The Tides of Avarice (48 page)

“Any second now, I should think,” said the sea rat. He sniffed knowledgeably.

As if they'd heard him, the islanders suddenly raised the intensity of their chanting. Off to the left, behind the line where the trees met the sand, heavy drums began to beat.

“What're they singing?” said Viola.

“Who can tell?” Sylvester replied.

“They's singing an 'ymn,” said Cheesefang. “An 'ymn to one o' the many gods they worships. They's askin' for divine blessin's on their, well, tell the truth, on their menu.”

“On us, you mean?” said Sylvester.

“True 'nuff.”

“Don't you think we ought to be doing something about it?”

“What makes you think we ain't?”

Despite Cheesefang's words, it didn't look as if any of the pirates were in any condition to fight off attackers. Some of them were definitely asleep. Others were very nearly so. The green grog had not been without its efficacy.

It had worked on Sylvester too, as he was discovering far too late. He managed to get to his feet, but only just. The borrowed cutlass he'd succeeded in pulling out from his belt looked alarmingly like rubber in the firelight. He supposed this might be useful. If the blade were made of cold steel he'd be likely to hesitate before plunging it into another sentient creature. A rubber blade, on the other paw …

He didn't have a chance to complete the thought. The islanders, who'd obviously spent the past few minutes organizing themselves, suddenly came charging in two troops around the sides of the blinding bonfire. Even if he hadn't been able to see them, Sylvester would have known their evil intent. Their scream was wordless, but it was understandable in any language.

Kiiillll!

Suddenly, the sea of drunken pirates changed entirely.

Sylvester could have sworn that most of the buccaneers were as near comatose. The cannibals should have been able to saunter among them slaughtering at will.

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

A wall sprang up between the advancing islanders and the nearest pirates. It was a wall of shining, finely honed steel.

Suddenly aware of what he should do, Sylvester stared at the cutlass Cheesefang had given him. Holding it in a grip that felt as if it had been formed before time began, he switched it from one side to the other, enjoying the way it felt so under his control. A moment ago it had seemed like a rubber blade. Now it was a killing machine. All the wooziness from the green grog had strangely vanished. He knew Cheesefang was standing on his one side, Viola on the other, each of them likewise brandishing a weapon. Somehow, he felt distanced from what they were doing.

He might never feel this way again, but at this moment, Sylvester Lemmington was a pirate.

And he gloried in that status.

He wanted to kill himself a few cannibals.

The cannibals obligingly charged.

For a while, it seemed as if the pirates might prevail. They were outnumbered more than two to one by the islanders, but they were skilled and vicious fighters every one, even under the influence of the green grog. Sylvester, Viola and Cheesefang fought back to back, forming a triangle of whistling lethality as their swords flashed in the fitful red light from the bonfire. Sylvester learned not to shut his eyes in revulsion whenever his blade notched into the flesh of an islander; he was unable, though, to train himself to stop saying “oops, terribly sorry” each time.

The night was filled with the clash of metal upon metal, and with the screams of the dying.

The islanders were beaten back once, but then renewed the attack in a second wave.

Casualties on both sides were horrendous.

Cheesefang took an ax blow in his side and blood spurted. The rat screamed in agony, then resumed fighting with a terrible grin on his face. The islander who'd wielded the ax, another rat, was the first person Cheesefang slew after sustaining his wound.

Slowly, slowly the attackers were driven back a second time.

But then, from the thick jungle at the top of the sands, there poured another host of islanders, a reserve force that had remained in hiding so long as it looked as if the cannibals on the beach might conquer unaided. The newcomers were mainly older people, but they were armed as well as any and, while they might not have the same strength as the younger fighters, they more than made up for it in guile.

The pirates didn't stand a chance.

It was all over soon after that.

✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿.

Far out to sea, Sylvester could see the lights of the Shadeblaze. Surely the pirates aboard the ship must have been able to hear what was going on. If Jeopord had thought to turn his telescope toward the shore, he would have been able to watch the cannibals' treacherous attack on his comrades. Sylvester recalled Cheesefang's reassuring words to him before they'd come on this doomed trip ashore: He might let us walk into the gaping jaws of death, he might, but he wouldn't let them jaws come closin' down on top of us. He be bound to find some way of rescuin' us before it's too late. It was surely long past time for Jeopord to be coming to their rescue …

He said something of this over his shoulder to Viola, who was tied with him, back to back.

“It's hard to see how he could come to the rescue,” she observed.

“What do you mean?”

“The Shadeblaze's presumably still firmly lodged on the reef. I didn't actually check, but I don't think he has any longboats left out there, so he and his men would have to swim to reach us, and true pirates don't swim, remember? Besides, even if he had the means to get here, he's got only a dozen pirates, not much of an army against a host of cannibals. I think we're done for, darling.”

“There's no need to be fatalistic,” he said grumpily.

“I'm not being fatalistic. Just facing the facts. We're both going to be lemming roasts by the time this night is over.”

“Hmmf!”

If Jeopord had only about a dozen pirates on the Shadeblaze, there were only about a dozen of them still alive here on the island. The carnage as the islanders strove to subdue the buccaneers had been extreme. Many of the pirates had adhered to the principle that they'd rather be dead than surrender, and with reluctance the islanders had granted them their wish. But the Vendrosians had paid a very heavy penalty too. For every one pirate corpse lying in hideous stillness on the sands, there were at least three or four dead islanders. The Shadeblaze's complement had acquitted themselves impressively.

“Keep yer spirits up, mateys,” said a familiar voice from a couple of yards away.

For some obscure reason, the Vendrosians had permitted Sylvester and Viola to bandage up the old sea rat before they were comprehensively tied up. It couldn't have been a matter of compassion; the islanders had emphatically demonstrated that compassion was a concept alien to them. Perhaps, with so much “food” already dead, they wanted to preserve, for as long as possible, those of their prey who still clung to life.

Sylvester gulped. It seemed Viola was wrong about being dead by the end of the night, but the prospect of being kept alive for weeks or months until a cannibal butcher decided it was their turn next to be a banquet was even less appealing than death.

The Vendrosian leader, Kabalore, and a handful of his biggest deputies now started moving among the captives, kicking and pulling the pirates to their feet. The air filled with nautical curses.

Sylvester and Viola, pushing backward against each other, were able to struggle upright before the little posse of islanders reached them, but Cheesefang, his movements still impaired by his wound, was less fortunate. The cannibals weren't gentle with him as they forced him to stand. The old sea rat had screamed just the once when he'd originally suffered the wound. He screamed a lot more than once now.

“You'll pay for this,” said Sylvester grimly to the tormentor nearest him, a stoat who had more skulls draped over his body than even Kabalore himself. As soon as he'd spoken the words, Sylvester began berating himself inwardly for having been so stupid.

The stoat turned a terribly yellow-eyed stare upon him.

“I'll be picking my teeth with your jawbone, soon enough,” he said. “If you don't hold your cack until then, I may not be too fussy about whether or not you're still alive at the time.”

Sylvester swallowed hard.

“Coward!” snapped Viola.

For a moment, Sylvester thought she was speaking to him, but no, it was at the stoat she spat the word.

The stoat looked astonished. “Who the blazes do you think you are?”

“Viola Pickleberry, of course, and you?”

The question flummoxed the stoat still further.

“My name's—hey, I don't have to answer to scum like you!”

“What a very unusual name,” sneered Viola.

“It's not my—”

Kabalore had noticed the exchange. “Leave her alone, Strimcrack. We've enough work to do without getting involved with the prisoners. Get those two apart,” he said with a nod at Viola and Sylvester, “and then tie 'em up again separately like the others.”

“Right y'are, sir!” cried Strimcrack with a display of good humor. Turning away from Kabalore, however, he added under his breath to Viola and Sylvester, “I'll see you two pay for this disrespect. Pay in agony and fear.”

“Ooh-er,” commented Viola loud enough for Kabalore to hear.

The remark earned her another murderous stare from Strimcrack as he bent to sever the bonds holding the two lemmings. He was not gentle in doing so and both of them suffered a welter of gashes and bruises. When he retied their wrists behind their backs the stoat made sure to tighten the cords so that they sank deep into the flesh.

“You'll be wishin' you 'adn't vexed ol' Strimcrack, you will.”

“Oh, poot,” said Viola, despite the fact that her face was pale with pain.

Once all the surviving pirates had been rounded up and herded to a place uncomfortably close to the pulsing red embers of the bonfire, Kabalore strutted in front of them, holding a couple of the skulls of his necklace out in front of his chest as if they were trophies he was especially proud of.

“Welcome to the island of Vendros!” he cried, just as he had when the longboats had first landed on the island's shore what seemed like many long hours ago.

His comrades set up a chorus of cackles and hoots into the dark skies. Clearly, they thought Kabalore's remark represented the height of wit. Sylvester could see them cavorting in a grotesque ritual dance behind Kabalore on the far side of the subsiding fire.

Kabalore waited until the din had died down a little before he spoke again.

“We regret we did not inform you beforehand that your stay here is destined to be a permanent one.”

Once more, his cronies went into a fusillade of exaggerated laughter.

“Come again,” murmured Cheesefang into Sylvester's ear. “Yer've been a luvverly audience. Thangyoo, thangyoo. I'm gonna be ‘ere all next week, wiv a matinee on We'nsday.”

“And,” Kabalore was saying, holding up a black-and-white paw to his comrades to tell them to quieten down, that the really good bit was yet to come, “we're especially looking forward to the stay you're going to have inside us!”

This time Sylvester thought the noise was going to shake the stars loose from their positions in the heavens.

“I wonder if this guy is going to be still as funny when he grows up and hits puberty,” said Viola caustically when she could make herself heard. She seemed unaware that Strimcrack was still fixing her with a lethal glare.

Sylvester wished he could find it within himself to joke like the other two. All he could see ahead was a long tunnel that got quickly darker and quickly narrower with, at the end of it, himself being slaughtered and butchered in the most revolting manner imaginable and then cooked and devoured by the kind of people he'd never even wanted to meet, let alone get eaten by. It wasn't the most cheering of anticipations and there was no use pretending otherwise. Jeopord had clearly written them off, so there was no chance of rescue from that quarter. Aside from Jeopord, there was really only Mrs. Pickleberry and, doughty as she was, what could anybody honestly expect an elderly lemming to accomplish, even if she was armed with not one, but two, sturdy rolling pins?

If she was even still alive.

He and Viola had come a long way from Foxglove, and there'd been many times when Sylvester had thought they wouldn't survive to live another hour – or even another minute – but he'd never experienced such an abandonment of all hope before. This really was it.

Kabalore, his cohorts having finally fallen relatively still, now addressed himself to the dozen or so bedraggled captives who stood in front of him with their hands tied behind their backs. Clearly, he'd expected to see them with their heads hung low in despair and dejection, and he quailed when he saw the reality.

These were pirates and they met his gaze with glares of defiance and threat.

All except one, who wasn't a pirate at all: Sylvester Lemmington.

Kabalore recovered his composure swiftly.

“I owe it to you, to you steaks and chops and roasts and hashes” – he lingered over each word with greater lipsmacking relish than the last – “I owe it to you to tell you what's going to be happening to you next.”

“It'd be quite all right if you just left us in ignorance,” Sylvester piped up.

“Silence, squirt!” said Kabalore.

The pirates murmured and grumbled in an ominous way, but Kabalore obviously thought they were safely under control and he was in no danger.

“As you can see,” continued Kabalore, gesturing around him at the numerous corpses of pirates and islanders, “we already have a plentiful supply of fresh meat. Indeed, we're going to have to feast for a week and a day and guzzle as hard as we can the whole of that time if we're going to get through it all before it begins to go” – he gave a dandified sniff – “off.”

Sylvester's insides turned coldly acid.

The cannibal chieftain beckoned behind him, and several burly islanders unwound long, dark whips from their waists. The whips looked vicious and intimidating, even when idle. The captives hardly needed the demonstration one of the Vendrosians gave, making his lash crack like a lightning strike.

“My friends here,” said Kabalore, “are going to escort you to comfortable accommodations in the cave we islanders call the Larder.”

The whip-wielders pressed forward and, grumble and swear as they might, the pirates had little choice but to obey orders. Soon, they were being herded in single file up the beach to where, unnoticed by Sylvester earlier, there was a notch in the thick wall of jungle vegetation. They plodded along a beaten path between the trees and tangled bushes, trying to see what lay ahead in the unreliable light of the blazing torches their captors held aloft. The noise of the sea breakers died out behind them, only to be replaced by the eerie sounds of the island jungle at night. Sylvester could sense eyes everywhere in the darkness watching him, not with any malice or intent to harm, but with a sort of cold, dispassionate curiosity. In a way, he found it almost comforting. This seemed far less frightening than his first experience of a jungle, back on Blighter Island. Or maybe it was just that there was no room left for any more fear in his mind. The whips, the cries of coarse mirth from the sweat-streaked islanders, the name of the place they were going to – all of these were enough to cram a small lemming brain with so much terror that it blanked out. It was almost as if there were no terror there at all.

“Don't worry,” said Viola suddenly. She was walking directly behind him.

“Don't worry?” he said incredulously. Their talking attracted a glare from the nearest islander, but the weasel did nothing to stop them. “Don't you think that there's really rather a lot to be worried about?”

“We'll pull through, somehow or other. Something will turn up, you'll see. Something always has before.”

She was right in that last remark, of course. Otherwise they wouldn't be here to have the conversation, but Sylvester couldn't help feeling the logic was like that of someone who jumps off a high cliff and, for most of the fall, can't understand why people said it was dangerous.

Sylvester decided not to point this out. Let Viola cling to her hopefulness, however misplaced. It was obviously her lifeline.

He wished, for some reason he couldn't understand, that Mrs. Pickleberry were here. He'd never have thought the day, or night, would come when he might yearn for the presence of the curmudgeonly old lemming as reassurance, but he did now.

I wonder what she's up to, he said to himself. I wonder if Jeopord's discovered she's aboard the ship?