The Dagger X (The Dagger Chronicles) (19 page)

W
aiting on the rowboat, Morris sensed that something had gone very wrong. He could hear the muffled cries of a great battle, but could not imagine what transpired within. He drew a pistol in each hand and stood in the rowboat, the barrels aimed at the dark passage, when Spider shot out into the open screaming, his fiery hair plastered down over his wide eyes.

“It’s coming!” Spider wailed, his arms revolving wildly in the water. Morris trained the pistols toward the half-submerged tunnel.

“What is coming, man?” Morris said, ready to fire at whatever emerged. But Spider could not answer. Quite suddenly Spider was gone.

Morris rushed to the gunwale, bewildered. He leaned over the water, the sunlight playing on the blue surface obscuring his view. Sure enough, he could make out a dark swirl of activity. Morris dropped both pistols into the bottom of the rowboat and lifted one oar from the oarlocks. Would it be long enough? Morris flipped the handle end high into the air and drove the oar blade
down into the water, letting the shaft run through his open hands so as not to lose it. The blade struck something, but he could not tell what. Again Morris drove the oar down into the water. Again.

The shape rose up, and as it became more distinct Morris could make out Spider’s upturned face, the whites of his eyes wide, his orange locks streaming back.

Spider broke the surface wailing in pain and terror just a few feet from the rowboat. He reached out and by luck grabbed hold of the oar shaft. Morris heaved, tumbling backward into the boat. Spider’s grip held true, and he was yanked from the water and over the rowboat’s gunwale.

“What has happened to you, man?” Morris said. Spider seemed to be bleeding from all parts, his blood brightly staining the bleached bottom of the rowboat. Morris dropped the oar and reached down to turn the man over. Was he too late?

As he righted Spider, he could see one gash along his side, probably the point he had been struck first and pulled under the water. But Morris had seen his share of battle wounds, and this one looked endurable. As he continued to turn Spider onto his back, though, a grievous injury came into view: Spider’s right arm was gone, ripped clean off at his shoulder. Dark blood surged from the wound.

“God, man!” Morris flipped Spider again so that the wound might be pressed against the bottom of the rowboat. Spider moaned, trying to say something.

“X . . . ,” he said.

Morris ignored him and chanced a look over the gunwale again to see what could have caused such an injury, but whatever it had been was gone.

“Do not move, Spider!” Morris said. He lifted the oar back toward its oarlock. Suddenly a mighty and unseen force collided with the rowboat, throwing Morris onto his back in the bow. He barely had time to lift his head before he saw Pippin’s enormous snout come up over the gunwale. The crocodile opened wide a mouthful of huge triangular teeth and snapped down on the metal oarlock and the wood to which it was fastened.

Morris could hear the wood splintering beneath the beast’s strength. He leaped up and charged at it, rearing back and delivering a withering kick with the toe of his boot. The crocodile took the strike without notice, wrenched her head to one side, and the entire oarlock—along with a chunk of wood to which it was connected—splintered off from the boat. The rowboat tipped dangerously, then righted. Pippin slipped silently below the water.

“Come back here, you devil!” Morris reached for his discarded pistols, found them, and leaned over the side. At that precise moment Pippin shot up out of the water and snapped her jaws down on the two pistols. Morris squeezed the triggers of both weapons, and they exploded. He reeled back, falling, and landed again in the bottom of the boat. The beast was gone. Morris lifted his hands before him, grimly happy to see they were still both attached to his body.

Again he stood and looked over the side—with more caution this time. Obscured in the shadowy blue waters, a dark reptilian form glided swiftly in the direction of the cave entrance. Morris lost it in the reflection of the bright sunlight on the surface.

Exquemelin nearly wet himself, so hard was he laughing. His eyes streamed with tears that ran down his face. This was too good. Too good. Van scrambled toward him, a coil of rope over his head and shoulders, Sarah just behind with a pistol in each hand.

“Where is he? What has happened, you madman!” Van said, breathless. X lurched and writhed with hilarity, unable even to take a breath. All he could do was point toward the crack leading down into the cave below.

“Where is Kitto?” Sarah said, peering down into the hole in a panic. X gestured again, the woman’s anxiety taking just an edge out of his enjoyment.

“Kitto . . . he is fine,” X managed, then crawled over the rocks toward where he could risk a peek at what was happening in the rowboat.

Van lowered his head through the crack.

“Kitto! Kitto!” he hissed. He turned an ear inward. Did he just hear a call of response?

Van stood to shrug off the coil of rope. Sarah peered down into the crack and came up with a smile of relief.

“It is Kitto! Quickly, let us get him out of there.”

Kitto and Akin had begun to extricate themselves from the tunnel as soon as Spider had fled with the
crocodile on his heels. Just moments after they had emerged again they heard Van’s voice calling. Now the dangling end of a rope was being lowered into the cave.

“Quick, now!” Kitto said. “Let’s get out of here.” He looped an arm over Akin’s shoulders and hobbled toward the rope.

“Your foot? Has the beast taken your foot?” Akin said, looking down at Kitto’s stump.

“No. I shall explain that later.” Akin reached out and took the offered rope in his hands, a smile spreading on his face when he looked up and could make out Van above him.

“Grab hold, Akin!” Van said, continuing to feed the rope down. “I’ll get you out of there in a trice.” Sarah stood just to the side of Van, widening her view of the scene below. She was the first, then, to see the movement at the far end of the pool by the passage leading to the ocean. It was no turtle she saw.

“Kitto! The crocodile! It is coming!”

Kitto turned away from the rope just long enough to see that Sarah was right. Pippin was swimming toward them, her sinuous tail curling through the water.

Van had lowered several yards of rope down now. It coiled into a small pile on the sand at the boys’ feet. Kitto and Akin grabbed two fistfuls of rope each, but the rope was too thin to attempt to scale it.

“Van! Get us out of here!” Kitto said. Pippin’s tail whipped. Her half-submerged head aimed straight at the boys, the black slit of her pupils bearing down
on them. If she had been wounded by Morris’s shots, Pippin did not show it.

Van heaved with all he had, feet braced on either side of the crack. He lifted both boys from the ground and managed to work one hand before the first so that Kitto and Akin hovered a foot off the ground. Sarah leaped in, grabbing a handful of rope below Van’s hands.

“Exquemelin, damn your eyes!” Sarah barked. “We need you!” Sarah’s back straightened, lifting the boys another foot just as Pippin’s groping claws struck sand at the bottom of the bank. Van worked his hands around Sarah’s—leaving the entire boys’ weight in her grip for a moment to do so—and grabbed another section of rope.

X’s laughter died on his lips. He sprang across the bouldery cliff top with the agility of a monkey. Pippin had propelled herself just to the top of the embankment as X shouldered his way between Van and Sarah to get a handful of the line.

“Hang on, Akin!” Kitto said. “Lift your feet up!” The boys could see that the crocodile was craning its neck upward, her huge mouth a chaos of teeth set in mottled gray and pale flesh. The boys lifted their legs so high they were practically above their heads. Pippin snapped her jaws shut with a clack.

X heaved with a groan and the boys shot upward, but then jerked to a stop. Pippin had shifted, and now all three hundred and more pounds of her flesh had settled onto the rope.

“Weer!”
X said. “Again!” Van and Sarah grabbed
below and strained against the hemp. Akin and Kitto rose another foot, the tight line sliding slowly beneath Pippin’s leathery belly and along one side of her skull.

Seeing her prey disappear, Pippin snapped again, this time at the stretched rope. Her teeth sank into the fibrous hemp. Pippin pulled, backing herself down the slanted embankment. Akin and Kitto sank several inches toward the sand.

“Pippin! No, my sweet!
Ma bien-aimée!
Let go the rope!” X groaned. The black slits in Pippin’s eyes widened a fraction, and the crocodile pulled back another six inches. Van and Sarah were knocked aside as X lost his balance and was dragged headfirst into the crack, sending Kitto and Akin plummeting downward another two feet. Akin let out a scream, thinking the end had come.

X’s body was jammed into the crack, the rough crags ripping through the elbows of his frock coat. His grip held true, but then Pippin pulled back another step, and the rope began to slip through his hands.

“You must climb! Climb to me, lads!
Rapidement!
” Akin’s grip was higher than Kitto’s, and he scrambled hand over hand up the rope, the rigid line making climbing just possible. Kitto moved up more slowly, jostled and abused by Akin’s kicking legs. In a moment Akin had reached X’s hands. He clung to the pirate’s wrists, further upsetting the man’s grip and sending Kitto plummeting another foot.

“My legs, Kitto!” Akin said. “Take hold of me!” Kitto reached up with his right hand and grabbed Akin’s
ankle. He let go of the rope and the two of them swung out over the sandy embankment, Kitto’s only foot just a few inches over the sand.

“Pull me, woman! Van! Pull me up!” X croaked. Sarah and Van grabbed X about the shoulders and armpits, the soles of their boots scratching and rooting to find a solid purchase. The boys rose.

Pippin, feeling no tension now on the rope, released her grip and instead clawed her way back up the sandy rise. She lifted her snout up at the swinging legs just above. Kitto reared back and dispatched a savage kick to the crocodile’s chin. Pippin’s head recoiled, and then she simply grinned up at them as they slowly rose ever higher and out of reach.

Within a moment Akin and Kitto each had managed to shinny through the crack, and the five combatants sank with exhaustion onto the rocks, Sarah clutching a fistful of Kitto’s shirt. It was several seconds before any of them had the breath to speak.

“Pippin,” X said. “You must forgive her. She is usually better behaved.”

Kitto scowled at the captain. “Indeed you are a madman,” he said, and then they all were laughing, none more than X, who remembered all over again the comedy he had witnessed out on the open water.

“Pippin would have had a nice meal of the two of you
jongens
, but her appetite was a bit satisfied.” X giggled his high-pitched giggle. The others turned on him.

“What do you mean?”

“That vile turd, the one who took my hand from me. ‘Spider,’ they call him?”

“Is he dead?”

“Perhaps. This I don’t know. Morris pulled him from the water, but the blood—it was beautiful!—and it was everywhere.” X’s giggling stopped and his face went grim.

“What is it?” Sarah said.

“He heard my voice,” X said. “
Oui, oui.
He did. We hope that he dies and quickly, or Morris will know.”

“Know what?”

“He will know he is not alone on this island.”

Fortunately for the pirates and their new allies, Spider was in no condition to relay important information. He managed to mumble something about “X” and “The Hand” to Morris before slipping into unconsciousness in the rowboat, but this was lost on Morris, who strained at the oars to get Spider to shore. He doubted that Spider would survive, but he had seen men overcome such wounds. It could be done if one acted swiftly.

When he came around the bend in the cliff side he saw the small gathering of the crew at the beach.

“Fire! Prepare a fire, immediately!”

Spider would need to be burned.