Pirate Curse

by Kai Meyer

  “Constantine,” corrected Soledad, who’d hurried up to the bridge in three quick leaps. She pulled the throwing knife out of the railing. “He was once a good friend of my father’s. Then he became one of those who betrayed him. It was through him that Kendrick got the opportunity to kill my father.”

  “Ah,” cried Walker. “That gives the whole thing a piquant note, doesn’t it? Now the affair becomes personal.”

  Was Soledad hoping to cross swords with her father’s betrayer? Her eyes glowed with pure battle lust. The Ghost Trader was examining her with concern. What would he do? He wouldn’t allow anything—or anyone—to thwart his mission.

  Jolly’s eyes roamed over the tense faces of her companions, and suddenly she felt sad. Deeply, incomprehensibly sad. Not all of them might survive till the end of this voyage.

  The Natividad fired again.

  Something snarled away over them. But before they all realized they’d missed death by a hair, Walker roared, “Confound it! They must have heavier guns on board than I thought.”

  “Fire,” said the Ghost Trader calmly. “Right now.”

  “Yes, you’re right.” Walker whirled around and bellowed orders over the deck.

  Seconds later the cannons of the Carfax spit death and destruction over the Natividad.

  Whomever the ghosts had been gunners for in their first lives, they knew how to serve a cannon. And how to hit a target precisely with the first shot.

  The thunder of the guns shook the Carfax down to the keel. For a moment the rigging trembled, as if the ship had run aground. Yellowish powder smoke wafted back over the deck and was snatched overboard by the headwind. Munk, who’d never experienced a sea battle before, squeezed his eyes shut as the acrid smoke floated over him. But Walker inhaled deeply, as if he enjoyed the smell, and Jolly gripped the balustrade more firmly, as if to support herself against the wind and the smoke of the guns.

  The storm of iron swept away over the deck of the Natividad, shredded parts of the rigging, and made the remnants of ropes and sails rain down on the crew of the bounty hunter. Two balls tore holes in the hull of the schooner above the waterline; from the interior came the screams of the wounded and dying. Splinters sprayed in all directions like daggers. The balls had hit the cannon deck of the Natividad and destroyed several guns at one blow.

  One figure stood grimly up on the bridge, undisturbed by the destruction aboard the ship, and roared orders: Captain McBain. He didn’t consider giving up on the basis of a single hit. His angry shouting resounded over the gap between the two ships and sent a shudder down Jolly’s back.

  The ghosts immediately began to load the cannons again, but the remaining guns of the Natividad were also ready to fire.

  “Now it’s their turn,” Griffin whispered. For the first time Jolly saw real concern on his face. Somehow that didn’t go with the life-loving, high-spirited boy she knew.

  There was no point in taking cover. Cannonballs could break through any railing, any plank wall. The companions could just as well stand up here and await their enemy’s attack; none of the grown-ups thought of sending Jolly and the boys below. They treated them as equal crew members. Now it was almost the way it had been on the Skinny Maddy, when Bannon and his crew had plunged into an apparently hopeless situation—and yet in the end came out of the battle as victors.

  Cannon thunder wiped away Jolly’s memories. Smoke came from the gun ports of the Natividad, befogging the entire ship.

  “Watch it!” roared Walker, and they all ducked.

  Iron fanned out over the deck of the Carfax, wood shattered, and part of the rigging tore apart. Jolly saw a ghost struck by a direct hit of a cannonball, shatter into bits of fog, and immediately put itself back together again. It became clear how superior the Carfax’s crew was to that of the bounty hunters. New courage spread through the companions, even more when Walker called, “No mast damaged! No holes in the hull!” In a rapture of triumph he hit Buenaventure on the shoulder. “Now we’ll get ’em.”

  The next broadside from the Carfax exploded over the sea, and the smoke that enveloped the Natividad this time was no longer that of her own guns. One ball must have hit the powder magazine, for a fire broke out under the deck of the schooner. When the smoke around the bridge cleared, Jolly saw with a shudder that Captain McBain had vanished—and with him a large portion of the stern cabin.

  Walker rejoiced even louder; Buenaventure let out enthusiastic barks; and even Soledad became so high-spirited that she threw her arms around the captain’s neck—if only for a moment. Almost immediately she bounced back, astonished at herself, and brushed off her clothing. Walker grinned and whispered something to the pit bull man that made him burst into yelping laughter.

  The dark mien of the Ghost Trader remained unaltered. “They’re turning away,” he said softly. Jolly wondered why the wind didn’t push his hood back. It was as if the power of the elements couldn’t affect him, as if the wind made an arc around him.

  Where were both parrots, anyway? Hugh and Moe had been invisible since the beginning of the battle.

  Walker waved over at the Natividad and watched with satisfaction as the damaged schooner fell behind.

  “What’s happening with the Palomino?” asked Griffin, and answered himself after a look back over the stern: “She’s still following us.”

  “She’s slower than we are,” said Walker.

  “Possibly,” said the Ghost Trader, “but not very probably.”

  The captain looked at him in surprise. “What do you mean?”

  With his long arm, the Ghost Trader gestured toward the mainmast. The tip was bent forward, along with the crow’s nest and the topsail. A painful crunching and breaking sounded, and then the top four feet of the mast plunged to the deck. A tangle of snapped ropes and torn canvas crashed onto the planking and buried several barrels of drinking water beneath them. Ghosts shredded apart like smoke, reassembled themselves somewhere else, and immediately wafted over to begin the work of repairs.

  “Goddammit!” Walker exclaimed.

  Soledad sprang to the balustrade and looked out onto the main deck. “One of their balls must have grazed the ast.”

  Walker reacted at once. Without wasting any more time, he discussed with Buenaventure how to proceed. Finally he turned to his passengers. “I think it will work. Even if there turns out to be no carpenter among the ghosts, we’ll hardly slow our journey and will at least maintain the distance.”

  “And the Palomino?” asked Jolly.

  “She’ll follow us, that much is certain. And strike as soon as we get any slower.”

  “We can’t run away from them all day long,” said Munk. He looked as if he were mulling something over in his mind. Jolly noticed that his right hand lay on the pouch with the mussels.

  Walker raised a disapproving eyebrow. “It’s only an hour so far, boy. We can only wait to see what time brings—perhaps an advantage we haven’t taken into account yet.”

  “Or the end,” said the Ghost Trader.

  Jolly ran to the aft railing and looked toward the bounty hunter’s ship. The Palomino was following them at a distance of just about a mile, maybe less. A hard race stretched before them.

  Now everything depended on whose side the wind and the sea favored. Both, as she knew from Bannon, were fickle allies.

  By the next afternoon the Palomino was still behind them, the distance unchanging. She followed them like a shadow, and her silhouette on the horizon depressed the spirits of all of them. As long as the enemy ship stayed behind them, her guns offered no threat. If, however, she should succeed in catching up to them and showed them a broadside, they were done for. Each of them was clear about that, even Munk, who’d learned more in the last hours about sailing ships and duels on the high sea than he could have imagined in his dreams.

  Jolly climbed up to the bridge, where Buenaventure held his position at the wheel alone. “What course are we taking?” she asked.

  The pit bull man looked
once more at the distant horizon in the west, then at Jolly. Each time she looked into his round, brown dog eyes, she was overcome with remarkable sadness, despite the menace and strength that radiated from the gigantic steersman. A tiny piece of the tip of his tongue showed red between his teeth.

  “To the east,” he said in his growling voice. “And to the north.”

  “I know that. I thought perhaps you could tell me something more exact.”

  Buenaventura’s jowls drew up into a pit bull smile. “He didn’t tell you anything, did he?”

  “No. Nothing at all.” Jolly followed his eyes to the Ghost Trader, who stood in the bow, one hand on the railing, the other on the silver ring under his robe. The two black parrots were sitting on his shoulders again as if they were stuffed, except that the wind was ruffling their feathers.

  “He doesn’t talk with anyone anymore. Not even with Munk. I think he’s really very worried.” Not about me or Munk or any of the others, she thought. Only about Aelenium. Everything boils down to that.

  The Hexhermetic Shipworm had refused to tell them any more about the floating city. He was sulking. Walker had imprisoned him in an old metal birdcage, which he’d brought out of the captain’s cabin in a blazing fury. Jolly had to blame herself for the fact that the captain really had every reason to be angry: When he’d climbed down into the cargo hold during the night to check what reserve wood, masts, and planks they were carrying, he’d discovered that the shipworm had not been idle during the sea battle—he’d polished off a good half of all the wood reserves.

  Jolly had thought Walker would never stop yelling. Especially when the worm offered to repay the loss with a poem.

  Jolly had no pity for the worm. He was greedy, dishonorable, and altogether unbearable. In addition, she reproached herself for leaving him unsupervised. It bordered on a miracle that Walker hadn’t thrown him overboard right away.

  Now, anyway, the Hexhermetic Shipworm sat in his prison at the foot of the mainmast, offended and silent. The birdcage was shaped like an onion dome, and Walker had locked it with a padlock. During the first few hours, the worm had sworn without interruption, until Griffin threatened to slice him into pieces with a cutlass. Since then he’d only occasionally grumbled about robbing freedom, misbehaving, and growling stomachs, but most of the time he was silent.

  Buenaventure snatched Jolly from her thoughts. “If nothing gets in the way, we should be under way for eight or nine days. After Haiti, we keep the Mona Passage lying to the starboard; then we have to sail right out into the Atlantic. So says your friend with the one eye, anyway. But I don’t know if that will work out.” He noticed her gaze, and the dark skin of his forehead wrinkled. “Why are you staring at me?”

  “I—I didn’t know that …” She was completely astounded at his unexpected torrent of words, but she broke off, shaking her head. “I’m sorry.”

  “I can talk like anyone else,” he said, “if that’s what you meant.”

  “But you don’t do it. Or only rarely.”

  “Only when there’s something to say.” He went back to watching the sails and the sea. In the south, many miles away, the coast of Haiti moved past, hardly more than a dark stripe across the horizon. The sun burned in the deep blue sky, and the wind blew strong and drove them briskly forward. The air smelled fresh and salty.

  The distance between the Carfax and the Palomino had hardly changed. Sometimes the enemy ship came a little closer, then fell back again. If the weather didn’t turn, the nerve-wracking pursuit could go on like this for days.

  “What did the Trader tell you?” Jolly asked. “I mean, about our destination.”

  “Only that it’s a place in the Atlantic beyond the Caribbean Sea. And that it’s called Aelenium. Never heard of such an island, but to be honest, it doesn’t interest me that much. I’m happy if everyone leaves me alone and I can steer the ship in peace. Walker does the business and determines the destination. Usually, anyway.”

  Jolly sighed. “Then I’d better not disturb you any longer.”

  He let her get to the steps before he spoke again. “You can stay, if you like.”

  Jolly turned around.

  Buenaventure’s jowls curled into what might have been a grin. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  “What does it feel like to walk on water?”

  She walked over in front of the wheel and leaned with her back against the balustrade. “I don’t know what it’s like if you can’t do it.” She thought for a moment. “I can’t stand to be on land for long. At least not far away from the sea. Once Bannon undertook an expedition into the Yucatan jungle, because someone told him that old Morgan had hidden a treasure in a temple there. I couldn’t go with him. I mean, I tried, but on the third day Bannon sent me back to the ship with two of the men. I couldn’t get air anymore, my feet felt as if they were as heavy as cannonballs, and finally I could hardly even move my legs. Just as little as you know what it feels like to walk on water, I don’t know how you can walk on land for a long time.”

  Buenaventure thought about that for a while. “We don’t even think about it. We walk on solid ground just because we can. It’s natural.” After a pause, he added, “I think I know what you mean.”

  She gave him a smile. “For us polliwogs, it’s just the same. We walk on water because we can. And just the way other people don’t think about walking along a street, it’s nothing out of the ordinary for us to jump from wave to wave. Well, except for the difference that on a street you don’t have to worry about kobalins and sharks.”

  The pit bull man flicked the tips of his folded-over ears. “Then it was probably a dumb question on my part.”

  “Oh, no.” Impulsively she stepped to his side of the wheel and hugged him. She reached just about up to his hips. “I wanted to thank you, besides.”

  He’d almost let go of the wheel in surprise. “What for?”

  “For helping us.”

  “You’re going to pay us, after all.”

  She let go of him and smiled. “Not for everything,” she said. “Certainly not for everything.”

  Buenaventure, the pit bull man, the veteran of the dogfighting pits of Antigua, returned her smile, and from then on they were friends.

  Fire and Smoke

  On the fifth day of their flight, Walker gathered them all in the captain’s cabin. Only Buenaventure stayed behind on the bridge at the wheel. Possibly the pit bull man knew what Walker had to say to them anyway. Sometimes it was as if there was an invisible bond between the two; one knew what the other was thinking, and both acted like two inseparable halves of one man.

  “That’s enough,” said Walker energetically, supporting himself with both hands on his captain’s desk and the spread-out charts. “We have to get free of the Palomino. I’m fed up with this scurvy lot.”

  Through the narrow panes behind his back they could see their adversary’s ship on the horizon. It was sailing in their wake, unchanging. Walker’s hope that the bounty hunter would be forced to give up early because of his larger and hungrier crew had turned out to be premature. Captain Constantine had provisioned himself for a long chase.

  Only now did Jolly have some conception of how high the price the pirate emperor had set on her head must be. She felt quite sick at the thought.

  “We must sail to the islands in the south,” said Walker, tapping his finger on one of the charts. “This silly cat-and-mouse game is getting too boring.”

  “You intend to force a confrontation?” asked the Ghost Trader.

  “If I can determine the battlefield—yes.”

  “Do you have an idea, then?”

  “There’s a group of small rocky islands, hardly more than a few points and combs rising out of the sea. It isn’t far from here; we could be there by evening. Maybe we’ll succeed in getting rid of them there.”

  Soledad joined in. “You intend to try to lead Constantine onto a reef?”

  Walker shrugged. �
�I don’t know if he’s familiar with the region—in any case, I’ve been there often. A few Spaniards have bitterly regretted that they followed me there.”

  The Ghost Trader wasn’t convinced yet. “How much time will we lose?”

  “Half a day, perhaps a whole one. Not more.”

  The shadows under the Ghost Trader’s hood seemed to grow darker, as if his face was sinking to an indeterminate depth. “I’m not sure that that’s a good proposal. They can’t touch us once we reach Aelenium.”

  “If we reach Aelenium. And what about Constantine then? Will your friends sink him? Otherwise, hell turn back to Tortuga or Haiti and tell all the world of your little secret.”

  Soledad supported the captain. “We have to shake him.”

  “He’s one of those you want to see dead, Princess.” The Trader examined her. “But there are things that are more important.”

  “I don’t have to see him,” she replied coldly. “It’s enough if I know that he’s dead.”

  “Toughness will not help you if the Maelstrom becomes all-powerful first.”

  Soledad held his look for a long time, but then she turned away.

  “I’m the captain of this ship,” said Walker with emphasis. “And I make the decisions.” Perhaps that was why he’d assembled them in the cabin, to let the environment underline his authority as commander of the Carfax.

  The Ghost Trader nodded slowly, his parrots imitating the movement. “Do what you think right, Captain. But never forget what’s at stake.”

  That’s exactly the question, Jolly thought. What the devil really is at stake?

  Griffin pointed to a slender container standing on a wooden shelf between leather-bound books. “What is that?” he asked, although he had to know that it was an urn.

  “My mother,” said Walker. “God bless her, the amazing woman.”

  Jolly raised an eyebrow. He noticed it and smiled.

  “The bravest, wildest, most merciless, and bloodthirstiest pirate on both sides of all latitudes.”