On Stranger Tides (43 page)

There was an expression of alarmed wonder on Hurwood's face, and he was saying something too softly for Shandy to hear. Then the old man drew a rapier of his own and ran nimbly at him.

Shandy was still painfully gripping the hilt of his own sword, and now he wrenched it free from his belt just in time to sweep Hurwood's point away with an awkward parry in
prime
, and then he hopped back and more easily knocked aside the old man's next thrust—and then the next. The gray forearms attached to his jacket swung and bumped against each other sickeningly.

Blood from his spiked hand made the saber grip slippery, and every time his blade clanked against Hurwood's the compass needle grated against the bones in his palm, sending an agony like tinfoil on a carious tooth all the way up to his shoulder.

Hurwood barked a harsh syllable of laughter and sprang forward, but Shandy clenched his fist on the saber grip—driving
the needle even deeper between the bones of his palm—and caught the incoming blade in a corkscrewing bind that yanked the hilt out of Hurwood's fingers; the pain of the action made Shandy's vision go dark for a moment, but with a last twist he sent Hurwood's sword spinning over the rail, and then he just stared down at the deck and took deep, gasping breaths until his vision cleared.

Hurwood had scrambled back, and now looked off to the side and pointed imperatively at Shandy. Obviously this was no longer a private duel.

One of the decayed mariners lurched obediently across the deck toward them; his clothes were ragged scraps and Shandy could see daylight between the bones of one shin, but the shoulders were broad and one bony wrist was whipping a heavy cutlass through the air as easily as a sailmaker wields a needle.

Shandy was already close to exhaustion, and the needle embedded in his hand was a hot, grating agony. It seemed to him that the jar of a butterfly alighting on the blade of his saber would be more torture than he could bear and stay conscious, but he made himself step back and lift his sword, though the move made the world go gray and drenched him in icy sweat.

The dead man shambled closer—Hurwood smiled at the thing and said, “Kill Shandy.”—and the cutlass was whipped back over the bony shoulder for a stroke.

Shandy forced his eyes to focus, forced his ploughed hand to be ready…

But the cutlass lashed out sideways, slamming into Hurwood and flinging him away aft across the deck, and in the instant before the necrotic sailor collapsed in skeletal ruin and, simultaneously, the gray arms evaporated from Shandy's jacket, Shandy's eyes met the gleam in the sailor's sunken eye-sockets and there was exchanged recognition and wry greeting and a farewell between true comrades. Then there was nothing but
tumbling old bones and some scraps of gaudy cloth on the deck, but Shandy let go of the torturing saber and dropped to his knees, then forward onto his ravaged hands, and his ears had cleared enough so that he could hear his tears patter on the deck.

“Phil!” he wailed. “Phil! Christ, man, come back!”

But Davies, and all the dead men, were gone at last, and aside from Hurwood the only men on the sunny deck were men who had climbed up from the
Jenny
.

Hurwood was leaning against the starboard rail, his face white as ashes, clutching the stump where his newly regrown arm had been. There was no blood leaking from it, but evidently it required all the man's sorcerous concentration to keep it that way.

Then Hurwood was moving. He pushed away from the rail and, one ponderously careful step at a time, plodded toward the aft cabin door. Shandy struggled to his feet and shambled after him.

Hurwood gave the door a kick—it opened, and he tottered inside.

Shandy stopped just outside and stared into the dimness. “Beth!” he called. “Are you in there?”

There was no reply except muttering from Hurwood, and Shandy took a deep breath, fumbled his clasp knife out of his pocket with his good hand, and stepped inside.

Hurwood was just straightening up from digging in an open chest against the bulkhead, and in his one hand he was clutching a wooden box Shandy had seen before. He turned and started toward Shandy, and Shandy felt the air thicken, pushing him back. It pushed him back out into the sunlight as Hurwood kept inexorably taking one step after another, and soon it became clear that Hurwood was heading for the ship's boat.

Shandy half opened his knife, laid his forefinger across the groove and then let the blade snap down. Blood spurted from his
gashed finger, but the air stopped resisting him. Evidently even unmagnetized iron was enough now to fray Hurwood's spells. He stepped forward and, before Hurwood noticed his sudden freedom to get in close, punched the box out of Hurwood's hand.

The box bounced across the deck. Hurwood, his mouth hanging open from sheer effort, turned and tried to walk; he fell, but then on his knees and one hand he began crawling toward the box.

Hardly able to move any better himself, Shandy lurched ahead of the creeping man and sat down on the hot deck beside the box and, his finger still painfully caught under the clasp-knife blade, fumbled the top of the box off.

“My saber,” he croaked to Skank, who was tying a bandage around his own thigh. The weary young pirate paused long enough to kick Shandy's doctored sword clattering across the deck to him.

Without unclamping the knife from his finger, Shandy grasped the injuring saber, squeezing the compass needle deep into his hand again, and then drove the sword's iron point down into the box.

The dried head inside imploded with a sound like old upholstery ripping.

Hurwood stopped, staring, then took a rasping breath and expelled it in a howl that made even the most badly wounded of Shandy's pirates look over in wonder. Then he collapsed, and blood began jetting from the stump of his arm.

With a shudder Shandy dropped the sword again and pulled the knife off his finger. Then he began clumsily using the knife to cut his cursed jacket into strips to use as a tourniquet—for if Beth wasn't aboard, he didn't want Hurwood to bleed to death.

DIZZINESS, NAUSEA, and occasional moments of blank forgetfulness all helped make Shandy's search of the
Carmichael
a time-consuming one, but the main reason he took so long—looking inside chests that couldn't possibly have contained Beth Hurwood and checking some cabins twice to see if she'd doubled back on him—was that he dreaded what he'd probably have to do if it became certain she wasn't aboard. The moment came, though, seeming all the bleaker for the postponement, when he had to admit to himself that he'd checked every cubic foot of the vessel. There was more gold and jewelry in the hold than could be unloaded in a day, but no Beth Hurwood.

He climbed listlessly back up to the main deck and blinked around at the battered men who awaited him, until he spotted Skank. “Hurwood regained consciousness yet?” he asked.

“Not last I heard,” said Skank. “Listen, though, did you have any luck down there?”

“No.” Shandy turned reluctantly toward the cabin where Hurwood had been carried. “Get me a—”

Skank stepped in front of him, backed up by the dozen other men who could still walk; the young pirate's face was as hollowed and hard as a sand-scoured twist of driftwood. “Captain,” he rasped, “you said he had his goddamned
loot
aboard, damn you, the stuff from all the ships he—”

“Oh, loot.” Shandy nodded. “Yeah, there's that. Plenty of it, just like I said. I think I sprung a gut moving chest of gold ingots around down there. You can all…go roll in it. But first, hoist me up a bucket of sea water, will you? And see if you can't find… fire, a candle or something…somewhere. I'll be in there with him.”

A little disconcerted, Skank stepped back. “Uh, sure, cap'n. Sure.”

Shandy shook his head unhappily as he limped to the cabin door and went inside. Hurwood lay on the deck planks unconscious, his breath sounding like slow strokes of a saw in dry wood. His shirt was more dark than white, and spatters of blood,
nearly dry, blackened the deck around his shoulder, but the bleeding seemed to have been stopped.

Shandy stood over him and wondered who the man really was. The Oxford don, author of
A Vindication of Free Will
? Beth's father? Husband of the unbearably dead Margaret? Ulysse Segundo the pirate? The bones were prominent in the open-mouthed face, and Shandy tried to imagine what Hurwood had looked like as a young man. He couldn't imagine it.

Shandy knelt down beside him and shook him by his good shoulder. “Mr. Hurwood. Wake up.”

The pace of the breathing didn't change, the wrinkled eyelids didn't flutter.

“Mr. Hurwood. It's important. Please wake up.”

There was no response.

Shandy knelt there, staring at the devastated old man and trying not to think, until Skank clumped in. New orange light contended weakly with the sunlight from outside.

“Water,” Skank said, letting a sloshing bucket clank onto the deck, “and a lamp.” After looking around uncertainly he set that too on the deck.

“Fine,” Shandy whispered. “Thank you.”

Skank left, closing the door, and the lamp's agitated flame became the room's illumination.

Shandy dipped up a handful of cold brine and tossed it across Hurwood's closed eyes. The old man frowned faintly, but that was all. “God damn it,” Shandy burst out, almost sobbing, “don't force me!” He grabbed one of Hurwood's ears and twisted it savagely…to no effect. In horror as much as rage Shandy stood up, pushing the lamp away with his foot, then lifted the bucket and flung the entire contents onto Hurwood's head. The weight of water turned the old man's face away and plastered the white hair out like a crown, but the breathing continued as steadily as before, without even any choking.

Genuinely sobbing now, Shandy turned away and reached for the lamp…and then breathed a prayer of thanks when he heard spitting and groaning behind him.

He crouched beside Hurwood. “Wake up,” he said urgently. “You'll never get better advice.”

Hurwood's eyes opened. “I'm…hurt,” he said softly.

“Yes.” Shandy brushed the tears out of his eyes to see the old man more clearly. “But you'll probably live. You survived it once. Where's Beth, Elizabeth, your daughter?”

“Oh…it's all over, isn't it? All done now.” His eyes met Shandy's. “You! You destroyed it…Margaret's head…I could feel her spirit go out of it. A mere sword!” His voice was gentle, as if he was discussing events in a play they'd both seen. “Not just because it was cold iron…?”

“And linked to my blood. Yes.” Shandy tried to match Hurwood's quiet, conversational tone. “Where have you got your daughter hid?”

“Jamaica. In Spanish Town.”

“Ah!” Shandy nodded and smiled. “Where in Spanish Town?”

“Nice house. She's restrained, of course. A prisoner. But in comfort.”

“Whose house?”

“Uh…Joshua Hicks.” Hurwood seemed childishly proud of being able to remember the name.

Shandy's shoulders drooped with relief.

“Do you have any chocolates?” Hurwood asked politely. “I haven't any.”

“Uh, no.” Shandy stood up. “We can get you some in Jamaica.”

“We're going to Jamaica?”

“You're damn right we are. As soon as we get this old hulk a little more seaworthy. We can afford to relax a little, now that
I know where she is. Beth will keep for another day or two while we make some repairs.”

“Oh, aye, Hicks will take very good care of her. I've given him the strictest instructions, and given him a nurse to make sure he does everything right.”

A nurse? thought Shandy. I can't quite imagine a nurse ordering around a member of the landed gentry. “Well, fine. We'll—”

“In fact, what day is it today?”

“Christmas Eve.” Can't you tell by everybody's festive manner? he thought.

“Maybe I should wave to him tomorrow.”

Shandy, still smiling with relief, cocked his head. “Wave at who?”

“Hicks. He'll be on a cliff at Portland Point, tomorrow at dawn, with a telescope.” Hurwood chuckled. “He doesn't like the idea—he's giving a big dinner party tomorrow night, and he'd far rather be home preparing for it—but he'll be there. He fears me. I told him to watch for this ship and make sure he sees me out on deck, and sees me wave to him.”

“We won't be anywhere near Jamaica by tomorrow dawn,” said Shandy. “I don't think this ship
could
be.”

“Oh.” Hurwood closed his eyes. “Then I won't wave to him.”

Shandy had been about to leave, but now he paused, staring down at the old man. “Why were you going to wave to him? Why will he be out there watching?”

“I want to sleep now.”

“Tell me.” Shandy's eyes darted to, then away from, the lamp. “Or no chocolates.”

Hurwood pursed his lips pettishly, but answered. “If I
don't
sail past and wave, he'll assume I'm not going to arrive in time, and so he'll do the first part of the magic. The part that has to be done on Christmas day. I meant to be in Jamaica today, to save
him the trouble of even going out there, but the storm yesterday and you today…” Hurwood opened his eyes, though not wide. “I just thought if we
were
going to be near there tomorrow, I'd wave to him and save everybody the trouble. After all, you've made the full procedure impossible by destroying the head.” He closed his eyes again.

“What's this…
first part
of the magic?” Shandy asked, feeling the first faint webs of anxiety falling over him again.

“The part that can be done on land. The big part, which I would have had to do, has to take place at sea. Tomorrow noon he'll do the first part. He'd rather I did it. He'll be unhappy not to see me sail past.”

“He'll do what? God damn it, what
is
this first part?”