Hush (Dragon Apocalypse) (7 page)

Gale cast her gaze toward Infidel. “Friends of yours?”

“I’ve never seen them before in my life!” Infidel said. “I thought they were after you!”

“They’re Skellings!” the shirtless blond man called out. “They conduct random raids for a living.”

“I figured they were after the bounty on our heads,” said Jetsam.

“A reasonable theory,” said Gale. “
If
they weren’t so far from their homeland.”

“Luckily, I’ve got their warlord tied up,” said Shirtless.

“How do you know he’s their warlord?” Infidel asked, drifting nearer.

“I think it will be pretty obvious when you see him.”

It bugged me that I didn’t know who this blond guy was. Gale obviously knew him. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, and he might have been the first man in Commonground I’d ever seen without a single visible scar. His body was flawless, his muscles perfectly symmetrical beneath taut tan skin. He had a square jaw and sharp cheekbones and teeth so white it hurt to look at them. I instantly felt a gut dislike of the man, despite no longer having a gut.

His white cotton britches were practically painted onto his skin, and it was difficult not to notice an unusually large bulge along his inner thigh. Infidel stared at him, her mouth slightly agape. My gut dislike hardened to outright hatred.

Gale grabbed hold of a rope and swung out to the Skelling’s boat. I drifted overhead and saw a large warrior hogtied on the deck. I had to admit that the mystery man was good at spotting warlords. His captive was completely bald and his face was riddled with scars. Around his neck he wore a chain of what, at first glance, might have been dried fruit, but on second glance were mummified human ears. His bear skin vest sported gold buttons, and he had gold earrings as well. His gray beard and mustache were braided together and reached down to his belly button. His horned helmet was trimmed with gold, almost enough to call it a crown. He glared at his captors with utter hatred.

“Good work, Brand,” said Gale, stepping forward and kissing the shirtless guy on the cheek. Gale was old enough to be the man’s mother; indeed, Mako and Brand looked about the same age.

Brand flashed his brilliant teeth in a broad smile. “I couldn’t have done it without your tactical brilliance, my captain.”

Gale blushed as he batted his eyelashes at her.

Infidel cleared her throat as she floated to the deck. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

“Infidel,” said Gale. “This is Brand. Brand, Infidel.”

“You must be new,” said Infidel, stretching out her white leather gauntlet for a handshake.

Brand grasped the hand by the fingers and bent to kiss it. “I was hired on the journey here,” he said. “It’s my pleasure to meet you.”

“Brand is my new dryman,” said Gale.

“What happened to Boggy?” asked Infidel.

“Tiger shark got him when he was taking a swim,” said Gale.

“Guess he should have stayed dry,” said Infidel.

Brand didn’t look like a dryman. Most members of the profession were older gentlemen noted for their soberness, with a reputation for stinginess rather than charm. Wanderers were a sea-faring race who’d long ago made a pact with Abyss, the primal dragon of the sea. As long as a Wanderer never set foot on land, Abyss promised that he would never drown in sea-water. Most Wanderers lived their lives completely aboard ship. They would band their boats together in remote harbors like Commonground to form impromptu cities where they socialized with one another. And so, to conduct business with the rest of the land-bound world, most Wanderer ships hired drymen. Somehow, as I watched Gale eye her employee with a look of school-girl giddiness, I got the impression that Brand had been hired for talents other than his skill at haggling for supplies.

“Is everything okay now?” a girl’s voice called out from the other ship.

I looked back and saw a hound dog with two paws balanced on the rails of the
Freewind
. Menagerie? He could talk again? Why did he sound like a girl?

Then, an actual girl walked up behind the dog. She had kinky hair like the other Romers, but red instead of black. I guessed her to be about thirteen years old. She looked worried as she gazed out over the corpse-filled water. “Did you get them all?”

This had to be Cinnamon. Infidel had said that Cinnamon was the most timid of the Romers. Perhaps it was because she had the least useful magical ability. I was told that she had the power to control other people’s sense of taste. She’d probably been hiding below deck. The others probably didn’t want her underfoot in battle.

“I kept your dog safe like you asked, Infidel,” she called out.

“Appreciate it,” Infidel said, with a salute.

Gale, meanwhile, had knelt before the captive warlord. She grabbed him by the beard and turned his face toward her.

“Why did you attack us?” she asked.

He responded by hocking up a gob and spitting in Gale’s face.

The stink was powerful enough to wrinkle my nose in the spirit realm.

“Oh, lord,” gagged Infidel, covering her mouth.

Gale calmly wiped her cheek.

Brand stepped toward the far end of the boat. “How can anyone’s breath smell so bad?”

Gale shrugged. “The main meat in a Skelling’s diet is rotten fish soaked in lye. It has a distinctive aroma.”

“I’d heard they were cannibals,” said Brand.

“Don’t believe everything you hear,” said Gale. “The Skellings come from an island where nothing grows but grass and thistles. They don’t have a lot of dietary options.”

“I’d eat thistles before I’d eat rotten fish,” said Brand.

“They eat thistles for breakfast,” said Gale. “But I think we’re getting sidetracked.”

She turned her attention back to the warlord.

“Mako,” she said, picking up his horned helmet from the deck.

Mako had slipped aboard when I wasn’t looking. He stepped forward and took the helmet. He opened his jaws far wider than any man should be able to, revealing saw-rows of teeth, and without bothering to say grace bit into the helmet and devoured it in a half-dozen bites, horns and all. He spat out the golden bits into his palm. “No sense in wasting these.”

The warlord’s eyes grew rather large.

Gale tried her question again, this time slipping into a language I didn’t understand. “Jabber jabber,” she asked.

“Jabber
jabber
,” the man growled in response. “Jabber jabber
jabber!
”

They went on like this for five minutes. The warlord’s answers kept getting shorter and shorter. Gale paused for a moment and had Mako chew up the warlord’s battle ax. The man looked distraught. I got the impression the weapon might have been a family heirloom.

The questioning resumed. Finally, the man answered with what turned into a monologue of utter gibberish that ran on for ten minutes.

Gale nodded, then stood from her squatting position, stretching her hands overhead to work the kinks from her back.

“What’d he say?” asked Infidel.

“It’s a little convoluted,” said Gale. “Apparently, they came here to set up an ambush. He says there’s a two-hundred-year-old witch named Purity who has enslaved all their women and turned them into a brain-washed army. She’s got a grudge against Ivory Blade, since he stole some kind of sacred harpoon, and she’s heading to Commonground to capture him. They want to find him first to use as bait to get their women back. When they got into port, they saw Ivory Blade fly onto my boat. They sent the ice-serpents in to take him by surprise, then decided to raid the boat when they realized there were only a handful of men on board.”

“Ah,” said Infidel. “They must have mistaken me for Blade since I’m wearing his armor. And the harpoon this witch is after must be the Jagged Heart.”

“So you know more about this than you’ve let on,” said Gale.

“And yet I really don’t,” said Infidel. “Here’s everything I know. Aurora told me that the harpoon was carved from the shattered remains of Hush’s broken heart. Hush became the primal dragon of cold after her heart splintered into a thousand pieces when she was jilted by Glorious, the sun-dragon. The ice-ogres used the largest fragment of the heart as the tip of a harpoon that Aurora said was used to hunt ghost whales.”

“Whales have ghosts?” asked Brand.

Infidel didn’t answer him. She said, “Aurora said the harpoon had been stolen by raiders, but she didn’t really describe them. Maybe it was this witch who took it. All I know is, Lord Tower had possession of the harpoon during our dragon hunt. It was the only weapon capable of killing Greatshadow.”

“Wouldn’t a harpoon tipped with ice melt once it got near a dragon made of fire?” asked Gale.

“Nope,” said Infidel. “I’m not an authority on the pecking order of primal dragons, but apparently cold trumps fire when it comes to elemental forces. Aurora said that cold was the eternal backdrop of all creation, while heat and flame were merely flickering aberrations.”

Gale sighed. “You’re leaving out one little detail, aren’t you?”

“What?”

“You now have the Jagged Heart. You’re wearing Blade’s armor and using Tower’s hammer. I assume you stole the harpoon as well.”

“I most certainly did not steal it. Aurora was the high priestess of the ice-ogres. She died recovering the harpoon, which was the most sacred relic of her people. I’ve made a promise to see that it gets returned to her homeland.”

“When you said you wanted to book passage to Qikiqtabruk you didn’t mention that you’d be transporting a treasure being hunted by an ancient witch. You’re placing my family in danger by bringing it aboard.”

“I swear I didn’t know there was a witch looking for the harpoon,” said Infidel. “But, look, does it really matter what kind of cargo I’m bringing aboard? Everyone here is being hunted by the Church of the Book, the Storm Guard, and the slaving Wanderers. What’s one more enemy?”

“If you’re my passenger, I have an obligation to defend you. I can’t do that if you’re keeping secrets.”

“I don’t need defending,” said Infidel.

“Don’t you?” Gale asked. “I’ve been too polite to mention it, but your face is covered with cuts and bruises. When you were last aboard my ship, swords bounced off your skin, and you didn’t bother with armor.”

Infidel crossed her arms. “You Wanderers make a big deal out of privacy. I’ll ask you to respect mine.”

“Don’t speak to me of respect. You’re asking me to risk my family. It’s easy to forget this here in the tropics, but the northern kingdoms are in the thick of winter. The coast of Qikiqtabruk is completely ice-locked. There will be no safe harbor.”

“Aw, Ma, don’t be like that,” said Jetsam, who was no longer standing on the waves but was instead doing a breaststroke in the air above his mother. I’d forgotten that in addition to being able to walk on water, Jetsam could swim in air. “If we make another boring run between the Isle of Apes and Raitingu I’ll go crazy. Let’s go to Qikiqtabruk and fight some witches.”

Mako stretched his lanky arms overhead to snatch his brother by the belt. He yanked Jetsam back down to the deck and said, “Speak to Mother like that again and I’ll break your jaw.”

“No jawbreaking, please!” said Infidel, looking embarrassed to be in the middle of a family dispute. “Look, the whole reason I’m hiring the
Freewind
is that I don’t want to fight anybody. I want to get up north as quickly as humanly possible, hand the harpoon to the first ice-ogre we meet, then get the hell out of there. If I liked cold weather even a little bit, I wouldn’t live on the Isle of Fire.”

“So what’s your hurry?” asked Gale. “I’d be more open-minded about this mission if you were waiting until summer. The north sea isn’t nearly as treacherous then.”

Infidel bit her lower lip. She stared at Gale for several long seconds. Finally, she took a deep breath and said, “If you must know, I’m pregnant. I think. I want to get this over with as quickly as possible before my health won’t permit it.”

Gale chuckled, then dismissed Infidel’s concerns with a wave of her hand. “You’ll not be so fragile as you imagine. I first sailed the Sea of Wine when I was six months pregnant with Levi. You’ll be fine if you wait until summer.”

“Or,” said Brand, stepping forward, “Or, we can accept the mission now, but for an extra fee.”

“You’ve already admitted that Sorrow paid a large fee for you to carry her to any destination she wanted. Just because I’m choosing the destination doesn’t mean you can change the price,” said Infidel.

“We negotiated that price without full disclosure of the value of the cargo,” said Brand. “Due to the need for additional security, our standard fee must be doubled.”

Gale didn’t look upset that Brand was launching into a negotiation to sail to a place that she’d just said was too dangerous to sail to. Wanderers are notorious hagglers; Gale was no doubt voicing protests as a basis for negotiating a higher fee. Brand was now doing the job he was paid to do by double-teaming Infidel.

Infidel smirked. “Double is outrageous. I’ll offer a five percent bonus if, but only if, we get attacked by... what was the witch’s name again?”

“Purity,” said Gale.

“Right. If Purity attacks, and if I can’t handle things myself, you get a bonus. These Skellings took us by surprise, but out on open water, I could have sunk both vessels before they even got near.”