Red Sails

by Edward M. Erdelac

  He could see its black eyes shining, see the white of its teeth, and feel its hot breath puffing up at him.

  Sampari straddled it then, the added weight driving the breath from his lungs. She reached around and put her bone knife under its chin. She plunged its point up several times, each withdrawal vomiting splashes of thick, hot blood down on Timóteo. The wolf gave up trying to dig into his throat and desperately tried to twist and deal with the girl on its back, but its efforts soon waned. It fell heavily against him and slid off.

  Timóteo lay gasping as Sampari stabbed the werewolf a few more times for certainty’s sake and then stooped over him to inspect his many wounds.

  How had it gotten down from the snare? How?

  As she prodded his punctured torso, Timóteo turned his head and looked at the thing. Like an expression slackening in death, the thing changed, softened before his eyes. Its hair fell away from its skin, its terrible dog face shrank back into manly proportions, and the coal black eyes dilated until Timóteo stared into the face of a dead, naked white man, curled up in an aura of shaggy, blood-soaked hairs.

  He whispered a prayer and lay back as Sampari attended him. He saw the snare rope still swinging from the branch, and the pale human foot, raggedly torn—no, chewed—at the ankle twisting, still securely bound, in the slipknot.

  * * * *

  Jan laid aside the spyglass and rubbed his eyes. He didn’t know how many of the werewolves were making their way up the hillside now, or how many the fladdermine had gotten rid of, if any. He had seen the things stop and bustle about down below before splitting up. There had been some altercation and the creatures had actually torn apart one of their number. Apparently a minor mutiny had been quelled.

  So Badham was still alive. But had he veered off toward Sampari and Timóteo, or was he coming up to the high ground with the others to investigate his bonfire? Vigoreaux had said the werewolves were in a maddened state under the full moon. He hoped their reasoning was sufficiently clouded, if it survived their transformations at all. That, and the direction of the wind were his only hope now.

  But as he sighted the first of the creatures bounding up to the fire on all fours, he felt the wind suddenly blow hard at the backs of his ears. He could smell the hint of tropic rain.

  The black-haired thing crouching in the firelight perked up immediately, just as Jan fired his musket and put a ball in its head, knocking it dead.

  He cursed. No more would come into the light. He let the musket drop and clambered further up the rocky ground, putting his face to the wind now blowing his scent and the scent of the powder down the hillside. He could reload and discharge a musket in a little over half a minute, but at the rate the things were nimbly scaling the hill, they would be on him in less time. Anyway, muskets were in more abundance than ammunition.

  Breathless, he gained the higher position where he’d left a second charged musket. He turned, dropping flat on his belly and resting the long barrel on a stone.

  Eight of the werewolves spilled over the lip of the hill and pounced, tearing into flesh and cloth, each of them fighting amongst the others to sink their snuffling muzzles in blood and gorge themselves on flesh. It reminded Jan once again of the feeding of sharks as he watched from his vantage above. Using Timóteo’s black cappa and white habit, which he had wrapped around a slaughtered village pig as both bait and marker, he sighted the unseen mound he knew to be inches away and fired.

  The bullet pierced the powder keg concealed there, blowing the Trivias in every direction. They tumbled down the hillside in flaming fragments, or spiraled through the air to crash howling into the treetops far below.

  He dropped the second rifle and stumbled for the crest, not pausing to watch the flames lick the night, nor the inky smoke drifting across the face of the waxing moon.

  As he reached the bald, rocky top ringed by bushes like a monk’s tonsure, the highest point of the island, he could hear the tumble of the stones below him, and the heavy panting and barking of the wolfmen. He could not hear the frigid little brook spilling from the blocky stone, but he knew it was there, as were the last two powder kegs he and Bunop had lugged up here.

  The wind kicked up again, and he saw the flashing cloud sailing on it across the night sky. It was fit to burst and nearly overhead. He dropped to his knees and struggled to light the powder trail in the moonlight, fumbling with the flintlock mechanism taken from one of the muskets. The light shifted, the air cooled, and in less than a minute raindrops as big as gun-stones were plopping down in the earth and on his bare back. He tried to shield the powder with his body, but it was no use. Soon he was in a flash downpour and the trail of powder was saturated. He flung the mechanism down and bellowed his frustration, drawing the stone axe and Badham’s knife as three great, shaggy heads thrust through the surrounding brush. One of them, he noticed, bore a jagged iron harpoon head instead of a left paw.

  They leapt at him. If he was to die, he would make the best of it.

  He brought the axe down hard on the snout of the first of them, hard enough to tear through muzzle and jaw and split the horrid face asunder. The werewolf released a terrible, gurgling howl and tumbled to the ground. Jan stabbed it with the dirk once in the base of the neck as it fell, hoping it was enough to keep it down. He kicked his foot into the second one’s chest, stopping its charge, but as it fell back its serrated harpoon claw raked a ragged furrow in his outstretched leg. He screamed and fell.

  The third overshot him and landed on the ground just past where he fell, its hind claws tearing his cheek. He stabbed wildly at its leg and heard the beast whine like a dog in pain.

  The harpoon-handed werewolf scrabbled up the length of his body, but Jan stopped it cold with the axe, sinking it deep in the creature’s head—too deep, for as it fell he could not withdraw it and had to leave it, rolling out from under its twitching bulk, the hot, metallic taste of its blood on his lips, and its rank, wet musk in his nostrils.

  He jumped to his feet and ran for the brush, right past two more of the things. He went slipping and sliding down the now muddy slope, lost his balance, fell through free air, smashed through clawing brush, finally bashed his shoulder on slick stone and rolled into the creek with a splash. He came up spluttering. Somehow the knife was still in his fist.

  He turned to glance up the hill. Lightning flashed briefly, silhouetting for an instant a terrible, misshapen body hurling at him through the air, simian arms outstretched, satanic ears laid back against its feral head.

  He dove back to the bottom of the cold creek. The creature smashed into him, driving his back and head into the cutting stones. He slashed with the knife, and reached for the thick-furred neck with his free hand. To his amazement, the hard-muscled body gave way easily to his struggles. He shoved it into the water and rolled out.

  Staring, he saw the yard long shaft of one of the native arrows protruding from the thing’s neck.

  Bunop gave a warning shout from the bank of the creek. He was crouched there, fitting another arrow to his bow when four more came bounding down the hillside. Bunop got one flight off and missed before they were upon them again, baying and slavering.

  The fight was fast and intense. Jan glimpsed Bunop in the lightning, sounding like a wolf himself and chopping at the hairy forms swarming over him with a hatchet. Jan felt the sharp piercing teeth in his side and the animal claws shredding his back. He bit back, clamping his jaws on furred limbs and twisting his head to tear flesh as he never had in his life. He felt the gush of coppery blood over his gums and over his knife hand. Furred hide came away in his teeth. He spat it out and sought more, balling up his other hand or clawing desperately at the things, fighting with fist and foot and tooth and elbows and knees, like a child almost. Howling, cursing and screaming, splashing water and the crash of lightning in his ears.

  Then, as if God had tired of the scene, there was no sound. The flash storm passed off to the south. There was only the trickling of the creek and his own breathing
. He lay beneath two dead Indians, their flesh marked by the violence of their deaths. He pulled himself out from underneath them slowly and painfully, for he shared their wounds if not their fate. He washed the bloody taste from his mouth in the creek, and saw another dead man face down there. Bunop sprawled on his back half out of the water, his chest rising and falling much too rapidly, marred by a great open gash exposing his ribs and behind them, what looked like the glistening sac of his lung peering out like a wary prisoner.

  Jan crawled over to him, but by the time he reached his side, the man was dead.

  Another pale, naked form lay on its face nearby.

  Jan sat on the bank and heard a low, threatening growl.

  He looked up and saw the gigantic beast perched like a gargoyle on a stone overhead, its long red hair hanging in sopping strings from its colossal shoulders.

  He got to his feet and held up the bloodstained knife.

  “Come for this at last?” he said.

  Badham sprung.

  * * * *

  Sampari did not know if the dark man T’motayo would live or die. The khakhua had badly maimed him and his breath rattled in his chest. She did not know if any of them would live or die. She had brought him at last to the village, knowing not where else to turn. Though her people had pleaded with her to go elsewhere, she had spat at them and brought him into her uncle’s tree house and salved his terrible wounds.

  She waited through the night, hearing the booming of the thunder powder and stepping out into the flashing storm to wash the blood from her body. She had lain with T’motayo then to keep him warm through the cool storm, feeling his torn body shivering against her own.

  The rain came and went, and she dozed where she lay, snapping awake when she saw the great red-haired khakhua looming in the firelight. But it was only a ghost behind her drooping eyelids.

  Below, Mivai wailed and cried to come up. She had found her way back to the village. Sampari hoisted her up and learned from her how the thunder powder had killed many khakhua on the beach, and how Bunop had followed the rest up the big hill where Jan waited.

  Mivai took Sampari’s place at T’motayo’s side and pushed her face into the crook of his neck, falling fast asleep, despite his ragged breathing and wounded state. She accepted her new role and the death of her father and brother admirably, and sleeping so innocently against T’motayo, seemed almost tolerable. Maybe Sampari would not kill her after all.

  Sampari stood then on the platform and waited awhile before going down to the forest floor to light the village fire. She did not know why she did this. If Jan did not kill the khakhua, it was not as if they did not know where the village was. She supposed she had lit it in case the impossible happened. The white man, not knowing the island, would see the fire and find his way back. But she supposed he was dead, and Bunop too. She did not know which saddened her more.

  Then the edge of the jungle rustled. She picked up her axe and the heavy laleo spear, and lowered it when she saw it was Jan.

  He was in as bad a state as T’motayo, cut and battered, his strange clothing in tatters. He dragged something behind him and she sucked in her breath.

  It was the red khakhua.

  The creature was limping along on all fours behind Jan, bleeding from countless wounds. Both its eyes had been put out and blood streamed from the ruined sockets like demon tears. It was like a great tame boar behind him. He led it on a length of rope like a pig to the slaughter.

  When Jan reached the fire, he jerked the line and forced the stumbling, whining thing to its rear haunches. It towered over them both, but he held the rope out to her, with something else.

  It was a long laleo knife.

  She took them, and it was as though she held fear itself in her sway.

  “Look!” she called out, and the khakhua flinched at the sound and bared its teeth but did nothing. “Look, people! See what has been done this night! What still may be done! Come out and see!”

  Drawn faces poked out of the huts warily, and there was much whispering and muttered talk. She coaxed them out and slowly they came into the firelight, timid yet curious and disbelieving of the sight.

  She forced the creature down to her level and held the knife so they would see. She cut its throat, saying, “I banish forever these demons from our people! We do away with the evil in the old way!”

  * * * *

  Jan watched her slit Badham’s throat, the blood spurting out to hiss in the fire.

  He put his foot to the thing’s hairy back and sent it head first into the flames. It whined and kicked feebly, but Sampari held it by the rope until the rope smoked and disintegrated. The smell of burning hair and cooking flesh hung heavy. He stumbled away from the fire and put his back to a tree, slowly sliding to the ground, not caring what happened next, but sleepily observing as if in a waking dream.

  The villagers took up spears and fished the burning carcass from the fire. The women set upon it with bone knives. It was barely blackened, and in death had returned to the natural form of Badham, but they didn’t seem to notice or care. They hacked at the body, lopping off ears, nose, fingers, sawing away great hunks of flesh.

  They huddled over the body, feasting like wolves themselves and he jerked from his dozing state, thinking for a minute none of his memories of the night were true and the werewolves were in the village.

  Then he remembered, and allowed himself to sleep.

  He dreamt of Vigoreaux, standing on the deck of The Trivia in the moonlight, alone.

  He did not know for how long he dozed. The next moment Sampari was shaking him awake. It was still night, so he could not judge the time.

  Her face was splattered with blood and she was saying words and gesturing to the ground.

  “Laleo!” she said. “Laleo! Vee-ga-row!”

  He nodded, and got to his feet, not needing to see the scrawled picture in the mud.

  * * * *

  Vigoreaux had hardly moved through the night. He had marked each far off explosion, and every howl and yelp had danced across the waters into his keen ears. He had stood motionless through the tropic storm and heard the last howl of Thomas Badham, the dolorso climax of the night’s deadly symphony. He had heard the death cries forty-one times this night.

  Now, they were coming.

  He saw the torch lights like fireflies around the peninsula, where he knew the village to be. The little fishing boats were out and every savage with a bow or a spear was coming across the waters to kill him.

  He chuckled.

  The farmer had been right. What a story this was! What an end, should he choose to make it here. To die at long last at the hands of these savages, having lost his singular crew at the hands of their would-be messiah!

  He stepped lightly in anticipation of the waning night’s pleasures, pausing to scoop up a cannonball and knock one of the brass skull plugs from the barrel of a swivel gun.

  * * * *

  Jan wavered from where he sat in the bow of the canoe, and from behind, Sampari steadied him. The night wasn’t over, though he felt like one who had come to the end of a long series of labors. The hardest was yet to come.

  They were flanked on either side by canoes. All the men of the village, with their bellies full of Badham, were at his beck. He was in command of a company of savage but willful marines, demanding blood for long years of the same. He was struck again by how odd his life was.

  Then one of The Trivia’s guns boomed and the water just in front of them exploded, sending a cool rain of seawater down their backs.

  Some of the men tried to jump ship, but others held them fast and struck bravery back into them with the backs of their hands.

  Vigoreaux’s voice came across the water as they paddled on over the waves.

  “Avast! Turn back! You’ve made a good showing this night, but don’t tempt my wrath.”

  “Your dogs are dead, Old Tick!” Jan shouted back, surprised he could muster the voice.

  “Yes. Thomas and One-
Handed Nan, Hobomock and the rest, all dead. I should squeeze your skull until you scream their names through your own blood. You’ve cost me much. But where’s your priest?” he called, mockingly.

  “A sight better off than your Mr. Badham.”

  “But touch a spar of The Trivia and I’ll make an island of your dead to stand on,” Vigoreaux warned.

  “The better to reach your deck. I told you I was your end, Captain.”

  “Rather, you could be a new beginning. I’ll need a crew, and a good first mate to keep them in line. Say the word, and I’ll enslave these brown rats and make you my man. We’ll sail to Cartagena and build us a fleet worth our salt. You’ve a strong heart. Don’t pump your blood down my gullet.”

  “This night’s your last, Old Tick.”

  “Very well, then.” He sighed. “Come aboard and die, the lot of you.”

  The pale old man left the gunwales and could be seen intermittently in the lantern lights, striding leisurely to the quarterdeck as though inspecting the knots.

  Their canoes thumped hollowly against The Trivia’s hull and they streamed up the sides of the ship like the rats Vigoreaux had named them. One crew scaled the port side. Another sullied the figurehead’s pale face with their muddy hands and feet, slithering up comically through the beakhead toilet holes and swinging up onto the forecastle with bone knives in their teeth. Jan’s own bunch mounted the starboard rigging and clambered over the rails as though assaulting a castle, Sampari struggling to help him at his side.

  The master of The Trivia stood at ease with his hands clasped behind his back. Barbed arrows flew down the length of the ship at him. These he batted aside with astounding swiftness, as though they were nothing more than mosquitoes or slow-moving beanbags pitched at a faire.

  The villagers charged aft, howling a primeval cry, spears and bayonets poised. They leapt over barrels and capstan, swarming around the skull adorned masts in a brown tide.