Whisker saw no sign of the Cat Fish as he made his way up the ladder, although he did receive filthy stares from the poodle with the mohawk and a bikini-clad cane toad wearing an excessive amount of makeup.
‘You certainly have an effect on the ladies,’ Horace whispered in his ear as they reached the top of the ladder. ‘They either love you or they hate you.’ The cheeky rat glanced behind at Ruby and added with a grin, ‘And sometimes, both at the same time.’
Whisker let the comment slide and continued across the deck towards the bustling navigation room. There was no sign of the other crew members on the deck, though Whisker did catch the aroma of freshly baked pies wafting up the stairs.
‘We can’t just go barging in there,’ Horace blurted out, as they neared the open door of the navigation room. ‘It looks like a captains-only kind of affair.’
‘Then how did Pete score an invite?’ Whisker asked, without slowing his pace. ‘I can definitely hear his voice.’
‘He’s the quartermaster of the ship,’ Horace argued. ‘He’s probably taking notes or presenting a petition or something.’
‘And we’re spies returning with important news,’ Ruby declared as they reached an enormous wild boar guarding the doorway. ‘I think that buys us an entry ticket.’
The boar stuck out a trotter, blocking their path.
‘Capt’ns only,’ he grunted.
‘We are captains,’ Ruby said, refusing to be intimidated. ‘I’m Captain Ruby of the Sea Cucumber, and this is Captain Whisker of the Golden Anchor.’
‘What ‘bout him?’ the boar asked, pointing to Horace. ‘He’s too short t’ be a capt’n.’
Horace puffed out his chest and spoke in his most pretentious voice, ‘I’ll have you know that I am none other than Horacio Handsome Hook, the much-revered captain of the Cave Lake Supply Cart.’
‘Ey?’ snorted the boar, tugging at his nose ring. ‘I’ve never heard o’ that ship b’fore.’
‘Then perhaps you’ve heard of the good ship Pig on a Spit,’ Ruby snapped, drawing both swords and prodding him in the belly.
‘Easy, lass!’ he squealed, raising his trotters in the air and sucking in his hairy stomach. ‘The pipsqueak can pass! Ye can all pass!’
‘Much obliged,’ Ruby said, lowering her weapons.
The three rats squeezed their way into the navigation room to find themselves surrounded by the most despicable, the most disgusting, the most deranged group of swindlers, scoundrels and scurvy sailors they had ever seen.
Whisker found it impossible not to stare.
Standing closest to him, a heavily tattooed racoon covered in misspelt slogans was jostling for space with an armadillo in patched-up body armour, while trying to balance a slime-covered snail on his head. The snail appeared to be harmless, but the enormous shark’s tooth mace resting against the armadillo’s shoulder looked menacing enough to take down a lion.
Nearby, a Tasmanian devil wearing a horned Viking helmet watched the newcomers suspiciously through a grotesquely scarred eye. His blood-red trident did nothing to lesson his devilish demeanour.
Further into the room, a hare with a dozen ear-piercings and sharpened front teeth muttered something incoherent to an overly excited chipmunk.
Even the koala on lookout duty, dozing in a chair near the window, looked threatening with his oversized biceps and barrel chest.
‘Someone needs a bath,’ Horace whispered to Whisker as they passed between an outlandishly-dressed orangutan and a skunk in a seagull-feather hat.
The skunk raised her tail and threatened to give Horace something to really complain about.
Holding their noses, while trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible, the three young rats listened quietly to the discussion from the centre of the crowd. Pete and the Captain stood beyond the far end of the table with the counterfeit Freeforian coins scattered across its surface. Each coin had been hacked open to reveal an iron core beneath a thin layer of gold plating.
‘What more proof do you want, Sven?’ Pete was saying to a gigantic brown tarantula, creeping onto the tabletop.
Seven-legged Sven stared at the coins with his eight beady eyes and then raised his head to reveal a set of enormous venomous fangs. Letting out an angry hiss, he wrapped three hairy legs around the table leg as if preparing to tear the furniture to shreds.
His fellow pirate captains let out a cheer of assent.
‘We’ve seen your tricks before,’ Penelope Pond Scum croaked, pointing a warty toad finger at the two rats. ‘And we know what you’re playing at. You want the gold mine all for yourselves.’
‘Hear, hear,’ chorused a tortoise in a skull-and-cross-bones-patterned shell. ‘They’re after our mine.’
‘For Ratbeard’s sake,’ the Captain said in frustration, picking up a bent coin and letting it drop onto the table with a ting, rattle, rattle. ‘Haven’t you been listening? There is no gold mine. The entire operation is a hoax orchestrated by the fox.’
‘That’s easy for you to say when he ain’t here to defend himself,’ chattered a gibbon in a skeleton-print bodysuit, perched on a bookcase.
Pete screwed up his nose and glared at her. ‘The fox is not here to defend himself precisely for the reason that he knows there is no gold in that mine. Why else would he stay behind on Aladrya with a mountain of riches up for grabs?’
The captains were momentarily silent as they considered Pete’s point.
‘We can still raid the village and make this worth our while, even if the mine is empty,’ said the orangutan, fiddling with her underpants eyepatch. ‘I’m in need of fresh supplies, plus a change of clothes wouldn’t go astray.’
‘Yeah, and a handful of those villagers would make great slaves for my rowing crew,’ the Tasmanian devil growled.
‘I simply cannot allow that to happen,’ the Captain said firmly, pounding his paw on the table. ‘I made a promise to the citizens of Freeforia that they would be protected and I will not go back on my word.’
Sven let out another hiss of anger and dragged his enormous hairy body onto the table.
‘I don’t think Sven likes your tone,’ Penelope Pond Scum croaked.
The Captain drew his black-handled scissor sword from his belt and levelled it at the tarantula.
‘If you intend to change your name to Six-legged Sven, then by all means keep crawling,’ he boomed. ‘Otherwise, stand down.’
There was a loud clatter from around the room as the pirate captains drew their own weapons.
‘I think you’re a little outnumbered to be callin’ the shots,’ Brawl growled, sweeping his bone club through the air and narrowly missing the end of Pete’s nose.
‘Oh my precious schnozzle!’ Pete gulped, staggering back from the table and grabbing his yellow-handled scissor sword from a shelf. ‘So much for a diplomatic solution.’
‘You take the left side of the room,’ the Captain said calmly, ‘and I’ll take the right. They can only fight us one at a time.’
With a cry of ‘Avast ye scurvy rats!’ the pirates surged forward.
‘Wait! Wait!’ Whisker screamed from the centre of the pack.
The advancing pirates stopped in their tracks and spun around.
‘Who said that?’ Brawl barked. ‘Speak up or I’ll rip off your legs an’ feed ‘em to a sea gull.’
‘It’s that wretched rat from the Pirate Cup,’ declared a brush tailed possum, staring at Whisker through a brass eye monocle. ‘I recognise his face from the wanted posters.’
‘He’s the one what lost the trophy to the gov’nor,’ chattered the chipmunk, aiming an acorn-firing shoulder cannon in Whisker’s direction. ‘I’ll teach him ‘bout proper pirate behaviour.’ She struck a match and moved it towards the short fuse of the cannon.
‘Oi! You can’t fire that thing in here, you jittery fool,’ the hare exclaimed, trying to extinguish the match by flapping her long ears. ‘You’ll blow us all to pieces.’
‘Then how ‘bouts we take care of
him the ol’ fashioned way?’ the racoon proposed, cracking his knuckles. ‘A fist fight t’ the death.’
‘Rotten pies to fisticuffs!’ Horace gasped, forming a defensive position behind Whisker and Ruby. ‘It’s fifty fists against five.’
‘I never said it’d be a fair fight,’ the racoon grinned through rotten teeth.
‘It never is with you lot,’ Ruby muttered.
‘At least wait until you’ve heard the breaking news,’ Whisker said, trying to talk his way out of trouble.
‘You are the breaking news!’ the armadillo snapped, raising his shark’s tooth mace above Whisker’s head.
There was a deafening roar of approval from the pirates as the armadillo prepared to clobber Whisker. The dozing koala on lookout duty awoke with a start, almost falling out of his chair. He took one look though his spyglass and began pointing wildly through a pane of glass.
‘Ships ahoy!’ he bellowed. ‘Ships ahoy!’
The pirates reacted in surprise and confusion. The armadillo lowered his mace, the racoon unclenched his fists and every set of eyes turned to face the port side windows.
Bartholomew Brawl stormed over to the koala and snatched the spyglass from his paws. ‘Give me that, you tree-hugging layabout.’
He surveyed the horizon for a moment and then exclaimed, ‘Soggy dog biscuits! Where did he come from?’
‘Who?’ the Tasmanian devil demanded.
‘General Thunderclaw,’ Brawl growled. General Thunderclaw and his entire stinkin’ navy!’
The Council of War
The shocked horde of pirate captains rushed over to the windows, desperate for a clearer view of the western ocean. Ignoring the five rats retreating through the navigation room door, they whipped out an assortment of rusty spyglasses and stood muttering to each other.
Outside, Ruby thrust her own spyglass into Whisker’s paws and turned to go.
‘See what we’re up against,’ she instructed, dashing towards the stairwell.
‘But where are you going?’ Whisker called after her.
‘Girl stuff,’ Ruby muttered without turning around. She pulled her empty quiver from her shoulder as she leapt down the stairs and Whisker had a hunch that girl stuff translated to weapons stuff.
The Captain was already staring through the ship’s large telescope and groaning in disbelief when Whisker raised Ruby’s spyglass to his eye and peered into the distance.
The fleet of four-masted Claw-of-War ships was slowly emerging from the northern and southern ends of the Crumbling Rock Islands and through the Central Channel. Led by the general’s infamous Dreadnaught, a destroyer in a class of its own, the ships began fanning out across the horizon, their giant-claw battering rams aimed menacingly towards the distant fleet of pirate ships. Sails lowered, oars extended, they rowed directly into the headwind, clearly intent on trapping the pirates in the bay.
Whisker had never seen so many ships in his life.
‘I think we’re in a spot of trouble,’ the Captain declared, his eye glued to the telescope.
‘That’s an understatement,’ Pete sniffled. ‘Our ship has been overrun with pirates who want to slice us into cutlets and our saviour is a malicious crab who wants to slice us, dice us, then mince us into rat balls!’
‘Rotten pies to rat cuisine,’ Horace shuddered. ‘How long do we have until those warships arrive?’
‘If they maintain their speed into that headwind, the first of Thunderclaw’s fleet will reach us within the hour,’ the Captain estimated.
‘That at least gives us a few minutes to plan our funerals,’ Pete said morosely.
The Captain pulled away from the telescope and turned to Whisker. ‘I take it that Thunderclaw’s presence in these waters relates to something you discovered on the island?’
‘In a way,’ Whisker replied, shooting a wary glance at the open door to the navigation room.
The Captain nodded in understanding. ‘Perhaps we should find a more private location to discuss things further.’
Whisker was about to suggest the submarine when Bartholomew Brawl poked his scowling face through the doorway and barked in a gruff voice, ‘Black Rat, the capt’ns ‘ave called a council o’ war an’ they request your presence immediately.’
‘Oh really?’ Pete said snidely. ‘Two minutes ago you were trying to kill us and now you want our help.’
Brawl glared at him. ‘You flea-ridden rodents appear to know more than the rest o’ us, so I figure it’s worth keepin’ you alive – at least for the next few minutes.’
‘How very civil of you,’ Captain Black Rat responded dryly. ‘I’ll consider joining your council of war, but only if you adhere to a few conditions.’
‘Such as?’ Brawl growled.
‘All weapons are to be left at the door,’ Pete jumped in. ‘We can’t have you barbarians trying to ambush us when things don’t go your way.’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Brawl said noncommittally.
‘And I wish to nominate a spokes-rat to speak on my behalf,’ the Captain added.
Brawl shrugged. ‘Sure, whatever. I don’t give a dog’s hind leg which one o’ you vermin I listen to. Now get a move on!’
He disappeared into the navigation room and the Captain turned to Whisker, a serious look on his face.
‘You’re it,’ he delegated.
‘I’m what?’ Whisker said in confusion.
‘The spokes-rat,’ Black Rat clarified. ‘There isn’t time for a proper debriefing, so I want you to represent the Pie Rats in the council of war.’
‘But I –’ Whisker began.
‘You know more about this than any of us,’ the Captain asserted. ‘With the possible exception of Horace, but I need him to evacuate the civilians before things really start heating up.’
‘Aye, Captain,’ Horace said, touching his hook against his forehead. ‘Benny’s submarine is sitting in wait, sir.’
‘Submarine?’ Pete said, raising an eyebrow. ‘Since when did Benny have a submarine?’
Horace didn’t respond. He was already bounding down the stairs, shouting, ‘Mr Tribble! Madam Pearl! Sisters three! Pack your handbags and report to the deck at once!’
Whisker was left facing Pete and the Captain, who wasted no time in bundling him into the navigation room.
The council of war was slightly more civil than the previous round of negotiations and, on Pete’s orders, all captains present were directed to place their weapons at the door. Despite their apparent willingness to comply with the request, several of the more unscrupulous captains re-entered the room with knife-shaped bulges under their clothing.
While the most influential pirates took their seats around the table, the remaining captains tussled for the best standing positions around the room or hung from the rafters. Whisker sat between Pete and the Captain at the head of the table, feeling extremely overwhelmed by the responsibility entrusted to him. He knew the fate of Freeforia was in his paws but, as the most hated animal in the room, he doubted the pirates would listen to a word he said.
A copy of Anso’s Crumbling Rock Islands map, featuring the Bay of Freeforia, lay in the centre of the table, along with a number of small wooden ships painted black and white to represent the pirate and Blue Claw forces respectively. Needless to say, there were considerably more white ships spread across the map.
‘I say we take our chances and sail up the river,’ the orangutan said, opening the discussion.
Whisker shook his head, speaking quickly in an attempt to quell the suggestion before it gained support. ‘Landing on the island is exactly what Thunderclaw wants us to do. Don’t think for a minute he won’t burn our ships and then hunt us into the jungle.’
‘He can’t do that,’ protested the possum. ‘There are international treaties in place. The Aladryan navy has less right to be on Freeforian soil than a pirate.’
‘Things have changed,’ Whisker said succinctly. ‘A new treaty has just been signed. The moment a pirate steps as
hore, the Blue Claw has full authority to attack. And that means innocent Freeforians will be caught in the crossfire.’
‘Who cares ‘bout the Freeforians?’ Brawl growled dismissively. ‘We’re pirates, not aid workers. We look out for ourselves. If a few pathetic villagers get squashed along the way, then so be it.’
Sven added his support with a loud HISS.
Whisker heard a murmur of assent from around the room and knew that trying to appeal to the pirates’ compassionate side was never going to win them over.
‘What if we gave you an incentive not to land?’ he volunteered.
‘An incentive?’ the tattooed racoon scoffed, flicking a glob of snail slime in Whisker’s direction. ‘You mean a fruit hamper and a couple of grass skirts from the village market? Forget it.’
There was a chorus of chuckles from the assembled pirates.
‘We could ask for the trophy,’ the gibbon shouted from the bookcase, ‘if the rascally rat still had it.’
The room erupted in mocking laughter.
‘You ain’t got nothin’ of value,’ the boar chimed in. ‘Nothing at all.’
Oh, yes we have, Whisker thought, suddenly reminded of his conversation with Eddie the Ear. We have exactly what you want.
He knew it wasn’t technically his to give away, but this didn’t stop him raising his voice over the laughter and jeers to announce boldly, ‘What if I were to offer you gold?’
There was a buzz of excited interest from around the assembled pirates and several captains raised their eyebrows greedily.
‘Go on,’ Brawl said.
Whisker chose his next words carefully, ‘As you are all aware, the Pie Rats recently won a prestigious sporting competition. Along with an, err, certain trophy, our winnings included a hefty sum of Aladryan gold. Gold, I might add, which is currently being held on this ship.’
Pete slumped his head against the table and groaned, ‘Oh my precious paws. He didn’t just say that. Tell me, he didn’t just say that.’
‘He said it!’ the Tasmanian devil growled. ‘So shut yer trap an’ let ‘im finish.’
The Golden Anchor Page 20
