Heroes of Time Legends: Murdoch's Choice

by Wayne D. Kramer

  Dippy, second only to Zale in seniority, puffed out his chest and tipped his sea-worn, black tricorn hat. “All the ship’s finest assembled, Captain.”

  “And then some, I see,” Zale replied. “What’s Wigglebelly doing here?”

  Rapid chuckling responded from the other end of the room, from a gut that shook the table because it simply had nowhere else to go. The flushed, round face of Jaxon “Wigglebelly” Harper jolted back and forth, beady eyes glancing over his shipmates. The ring of wispy, white-gold hair encircling his head made him appear electrocuted.

  “C’mon, guys.” Wigglebelly pulled on his yellow suspenders. His zappy voice had the remarkable quality of sounding both light and thick all at once. “I’m the senior-most deckhand.”

  “You just want to know what we’re meeting about,” said Kasper “Beep” Gibbers. Beep stroked the long black and yellow hairs of his chin, a beard so thick that he was rumored to keep daggers stowed within. He was the ship’s boatswain and the appointed deck foreman over matters such as navigation, rigging, sails, ropes, and hull.

  “I’m an able-bodied seaman, man,” Wigglebelly said.

  “A deckhand is not an officer!”

  Wigglebelly’s smile disappeared. “I help all you guys out there. I can cook. I fix stuff, man!”

  “You’re fat, Wigglebelly!” Zale shot back. “And you can stay. Your jollity pleases me.” Wigglebelly chuckled with glee, shifting the table a good three inches. Brash as it may have sounded, Zale’s comment was chummy, making light of his own largeness.

  Zale decided to start with matters of simple procedure. “Is the Queenie readied and provisioned for voyage?”

  “So, we’re not renaming the ship, then?” Beep asked.

  “It’s named for the captain’s cat,” said Dippy.

  “And—forgive me, sir—that cat’s dead, right? Mightn’t that be bad luck?”

  Zale felt a pang of sadness. Queenie had died during their last voyage, not two weeks ago, leaving Lola to the burial. Queenie had lived as posh and happy a life as any cat could hope for.

  “That cat’s better luck dead than half you slack-arsed lickspittles are alive!” Zale shouted. “Now, back on topic. Is the Queenie stocked and ready?”

  “Aye-aye, Captain!” Yancy “Fump” Willigan saluted. Fump was the quartermaster, charged with the ship’s stores of rations and supplies. A blue knit cap concealed his ginger hair, although his well-trimmed beard displayed it handsomely, and sunlight was the bane of his pale skin.

  “Plenty of timber, nails, and sailcloth are all onboard,” Fump said, “and victuals aplenty for a standard voyage. Barrels of drink get loaded in the morning, along with fresh wheels of cheese after Wigglebelly used up our whole supply.”

  Jaxon shifted his girth toward Fump. “You know what cheese soup calls for, man? Cheese!”

  “Yeah, and usually something else! Elsewise it’s just melted cheese. Gummed up my plumbing for days.” Murmurs of agreement filled the room.

  Zale slapped the table. “Stay on target, men! Chim, how’s our armory stash? Are the crossbows and ballista all trimmed out?”

  “Well, I haven’t shot anyone for a real test since back in port,” Rosh “Chim-Chum” Pureblood said, sounding mildly dissatisfied. Chim-Chum was nicknamed after an especially aggressive monkey they had encountered several voyages back. Rosh was Zale’s one-armed master of arms, responsible for all weaponry aboard the Queenie. He had an oddly shaped, generally square head that flummoxed hat makers, glasses upon his nose, and receding sandy-brown hair.

  “But the siege skein is well-torqued,” Chim said, “and the crossbow strings cleaned and oiled. We still have plenty of bolts, spears, and swords aboard from our last load.”

  “How about our crew openings, Dip?” Zale asked.

  “We still lack a physicker, Captain…and a chaplain, if we’re concerned with tradition,” Dippy replied. “Not essential needs, of course, so long as we have no sick or injured bodies.”

  “Or injured souls,” Fump added.

  “If our souls were perfect, would we be in this guild?” said Beep to a rumble of laughter.

  Zale glared at the table. Whatever job they took, timeliness was more important than ever. Zale mentally assessed anything they could do now that might help.

  “Beep, Fump…let’s have the berthing deck amidships cleared of all goods and chattels, and stow all extra supplies in the hold.”

  “Aye, sir, that’s no problem,” Beep said. “Is this to clear the benches?”

  “Yes, Beep…and please ensure the sweeps are in ready position.”

  “Are we…rowing our next voyage?” Fump asked.

  “Expediency’s the word,” Zale said. “If the wind betrays us, we must be ready to man the oars. That way we’ll limit any becalming or tiding over as much as we can manage.”

  “We’re a pretty light crew if we think much rowing will be involved,” Chim said, “and we’ve not had a proper coxswain since losing Axel to the Pilfer.”

  “He’ll get his reward for that treachery,” Zale muttered. “Sailing a few months under that sot of a captain ought to do it.”

  “Sir,” Dippy said, “I might have a notion for some additional crewmates, with your permission. Rowing or not, a few more hands on deck would not harm us.”

  “I’m inclined to agree,” Zale replied. “Make it so.”

  “We could use a navigator for night-watch,” said Beep.

  Zale rubbed at his scratchy chin. “Take Jensen for that.”

  Beep’s mouth fell open. “Jensen, sir? He’s a little green, barely out of his vocational studies…and more a carpenter at that.”

  “Gives the lad a good chance to prove his worth,” Zale said. “Nothing like cutting a man’s sleep to find out what he’s really made of.”

  “Yes, sir,” Beep said.

  Zale leaned back. “Very good, crew. With that business out of the way…I have some news of a potentially…less-than-savory nature.”

  The room fell into the silence of anticipation. Zale’s gruff sigh carried loudly. “Gentlemen…the mastery bar has been raised.”

  Chairs slid and fists pounded the table.

  “Can they do that?” asked Chim, his face suddenly grave.

  “That’s not supposed to happen before the deadline!” exclaimed Beep.

  “That’s harsh, man,” said Wigglebelly. “That’s real harsh. Hey, who can we pay off? There’s always someone to pay off, man.”

  “You pay off the bar, addle-brain,” Beep replied.

  “Huhuhuhuhuhu,” Wigglebelly erupted, looking to his comrades for support, finding none.

  Zale rubbed the bridge of his nose, giving the initial shock time to settle. The one person who was still sitting quietly was Yancy. “What say you, Fump?”

  Fump gave a light shrug. “How high have they raised it?”

  “Over a million,” he said.

  The room again broke into a furious racket.

  “It seems,” Zale said once he could hear his own voice, “that the powers-that-be don’t much relish the idea of granting their top crews quota flexibility and other such perks. Pratt says we should be flattered that we’re still relevant.”

  “If they like us so much,” said Chim, “maybe that could be to our advantage. Every crew in this guild knows enough about certain sanctioned cargo runs to stir hostilities abroad. I’m sure our good leaders would hate to have to answer for some of the jobs they’ve ordered.”

  “Aye, that’s fair enough,” Dippy said. “Still, I think we’d be wise to avoid a bout with the officials.”

  Zale liked Chim’s thought process. True enough, many jobs over the years had been ordered by kingdom officials that involved less-than-friendly negotiations with other lands, if not outright theft. He agreed with Dippy, however, that tussling directly with kingdom officials would not bode well for them.

  “An opportunity has presented itself,” Zale said. “Dippy and I met a man at The Wench’s Tavern, claim
ing to be within the inner circle of Brumm nobility.”

  Chim gave a low whistle. “That’s no easy journey. At least one mountain pass, if not two, depending on which way you go.”

  “Oh, man.” Wigglebelly shifted his girth and rubbed his hands together. “He must want something really expensive.”

  “He seeks an artifact known as the Grimstone,” Zale said, “allegedly some piece of the celestial object that fell to Eliorin long ago and brought about the Shadow Age.”

  “The Shadow Age?” Beep asked. “Is this guy for real?”

  “I was there,” Dippy said. “This guy was real. Set the bloody table on fire with his hands.”

  “Not just fire,” Zale added. “It flickered purple, and instead of heat came a completely unnatural chill.”

  “Sounds like a magician,” said Chim.

  “Maybe some kind of illusion,” said Beep.

  “The man knew of the raised bar,” Zale said. “In fact, he’s the one who told us about it. He promised that the pay from this job would more than cover the new goal.”

  The room fell into a contemplative stillness.

  “It seems a little too convenient,” Fump finally said. “Too good to be true.”

  There were a few nods of assent around the table.

  “I agree,” said Chim. “It’s your call, Captain…but to speak of the Shadow Age…and a parlor trick that was probably some kind of flamethyst…and then he just happens to offer what we’ll need to pass the goal…. I can’t help feeling a little skeptical.”

  “That wasn’t flamethyst,” Dippy muttered.

  “There’s another interesting development,” Zale said. “This gentleman also managed to approach ol’ Puffypants.”

  “Seadread,” Dippy added under his breath.

  “Maybe he’s trying to play the field,” said Fump. “Stir us to action by mentioning our biggest rival.”

  “I got the distinct impression that he came to Warvonia seeking the best,” Zale said. “And he found them: Seadread and us.”

  “If Seadread goes for it,” Chim said, “he could beat us to the goal with this one job.”

  “Or,” Beep said, “the guy’s throwing both of us on a bootless errand. Think about it. They’ve raised the bar. The officials clearly don’t want us to earn quota exemption. Instead of just blatantly doing away with the goal, they just sidetrack us with a bogus job—make us flap our rudder aimlessly until the deadline passes and they raise the bar even higher, perhaps this time so high that no one could reach it.”

  “And if it’s not a misdirection?” Dippy asked. “Even aside from the goal, it could bring us more boodle than we’ve ever hauled in a single charge.”

  “Everyone know,” Zale said, “that I don’t consider this mission lightly. Aside from the uncertainty, it could be dangerous. It might even tangle us up with Gukhan.”

  “Aye, Captain,” said Dippy, “but such a large bounty should be expected to carry some risk.”

  “I think you’re all forgetting something,” said Beep. “This is supposedly an object of the Shadow Age, and the Shadow Age is just a fable!”

  “How can you be so sure?” Chim asked.

  “Because I outgrew the children’s stories about grimkins and umbramancers.”

  Wigglebelly’s smile disappeared. “Some say that stuff ’s true, man.”

  Beep groaned. “Why is Jaxon here again?”

  “It’s a risky proposition.” Zale projected his voice before the conversation veered further off track. “Do we have any other prospects?”

  “Well, it could be a long-shot,” Fump said, “but we might have first dibs to bring in a shipment of verdantium from Korangar. Tourism trade loves the stuff.”

  “Hey, that’s promising,” Chim said.

  “Just one shipment of green moonstone isn’t going to get us to over a million lyra,” Dippy said.

  “No, but it’s such a short voyage, we should have enough time to pick up something else,” Chim said.

  Fump nodded. “Which brings me to job number two….”

  Zale stared at Fump, impressed, finally feeling a glimmer of hope that they might have a real opportunity to sink their teeth into.

  “It’s a chancier run to Akkadia,” Fump said. “The university down in Miskunn’s after a cosmic mineral called heptalatticite for research, and they’ll pay big for it. Apparently the grimkins haven’t been willing to negotiate fairly and need some motivation. It’d be a small shipment. Even against the winds, we might get back faster than usual.”

  Zale rubbed feverishly at his stubbly beard. “This does seem promising, Fump.”

  The Korangarian capital of Vartu was only about a week’s sail north of Warvonia, where they could retrieve the shipment and hurry back. Akkadia was a bit farther, across open waters to the east, but still doable. The feather-covered, beak-mouthed grimkins could be a sketchy bunch, but Zale’s crew had dealt with their kind a few times over the years.

  These jobs brought a certain comfort to Zale—a familiarity. He could imagine the cargo. He could trace their course in his mind’s eye. Their outcome seemed inevitable. He saw none of that with the Grimstone job.

  “What if the grimkins won’t cooperate?” Beep asked.

  “Those lightweight, flightless wonders are of little concern,” Dippy said.

  “Chances are they’d think twice before getting the Tuscawnese officials too upset,” Fump said. “If not, we’ll intervene— make those grimkins squawk like egg-laying hens until a favorable arrangement is struck.”

  “The grimkins can be a stubborn lot,” said Beep.

  “Aye,” Zale agreed. “There’ll be no time for shenanigans.”

  “Sounds perfect to me,” Chim said. “Let Seadread chase the wind while we hurtle past the goal with real loads.”

  “Well, that settles it then, right?” Beep asked.

  Dippy looked at Zale. “What do you say, Cap?”

  Zale placed both hands upon the table with an air of finality. “To you, Fump Willigan, I say stow an extra ration of ale for yourself, and draw up the papers. We’ve got ourselves two jobs to the goal, men!”

  CHAPTER 3

  CHANCE MEETINGS

  7/22/3203

  Zale’s mind raced that night as he lay in bed, trying in vain to sleep. The clock in his bedroom had long passed the twenty-seventh hour, working its way steadily beyond midnight. Before he knew it, the third hour of morning was upon him.

  He sat up with a grunt. The bed squeaked in protest as he gave himself a light spring and stood. Looking back, he was relieved to see that he hadn’t woken Lola. He grabbed a robe and tied it over his shirtless gut, and stepped into a pair of padded slippers.

  Throwing open a sliding door, he made his way out to their balcony, where spread before him was a gorgeous view of Warvonia below and the sea in the east. Eliorin’s planetary rings cast a bright band in the sky, reflecting across the water and beyond the horizon. The moon shared the sky as a fading crescent, a meager showing in comparison.

  Many a wayfarer had postulated how much more complex navigating the ocean would be without these rings as a guide. Such people, of course, were simpletons to Zale. To these comments, he’d often point out: “If the rings weren’t there, the stars would be much brighter, and we’d learn to guide ourselves with them instead.”

  In fact several stars were still visible despite the rings, on clear enough nights. Enough stars to still pinpoint the cardinal directions, if one knew where and when to look.

  But tonight Zale’s mind was on much more than the rings, moon, and stars.

  He knew seeking the Grimstone could be a fool’s errand. Clearly his crew thought as much. Yet, he was unsettled. Had that man Vidimir truly come from the nobility class of Brumm? If so, and it was the Palace that sought this artifact, Zale and his crew might have been remiss to brush it off so quickly. Even worse, if Seadread’s crew took the job and managed to succeed, it would reflect all the more poorly on Zale.

 
He needed some kind of verification. On the morrow his crew would be at work readying the Queenie for their short stint to Korangar. Zale, he decided, would be elsewhere, visiting one of his most trusted sources for obscure information, past and present.

  It was time to see trusty old Tomescrubber.

  Jira “Tomescrubber” Dunkeld was a spry, hunchbacked old gaffer with a thick thatch of white hair and more spring in his step than a marsupial. His shack was just beyond the westernmost fringes of Warvonia, at the edge of a dense forest full of corkscrew willows and curly-trunked, blue-leafed oaks, like wooden serpents emerged from the ground and frozen in time.

  Arriving there took Zale all of three hours upon the back of his sturdy and stout pony named Rudy. Zale was naturally an early riser on even restful nights, often up with the first hint of sunlight creeping over the skyline, if not before. All he’d needed was a stein of black coffee, and by the fifth hour he was saddled up and on his way.

  After three hard knocks the door swung open. The squat old man peered up at him, eyes widening with recognition. “Zale!” he laughed, giving his hand a hearty shake. “Things slowed down on the mercantile front?”

  “Anything but,” Zale said. “I have a bit of a quandary, Tomescrubber. I’m hoping you might know something about a certain artifact…something of an ethereal nature.”

  “Oh?” Jira hopped aside. “Come in, come in. Have a seat.”

  Jira shut the door and scooted his way toward another room.

  “How about some tea, huh? Or a glass of wine? Ruca Merlot—some of Sharm’s finest!”

  “Tea would be perfect, thanks.”

  Zale sat on a bentwood chair, sinking into its cushion. He gazed around the eccentric hut, enticed by the variety of scattered sundries throughout—half-melted candles upon tables, vials, bowls, chunks of rocks and gems, dried herbs hanging overhead.

  Most of all his eyes scanned the shelves packed with dozens of old books. Old Tomescrubber had once been a student of Miskunn Vocational University under the most unusual discipline of historical arcana. Over the years he rose to the station of professor, and during that time he had been a keeper of annals, chronicles, and archived writings of the most esoteric sort. None of these he was allowed to keep for himself, of course, but he studied them voraciously. The volumes in this room were Tomescrubber’s own personal notes—cherry-picked minutiae that he considered most relevant, most fascinating, most mysterious, and generally most worthy of further study.