Kal Moonheart Trilogy: Dragon Killer, Roll the Bones & Sirensbane (67 page)

‘Dig him out! Missus Speckle’s going to be very happy when we slide her husband back into town.’

‘She might even reward us!’ Deros said. ‘Then we’ll be rich after all!’

‘Missus Speckle’s old and poor,’ Kal said (Missus Speckle was forty). ‘We’ll just have to do this out of the goodness of our own hearts!’

Deros shook his head. ‘No way, Kal. I’m not wasting my energy for nothing. Let’s just head home and tell our parents instead. They can come and fetch him.’

He turned away and started off back down the pass.

‘Help me and you’ll get your kiss,’ Kal called after him.

Deros stopped, swivelled on the spot, and returned to Kal and Mister Speckle. He stood hopefully before her, and Kal bent her head to deliver a peck on the lips.

It was quick and cold, but enough to satisfy a ten-year-old. They set to work. Kal started scooping away snow with the flat of her axe head, Deros tried to help by flicking it away with the end of his stick. After a time, Kal called a halt, and they both stepped clear of the body.

‘That’s not good,’ Deros said, looking at what they had uncovered.

‘No,’ Kal agreed. The smell was stinging her eyes.

‘We should probably get back now.’

‘Yes,’ Kal agreed.

Mister Speckle’s frozen flesh only extended as far as under his chin. Below the neckline he was just a cage of picked-clean ribs.

But that wasn’t all. Inside the natural cave of the rib cage was a stinking pile of droppings. Trapped under the snow, and soaked with scent, the revolting pile still smelled as fresh as the day it was laid.

The icy wind blew the smell further up the pass.

Deros prodded the poo with his stick. But it was Kal who figured out its meaning first.

‘We need to get out of here now,’ she said. ‘This is a trap!’

IV.ii

Mutiny

CRACK—BOOM! A distant harsh echoing sound roused Kal from her sleep. Thunder? Her body was wet and cold with snow … no, not snow: it was sweat. The mountain terror was just a dream, and she was actually safe at home. She could sense a comforting presence nearby.

‘Dad? Mum?’

All she got in response was a mocking laugh, and the illusion was broken. Kal’s mind returned to the present.

She was lying on a pile of sawdust, and the ground was moving in a nausea-inducing kind of way. Lula was lying nearby, clad only in a shirt and her black hat. The scene was lit by a swinging lantern, which sent long vertical lines of shadow moving before Kal’s eyes in a kaleidoscopic, disorienting manner.

They were at sea.

In a cage!

She groaned, and pulled herself into a sitting position. Her whole body ached, but she guessed she ought to be thankful she wasn’t still chained to a mast. Fuzzy memories of the previous few days swirled around in Kal’s head. She and Lula had gone after treasure, but in their greed they had gone too far, and ended up forfeiting their prize to—

‘Dogwood!’

The fat captain of the Senate Guard was sitting on a stool watching them. Kal made a move towards him, but a sudden flapping ball of feathers filled the space between them. A parrot! Kal realised where they were: locked in the parrot cage in the hold of the
Swordfish
.

‘…’ she said. She summoned up some saliva to wet her throat and tried again. ‘… Let us out, Silas,’ she eventually croaked.

Dogwood just groaned and looked back over his shoulder. Kal suddenly realised—the bars were behind him. Dogwood was locked in the cage, too.

CRACK—BOOM! That noise again, like quick, sharp thunder.

‘What happened, Dogwood?’ she said. ‘What’s going on?’

‘The crew decided that they didn’t want me as their new captain, after all,’ Dogwood explained glumly. ‘They didn’t like the idea of going back to Port Black to arrest the Magician, like we had all agreed.’

‘So much for the pirate code,’ Kal said. ‘What have they got planned for us now?’

‘Well,’ Dogwood said. ‘I
did
manage to convince them that if they took us back home, Senator Godsword would pay a handsome ransom for our safe return.’

Kal slumped back in the sawdust.
Bailed out by Ben again! What a way for all this to end.
‘When we get home,’ she said, ‘I’m going to crawl into bed and not come out for a month.’

CRACK—BOOM! The parrots all started squawking.

‘What
is
that infernal noise?’

‘It’s the Eldragoran Armada,’ Dogwood said. ‘They’re using cannon to break a passage through the reef that protects the Islands.’

That wasn’t good news, Kal reflected. The mile-wide reef protected the Islands from more then just enemy ships. ‘It’s just as well we’re getting out of here,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t want to get caught between the Magician and the Armada while they scrap it out.’

‘We have to go back,’ a small voice said. ‘Back to Port Black.’

It was Lula. She had woken up now, too.

‘No, Lu,’ Kal said. ‘Forget it. It’s over. We’re alive, and that’s more than we deserve right now. I promised to help you, and that’s what I’m going to do: you’re going to stay with me at my flat in the city for as long as it takes for us to recover.’

‘You promised to break the
curse
,’ Lula said ‘And the curse ends with the Magician. We can’t leave my people caught between him and that bastard Azul. We have to help them!’

Kal shivered. A horrible memory stirred; one that was always at the back of her mind.
A freezing mountain. The pungent tang of monsters.
‘When I interfere and try to do good, then people die,’ she said.

Dogwood, however, was on Lula’s side. ‘If we can get to Port Black before the Armada, take out the Magician, and take back the fort, we can claim the Islands for the Republic again. The Armada wouldn’t dare attack then. Especially if we can man the cannon on the fort walls.’

‘We can rescue Che!’ Lula added.

‘In case you hadn’t noticed,’ Kal said, ‘we’re in a cage heading
away
from Port Black.’ She had no energy to argue any more, and curled up in a corner. All she wanted to do was sleep forever.

‘Well, if you won’t think about helping people,’ Lula said, ‘then think of the adventure! Or would you rather spend a month cooped up in here?’ Kal heard what sounded like digging. Curiosity got the better of her, and she rolled over to look. Lula had her arm up to her elbow in the bucket of parrot seed.

‘They put me in here once after I accidently chopped a man’s finger off in a knife-throwing contest,’ Lula said. ‘After that, I swore I’d never let myself get locked up again.’ Her hand came up out of the bucket, her fist clenched. ‘This could be the beginning of a great adventure, Kal,’ Lula said. ‘And every great adventure begins with one small step.’ She opened her fist and held out a small brass key.

Something stirred in Kal’s chest, and she slowly got to her feet.

‘Back to Port Black!’ a parrot squawked. ‘Back to Port Black!’

* * *

Kal donned an old military jacket of Dogwood’s (that was twice her usual size, and fit her like a trenchcoat), grabbed her bag (which had been conveniently left on a hook in the hold) and exited the
Swordfish
via the aft gunhatch. She clambered up the beams and windows of the transom—the superstructure of the captain’s cabin—and gained the quarterdeck unseen by any of the crew. The ship’s doctor was standing with his back to her, overseeing the deck below. What was his name again? Oh yes …

She crept up behind him and put a knife to his throat. ‘All hands on deck, Mister Tooth. Smartly now!’

The doctor gave a nervous cough, but he didn’t argue. ‘All hands!’ he shouted in as calm a voice as he could manage. The depleted crew were just the ten men and women who had survived the zombie attack at the Blue Mahoe. They hove the ship to, and then gathered in a small bunch between the mainmast and the forecastle.

Kal jabbed the doctor in the arse with the point of her knife. ‘You too, matey,’ she said. ‘Your place is before the mast, not up here.’

The man had no choice but to obey, because across the deck, sitting on the forecastle rail and toting a long musket, was Dogwood. His evil grin suggested an itchy trigger finger.

Kal leaned against the mainstay, trying to project an image of cool confidence. In truth she was deadbeat and—despite the heat of the sun—covered in goosepimples. She gripped the thick rope for support and looked out over the crew. ‘Who is the captain now?’ she asked them.

All eyes fell on the doctor. ‘I am,’ Doctor Tooth said. ‘Dead Leg is confined to his cabin, on account of him being a zombie and all now, so we had a vote.’

Kal swallowed a brief flicker of regret for Dead Leg’s fate. ‘Wrong answer!’ she said. ‘Captain Dogwood assumed command of this vessel with the authority of the Senate. You don’t get to vote. Locking your captain away is an act of
mutiny
!’

‘We don’t recognise no Senate at sea,’ the doctor grumbled. ‘Never have.’ The crew all nodded in agreement.

Kal shrugged. ‘Then that makes you lawless pirates, not mutineers,’ she said. ‘Either way, the punishment is the same, isn’t it, Captain?’

‘Indeed,’ Dogwood agreed. He looked up. ‘If you would, Quartermaster.’

The hapless crew were surrounded on three sides. Lula was halfway up the mainmast, armed with a crossbow. She lobbed a rope up and over the topsail yardarm. It fell and then stopped and dangled just five feet off the deck. The end was looped and coiled around itself thirteen times.

It was a hangman’s knot.

‘The punishment for mutiny and for buccaneering is death,’ Dogwood said cheerfully. ‘But I can’t afford to lose all of you, so we will just hang one man today. The rest of you will get a flogging! So … if you would, Mister Tooth, just slip your head in the noose for me now.’

There was a stunned silence on deck. The doctor took off wire-framed spectacles he wore and rubbed them, as if hoping that when he put them back on his situation might have changed. The crew casually moved away from him, leaving him standing alone. They obviously figured a flogging was a better option then leaping to the doctor’s defence.

‘I’m … sorry,’ he spluttered.

‘So am I,’ Dogwood said. ‘Now let’s hurry up and get you swinging. We need to crack on if we’re going to reach Port Black before the Armada.’

The doctor fell to his knees, a quivering wreck. ‘No, please,’ he moaned. ‘I won’t mute— … mutinise— … I won’t do it again, I promise!’

Kal laughed and clapped her hands, breaking the tension. ‘You bet you won’t!’ she said. ‘Alright, enough messing around. The show’s over. Let’s get back to work.’ The crew breathed an audible sigh of relief, and Lula started to haul up the noose.

‘No,’ Dogwood said. He hadn’t lowered his gun. ‘This man gets hanged. Now.’

‘What?’ Kal said.

‘Senate law is not a joke, Moonheart,’ Dogwood said. He pointed his gun directly at the doctor. ‘You can either have a quick death by hanging, or a slow death by lead poisoning.’ To demonstrate he was serious, he swung his gun left and fired. A section of the rail exploded, and a block broke free and swung across the deck. Dogwood calmly reloaded the gun, taking a cartridge from his belt, ripping off the end with his teeth and filling the priming pan and muzzle with powder and shot. He then returned his aim to the doctor.

With a hopeless, wretched look on his face, Doctor Tooth put his head in the loop, and Lula drew in the slack. The rest of the crew held their breath. In the distance, the Eldragoran cannon rumbled on.

But Kal drew a deep breath of clean sea air. She knew something like this would happen when they all escaped the cage; but she had a play, and it was now or never. She raised her voice: ‘Belay this nonsense!’ she shouted, choosing her language carefully. ‘There’s another course we can take here. No one has to die.’

Dogwood looked annoyed by her interruption. ‘What are you talking about, Moonheart?’

Kal took a scrap of paper from her bag—a scrap that had gotten wet several times, as well as having been torn in several places over the course of her adventures. ‘I’m taking command of this ship,’ she announced. ‘
I
have Senate authority, too.’

‘You?’ Dogwood scoffed. ‘What do
you
know about captaining a ship?’

‘Well,’ Kal said, striding back and forth along the quarterdeck now that she had everyone’s attention. ‘It’s true that when we started this journey, I had no sea legs. But unlike you, Dogwood, I didn’t spend my time hiding up in the crow’s nest.’

She addressed the crew directly: ‘I worked hard, and I reckon I can now hand, reef and steer with the best of you. But of course, that’s not what you want in a captain: what you need in a captain is leadership, trust and reward. It’s true that I’m going to lead the
Swordfish
into danger, but you can trust me not to put you in any situation where I won’t be at the front of the action. And although we’re going to spend the treasure we found on guns, equipment and help, there
will
eventually be a reward. Think of it as an investment; if you sail with me then the Silver Sea will be ours to plunder forever more. And here’s why …’

She opened her letter and read aloud:
‘In discharge of the great trust which the Republic hath placed in me, I do by virtue of full power and authority derived unto me, and out of the great confidence I have in the good conduct, courage, and fidelity of you, the said Kalina Moonheart, to be Master and Commander of the vessel the Swordfish, which hereafter shall be fitted for the public service and defence of these islands, and also of the officers, soldiers and sailors, which are, or shall be put upon the same, and to cause—’

She paused to take in air.

‘—and to cause the vessel to be well manned, fitted, armed and victualled, and by the first opportunity, wind and weather permitting, to put to sea for the guard and defence of these islands, and in order thereunto to use your best endeavours to surprise, take, sink, disperse and destroy all the enemies ships or vessels which shall come within your view.’

‘Given under my hand, Benedict Godsword, Consul of Amaranthium in the year one thousand and six.’