Rasco snickered.
Sylvester’s gaze narrowed. He didn’t like the sound of that snicker. It hadn’t seemed sufficiently … respectful. It had been more like, well, downright derisive. “What’s so funny?”
The mouse rolled his little black eyes. “You know. I asked you a question and the answer is a lemming.”
“I don’t get it.”
Rasco shrugged. “Never mind. Ask someone to explain it to you sometime.”
Sylvester twisted his lips. The mouse’s response didn’t seem very satisfactory, but he suspected it was the best he was going to get.
Ignorant of Sylvester’s thoughts, Rasco continued, “I’ve heard about you lemmings. Never seen one, o’ course, until you lot came stumbling along.”
A warm glow filled Sylvester’s chest. “So the renown of we lemmings has spread as far afield as Blighter Island, has it?”
Rasco nodded, staring back along the path. It was beginning to be worrisome that the two Pickleberries hadn’t yet appeared.
“’At’s right. Me grandma was talking about your folk a while back. Let me try to remember what it was she said.” He scratched the back of his small head. “Oh, yes, something about the whole caboodle of you being obsessed with suicide.”
Sylvester chuckled. “I’m afraid your grandmother’s got hold of the wrong end of that rumor. That’s not the way we are at all.”
“You’re not? Not constantly looking for cliffs to jump off?”
Sylvester’s chuckle broke into a full laugh. “Naturally not! We just—”
His words came to an abrupt halt. If you looked at it from the right angle, which was the wrong angle really, then it was true to say that the inhabitants of Foxglove did spend quite a lot of their time obsessing about jumping off a cliff. It wasn’t that they were suicidal, of course. They were as fond of life as the next creature. It was just that …
He winced.
“Look, it’s all a matter of context,” he said.
“It is?” responded Rasco absently. “Them gals of yours is taking their time, ain’t they?”
“I wouldn’t think there’s anything to be alarmed about,” Sylvester reassured him. “It’s probably just that one or other of them has had to stop for a few moments to . . . powder her nose.”
“In the jungle?” said Rasco, wrinkling his brow as one might on discovering one’s sardine was rather more elderly than anticipated.
“I didn’t actually mean they were powdering their noses. I meant that—”
“What you said was—”
The mouse broke off suddenly, holding up an open paw to tell Sylvester to hush as well.
“Can you hear?” whispered Rasco after a few seconds.
“Hear what?”
“Voices. Listen.”
“It’s just Viola and her mom.”
“Ssh! It’s not them.”
Sure enough, Sylvester was beginning to be able to make out a faint sound himself. Those weren’t the voices of female lemmings. They were the voices of …
“I know who that is,” he said to Rasco, fear making him speak so quietly that for a moment he thought he might not have spoken at all.
But Rasco heard. “Who? Not Deathflash, is it? The ruffian you call Rustbane?”
“No, not him. One of his men. That’s why the others haven’t got here yet. They must have recognized his voice and taken cover. A wise move. We should do the same.”
“Okay. Over there.”
Moving as quickly but quietly as they could, the mouse and lemming secreted themselves behind a strange plant that looked more like something out of a nightmare than anything that could actually grow.
“Don’t touch them spines,” instructed Rasco just as Sylvester was about to prod one inquisitively. “Them’s poisonous.”
“They are?” said Sylvester, recoiling.
“Too right, boss. Stick yourself on one o’ them and … best I not tell you what’d happen, but you’d not be having any little Sylvesters in a hurry. Now hush.”
The voices had been getting closer all this while and now, their owners came into view. Although Sylvester already knew who one of them was, he still sucked in his breath in a little hiss of dismay when he recognized the big figure of Jeopord, Cap’n Rustbane’s first mate aboard the Shadeblaze, the ocelot whom the captain affectionately referred to as his Jack o’ Cups. And now Sylvester recognized the other pirate too, a raccoon with an ear missing and a permanent snarl on his face, although he’d never learned the fellow’s name. He didn’t have long to wait to discover it.
“That should be far enough,” said the raccoon, looking back the way they’d come. “The rest of ’em are searching ’way to the south o’ here for those infernal lemmings, God rot ’em.”
Jeopord shook a paw as if shaking a fly off it. “The lemmings aren’t of any consequence, Bellowguts,” he said. “You ask me, they’re just another of the old buzzard’s distractions. Summat to keep the hearties busy so they’ll forget there’s still no more of a sign of Adamite’s treasure than ever there was.”
Bellowguts sniggered, wiping his nose on the back of his paw. “Still an’ all, Rustbane’ll not let them escape. He don’t not never let no one escape, he don’t.”
Jeopord guffawed. “Sure as rain is rain, you’ve got that right, me old faceache!”
The two pirates laughed long and loud together, though for the life of him Sylvester couldn’t see what was so all-fired funny.
“But, truly,” said Jeopord at last, drying his eyes much as Bellowguts had wiped his nose, “the lemmings needn’t concern us. And, by the time we’re done with him, Rustbane won’t be bothering them either.”
Again the two cutthroats gave themselves up to laughter.
“Seriously, though,” said Bellowguts eventually, “what if something should go wrong? There’s been times a-plenty folk ’ave tried to put an end to Rustbane’s charmed existence, and all of ’em have found theyselves swingin’ from the yardarm while diverse bits of they’s anatomy is already feedin’ the fishes.”
“Not this time, me old blaggard, not this time,” replied Jeopord, rubbing the side of his nose with an evilly long claw. “You mark my words on that.”
“Ye so sure?”
“Aye, I’m sure. There be fifty of us, maybe twice that, and Rustbane, damn his eyes, is growing old. He ain’t half the fox he used to be, and that was even afore his vision went all cloudy over this tomfoolery about the magical chest of the Zindars.”
“Ye don’t think there’s any such thing, do ye, eh, Jeopord?”
There was something in Bellowguts’s eyes that told Sylvester the raccoon knew a bit more about the treasure than Jeopord thought he did. If the ocelot saw that cunning little light, he paid it no attention.
“A bit o’ mythology, mate,” said Jeopord. “That’s all it is, a bit o’ mythology.”
Sylvester, still watching Bellowguts’s eyes, saw something change as decisively as if a switch had been turned from on to off, and wondered if he’d just observed Jeopord’s death sentence being signed. The ocelot was not nearly so clever as he thought he was, and the raccoon far cleverer.
Aside from that little flicker in the eyes, Bellowguts gave no sign he was anything but Jeopord’s gullible acolyte.
“When are ye going ter brief the crew, Jeopord?”
“When I’m good and ready, is when.” The ocelot put the heel of his paw on his cutlass’s pommel and strutted up and down the little clearing where the two had paused. “This ain’t going to be a plan that gangs agley because too many people know about it ahead o’ time, oh no it ain’t, not with good old Jeopord in charge o’ things, it ain’t.”
Before he could stop himself, Sylvester let out a tiny hiss of disbelief at the pirate’s vanity.
“What was that noise?” said Jeopord, stopping suddenly
mid-strut.
“I ’eard nothin’.” Bellowguts’s reply was very quiet, dangerously so. Already his own sword was in his hand, its tip dancing a menacingly casual dance in the air in front of him.
“A hissing noise,” said Jeopord. His sword was circling in the air too, as his gaze searched the foliage around him.
Rasco and Sylvester stayed as still as stone, not daring even to breathe.
“It came from … from over ’ere, I think.” The ocelot’s eyes seemed to focus on the chubby leaf directly in front of Sylvester’s nose.
Cutlass raised on high, Jeopord pounced forward.
Sylvester shut his eyes tight, expecting this moment to be his last.
He waited for the blow to fall.
It never did.
At least, not on him.
There was a swwwiiiissssh as something whistled through the air next to his face, almost close enough to take off a few whiskers, and then there was a commotion just a few inches from where his toes lay quivering in the jungle mulch.
“Got it!” crowed Jeopord loudly, the shout sending brightly colored birds high above into a new cacophony of chattering and squawking.
With a courage he’d never known he possessed, Sylvester managed to prize one eye open.
Back in the center of the clearing, Jeopord, cutlass back in its scabbard, was proudly holding aloft the two dripping halves of a serpent that was as thick as one of his own arms and twice as long as one of his legs.
“Told you I’d heard something,” the first mate informed Bellowguts triumphantly.
“A snake,” said the raccoon.
“And not just any old snake.” The ocelot laughed. “Don’t you recognize the markings?”
From where Sylvester crouched trembling, the markings of the dead creature seemed as gaudy as the plumage of the jungle birds.
The raccoon peered. “Nope.”
“That’s a yellow-headed colonswallower, that is.”
“It is?”
“Nastiest reptile in the whole jungle.”
The raccoon looked suitably impressed.
“Yes,” said Jeopord with affected casualness, casting the two halves of the snake away from him in opposite directions. Where they landed in the greenery there was a sudden commotion as jungle creatures moved in swiftly to fight over the fresh carrion. “It tends to lurk in latrines, that’s the place it likes to haunt the most, and when it sees its opportunity it moves like a streaking arrow and buries itself, all unnoticed, right inside a fellow.”
Bellowguts gulped. “Ye mean it . . .?”
Jeopord gave him a long, significant look. “Like a terrier down a rabbit’s burrow.”
Bellowguts gulped again, this time violently enough that Sylvester heard it distinctly. “An’ then?”
“Slowly, over weeks, or maybe even months, it gobbles him up from the inside out!”
Sylvester had never seen a green-faced raccoon before. He did now.
“I’m gonna wear two pairs of trousers in future,” muttered Bellowguts, looking around him suspiciously.
“Good idea.”
“Three.”
“Even better.”
“Ah, Jeopord?”
“Yes?”
“Why did ye want to … call this meeting?”
“Because you are my best and most trusted fellow conspirator, o’ course, Bellowguts.”
“Ye said ye had something ye wanted to talk about.”
“I did. I do.”
“Well, we ain’t talked about it yet.”
“We haven’t? Why, yes, Bellowguts, you’re perfectly correct. What I wanted to talk about with you was … this.”
Faster than the eye could see, Jeopord’s cutlass was back out of its scabbard and moving in a screeching arc toward the raccoon’s exposed throat. Bellowguts reached for his own weapon but, too late, too late! The tip of Jeopord’s blade seemed merely to nick the flesh of his crewmate’s furry neck, but there was a sudden fountain of blood.
The ocelot stepped back sharply as, making a hideous bubbling noise through his torn throat, the raccoon slowly collapsed forward.
In an instant it was all over, and Bellowguts’s body was still. The stillness of death. All that moved was the pool of blood in which the dead raccoon lay, its surface rippling in a small breeze that shifted sluggishly among the densely packed trees. The scent of blood’s sticky saltiness was strong in the air.
“Thought you’d sell me out to the skipper, did you?” said Jeopord to the corpse at his feet. “Thought you could be his spy among us, then betray us at the last possible moment after we’d cast our die? Well, this is what happens to traitors. Just be thankful, wherever you are, I didn’t have the opportunity to take me time over it and give yers a proper send-off from this scurvy life.”
He drew back his foot to kick the dead raccoon, then obviously thought better of it. Instead, he wiped off his blade on some grass until it was shiny again, and put the weapon back in his belt. He gave off the air of one satisfied by a job well done.
But not completely done, not quite yet.
“I hear you!” cried Jeopord, turning slowly in a circle, addressing his words to the riot of vegetation on all sides. “I hear you!”
For a moment, Sylvester thought the pirate must be speaking to Rasco and himself, must have known all along that the quivering smaller creatures were spying on everything that had been happening, but no.
“You out there,” the ocelot called. “You carrion-eaters. I know yer watching. Come here and have yer fill. Come and get rid of me evidence for me.”
There was a rustling in the bushes, lots of rustlings in lots of bushes. The wild creatures of the jungles were waiting only for Jeopord to leave them alone with their meal.
And, if the dead raccoon didn’t provide enough to sate their appetites, to what else might they look as provender?
“We best get out of here,” whispered Rasco.
“I was thinking the same thing.”
They both eyed the ocelot’s back, willing him to leave quicker. He was clearly unaware of their mental urgings, because he sauntered slowly from the clearing, his forepaws hooked into his belt, whistling softly to himself as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
“Get a move on,” said Sylvester under his breath.
At last, Jeopord was out of sight. The rustling around them grew louder.
“You know where the gals are, mon?” said Rasco.
“You know I don’t.”
“We best find ’em.”
“We had.”
In the end they didn’t have to find Viola and Mrs. Pickleberry – the two female lemmings found them.
“Did you see that?” said Viola, her eyes saucer-wide, as she ran into Sylvester’s arms. “That … that brute just murdered the poor raccoon.”
“I’m not certain the ‘poor raccoon’ was exactly a little innocent,” murmured Sylvester, but not very loudly, not loudly enough for Viola to hear, in fact. It felt good having her in his arms and her head on his shoulder, and there was nothing he was going to do to end that situation sooner than he had to.
Then his eye fell on the corpse of Bellowguts. Already the sight of it was largely obscured by the clouds of fat, shiny black flies that had descended upon it. A couple of small creatures had dared to slither out of the undergrowth, their beady eyes intent on the raccoon’s flesh. They seemed to have teeth larger than the rest of their bodies. Holding Viola tight was a luxury he’d have to save for later.
“Let’s go!” he cried.
Mrs. Pickleberry was staring at him askance. “And none too soon, if you ask me.”
“Um, yes,” said Sylvester self-consciously, gently pushing Viola away.
“Sheesk!” said Rasco.
The single syllable summarized it all.
&nb
sp; With the black mouse in the lead once more, the little party resumed their trek through the dense jungle growth. Viola was directly behind Rasco, then Mrs. Pickleberry with Sylvester taking up the rear.
I suppose I should be glad Rustbane’s facing a mutiny, Sylvester told himself, holding up a paw to deflect a whippy branch that seemed determined to crack him across the face. I suppose I should be glad that soon the murderous scoundrel will be walking the plank. Yet … somehow I can’t make myself feel good about it. Yes, Rustbane’s cruel and despicable and he’s got more blood on his paws than a thousand tyrants, but he’s also something more than that.
Sylvester’s thoughts ran back to the time he’d spent with the gray fox in the cabin aboard the Shadeblaze. Somehow, Rustbane had seemed as much at home in that book-lined place as he did when he was swaggering across the deck of a pirate ship, condemning some poor mortal to an excruciating death. It’s as if there are two people inside him, but one of them’s hardly ever allowed to show his face.
Phew, but it was hot here in the jungle. Even though it was still early in the day, the air was like that in front of a just-opened oven door. Sylvester felt as if he were in danger of being cooked alive. It was difficult to walk and think at the same time in this baking heat, especially when the ground underfoot was a treacherous maze of snaking roots and grasping grasses, all of them eager to trip up an unwary lemming and send him sprawling.
Perhaps I should try to work out some way of warning Cap’n Rustbane of what’s going to happen?
Without having made any conscious decision to do so, Sylvester found he’d paused on the track and was leaning against a conveniently situated tree trunk.
Idly, he wondered how long he’d been here.
And where the others might have gotten to.
He was on his own.
Snakes.
Lizards.
Poisonous insects.
Wild carnivores.
“How much longer?” he wailed.
13 Veggie Music
Quite a lot longer, mon, if you’re proposing to just lean against a dead tree until a boa constrictor comes along to ingestify you.” Rasco’s voice, coming from thick undergrowth almost next to Sylvester’s ear, startled the lemming. He kept his balance with difficulty as he pushed himself away from the tree.
The Tides of Avarice Page 33
