The Tides of Avarice

by John Dahlgren

  Sylvester glanced sideways at Viola.

  She was covered in blood.

  He’d thought Cheesefang was an efficient killing machine.

  Viola was something else.

  In the corner of his eye there was a blur. Operating on pure instinct, Sylvester swiveled away from the direction of the blow, deliberately falling to one side at the same time as he brought his sword – the perfectly balanced, wonderful sword his father had given him – round in a whistling arc to slice directly across the muzzle of a black and white terrier.

  Not just any black and white terrier.

  Kabalore was silent for a split second, then let out a shriek of anguish. The cannibal chieftain stared at Sylvester as if staring alone might strike the lemming dead in his tracks.

  Sylvester refused to be intimidated.

  “Behind you!” yelled Viola. “Look out behind you!”

  He half-turned and saw a blue mongoose charging toward him, skulls on a belt around its waist and a horrific open wound where its scalp should have been. He then realized he should never have taken his eyes for one moment off Kabalore.

  Forget the mongoose! The terrier’s the one’ll kill you.

  Sylvester slid once more to his side, kicking out with his rear legs.

  One of the blows struck home. Kabalore gave a yippp of dismay and keeled momentarily off balance.

  Sylvester took advantage of that moment, squirming forward and probing in front of him with a sword that now seemed less a weapon than a part of himself.

  A swipe of his sword took Kabalore across the back of one of the terrier’s forelegs, ripping into the tendon.

  The dog screamed.

  The pain must have been almost beyond enduring, yet somehow Kabalore stayed upright. He swung his cudgel with almost supernatural speed toward Sylvester’s head.

  This is it, thought Sylvester. I’ve done my best. I’ve fought like no other lemming has probably ever fought, and it’s all been for nothing. I hope the end’s as quick for Viola as it is for me. Maybe, if I’m lucky, I can deliver one last blow against this cannibal murderer.

  He rolled away from the descending cudgel, knowing his maneuver was too little, too late.

  He raised his sword blindly.

  There was a crushing kick in his flank.

  The mongoose! He’d forgotten the blue mongoose.

  He’d turned his gaze away from it in order to focus on the more immediate threat, Kabalore, but the mongoose kept on charging through the red haze of its fury and the even redder haze of the blood seeping from its terrible head wound, and it stumbled straight into Sylvester’s sprawled body.

  He looked upward and saw, silhouetted against the dim flicker of the reflected flames on the cavern’s faraway ceiling, the mongoose trip over him. The mongoose was wielding an ax far bigger and obviously far sharper than the one Jasper had unearthed from the shadows of the Zindar ship. As the mongoose stumbled over Sylvester, the ax came swinging uncontrollably downward to lodge itself in the middle of Kabalore’s face.

  More blood pouring.

  A weariness of soul crept into Sylvester as he shoved himself upright, trying not to slip on the accumulated gore that covered the cavern floor with a slick coating. He launched a furious blow with his sword at the blue mongoose, realized even as he did so that the creature was dead already, that it had been fighting on beyond all limits of endurance, that his killer strike had been a wasted effort.

  Kabalore was dead too. That much was obvious.

  Viola was alive.

  She shoved her face right up against his and bellowed in his ear to be heard over the din of battle.

  “I think we’re winning!”

  “How can we be?”

  “What?”

  “How can we be winning?”

  “The cannibals! Those we haven’t killed are running for the exit!”

  It was true, Sylvester saw. A posse of cannibals was heading as fast as it could for the far side of the cavern, presumably for the gap in the wall through which there was escape to the island’s shore.

  “Let them go!” he cried. “Let them go! They’re not the real enemy!”

  Viola had found a dagger somewhere. A gopher wished she hadn’t as it fell to the ground trying to push its innards back where they came from.

  “They’re not?” shouted Viola.

  “No! The ones who want to kill us are Jeopord’s crew.”

  “Oh, by the lacy smalls of the triple-breasted goddess,” she said, beginning to laugh.

  “As Cap’n Rustbane might have described it,” responded Sylvester.

  It was the wrong time for laughter. It was the wrong time for anything except fighting as viciously as you could and shutting your mind to the horrors you were inflicting upon your foes. Even so, Sylvester found himself laughing along with Viola. He had no idea what he was laughing about. All he knew was there was something very funny in the blood-drenched air.

  Jeopord quenched the fires of his mirth.

  The big ocelot had been fighting like a mad dog on the far side of the battle area, and Sylvester had been entirely unaware that Jeopord was no longer there.

  Now, the ocelot was advancing toward him, a grin on his toothy face. Farther back, Cheesefang was turning an anguished gaze in the direction of the two young lemmings. The sea rat had taken a blow somewhere that Sylvester couldn’t see.

  “Hello, traitor,” said Sylvester to the ocelot.

  “Fine words,” replied Jeopord, as if they’d bumped into each other in the Foxglove marketplace and were hunting around for a few social niceties to exchange before they could mercifully escape from each other. Sylvester had seen his mother do this a thousand times. He’d never before realized it might be such a sophisticated art.

  “But you are a traitor, aren’t you?” said Sylvester. “You betrayed Throatsplitter Adamite because you thought Rustbane might be your better bet, and then you betrayed Rustbane the very first moment it suited you to do so. Now, you’re betraying Cheesefang, who’d have served out the rest of his life as your crony if you’d let him, such was the loyalty he had for you. All these folk you’ve betrayed, Jeopord, and likely a thousand times more and you think it’s odd I should call you a traitor?”

  The ocelot’s eyes opened wider than Sylvester had seen them do before, wider than he’d believed it possible any ocelot’s eyes could open. For a moment, he thought that maybe, just maybe, his moral castigation had gotten through to some scintilla of honor buried deep within Jeopord’s psyche.

  He should have known better.

  “Honor? Treason? They’re all born out of yesterday! Anyway, why the hell am I listenin’ to a hamster?”

  “Not a hamster, a lem—”

  “Lay off my boy!” said a different voice.

  “Dad!”

  Jasper shot Sylvester a sloppy sideways grin. “You didn’t think I was going to watch you two get yourselves killed, did you?”

  “Oh, great,” said Jeopord with heavy sarcasm. He turned away from them briefly to despatch two heavily weaponed mink with a single blow. “Now we got folksy stuff.”

  “You have a sword?” said Jasper.

  “As if I didn’t,” replied Jeopord.

  “Then fight, you scum!”

  Jasper sprang straight toward Jeopord’s throat.

  For a moment, the perplexed ocelot looked as if he’d leave it too late to step aside. At the very last second, as the older lemming whistled through the air toward him, he thought to flinch away just enough that Jasper landed in the blood and gore beyond, slithering and windmilling as he tried to keep his balance on the treacherous surface.

  Jeopord grinned a hideously evil grin.

  It was obvious Jasper was going to be easy prey.

  The ocelot took a pace forward.

  “Leave my d
ad alone!”

  “And my future father-in-law!”

  “Your what?” said Sylvester.

  “Shut up, dimwit. Skewer the blasted tom!”

  The other combatants were, for the most part, keeping their distance. Whatever was brewing among this little group was evidently something it was best for outsiders to stay out of.

  Sylvester was almost dancing as he moved forward. The sword sang in his grip. He thought he’d probably just had marriage proposed to him. He wasn’t sure. He’d not hold it against Viola if later she told him it had all been a dreadful mistake, a few words misunderstood in the heat of battle. That was it. That was surely all it could ever have been. A babe like Viola Pickleberry might dally with a goofball like Sylvester Lemmington, but surely she’d never think of actually hitching herself to him.

  The old Sylvester would be tripping over his two front feet around now, thought Sylvester. The new one’s using the moment to carry the battle to a murderous carnivore ten times his own size. The new one’s either extraordinarily stupid or he’s become a Zindar spawn.

  Jeopord glanced back over his shoulder at Sylvester, then glanced at him again. The ocelot chuckled. “I’m keeping you for later.”

  “For you,” puffed Sylvester, “there isn’t going to be any later.”

  “Tough talk from a hamster.”

  For once, Sylvester didn’t even bother to contradict the slur. It was beneath his contempt.

  “You frightened of a lemming?”

  Jeopord looked as if he couldn’t believe his ears. “Me? Frightened? Of a lemming? You got to be jokin’.”

  “Then put up or shut up!”

  Jasper spoke again. “Which lemming is it you’re frightened of? Me?”

  “Or me?” said Sylvester, beginning to smile bleakly.

  “Or me?” said Viola.

  Everyone turned to stare at her.

  “Well, why not? He’s just a mangy old tom cat with breath you could use to fill a sandwich. No match for a lemming.”

  “Exactly, m’dear,” said Jasper. “So, cesspit face, on guard with you!”

  With exaggerated courtesy Jeopord bowed toward Jasper. “Could I do you all three at once? Make myself a lemming kebab?”

  “No!” Even Sylvester was startled by the vehemence of his own voice. “This scum is mine and mine alone.”

  “Suicide by pirate, is it, hm?” said the ocelot, regarding him mockingly.

  “Don’t be a fool!” yelled Jasper.

  “I’ve told you before, Dad. Stop calling me a fool. You were away too many years to have the right to order me around as if I were still a child.”

  Jasper fell back. Anger chased another emotion across his face.

  A fine time to start an argument with my father, thought Sylvester bitterly.

  He didn’t have time for any further thoughts, because Jeopord was upon him.

  The ocelot’s sword was larger than Sylvester’s, which meant that by all the ordinary standards of combat, Sylvester was hopelessly outclassed. Sylvester’s sword was about the size the ocelot would have used as a dagger, only flimsier. He knew what he had to do was use his diminutive size as a strength rather than a weakness, and to substitute speed and guile and quickness of thought in place of weight of weaponry.

  The trouble was, he’d never learned how to do any of these things.

  He was going to have to improvise.

  Well, I guess that’s what the very first warriors had to do, back when Sagaria was young. The thought wasn’t as reassuring as it should have been, because hot on its heels came another. And very few of them lived to a ripe old age, if the legends are anything to go by.

  “Lhaeminguas be with you,” cried Viola, surprising him.

  Well, any myth in a storm.

  All of these notions were flashing through his mind, even as he found himself slithering to one side in a sort of graceful form of sustained collapse. He hadn’t a clue how he’d ever repeat the maneuver if he had to, but it seemed surprisingly effective. Jeopord’s sword came swishing down and missed Sylvester altogether, instead chunking firmly into the packed, blood-soaked sand.

  For a moment, the ocelot had to wrestle with the weapon to dislodge it, and in that split second Sylvester darted forward and slashed his own sword across the inside of the bigger creature’s forepaw, just above where Jeopord gripped the sword’s pommel.

  The ocelot let out a high shriek of pain as blood spurted from the wound, almost blinding his foe.

  Sylvester put up a paw to wipe the sticky hot liquid out of his eyes.

  Although Jeopord was clearly in agony, that didn’t seem to hamper him much. He pulled his blade out of the ground and tossed it to his other forepaw, catching it neatly and beginning to twitch it threateningly. The ocelot put his injured paw up to his mouth and clamped his teeth over the wound to stanch the flow of blood. His eyes flared yellow in insane fury.

  Viola and Jasper got themselves out of reach of that feverishly scything, bloodied but razor-sharp blade and scrambled for cover. The rest of the fracas had fallen into a lull as the combatants stopped to watch the fight between Jeopord and Sylvester. Out of the corner of his eye, Sylvester could see Pimplebrains looking at him with an expression that could almost be pride. The old beaver had managed to get himself alongside Cheesefang, and the pair of them had dealt out death to cannibals until the survivors had turned and fled.

  So that’s what Pimplebrains thinks of his skipper, thought Sylvester, darting to one side and then the other, as Jeopord’s sword sought him. Evading the slashes would have been hard enough had the footing been just the cavern floor, but Sylvester was having constantly to readjust himself as the scattered bodies of pirates and cannibals got in the way. What made it even more difficult was that most of the dead and mortally wounded animals were larger than Sylvester, some of them considerably larger. Large or small, the dead and wounded had blood that was slippery and Sylvester was wading through far too much of it.

  He balanced on the outthrust leg of a dead dog, and realized it was Kabalore’s.

  Kabalore was a lot bigger than me. He didn’t fare too well, did he?

  Jeopord’s sword was a river of silver exploding toward him.

  Sylvester sprang away to his left, somersaulting through the air and continuing to roll after he hit the ground. He hammered into the side of a dead stoat and lay there for a second, winded, the world performing crazy dances in front of his eyes.

  When things came back into focus, he saw Jeopord advancing toward him once more, his face fixed in a crazy grin. The ocelot had let his wounded paw fall to his side, and seemed not to care that his lifeblood was still pouring copiously from it.

  Uh-oh, this is it.

  Sylvester didn’t know where he got the strength, but it came from somewhere and allowed him to twist away, kicking up a cloud of sticky wet sand into Jeopord’s face.

  The pirate screamed a terrible oath.

  “I’ll get you, you—”

  “Not in front of the fairer sex,” said a voice that Sylvester had never expected to hear again.

  “Rustbane!” Jeopord gasped.

  The gray fox bowed with a flourish of his cape. “At your service.”

  Whatever the fox’s attempts at suaveness, he was looking the worse for wear. His costume was faded, wrinkled and a little shrunken and the same could be said for his face, but there could be no doubting the assurance with which he held himself.

  “So sorry,” said Rustbane with a nod to Viola. “I meant to say ‘fairer gender.’”

  “You’re dead!” cried Jeopord.

  “Not so you’d notice.” The fox pinched himself as if to check. “Still here.”

  “But I—”

  “Killed me yourself? Yes, I thought you’d think that. But you were wrong. Wrong, as you’ve been about so many things, J
eopord, my old Jack o’ Cups.”

  “You were dead!”

  “I was. But then I wasn’t. Confusing, isn’t it?”

  “And now you’re—”

  “Exactly. Now I’m here, and I find you about to impale my very good friend Sylvester Lemmington, one of the finest – perhaps the finest – hamsters Sagaria has ever been lucky enough to know.”

  “Lemmings,” said Sylvester hoarsely. Still winded, he felt as if his throat had been used as a cheese grater.

  “Pardon?” said Cap’n Rustbane, turning to look at him.

  “Lemmings. I’m a lemming, not a hamster. I’ve told you before.”

  This is crazy, thought Sylvester. I want to laugh. I’m just about to be skewered six ways to yesterday, and the main thing I want to do is roar with laughter. I think my throat would burst if I tried it.

  “Quite so,” said Rustbane gravely. “I’ll try to remember that in future. I don’t mind so much if it’s hamsters getting impaled, but lemmings – that’s different.”

  He faced Jeopord.

  “You and I, we have a score to settle, my Jack o’ Cups. If it were merely a matter of a lemming or two I could possibly find it in my heart to forgive you, but it’s me you tried to kill and I really do take the most profound exception to that.”

  Jeopord’s eyes moved shiftily. “I don’t suppose it’s any use tellin’ you it was only a joke?”

  Rustbane answered with deceptive mildness. “No, I’m afraid that won’t wash.”

  “That I was jus’ doin’ it for your own good?”

  “That neither.”

  “That I was doin’ it out of loyalty? That I knew you’d escape the jaws of death somehow, you bein’ Cap’n Terrigan Rustbane, after all. I thought it might be doin’ you a good turn to let you lie low while me an’ the lads” – Jeopord gestured around him at the scene of carnage – “tackled these here cannibals? A special nasty breed of cannibals they was too. I thought to myself, I thought, ‘Jeopord, me old cully, your ol’ drinking bud and lofty skipper, to wot you owes the greatest love an’ respect a man could ’ave – well, an ocelot, but same thing – the greatest love an’ respect an ocelot could ’ave, you’ve got to—”