaving Little Water Street nearly deserted of foot traffic. The waterway was similarly vacant except for the lonely, ramshackle barge floating silently on the dark current.

  They were headed to the opposite end of the Shambles from the Dead Fish Inn, past Mutineer’s Alley and the stone steps that led up to the village proper. Rye eyed Thorn Quill’s darkened shop warily as they passed by, but it seemed that Thorn Quill must still be at the Keep.

  The old coopery was a sprawling, nondescript warehouse of weathered gray wood, set on an aging pier above the river. It had been converted into a marine supply store, but was shuttered and closed at the moment, there being no mariners in the market for its goods.

  Folly led Rye and Quinn down the steep embankment under the shadows of the pier. The river ran high, lapping at their feet. Barnacles climbed the wooden pylons around them, and the air was stale with wood rot. Stacked on their sides, from the river’s edge all the way to the top of the embankment and the underside of the pier, stretched a mountain of oaken barrels. The bulging staves of the barrels were covered in mold, straining the metal rings that had turned green with corrosion.

  “How long have these been here?” Rye asked, splashing through ankle-deep water to examine them more closely. The bottom row of casks lay half submerged in the brackish river.

  “As long as I can remember,” Folly said. “It would be quite a job to move them. When Ned Cooper closed shop, the new owners couldn’t be bothered. Everyone’s m
ore or less forgotten about them.”

  “But they’re full,” Rye said. She tried to give one a shove. It wouldn’t budge.

  Folly placed her ear against a cask and rapped it with her knuckles. “There’s definitely something in there.”

  “The river’s awfully quiet,” Quinn muttered, his eyes on the slow creep of River Drowning’s black water.

  “So how do we bleed a hogshead?” Rye asked.

  “That’s what the tools are for,” Folly replied with a smile. “Quinn, stop daydreaming and hand me that sack.”

  Quinn frowned and brought it over. Folly removed a mallet and a wooden tap. She ran her hand over the circular end of one barrel until she found the round keystone near its rim. She licked her thumb and cleared off the caked grime. Rye saw a small X cut into the softer wood of the keystone. Folly lined up the tap and gave a hard swing of the mallet. It dented the hole, but didn’t pierce it. Folly set her jaw and swung harder. This time her stroke drove the tap through the keystone, and liquid sputtered and spurted from the seams, trickling down the cask onto the ground.

  “Is it blood?” Rye asked, peering at it.

  “I don’t know,” Folly said. “It doesn’t smell like rum. Or mead. Maybe we should taste it.”

  Rye and Folly both turned to Quinn.

  “Why me?” Quinn asked in alarm.

  “Because you’ll eat anything,” Folly said.

  “No I won’t.”

  “You are the only person I know who likes green licorice,” Rye added.

  “Fine,” Quinn said, stepping forward. He dabbed a pinkie into the flowing trickle and touched it to his tongue. He contorted his face and spat it out quickly.

  “Blood?” Folly asked excitedly.

  “No,” Quinn said. “But it’s strong. Bittersweet. Whatever it is, it’s been in that cask far too long.”

  “Well, it will take forever to drain like this,” Folly said. “Give me a hand, Rye.”

  Rye joined Folly in gripping the tap. They gave it a wiggle and a firm tug, pulling it free. Now the contents of the cask flowed freely out of the new hole.

  “Much better,” Folly said. “Do you suppose one is enough?”

  Rye looked at the mountain of barrels above them. “Tam’s Tome didn’t say. But I’d hate to have to come back and do this again.”

  “We better get started, then,” Folly said. She handed Rye a mallet and tap of her own, then gave another set to Quinn. “Time to use some of those new blacksmith muscles,” she said with a smile.

  Folly and Quinn got to work, Folly tapping another lower barrel while Quinn climbed atop the casks to work on the ones higher in the stack. Rye examined the mallet in her palm and hesitated. She had never been particularly handy with tools. A shadow over her shoulder caught her attention. The broad wings of a large rook fluttered as it settled on top of a broken pylon not far out in the river. It bobbed its head and watched her with its coal-black eyes.

  “Stop looking at me,” she muttered in its direction. “You’re making me self-conscious.”

  Rye crouched in the water, careful not to wet the seat of her leggings, and lined up the tap against the keystone of a lower barrel. She stuck her tongue between her teeth in concentration as she readied the mallet. She swung and it bounced off the edge of the tap, sending it scraping down the side of the barrel but causing no real damage.

  “Give it a good swat,” Folly encouraged. “You’re not going to hurt it.”

  “It’s my thumbs I’m worried about,” Rye said, lining the tap back up against the keystone.

  She gritted her teeth, cocked her arm, and heaved with all her might, as if swinging her cudgel. This time she missed the tap entirely, the head of the mallet cracking right through the circular end of the barrel. The liquid splashed and sprayed out like a fountain.

  “That’s one way to do it,” Quinn said with a chuckle above them. He caught his laugh in his throat as the entire mountain of hogsheads shifted.

  Rye watched as her cask imploded in on itself with a crack of wood, the weight of the stack crushing it. Several tumbling barrels crashed and broke themselves, and Quinn leaped from his perch before they could take him with them. The three friends rushed out from under the pier to avoid being flattened. They watched as the rest of the stack came to an uneasy balance, a third of them now broken and scattered in the shallows, dumping their mysterious contents into the river. Several floated off in the current. The rest of the stack remained precariously piled up the embankment.

  “This won’t take any time at all with your help, Rye,” Folly said.

  “Look at that,” Quinn said pointing to the top of the pier. The solitary rook had been joined by a large flock of companions, much like the one Rye had seen atop the bridge earlier. The black birds took up posts on the pier, hopping about and bobbing their beaks eagerly.

  “What do you suppose they’re so interested in?” Quinn asked.

  “I don’t know,” Rye said. “But let’s finish the job and get out of here before we find out.”

  They returned under the pier and carefully examined the shifted mountain of casks.

  “Maybe if we break the ones right there,” Folly said, her hands on her hips, “the rest will roll right in.”

  But Rye wasn’t looking at the oaken barrels. The friends were no longer alone under the pier. Two unblinking, predatory eyes had cracked the surface of the shallows, followed by the head of an enormous reptile.

  19

  The River Wyvern

  The River Wyvern floated toward them as slowly and quietly as a fallen leaf, yet its length was even greater than that of Captain Dent’s largest longboat. Rye could see the knotty ridges of its back where they protruded from the water like stepping-stones. Trailing an impossible distance behind, the barbs of a sharp crest on its tail wove silently through the water like a sail. The effect was hypnotic, and Rye, Folly, and Quinn stood in awe, paralyzed with fear.

  The spell was broken when the River Wyvern lurched from the water violently, and the three friends scattered backward, scrambling over several fallen casks.

  The beast’s forelegs splashed onto the embankment, and a long whip-like tongue snapped out, just missing Rye’s arm and sticking to a broken barrel. It recoiled its tongue and chomped the wood between jaws large enough to consume her whole. As the Wyvern dragged itself from the water on four scaly legs, Rye saw it was nearly as tall as a horse, its black, dripping body shimmering almost blue in the fading sunlight that snuck through the cracks of the pier. It cocked its head one way, so that one eye faced them, then the other.

  “What’s he doing?” Folly asked.

  “I think he’s . . . measuring us—” Rye began, then gasped and leaped higher up the mountain of barrels as the River Wyvern ambled forward, flicking his tongue. Folly and Quinn did the same without a moment to spare.

  The River Wyvern landed on a lower row of barrels. Several collapsed under the reptile’s weight and Rye could hear its sharp claws grinding against the casks’ metal bindings as it struggled to balance on the uneven surface.

  “Keep climbing,” Quinn called, and they all clambered higher still.

  But the River Wyvern had stabilized itself, and began climbing too. Rye, Folly, and Quinn dropped themselves on their backs at the top of the stack, staring down helplessly at the approaching beast. Rye pressed her feet against the side of a barrel and pushed with her legs.

  “Give me a hand . . . or a foot,” she croaked, straining her thighs.

  Folly and Quinn did the same, rocking the barrel with all their strength. It started to wobble, then it moved and finally rolled under its own weight down the side of the stack until it bounced off the River Wyvern’s nose with a thud. The River Wyvern pinched its eyes tight and shook its head as the barrel landed on the embankment with a crack and split open, spilling its contents into the river.

  “It didn’t like that,” Rye cried. “Do it again.”

  They pushed down another barrel. Then a third. The
River Wyvern snapped at the tumbling projectiles with its teeth. Now others began to plummet down on their own, the delicate balance of the stack shifting. The River Wyvern lashed at the rolling casks with its long tail, the tall serrated crest cutting through the air like a sawblade.

  Rye climbed to her feet and balanced atop the wooden curves underneath her. “It’s working,” she called, then lost her breath and fell hard on her backside as the cask rolled out from under her. Quinn grabbed her by the hand and pulled her up, but they all tottered as their footing shifted and rolled beneath them. The mountain of hogsheads was in motion, steadily rolling down toward the agitated River Wyvern.

  Rye, Folly, and Quinn struggled from one rolling cask to the next, but no sooner did they gain ground than it disappeared beneath them. The River Wyvern crushed barrels in its jaws and swatted them with its tail. Rye lost her footing again and flung her arms around the rim of a cask just as it toppled down toward the waiting mouth of teeth below her. All around her, the entire stack gave way, and she could only pinch her eyes tight as everything, and everyone, slid and tumbled down the embankment and into the River Drowning.

  Rye opened her eyes and found herself floating atop the cask, her arms still clutched around it. She had drifted out from under the pier, the shallow waters that lapped the embankment now littered with broken wooden husks. In the shadow of the pier she could see a monstrous, frenzied thrashing. The River Wyvern splashed and assaulted the barrels that had not already been destroyed, taking out its wrath on its wooden attackers.

  With a final angry slap of its tail, it plunged back into the river and eased out into deeper water as silently as it first had come.

  As darkness settled over the river, Rye heard a rhythmic ping of metal in the distance. She didn’t waste time trying to locate its source, and instead slipped from her perch and hopped through the shallows to dry ground. Folly and Quinn sat damp and haggard on the embankment.