Sebastian and Cornelius exchanged amused glances.
'Well, point taken,' said Cornelius. 'But stories about the good captain are told everywhere. Anything that well known must have some foundation in fact. Why, it is said that his treasure hoard has been looted from the merchant ships of the known world and that it is hidden in some remote spot, where only the bravest dare venture. Now, Nathaniel told me—'
'Hold on a moment!' said Max. 'Who's Nathaniel?'
'The chap in the hospital. The one I got the map from.'
'Ah yes – carry on.'
'He told me that the last time he tried to mount an expedition, he found the island exactly where the map said it would be. He and his men landed in rowing boats and started off into the jungle, heading for the peak of a high mountain. Then . . . something happened and they had to make a run back for the beach.'
'Needed the loo, did they?' asked Max.
'No, it wasn't that! He said there was something waiting for them out there . . . something . . . horrible . . . it was—'
'What?' cried Max impatiently. 'What horrible thing was waiting for them? A monster? A demon? A bowl of lumpy porridge?'
Cornelius sighed. 'I don't know,' he said. 'Nathaniel was just telling me about it when he . . . you know . . . popped off.'
'Popped off?' Max looked back over his shoulder with a puzzled expression. 'What does that mean?'
'He died, you idiot,' hissed Sebastian.
'Oh, I see!' Max snuffled. 'Bit inconvenient, I must say. Popping off before he'd told you exactly what was waiting for you.'
'Yes, well, he didn't have a lot of say in the matter, did he?' growled Cornelius.
'No, but still . . . he could have tried to hang on a bit longer.'
'Max, please shut up!' said Sebastian.
'Oh, well, that's charming,' observed Max. 'I was only trying to make some pleasant conversation.'
'If that's pleasant, I wouldn't like to hear you being unpleasant,' said Sebastian. 'Now please, give it a rest and let me think.'
He lapsed into a moody silence and remained that way for much of the day's journey, only venturing to ask a question when they were reaching the top of a ridge and he noticed that Cornelius was leaning out to look back down the incline.
'What's wrong with you?' Sebastian muttered.
Cornelius frowned. 'Stop for a moment,' he said.
Sebastian did as he was told, reining Max to a halt. Cornelius pulled a battered old spyglass from his belt. He stood up on his seat and extended the device to peer back down the trail. He sat still for several moments, squinting into the eyepiece.
'What are you looking for?' demanded Sebastian irritably.
'Not quite sure,' said Cornelius. 'But I have a sneaking suspicion that— Ah-ha! Just as I thought.'
He handed the spyglass to Sebastian and pointed down the trail. Sebastian got to his feet and lifted the device to his eye.
'What exactly am I supposed to be looking for?'
'Just keep watching,' Cornelius told him.
Sebastian moved the focus of the telescope impatiently back and forth before he picked up a distant cloud of dust. He homed in on it and, after squinting for a while longer, was able to discern a cloaked figure mounted on an equine and riding slowly towards them. At first he was unable to make out much detail, but then he realized that it was a woman.
'It would seem that your shape-shifting friend is not quite finished with us yet,' observed Cornelius.
'Leonora?' Sebastian couldn't help it: at the very mention of her something in his heart seemed to leap in exultation. 'I . . . I wonder what she wants?'
'What do you think she wants?' retorted Cornelius. 'Revenge for her brother, no doubt. Not to mention the treasure.'
'Oh no, I don't think she'd be interested in that. No, it's probably just a coincidence that she's heading this way.'
'Oh dear,' observed Max. 'He has got it bad. Isn't there anything we can do for him, Cornelius?'
'What would you suggest? I'm no magician.' Cornelius looked thoughtful for a moment. 'Perhaps if I waited here behind a rock and cut off Leonora's head as she rode by, that might lift the enchantment.'
'You'll do no such thing!' protested Sebastian. 'She has a lovely head and it will look a lot better left on her shoulders.'
'Yes, but, Sebastian, think about it! If we don't stop her now, she's liable to follow us all the way to the treasure. And who knows what dark arts she might practise on us along the way? I'm afraid of no mortal man or creature . . . but an evil witch like her makes me very nervous indeed.'
'I don't know why you keep calling her that,' protested Sebastian. 'I mean . . . if it wasn't for her, that snake would have eaten the pair of us.'
'Oh yes, she arranged our rescue, I'll grant you that. But only because she suspected we might be of value to her. And once she had a sniff of our reason for making this journey, she and her brother came sneaking like thieves in the night, as you well know.'
'I still think that could have been a misunderstanding.'
'Oh really! And what about when they turned themselves into panthers and tried to kill us? That would be a misunderstanding too, I suppose?'
'Umm . . . well, you see, I've been thinking about that. I believe that when they change into cats, their animal instincts probably get the better of them. They can't actually help themselves.'
'The young master is addled in the head,' observed Max glumly. 'We'd do better to take him to a doctor.'
'There's no doctor who can prescribe a cure for what he's got,' muttered Cornelius. 'Come on, let's get moving before she starts to catch up with us!'
Sebastian found himself wanting to linger so that he could speak to her again; but Cornelius was giving him a certain look and he knew that there was little point in arguing. So he slapped the reins against Max's shaggy flanks and they went on their way and began to descend the ridge into the valley below.
CHAPTER 8
ALL CHANGE
They made camp for the night and kindled a fire. Sebastian and Cornelius dined well on a javralat that the Golmiran had killed, back along the trail. Afterwards they laid out their bedrolls, but the little warrior kept gazing off into the darkness, and after a while he was able to point out the distant twinkle of a campfire.
'There she is,' he muttered. 'Looks like she's gained some ground on us too. An equine travels faster than an old buffalope and a caravan.'
'Oh, don't mind my feelings,' grunted Max, who was browsing the grass a short distance away. 'Talk about me as if I'm not here.'
'It's not a criticism,' said Cornelius. 'I'm just stating a fact.' He stared moodily towards the distant light. 'I could easily go out there, you know. We Golmirans are renowned for our stealth. I could wait till she's asleep, creep up on her with my sword and—'
'Nobody's creeping up on anybody!' Sebastian assured him. 'My goodness, earlier today you were criticizing her for doing the very same thing. Let's just get some sleep.' He made a point of waiting until Cornelius had climbed into his bedroll before following suit. He lay there for a while, thinking about Leonora sleeping only a short distance away, and part of him wanted to go to her, just to look into those beautiful tawny eyes again. Yes, he knew it was madness; he understood that after what he'd done to her brother, she would most likely try to kill him; and yet whatever it was she had planted in his unconscious mind, it had a powerful hold on him. It would not allow him to rest; he could feel it tugging at him, nagging at him like some strange malady.
Finally he managed to shrug off the notion and pulled his blanket tighter around him, because it was cold out here at night. He listened for a while but there was just the sound of the restless wind whistling across the wide stretches of grassland. But the day's journey had tired him, and he finally fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
He woke suddenly with a rising sense of apprehension. He wasn't sure what had woken him, but now that it had, he was strangely anxious and sleep seemed a million miles away.
With a mounting sense of panic, Sebastian realized what must have happened. He struggled out of his bedroll, strapped on his sword and started off in the direction of the distant campfire, walking at first but then breaking into a run, heedless of the noise he was making – he didn't know how much of a start Cornelius had on him.
The twinkling light of the campfire grew rapidly closer but he didn't slow his pace. He kept thinking about what Cornelius had said to him just before they'd settled down for the night. He must have gone to kill Leonora, and Sebastian knew that he could not allow that to happen.
He was still some distance away when he spotted Cornelius, moving stealthily towards a sleeping figure that lay stretched out on the ground beside the low, flickering fire. There was a glitter of steel and Sebastian could see that his friend was holding out his sword. He was close now, so very close. Sebastian redoubled his efforts, pumping his arms and legs desperately, but now Cornelius was stepping up to the bedroll; he was raising his sword high and—
'No!' yelled Sebastian. He flung himself forward, his arms outstretched to grab the little warrior, but he was an instant too late. Cornelius's arm came down in a swift, brutal arc and the blade bit deep into the blankets and cut through to the ground beneath. An instant later Sebastian slammed into him and sent him sprawling to the ground.
They rolled over in the dust. Cornelius came swiftly back to his feet and adopted a fighting stance, his weapon raised to defend himself; and Sebastian couldn't stop himself from drawing his own sword and moving forward to meet him. Suddenly Cornelius realized who it was and lowered his weapon, but Sebastian felt no compulsion to do likewise. A terrible rage was burning in his chest.
'Sebastian, what are you doing?' growled Cornelius, but then had to duck beneath a savage swing from Sebastian's sword that would surely have taken his little head clean off his shoulders. 'What's got into you, man?' he cried. He took a couple of steps back but Sebastian kept coming at him, anger pulsing within him like a living thing.
'You killed her!' he screamed. 'After everything I said, you killed Leonora!'
'I killed nobody,' said Cornelius flatly.
'Yes you did, I saw you! Don't lie to me!' Sebastian ran forward again, his sword ready to strike his friend, and Cornelius gave a tut of irritation. He intercepted the blow with his own blade, flicked the weapon expertly aside, then launched himself upwards in an almost leisurely somersault.
Sebastian saw it coming and tried to step out of the way, but he was too slow. Cornelius's boots connected with his chin and he went down in an ungainly sprawl, dropping his sword. He lay there, stunned, the moonlit plain seesawing crazily around him. He saw Cornelius walk up to the pile of blankets, reach out with his sword and flip them open to reveal another roll of blankets inside the outer ones.
'Not here,' said Cornelius regretfully. 'She must have known what I was planning.'
'Thank goodness,' whispered Sebastian. 'I thought—'
He broke off at the sound of a distant bellow – the sound of a terrified animal.
'Max?' Sebastian whipped round to look back the way he had come, and suddenly he could see everything with startling clarity: the light of his own campfire back there and, a short distance from it, another fire – a much bigger one – blazing up under the night sky.
'Shadlog's beard,' snarled Cornelius. 'The caravan!' He began to sprint back the way he had come and, after a brief hesitation, Sebastian scrambled to his feet, grabbed his sword and followed him. They ran side by side in silence, neither of them wanting to believe what was happening. But they only had to travel a short distance to confirm their worst fears. The caravan was burning. Everything they owned was going up in flames.
When they finally reached the blazing shell, it was too late to save anything. The flames were too powerful, leaping up as though trying to claw at the sky. They found Max wandering agitatedly round the fire, shaking his head and apologizing to anyone who would listen.
'I'm so sorry,' he said. 'It's not my fault. I was having a wonderful dream in which I was eating my way through an entire field of sweet berries, and then I woke up and the caravan was already burning. I couldn't find you two and I had no way of putting it out. I tried weeing on it, but I couldn't produce enough. Oh dear! What's going to happen to us now?' He thought of something. 'Oh no! The barrels of pommers – I was looking forward to those!'
Sebastian couldn't find the words to reply. He stood there watching in disbelief as a large part of his young life was destroyed. It wasn't just the food and supplies they'd brought for the expedition, though that was bad enough. All his father's props and costumes had been in the caravan; his journals, his boxes of souvenirs and mementos from the glory days when he was jester to the king's court. Such treasures had little material value but were irreplaceable.
Cornelius made a sound of disgust and spat onto the earth at his feet. 'Still think so highly of your precious Leonora now?' he growled. Lit by the glow of the fire, his face looked positively diabolical. 'She's been creeping around in the dark again.'
'Just as you were,' snapped Sebastian. 'Only you had cold-blooded murder on your mind. She merely wanted to deprive us of our comfort.'
'Think so? For all she knew we could have been sleeping in there.'
Sebastian sighed and shook his head, realizing that it was pointless to stand there debating the matter. He glanced at Max, who was still pacing anxiously up and down.
'Well, one thing's for certain,' he said. 'For some time now I've been talking about the possibility of making a career change. Looks like I no longer have any choice in the matter.' He took off his jester's hat and threw it into the blaze. The fabric caught fire immediately and went up in a flash of sparks.
The three of them stood there in silence and watched the burning caravan. It went on blazing all through the night.
CHAPTER 9
ON FOOT
When the wooden embers of the caravan were finally reduced to a pile of grey ash and blackened timber, they set about rescuing whatever they could. It was precious little. A few metal tools and knife blades had survived, along with a handful of coins and a couple of stone pots, but everything else had perished. Refusing to be downcast, Cornelius set about making backpacks out of the bedrolls, telling the others that maybe it was all for the best.
'That old caravan was only slowing us up,' he said as he stowed his few remaining belongings in his pack. 'It's better this way: we'll travel faster and we can easily buy more provisions when we get to Ramalat. I'm told that the markets there are the finest in the known world. Luckily the treasure map was here at my breast the whole time. If that had been in the caravan, then we really would have been in trouble. So things aren't as bad as they may seem.'
'You are the eternal optimist,' observed Sebastian. 'If somebody had cut off our legs in the night, you'd say it was all the better for us to walk on our hands.'
'Oh, it's not so bad. What was in that caravan anyway?'
'Well, let me see now. Tools, cooking implements, weapons—'
'That's not what I meant. I'll tell you what was in there – a bunch of old memories, tying you to the past. Now you are free to concentrate on the future.'
Sebastian Darke: Prince of Pirates Page 6