The Dungeoneers: Blackfog Island

by Jeffery Russell

  “I could have waited to tell you. Waited until we were on the ship, out to sea. I could have just not told you at all.”

  “Ah, well that makes it all ok, I’m sure.”

  “I’m telling you now because I wanted to get off on the right foot with you. Start over. I’m hoping I’ve proved my worth.”

  Thud was silent. The elf had, indeed, been an asset almost from the moment they’d met. He grunted and started walking again.

  “Was that a yes?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ve half a mind to toss ya off the pier. What are ye expectin' to get out of this?”

  “I’m not the sort to plan ahead that much. I see opportunities and jump for them.”

  “Good way to land on yer face.”

  “Sometimes, yes. Sometimes on my feet.”

  “Which of those ended up with you picking pockets in this boil of a town?”

  “Hard to say until I see what being here leads to. Right now I’m hoping it leads to an expedition to this Blackfog place.”

  “Blackfog sounded better than staying in Stilton?”

  “You’re going.”

  “We’s gettin' paid to. You ain’t on the payroll.”

  “I accept tips.”

  Thud grunted. “Well then, here’s a tip for ya. Try to con me again and ye’ll get to practice your swimmin'.”

  “That sounded like a yes.”

  “Don’t push yer luck.”

  They’d reached the pier where the Squiffy was docked. Ween was on deck, directing a stream of dwarves carrying arm-loads of gear from one of the wagons parked at the foot of the gangplank. He looked terrified every time he had to give a direction. The weapons wagon, Thud thought. It looked naked with the gear and ballista removed, its metal plated sides folded down, the smithy on the back cold and dark. Thud ascended the gangplank quickly, the elf behind him. He didn’t mind ships so much but had never been a fan of the getting on and off of them bit. You either had to walk a narrow plank over water or, with small boats, step in and hope the thing didn’t flip over. Clink was at the bow, mounting the ballista under the supervision of a nervous looking Skulk. Mungo looked to be setting up the signal mortars along the starboard side. He seemed to have added a few seagull feathers and a bit of dry seaweed to his fake beard.

  “Everything ok?” Thud asked Skulk as they walked up.

  “Hard to be happy with anyone punching holes in the deck but your mate seems to know his business,” Skulk said. “Less happy with those tube things.” He frowned in Mungo’s direction. “Your…uh…‘dwarf’ there says they’ll be useful in a scrap. Least ways if I understood him right. He doles out syllables like an alley-cat deals pox.”

  “I trust he has some notion behind it,” Thud said. “I tends to let him ‘ave his way. He’s good with surprises in a pinch.” He glanced around the deck with its bewildering array of ropes and beams. “Don’t see much crew about.”

  “There aren’t many to see at the moment. I made the rounds trying to pick up souls. Hard to find sailors that be wanting to sail for Blackfog. Harder still when you’re on the wrong side of Laughing Larry. The best of the lot are out to sea on his ship and the rest don’t want to cross him.”

  “Sounding to me like a good way to end up with a crew o' questionable loyalties.”

  “Your dwarves know how to handle a ship?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then the choice be between a mediocre crew ye can’t trust or a bad crew that ye can.”

  “I’ll have to think that over,” Thud said. “Speakin' o' questionable loyalties, the keeb here don’t actually work for the Singers. Jest wants to come cause he thinks it will be ‘interesting’.”

  “Now there be a suspicious reason to me mind,” Skulk said. “So the Singers aren’t after us?”

  “I doubt word has even reached them yet,” the elf said. “Or will, fior another few weeks at least.”

  “He helped fight the attack off,” Thud went on. “So he either ain’t with that group or they’re playin' a deeper game.”

  “You wanting me to string him to the mast?” Skulk asked.

  “Not yet,” Thud said. “He’s been useful so far.”

  “You’re thinking of bringing him, then?” Skulk had a distinctly skeptical look.

  “Easiest way to keep an eye on ‘im,” Thud said.

  “Feeling a bit invisible here,” Catchpenny said.

  “You should like that, bein' a thief and all.”

  “He’s a thief?” Skulk asked.

  “Yeh, and you’re a smuggler. Ain’t no accountin' for morals in this town.”

  Skulk shrugged. “Well, it’s up to you. You’re the captain.”

  “I’m the what, now?” Thud asked.

  “Samona’s gone so you’re in charge. You’re the captain.”

  “I don’t know anything about captaining a boat.”

  “It’s easy. Ye just turn the wheel so the boat points where ye want it to go and then ye tell the crew how fast ye want it to go that way. Don’t even have to turn the wheel yourself. You can make someone else do it.”

  “You’re Samona’s quartermaster. To my mind that makes you captain until we manage to rescue him.”

  “I’ll be captain!” The elf’s face lit up, as if he actually thought there was a chance of that happening.

  Skulk rubbed at the bump on his head and winced. “Ye want to try and rescue him? We’ve no crew and we’re in a ship almost small enough to fit in the Black Knife’s holds. Fine. I’m captain. Forget this job ever existed and just head off to do whatever it is ye do.”

  “Oh no you don’t,” Thud said. “If that’s what yer plan is then I’m captain and out of the two of us…”

  “Three of us!” Catchpenny said.

  “…I’m the only one that actually has anything resembling a crew aboard.”

  “Mutiny!” Skulk yelled in mock protest.

  Ween looked up from the deck below, eyes wide. They watched as he ran and hid behind a coil of rope.

  “So,” Thud said. “You can be first mate or we can tie you to the foremast. Your choice.”

  “I don’t even get to be first mate?” Catchpenny asked.

  “That’s the mizzenmast,” Skulk said. “Captain.”

  ***

  The sun was sinking in the valley between the keeps, the buildings of Stilton black shapes against the orange light. Thud squinted at it with one eye pressed to a diamond of clear glass in the stern window of the captain’s cabin. He’d had a look through Samona’s desk and cupboards to no avail. Well, some general avail but not the specific avail he was looking for. He’d found rum and cigars, books, rings, bottles of wine, some nice looking cheeses and a cupboard full of sausages but wherever Samona kept his charts while in port, it wasn’t in his cabin.

  There was a knock and the door opened. Ping poked his head in.

  “Think loading’s done,” he said.

  “All right,” Thud said. “Give me the main vein.”

  “The smithy didn’t get loaded as there’s one on the ship and ours is built into the wagon. Mungo is on field kit because most of his workshop is staying. Chickens are staying; Goin is worried they’d get seasick and doesn’t figure we’ll be needing them for trap-duty. We also didn’t load a lot o' Gammi’s cookware so he’s just got the stuff he carries ‘round with him. Gryngo’s mixer barrels are in steerage, active barrels strapped on deck near the ballista but not too near.”

  “The oxbears and the wagons?”

  “Stabled in Craneview up top o' the ridge. I’m off to take the last wagon up there now.”

  Thud nodded. “We’re going to leave a base team on land,” he said. “I’m not bringing Gong with us but I’m not leaving him here alone either. He ain’t gonna like either side of that but he’ll come ‘round once he’s grumped about it a bit. Giblets is staying. We’re heading to sea to an island of darkness so I don’t think geology is going to be figuring too much into things. Besides, he’s back up medical
and I want Doc with us.”

  “Gong is going to be Giblet’s patient?” Ping asked. “That might annoy Gong enough that he forgets about the other things.”

  “Goin is staying also. Oxbears are stabled and the chickens aren’t coming which doesn’t leave him with much to do. That goes for you too. The wagons are staying ashore and the wagons are your domain.”

  Ping nodded.

  “What’s that big town south of here?” Thud asked. “The one with that bootmaker with the wooden ear?”

  “Calamay? It’s about four days south. And I still have that ear.”

  Thud laughed. “Aye, Calamay. Meet us there. Don’t know how long we’ll be but you’re gonna be better off holed up there than anywhere near Stilton. Just steer clear o' that bootmaker.”

  Ping nodded and turned to go.

  “We’re sailing within the hour,” Thud said. “They’ve got a good start on us and we need to ride the tide out. So you get to be the one that tells all of this to Gong. I’ll bring ya something nice back.”

  ***

  The ship was loaded. The sky was studded with stars and the wind was crisp. Thud stood on deck, arms crossed, trying to look captainly.

  “Untie that rope!” Skulk yelled from next to him. “No, the other one!”

  Leery was high above, the only dwarf particularly skilled at climbing. She’d gone up the rigging like a squirrel and had now somehow found a rope to swing on between the masts. Mungo was trying to keep up with her below. Apart from Skulk, Mungo was the only one that understood the array of ropes and what they did, having spent a few seconds squinting up at them. He’d announced that he had a few ideas on how to improve things as well. They’d recruited Durham to help but he seemed to know less about sailing than he did mapping. Between the three of them they almost had one of the sails unfurled. The stern had drifted a few yards to the side when they’d untied it but apart from that they still sat in the dock.

  “You know where we’re going?” Thud asked.

  “Blackfog Island?” Skulk asked. “No. I know it be in the Cloud Sea and I know when Samona thought it would be there, but I ain’t privy to his route through the straits. Meaning I don’t even know which way he entered the Cloud Sea from much less where out there we went to. Samona kept his charts secret.”

  “Not even a guess?”

  “Not that one! Tie it to the other mast!” Skulk yelled at Leery. He scratched his head and shrugged. “Nope, saw some islands here and there on the way through, don’t know what ones. They all kinda look the same after more'n two and Samona changes little parts of his route all the time. Blackfog ain’t the only peculiar thing in those seas.”

  “So we’re gonna just head into the Cloud Sea then sail around and look for it?”

  “Hoping we lay eyes on Laughing Larry and follow him. Other than that, well, ‘tis up to the salt.”

  There was a loud snap of cloth from up above as one of the sails filled with wind. The ship jerked forward then settled into a slow drift. Leery swung from a rope above as another sail caught, then another, billowing around her. She dropped to one of the lines and zip-lined her way to the deck. Skulk gestured Thud towards the wheel.

  “Ye be the Captain. Don’t worry too much, I got the seafaring side of things.”

  To Thud’s mind, the ‘seafaring things’ included everything now that they were underway. He took the wheel in hand and gave it a tug. It spun readily, just enough resistance to remind you that there was a ship at the other end of it.

  “Which way we going, Skulk?” he called. Skulk was down on the main deck again, trying to direct Leery to rescue some of the rigging on the sails that were still furled.

  “East,” he called back. “The Black Knife went East!”

  Thud turned the wheel until the bow pointed at the rising Pearl Moon. Its reflection laid a road of silver light across the sea, leading away to a far horizon.

  Chapter Six

  Leery sat on a barrel, tying and retying a piece of rope into one of the knots Skulk had shown her.

  “You think it’s flat?” Ginny asked. She was standing at the rail, studying the horizon.

  “What?”

  “The world.” Ginny gestured at the horizon. “Looks mighty flat out there. Nothin' but water and then, far out there, an edge.”

  “Naw, all the water’d fall off, eh?” Cardamon said. His head was below the height of the railing and he peered between the balusters like they were prison bars.

  “It’s round,” Leery said. “When a ship sails far enough out you can see it disappear, going over the curve.”

  “How’s that work? We’d all fall off if it were round.” Ginny again, still squinting ahead at the sea.

  “We all stick to it,” Leery said “Think of an ant walking around a cantaloupe.”

  “Ants got sticky li'l feet,” Cardamon said. “Can walk up walls too. I can’t walk up no walls.”

  “Maybe it’s flat on one side and curved on the other, like half a cantaloupe,” Leery said.

  “Everything’d still fall off the bottom.” Cardamon’s eyes widened. “Unless they’s all ants down there. Kingdom o' giant ants. Cor, that’d be a job for us, eh?”

  Leery laughed and started untying the knot again. They were a day and a half out of port and she had been feeling restless. The weather had been mild and the wind steady. After the initial novelty of being at sea wore off the experience revealed itself as spending a lot of time looking at swirling green water under a hazy blue sky. They’d seen other ships but none of them the Black Knife. But now the monotony was coming to an end. They’d reached the Mosaic Islands. A rugged mountain, furred with firs to…starboard? No, port. Eventually she’d get those straight. A rugged mountain to port was the nearest of the islands. There were others beyond it, a scatter of mountains and rocks through which the sea moved like a sieve. The gateway to the inner Mosaics. If you knew how to navigate them it was the fastest route to the southern coast of Karsin. She remembered a job they’d done there. A palace buried in the sand and a scimitar of wind. She’d done a triple-flip wall-grab off of a statue. Some of her finest work. Of course she’d missed the next jump and broken her legs in eight places but she was starting to get used to that. She had what dwarves called ‘stone bones’. Not many dwarves had it. Her bones were harder to break and, better yet, once set would heal within minutes. The disadvantage to this was that any time the team was presented with a situation where breaking bones was a likelihood she was the one that got sent in first. Leery had been broken and put back together more times than she could remember. She liked the hazard pay.

  She was one of the originals. Thud had recruited her straight out of the circus. The ringmaster and the acrobat. There weren’t many jobs for a dwarven acrobat that didn’t involve a red sponge-ball nose. Somersaulting around dungeons was far more to her liking, even if there tended to be more spikes. This sailing thing, however, was an occupation she’d never thought of. A great deal of sailing, as best she could determine, involved climbing up the big pole things to mess with ropes and pulleys. Dwarves were not natural climbers, particularly where ropes were concerned. They much preferred ladders and dwarven ladders had many rungs. This had made Leery the star of the crew as far as Skulk was concerned. He didn’t even seem to mind too much when she swung between the masts on a rope, even though she’d missed once and fallen on the wheel causing the ship to turn hard to…whatever direction that was. Starboard? When sailors weren’t doing things with ropes they apparently sat around and made up new words for things that there were already words for.

  It was a bit like Dwarvish, maybe. A language that excluded those who didn’t know it. Dwarves kept their language secret for tactical advantage. She wasn’t sure why the sailors did it. It seemed to her that if you wanted someone to knot a sail to a pole with a rope, yelling “trim the spinnaker sheets” at them was a less likely means of having it accomplished. Particularly since ‘sheet’ was the sailor word for ‘rope’ and ‘knot’ was a t
erm for speed but, somehow, not distance. For that they had ‘nautical miles’ which were different than everyday sort of miles because why make things easy? Anything Skulk asked them to do tended to be followed by a minute or two of translating. The ship was moving at least, though Leery was pretty sure one of the sails was sideways and another one appeared to be billowing in the wrong direction.

  “We could ask Ruby if it’s flat,” Ginny said. “She knows things like that.”

  Cardamon shook his head. “Talkin' to Ruby always makes me feel uneducated. Like there was some books I was s'posed to read but never got ‘round to.”

  “You ARE uneducated,” Ginny said. “At least when it comes to things what ain’t related to taking traps apart.”

  “Yeah, but that don’t mean I like bein' reminded about it. ‘Sides, it was your question in the first place. You go ask her. I’m gonna go take a nap. Watchin’ the landscape rock back and forth makes me wobbletummied.”

  “I’ll go with you, Ginny,” Leery said. “I’m betting she’ll make tea for us.” She threw in the tea mention as an enticement. Ginny didn’t look quite sure yet on just how she’d wound up on her way to see Ruby. Leery had her own reasons for not wanting to see Ruby but knew it had to be done.

  Ruby was sitting on the bow, the prow, the fore or the foc'sle, depending on who you asked. She’d procured a stool from somewhere and sat facing out to sea, writing in her journal, her broad conical straw hat shading her from the blotchy white sunlight. Her tiny stove was beside her, silver teapot just starting to steam. The teapot was from one of the first dungeon ventures Ruby had accompanied them on. It had little flowers and vines laid across the surface and any tea leaves put in it produced tea three times as fast, never over-steeped and lasted four times as long. Far more useful in Leery’s mind than the singing sword they’d been sent there to retrieve. A sword singing Froggie Went a Courtin’ didn’t seem like it would add much help in a battle. Their patron had ended up throwing the thing into a lake somewhere.

  “Cardamon wants to know if it’s flat,” Ginny said.