The Tides of Avarice

by John Dahlgren

  “Nope,” said Rustbane. “Good try, but nope.”

  “Then defend yourself, scumbag!”

  With a roar the ocelot leaped at Rustbane, his sword singing in a lethal arc.

  Sylvester didn’t know where Rustbane’s sword came from. One moment the gray fox was seemingly unarmed, the next his blade was clashing against Jeopord’s, forcing the ocelot back on the defensive.

  Jeopord gave a howl of frustration as he was thwarted by the savage resistance the gray fox offered.

  “Why can’t you just go ahead and simply die?” he said with exasperation.

  “Actually, I’m not really the ‘dying’ type,” Rustbane said calmly. “To put it another way, it’s not my style.”

  “Kill that bloody vulpine!” Jeopord shouted to the nearest pirates. Only two were within earshot, a toothless skunk and a one-eyed wolverine, but they seemed very reluctant to carry out the order.

  “Or by the devil’s grandmother’s underwear, I’ll kill you two meself.” This threat seemed to spark little enthusiasm to obey the new skipper. Nevertheless, they slowly advanced toward the gray fox, their cutlasses drawn.

  Two silvery flashes appeared abruptly in Rustbane’s paws. He fired the flintlocks at the same time, making it sound like a loud single bang. The two pirates crashed against the cavern wall and fell to the sandy floor, where they lay motionless.

  “Two black spots mended,” said Rustbane. He stuck his smoking pistols back into his belt, then drew his sword again. “Now, we can continue undisturbed me, ol’ Jack o’ Cups.” Rustbane gave Sylvester a cocky little grin. “Maybe I’m just a ghost, not a flesh-and-blood fox after all. Wouldn’t that be a fine and fancy turn up for the books, eh? Take that, you cur!”

  This last was to Jeopord, who’d renewed his attack. Fending off his foe’s sword with his own, the gray fox kicked out unexpectedly. Jeopord had just been sneakily drawing a dagger from the folds of his trousers. Rustbane’s foot caught the ocelot’s paw in the act, driving the blade back into Jeopord’s flesh.

  The ocelot howled again, this time in agony as the sharp serrated blade tore into him.

  The fight was actually over in that moment, although it took a couple more minutes for Jeopord to realize it. His face twisted in pain and with his injured leg uncertain beneath him, the ocelot didn’t stand a chance. Sylvester could see temptation crossing Rustbane’s face, the temptation to toy with the ocelot’s anguish and misery, to protract the process of finishing Jeopord off, but the emotion was only a fleeting one. The two pirates went back a long way. They’d been friends much more than they’d been foes. The gray fox owed it to his Jack o’ Cups to make this as rapid as possible.

  Sylvester, frozen where he lay, watched in fascination and with a certain amount of grudging respect as the ocelot, despite everything, fought back viciously against his old skipper. His curses filled the air. His sword seemed almost liquid, so swiftly did it change direction as he sought each new angle of attack against the gray fox. For his part, Rustbane was doing the minimum possible, just defending himself when he needed to, attacking whenever he judged that Jeopord’s guard had dropped. The fox was barely breaking breath.

  “I can’t bear to watch,” Viola whispered in Sylvester’s ear. At some point, she must have wormed her way unnoticed across the gory terrain to snuggle up against him.

  “Me neither,” said Sylvester, but he carried on watching anyway as Viola buried her face in his shoulder.

  Finally, Jeopord’s resolve was breaking down. The movement of his sword arm lost its fluidity, becoming a series of jerks. The power with which his weapon clashed against Rustbane’s audibly decreased. Those moments when Rustbane could stab through Jeopord’s guard became more and more frequent.

  “Throw down your weapon, my old comrade,” cried Rustbane at last. “Let me make this quick.”

  “I’m not done with ye yet, y’old bastard,” grunted Jeopord.

  But it was clear that he was. His chest was heaving like the waves of stormy sea. Blood was streaming from the deep wound in his hip. He could scarcely limp. That his damaged leg hadn’t already collapsed beneath him was a miracle. Even the effort of keeping his sword held out in front of him seemed to have become too much because suddenly, in spite of the defiance of his words, the weapon turned groundward, slowly falling from his grasp as Jeopord toppled to his knees.

  “I never thought it would come to this,” said Rustbane, seeing his adversary helpless before him.

  Jeopord just cursed him.

  “And I wish it hadn’t, old friend, but you betrayed me, you cast me to the sharks and there’s no way Cap’n Terrigan Rustbane could let such a heinous crime go unpunished. No choice about the punishment either. It has to be death, don’t you agree, eh, me old Jack o’ Cups?”

  Jeopord cursed again.

  Rustbane’s voice was almost tender. “Fare thee well, my friend.”

  Moving faster than sight, the tip of his word slashed across Jeopord’s throat.

  Blood sprayed.

  The ocelot crumpled in a ghastly silence, not even lifting his paws to the wreckage of his neck.

  His face now empty of all sentiment, the gray fox looked down at his dying comrade-in-arms and slowly sheathed his sword.

  “So die all those who would attempt to see the back of Cap’n Terrigan Rustbane,” he remarked to no one in particular. “It’s a terrible thing to contemplate how many have died because of the lack of learning that lesson.”

  The gray fox turned his head and stared straight at Sylvester. “Hamsters included.”

  “I’m not a—”

  “My little joke.”

  “Okay.”

  None of the other combatants showed any inclination for fighting after witnessing the demise of the ocelot. The few surviving cannibals who hadn’t yet fled did so now. Cheesefang and Pimplebrains began clambering toward their skipper with big goofy grins of welcome on their battered faces. The other pirates were pretending as best they could that, despite their having pledged allegiance to Jeopord after the mutiny, their loyalties had really lain with Rustbane all along. Sylvester heaved himself to his feet, pulling Viola beside him.

  The only person who seemed still to be eyeing the gray fox warily was Jasper.

  “You’re probably the only one who’s ever bested me and lived to tell the tale,” Rustbane said conversationally to Sylvester.

  Sylvester’s mouth dropped open. “Me?”

  “You. Don’t act the innocent to me. At every turn, you’ve done almost exactly the opposite of what I wanted you to do. You’ve annoyed me to the point where I didn’t know whether to nail your head to the wall or just drown myself. Somehow, I restrained myself, with that admirable self-control upon which, over the years, so many gentlemen and scholars have favorably commented. I’ve come, despite myself, to like you. Like you quite a lot. What d’you think of that, eh?”

  Sylvester looked at the sprawled, bloodied corpse of Jeopord, whom Cap’n Rustbane had also liked quite a lot, and couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “Too embarrassed to answer?” said Rustbane, misconstruing. “Well, I can’t say that I blame you. Who can tell how many folks are wandering the Seven Seas and wishing that Cap’n Terrigan Rustbane could like ’em, or even just say a kind word about ’em? You must be the fortunatest hamster – lemming – in the whole of Sagaria to have been blessed by—”

  “’E does go on a bit, doesn’t ’e?” said Jasper in a histrionic whisper that echoed all the way around the walls of the cavern. “Big-headed too, this friend of yours, Syl.”

  The echoes soon reached Rustbane’s ears. The gray fox paused and his eyes flickered red with fury, then focused again in a gimlet gaze that would doubtless have pinned Jasper to the spot, had Sylvester’s dad been looking.

  “And who,” said the gray fox in a menacing whisper, “is this?”
/>   “My dad.”

  “I thought he’d fled the Lemmington nest long ago.”

  “He did, but now I’ve found him again.”

  “Like something you’ve scraped off your shoe and promptly stood on again?”

  Sylvester bristled, but kept himself in check. “Like, for example, you,” he said.

  Rustbane looked as if he were about to snap an angry retort, then he seemed to swallow the unspoken words and nodded. “Point taken, and well spoken. He’s your beloved pater and I shouldn’t have talked of him that way.” The fox stepped toward Sylvester and Jasper, holding out a paw. “Any friend of young Sylvester is a … well, put it this way, I’ll not slit your gizzard without so much as a by-your-leave. The name’s Rustbane, Cap’n Terrigan Rustbane. You may have heard of me as Doomslayer, or Deathflash. Warhammer, perhaps?”

  “Nope,” said Jasper, not taking the proffered paw. “Can’t say as I have.”

  “This place smells of blood,” said Sylvester interrupting an exchange that seemed destined to become nothing but pricklier. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “You forget something, my small friend,” said Rustbane, drawing his attention away from Jasper as if out of treacle. “A small matter of the treasure chest of the Zindars. It’s what we all came here for through stormy oceans and tempestuous climes, you may remember.” He looked down at one of the silver pistols nestling in his belt, as if debating with himself whether to put a bullet through someone’s brain now or later, then squinted at Sylvester with a brightly glinting eye.

  “It’s not here,” said Sylvester, spreading his paws.

  Viola, beside him, gave a little murmur of confirmation.

  Cap’n Rustbane put his paws to his sides, tilted back his head and gave a mighty guffaw. His peals of laughter seemed to go on for an unconscionably long time, yet Sylvester couldn’t detect any humor in them whatsoever.

  Finally, Rustbane sobered himself, rubbing his eyes to wipe the mirth from them.

  “Oh, dearie me,” he said. “I could have sworn you just said that—”

  “It’s true,” interposed Jasper. “The Zindars didn’t leave their treasure here. They buried it … elsewhere.”

  Another peal of laughter from Rustbane, this one even more artificial than the last. Standing behind him, Cheesefang joined in. The sea rat’s attempt at laughter sounded like someone trying to swallow a bag of forks. Next to Cheesefang, Sylvester noticed, Pimplebrains stood silent.

  “But what of old Throatsplitter’s map?” Rustbane said at last.

  Jasper looked blank.

  Sylvester hurriedly explained to his father about Cap’n Josiah “Throatsplitter” Adamite and his treasure map. As he did so, he saw Jasper’s face relax.

  “Oh, that,” said the older lemming at last. “Yes,” he added to Rustbane, “there’s treasure of a sort here. Perhaps that’s what the map’s referring to.”

  “Treasure?” said Rustbane eagerly. “It’s good to know at least one generation of Lemmingtons can talk about the stuff that’s important. Treasure, you say? So just tell me, old hamst—fellow, where is it?”

  Jasper bowed mockingly, imitating Rustbane’s own grandiloquence of gesture. “Right here alongside us.”

  “It is? Where? Show me or I’ll—show me, please.”

  Again Jasper bowed, this time extending a paw out to one side and pointing.

  Rustbane gazed in the direction of Jasper’s extended claw. “I can’t see nothing.”

  Sylvester began to laugh. “Yes, you can.”

  The gray fox shot him an angry glance, eyes narrowing.

  “It’s the biggest thing you can see,” Sylvester explained.

  Realization dawned slowly on the fox’s face.

  Surrounded by its aura of inconceivable antiquity, the hulk of the Zindar vessel loomed toward the distant cavern ceiling.

  Everyone fell silent as the implications sank in. Here, indeed, was a treasure of inestimable worth. The lemmings and Pimplebrains already knew that somewhere within it was an element capable of improving the way people could think, of making them cleverer than they could naturally be. There were also those cunning machines, like the ones that invisibly tended the crops of fruit and vegetables. Jasper had mentioned in passing a couple of others he’d discovered during his years dwelling within the Zindar ship, but Sylvester hadn’t had the time to quiz him further. Who knew how many other machines there might be, still silently running after all these centuries, and what they might be capable of doing?

  Miracles, perhaps.

  They would certainly seem like miracles to the people of Sagaria.

  The person who owned the Zindar ship could be monarch of the world.

  There was one problem.

  “How,” breathed Rustbane, “are we going to take it with us?”

  20 The Longest Voyage of Them All

  They couldn’t, of course, take it with them. Sylvester, Cheesefang, Pimplebrains, Viola and Jasper all took turns trying to explain this as sympathetically as possible to Rustbane. It wasn’t so much that the pirate skipper was inconsolable (although he was that too) as that he was incapable of conceiving that any treasure, and most particularly a treasure of this unique magnitude, couldn’t be hauled away and spent.

  “Perhaps we could just live here?” said the fox hopefully. Before he had been gray, now he was positively ashen.

  “We’ve driven off the cannibals for now,” Sylvester pointed out, “but how long do you think their fear’s going to last? A week? A day? An hour?”

  “Between us we could—”

  “No,” said everyone.

  “Not even if—”

  “No!”

  “It’s not as if,” said Jasper eventually, “the Zindar vessel’s going to go away, is it? I can trick it so the Vendrosians can’t see it any longer. They’ll not interfere with it. You’ll be able to come back any time you want with a whole army of pirates and—”

  “But I want the treasure now!” howled Rustbane.

  Through all of this, Sylvester was relieved that his companions had better sense than to mention the location of the chest of the Zindars, the trove after which Rustbane had been searching. The idea of another horde of pirates descending upon Foxglove, this time with no reason to curb their savagery, was one that Sylvester dared not countenance.

  On the subject of companions …

  “Here’s a question for you,” he said to Rustbane, changing the subject so abruptly that the gray fox didn’t have time to notice it was happening. “Where’s Mrs. Pickleberry? You know, Three Pins. And where’s Rasco?”

  The gray fox brushed what looked suspiciously like a large, globular tear from the corner of his eye. “On the Shadeblaze.”

  With many a stop and start, Cap’n Rustbane related how he’d been saved from a watery grave by Viola’s mother and the chirpy little mouse acting in tandem.

  “They was braver than any of my cullies aboard the old Shadeblaze,” confessed Rustbane, his voice becoming hoarse with emotion. “I can tell ye that. Braver by far. My Jack o’ Cups, he was a vicious brute when his temper was aroused, for all he was a darling boy.” Rustbane looked at the heap of dirty yellowish fur that had once been Jeopord. “If he’d known what they were up to, they’d have been kebabed, cooked and eaten before they were given a chance to die.”

  Viola’s forehead furrowed. “How did they manage it?”

  “What? Being keb—”

  “No, rescuing you. Saving your life.”

  Rustbane grunted, annoyed that the center of attention was shifting away from himself. “Let them tell you themselves.”

  ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿.

  It took a few more hours before they were able to persuade the gray fox to leave the Cavern of the Zindars, but finally the little party half-escorted, half-dragged him down to the shore where Je
opord and his men had left the longboats. Through fear or prudence, the cannibals didn’t trouble them, although Sylvester thought once or twice he could hear the sounds of distant drumming and chanting. The sun was low in the sky, painting the tips of the waves with blood, as they maneuvered three of the boats down over the sand and into the water. Of course, Rustbane refused to row, such menial tasks being beneath him, but Cheesefang and Pimplebrains took an oar apiece and soon the leading craft bearing the gray fox, his new lieutenants and the three lemmings, was slicing through the choppy water of the bay. In the dusk, the Shadeblaze was a hulk of darkness lit only by yellow lamps hung at bow and stern. As the longboat came closer, a few further lamps were lit. It seemed that Rasco and Mrs. Pickleberry were preparing the ship to welcome the weary travelers.

  Soon, Sylvester could hear the two aboard the ship, their voices drifting across the darkling waters of the bay.

  “I must most humbly beseech you—”

  “Wotcher bleating about now, yer daft oaf?”

  “Please, oh treble-pinned one, you’re—”

  “Out with it!”

  “Ma’am, it is a matter of circumstance that—”

  “You got my rolling pin?”

  “I fear not. However, ma chérie, although I hesitate to trouble you—”

  “I got a itch.”

  “Mrs. Pickleberry.”

  “Yes?”

  “You are standing on my—”

  “Why’s that daughter o’ mine takin’ so long gettin’ here? I bet she’s canoodlin’ with that scoundrel Syl—”

  “You’re standing on my tail!”

  “I am? Why didn’t yer say so in the first place?”

  Sylvester smiled. All seemed well aboard the good ship Shadeblaze.

  A few minutes later, the longboat was heaving to under the wall of the Shadeblaze’s side. A rope ladder dropped from somewhere invisible above and Pimplebrains scampered agilely up it. Watching, Sylvester couldn’t make out how the old beaver manipulated his hooks in order to climb so nimbly. Next up was Rustbane, still morose, and then Viola, Jasper, Sylvester and, finally, Cheesefang. Just before he clambered onto the ladder, the sea rat fastened lines to metal rings at the two ends of the longboat, so that the boat itself could be hauled up behind them. Then it was the turn of the next longboat.