A Company of Heroes Book Four: The Scientist (15 page)

With an exasperated curse, Rykkla removed her shoes, wrapped them in her shirt and tossed the bundle down onto the beach, where it landed with a thump at the feet of one of the men, who jumped convulsively at the unexpected sound. Turning back toward the cliffedge and without even another moment’s hesitation, she dived with not a little grace into the waves thirty feet below. She surfaced, tossed her hair from her face, got her bearings and struck out for the receding boat.

Rykkla was a strong if not very skillful swimmer and she pulled with her powerful acrobat’s arms, quickly closing the gap that separated her from the fleeing longboat, her annoyance increasing in inverse proportion.

When she reached the rear of the longboat, the figure in it clambered clumsily to meet her, smacking painfully at Rykkla’s fingers as she grasped the transom.

“Damn it!” cried Rykkla, rocking the boat so violently that the figure in it stumbled and fell over a seat and onto the deck. Rykkla immediately flung one long leg over the transom and pulled herself into the boat. She instantly turned toward the stranger, who was only just then sitting up.

“What the bloody hell do you . . . “ began Rykkla, but found the remainder of both the sentence and her anger forgotten as the stranger pulled herself erect.
Musrum’s great protruding umbilicus!
she thought, amazed in spite of herself.
It’s just a kid!
A girl kid, in fact, perhaps fourteen or fifteen years old, with matted hair hanging in dark brown tangles to her waist, thin face with sunken cheeks and enormous, coffee-colored eyes; skinny arms and legs that looked even longer for their thinness.
The poor thing looks like she hasn’t eaten in a month,
was Rykkla’s first thought. The girl was dressed in only a few scraps of tattered cloth and odorous goatskin.

“Hello, there,” Rykkla greeted the stranger girl, but received only a sullen glare in reply.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“In any direction away from that island.”

“I don’t blame you much for that, but why didn’t you just ask for help? Those men aren’t going to be very happy with you, you’ll’ve put them to a lot of bother.”

“I’m sorry, I thought that they might be some of Roelt’s men.”

“Roelt? Payne Roelt?
The
Payne Roelt?”

“There’s not more than the one, I hope?”

“Not that I know of.”

“You haven’t got anything to do with him, do you?” the girl asked warily.

“Musrum forbid. In any case, I couldn’t even if I wanted to since he’s been dead for these last couple of years.”

“Dead? Payne Roelt’s dead?”

“As a mackerel.”

“What about Prince Ferenc, and General Praxx? Are they dead, too?”

“The general is, I’m pretty sure, but the prince has been locked up in a madhouse for a long time.”

“I guess that’s good enough.”

“Look, none of those men back there will do you any harm; what do you say we turn about and pick them up?”

“I suppose so.”

“Then we can all go back to the ship and sort out our stories.” Rykkla looked at the ribs protruding from the girl’s flanks and added: “There’s plenty to eat on board, too, and clean clothes.”

“All right.”

“My name is Rykkla, Rykkla Woxen.”

“My name is Tholance.”

Rykkla took over the oars and after only a few minutes was being pulled onto the beach by a dozen angry pirates who were more than a little disconcerted to see that they had nearly been marooned by a skinny little girl. As she reclaimed her shirt and shoes, Rykkla explained that Tholance had been a castaway trying to escape her prison. This did little to soothe the men, but their grumbling soon abated even if their surly scowls did not.

“What the hell?” growled Basseliniden when he saw the stranger being helped aboard the
Amber Princess.
“What is this? a pirate ship or a girl’s school?”

“She was a castaway,” replied Rykkla. “She was abandoned there by Payne Roelt.”

“Payne Roelt?
The
Payne Roelt?”

“That’s just what I asked. How many Payne Roelt’s can there be who’d abandon a twelve-year-old girl on a desert island?”

“Not more than the one, I hope.” The captain looked the scrawny waif up and down with a critical expression. “Not awfully prepossessing. Have to get some decent food in her and some decent clothes on her, of course. Well, young lady, I’m Captain Basseliniden . . . ”

“My name is Tholance.”

“Well, welcome aboard the
Amber Princess
, Miss Tholance. Go along with Miss Woxen here and she’ll take care of you. Once you’re settled, we’ll have a talk and decide what’s to be done with you.”

Rykkla took the girl to the galley, thinking that Tholance was more in need of food and drink than clothing. For several minutes she watched the girl absorbing food as efficiently and rapidly as a sponge, the silence broken only by smackings and suckings almost machine--like in their regularity.

“Is Tholance,” Rykkla asked, “your first name or last?”

“First. My last name is Milnikov.”

“Milnikov? Milnikov . . . Why does that sound so familiar?”

“My father is Baron Milnikov.”

The girl had put down the biscuit upon which she had been chewing and looked up at Rykkla with her great, wet, brown eyes. Rykkla thought a little unkindly that Tholance looked like one of the maudlin pictures painted on velvet and sold on street corners. “Maybe I should have said ‘was,’“ continued the girl. “I know that if my father was alive, he’d have rescued me long before now.”

“You’re right, Tholance; I’m sorry, but the baron is dead.”

“Did Payne Roelt kill him?”

“I really don’t know,” Rykkla answered, horribly embarrassed and uncomfortable. “I’m sure that he had something to do with it. I don’t know if this will mean anything to you or not, but Princess Bronwyn had your father’s remains buried in the Great Temple in Blavek.”

“Father would have thought that pretty funny. It must really annoy the Church to have him there.”

“I hope so. Tell me, Tholance: how long were you shipwrecked on the island?”

“I wasn’t shipwrecked. I was marooned.”

“Marooned? You mean someone deliberately left you there?”

“Yes. Payne Roelt kidnapped me in order to get a hold on my father. He must have died before he told anyone where I was.”

“The princess will be delighted to meet you. She loved your father very much.”

“Do you know Princess Bronwyn?”

“Yes, I know her as well as anyone, I suppose. We’re pretty good friends.”

“But you’re a pirate!”

“No, not really. Captain Basseliniden, the man you just met, he’s the pirate. This is his ship. I first met him a long time ago. In fact, I met him through the princess. He was in just the right place and at just the right time to rescue me and two friends of mine from the Baudad Alcatote.”

“The Baudad of Spondula?”

“The same. We were escaping from his harem.”

“Sounds like one of my father’s stories!”

“I suppose it does, at that. I’ll have to tell you all of the details later, maybe after you’ve met my fellow escapees, Thursby and Gravelinghe.”

“You’ve read my father’s stories?”

“Who hasn’t? I’ve even found some in the crew’s quarters on this ship! Practically falling apart they’ve been read so much.”

The girl beamed and her smile was so radiant, so all-consuming that dirt and grime and dejectedness sloughed away from her like a snake’s skin. Rykkla realized, with something like surprise, that beneath the greasy, matted hair and in spite of the cracked lips and calloused feet, in spite of the bones protruding beneath undernourished flesh, in spite of the stiff, ragged, malodorous goatskins, there was a delicately pretty, almost elfin young lady.

“Say,” suggested Rykkla, “why don’t we clean up a little before you make your début? I’m sure that I can find something more appropriate for you to wear, too. You’ll feel a lot better.”
Too say nothing of improving your smell
,
she added to herself.

“That sounds wonderful!”

“As soon as you’re done eating, then.”

Which was not as soon as Rykkla expected, since the girl’s skinny body was deceptively insatiable. She methodically disposed of more food than Rykkla could have consumed in a week before she finally declared herself satisfied. Rykkla ordered the cook to clear away what little débris remained and to bring soap and a bucket of hot water.

The goatskins and the tattered, unidentifiable bits of her original clothing peeled away like the skin of a scalded tomato. Rykkla was appalled at the emaciated figure that was revealed.
(Where did all of that food go?)
Ribs, elbows, knees and hips protruded through skin that seemed as precariously thin as the fragile membrane of a balloon. She was certain that she could discern the girl’s spine between promising breasts as round and cheery as egg yolks. Tholance looked like a doll made of string and beads.

Although the process must have been painful, Tholance made no protest at the vigorous scrubbing with cloth, brush and sponge to which Rykkla subjected her. When the process was completed, and after the cook had provided half a dozen additional pails of steaming water, Rykkla critically examined her handiwork. She had been right, she concluded, in her original estimation that deep within the unfortunate creature was in fact a young girl of blossoming beauty. With a little more nourishment, Tholance would be as fine-boned, graceful and translucent as a blown glass figurine. Her round face was dominated by eyes as large, shimmering and golden as a pair of crème caramels. Her complexion, still red and raw-looking from its scrubbing, held promise to be as fine-textured and cool as rose quartz. Her hair dried to a cloud of chocolate fluff that fell in weightless billows to her waist.

“My goodness,” exclaimed Rykkla, “you’re certainly a very pretty young lady!”

“Thank you very much!” Tholance blushed charmingly. “Papa always said that I favored my mother.”

“There are clothes for you,” she indicated a pile of garments. “As soon as you’re dressed, we’ll get on with the introductions.”

Thursby and Gravelinghe, as Rykkla had suspected, were immediately taken with the newcomer and cooed over the child nauseatingly, even the giantess, much to Rykkla’s infinite surprise. For her part, Tholance took to the two women as though they were newly-reunited sisters. She interrogated them mercilessly about their life in the Baudad’s harem and about the countries they had originally come from. It was not until Rykkla noticed that Tholance had procured paper and pencil from the captain and was busily taking notes while the others talked, that she realized that the girl was, indeed, her father’s daughter.

Basseliniden, as Rykkla had suspected and expected, was not the least bit happy about his new passenger. The addition of three grown women to his crew had been difficult enough to deal with, now he was burdened with a veritable child, however adorable it may appear in its oversized sailor’s costume. That his men, rough, uncouth and illiterate though they may be, had adopted Tholance as a kind of mascot and acted toward her like a congress of maiden aunts only made matters worse. To see a burly sea-thug mash a thumb in a block and only murmur “Gosh darn it all, that sure hurt somethin’ fierce!” through clenched teeth, or to see Tuna Nose or Google Eye playing jacks or cooingly offering the girl handmade dolls sickened him.

But what could he do?

The
Amber Princess
was standing a few miles off the eastern shore of Tamlaght, just south of the entrance to Sommer Bay. There had not been much action for several weeks, and the crew, bored, restless and greedy, had become increasingly unhappy that Bassiliniden had, according to their lights, allowed too many likely prospects to slip away unmolested.

Rykkla and the captain were on the poop. The weather was fine, even if the wind was little more than a faint breeze, and they had only just finished their breakfast. The air, barely moving at dawn, was still and the heavy stagnation was only relieved by the draft from the courses as they flapped with the heave of the ship. The sky overhead and around was a yellowish grey with the blue rising of land to the westward, its detail hidden behind an impalpable haze. Moving across the sky, from east to west, were light, feathery, cirrus clouds. The captain pointed out the dark ruffles in the water caused by fitful puffs of breeze.

“There’s a typhoon coming, I’m afraid,” he observed.

Rykkla looked forward, not really aware of any particular reason, though some distant, intruding sound may have penetrated her unconscious, and saw one of the sailors, a grossly fat man with beetling brows whom she knew as Waterweed, in the weather main rigging shouting angrily to someone out of sight on the main deck beneath him. Meanwhile, the two bosuns came rushing up the poop-steps, along with Tholance and Thursby, looking behind them as they hurried. Both bosuns carried belaying pins and the girls were picking food from their hair and clothing. As though anticipating the coming trouble, diagnosed from the forward cabin door, the third mate appeared at the after-companion bearing three double-barrelled shotguns and three belts of cartridges while the carpenter, with bleeding nose, followed the bosuns and cook up the steps. The captain, the first mate and Rykkla, whose heart had begun pounding even though she had no idea what was going on, silently buckled on the belts that the carpenter handed to them. Taking a gun apiece, and mounting the house, they went forward to the monkey-rail, where they joined the three fugitives.

“Devil of a gang, sir,” said one of the bosuns. “Don’t know what to do with ‘em.”

“They wouldn’t eat their breakfast,” explained Tholance. “They threw their hash at me.”

The carpenter, busy with his ruined nose, made no comment.

Captain Basseliniden, Rykkla and the officers looked over the monkey-rail, upon which they nonchalantly rested their weapons, with the muzzles slightly and significantly depressed. Rykkla realized that she had not until that moment closely examined the crew. Clustered near the main hatch and looking aft curiously were the men who had been working forward, an unkempt and seedy muster of life’s failures, the material from which most pirate bands are developed. Directly beneath and looking up at the guns, the sight of which momentarily gave them pause, were more than a dozen scowling thugs in all stages of disarray. A few wore greasy caps or slouch hats while the rest were bareheaded. Here and there a tightly buttoned canvas jacket masked a hiatus beneath. One man, dressed in a complete suit of washed-out oil-skins, shivered palpably, though not in fear, as was made evident by his grey-tinged red hair, his great hooked nose, bushy, arched eyebrows and the threatening pose of his massive body, which was bent back and to the right with an iron belaying-pin extended at arm’s length. Two men were in their stocking feet; one was without even stockings, and three others owned but a boot apiece, not one a mate for any of the others. The clothing was uniformly greasy, tarred and patched, most of it constructed from canvas and blankets and not a garment among them fitting its wearer. One man, with trousers ending near his knees, was a giant nearly as large as Gravelinghe, and, aside from his bald head and a cast in one eye, was a perfect model of virile manhood. Others were stoop-shouldered and bent, and a few were nearly as fat as the man in the main rigging. All were middle-aged or older and on each face was a common expression of intelligence, resentment and disgust.