The Ghostfaces

by John A. Flanagan

  He realized that, while he had been taking stock of the three strangers, they had been doing the same with him. He hesitated, not sure how to open communications. There was a trading sign language that was used through the Stormwhite Sea and beyond, for those remote areas where people didn’t speak the common tongue. But he doubted it would be understood here. He decided on the simplest opening gambit he could think of.

  He pointed to himself, and spoke. “Hal,” he said. “I am Hal.”

  He saw a light of comprehension in the three sets of dark eyes studying him. Encouraged, he half turned and rested his hand on Thorn’s shoulder.

  “Thorn,” he said. “This is Thorn.”

  The older man nodded once and repeated the names.

  “Hal . . . and Thorn,” he said, gesturing to each of them as he spoke.

  Hal was delighted that he had been understood. He nodded, smiling. “Yes,” he said. “Hal . . . Thorn.” Again, he pointed to himself and to his companion.

  But Thorn had noticed the additional word the older man had used.

  “He said and,” he said softly to Hal. The skirl turned to him, not quite understanding the significance. Thorn repeated the statement.

  “He said and,” he said. “You didn’t say and. How did he know and?”

  Hal was taken aback, realizing that Thorn was right. The stranger had used an extra word—and used it correctly. Maybe, he thought wildly, and was a universal word. Then his surprise doubled as the gray-haired man continued, speaking slowly and precisely in the common tongue.

  “I am Mohegas,” he said, “of the Mawagansett people. These are my nephews.”

  chapter twenty-one

  Hal was so shocked at hearing the man speak the common tongue that he actually recoiled a pace. He looked to Thorn, who appeared equally surprised. Then he turned back to the gray-haired man—Mohegas, he corrected himself.

  “You speak the common tongue?” he said. It was a question, not a statement. Mohegas allowed a faint smile to touch his grave features, then composed them again.

  “Not very good,” he said apologetically. “But some. I speak some.”

  “How did you—”

  Mohegas interrupted him. “We have one of your people with us. A White Hair like you.” He touched his own hair with his left hand as he spoke. While his hair was almost black, although streaked with gray, Hal and Thorn were both fair-haired, as were most of the crew. Even Edvin, whose hair was a slightly darker shade than the norm, had hair that was a light shade of brown. Compared with the dark tresses of the three men facing him, Hal thought that “White Hair” was a fitting description.

  Of greater significance was the fact that a White Hair, presumably a Skandian, was living with the Mawagansett people. Hal frowned as he tried to think who that might be. He couldn’t think of anyone who had gone missing recently—or at least anyone who wasn’t accounted for. Mohegas saw his expression and guessed at his thoughts.

  “He joined us twelve sun cycles ago,” he said, then corrected himself. “Twelve years, you would say. He has taught many of our tribe the common tongue, even the children.”

  Which explained why Hal couldn’t think of anyone who might be the mysterious White Hair. If he’d been here twelve years, Hal still would have been a boy when he first went missing.

  Thorn, however, was a different matter. “What is his name?” he asked.

  Mohegas switched his gaze to the old sea wolf, sizing him up, taking in the hard muscles, the graying blond hair and the massive club-hand on the end of his right forearm.

  “We call him Polennis,” he said. “In your tongue, that would mean ‘Man Who Swims.’ He calls himself . . .” He paused, trying to recall the man’s Skandian name, which hadn’t been used for many years, then succeeding. “Or-wik? No, Or-vik.”

  It was a common enough name and Thorn shrugged. For the moment, he couldn’t recall any Orvik who had gone missing twelve years prior. But then, he couldn’t recall a lot of events from that period of his life. He had seen most events over the rim of a brandy tankard. He looked at Hal.

  “Doesn’t ring a bell with me,” he said.

  Hal nodded. “He may not even have come from Hallasholm,” he said. “He could have come from anywhere in Skandia.”

  “At first, we thought you were Ghostfaces,” Mohegas continued. “But then we watched you and saw that your skin was naturally pale.” He paused, then explained, with an expression of distaste. “Ghostfaces have skin like ours, but they paint it white.”

  “Ghostfaces,” Hal mused. “They sound like good people to avoid.”

  Mohegas continued. “We have been watching you. We watched you hunting,” he said, looking at Thorn, who nodded.

  “We saw you watching us,” he said, and Mohegas smiled again.

  “Then we saw the bear chase you—you and the girl.” He looked at the stockade, where Lydia was still poised at the top of the access ladder. Hal glanced back with him. She was resting the atlatl dart across one bent knee, apparently relaxed, but ready to throw in a second.

  “It wasn’t my most dignified moment, I have to say,” Thorn replied.

  “Then, yesterday, you risked your lives to save two of our children,” Mohegas continued. “The bear nearly got you then.” He addressed this remark to Thorn, who instinctively touched his still-aching ribs.

  “It did indeed,” he replied.

  “But then you all joined together to fight the bear. You two, and the tall one. The two who look the same. And the one who is always complaining.”

  “They have been watching us,” Hal said in an aside to Thorn.

  “And then you killed the bear,” Mohegas said. There was a note of wonder in his voice. “How did you do that?”

  Of course, Hal thought, the final battle with the bear, on board the Heron moored in the inlet, wouldn’t have been visible to anyone observing from the forest near the campsite.

  “We have a very powerful weapon,” he said. “We call it the Mangler and we used it to shoot the bear.”

  Mohegas nodded gravely. “It must be powerful. That bear has been terrorizing our people for over a year. None of our weapons were much use against it and it has killed three of our warriors.”

  “Well, we’re glad we could help out,” Thorn said. “It was causing us our share of trouble too.”

  “And you saved our children. We had told them not to come and spy on you. We told them the bear was prowling in the area. But they are children, after all, and inclined not to listen.”

  “Children are like that,” said Hal loftily.

  Thorn regarded him with amusement. It wasn’t too many years since Hal had been a child himself, and one who was constantly getting into trouble.

  “For this, you have our thanks. And for ridding us of the bear, of course. But mostly, for saving our children. That is the most important.”

  Hal inclined his head in a shallow bow of acknowledgment. “As we said, we’re glad to be of service.” He felt a small surge of pride as he recalled how his crew had rallied together to protect the two Mawagansett children clinging desperately to the tree as the bear raged below them. There had been no need for him to issue any orders; everybody simply joined forces to save the children, regardless of their own safety.

  “We want to name you as friends of the Mawagansett. And we are here to invite you to our village for a feast of gratitude. The two children you saved, Minneka and Lahontas, will express their thanks. They will apologize for putting you all in danger and they will serve you during the feast.”

  “There’s no need for that,” Hal said, but Mohegas nodded gravely.

  “Yes. There is. They disobeyed their parents. It will do them good to make amends.”

  Thorn grinned. “That’s a good point,” he replied. “It’s good for naughty children to make amends for their sins.”

  �
�They are not bad, you understand,” Mohegas told him, thinking that perhaps he had given them an incorrect impression. “They are just headstrong and curious.”

  “Knew a boy like that myself once,” Thorn told him.

  Hal decided that it was time to get the old sea wolf off the subject of headstrong boys he had known in the past. “We’ll be delighted to come and join your feast,” he said, giving Thorn a warning glance. “When do you want us to come?”

  “This evening. After sunset,” Mohegas told him. “I will come to show you the way to our village just before dark.”

  Hal nodded. “We’ll be ready then.”

  Mohegas hesitated, looking from Hal to Thorn, then back again. “Forgive me for asking,” he said, “but which of you is the leader of your people?”

  “He is,” Thorn said promptly, laying his left hand on Hal’s shoulder. “He’s the commander of our ship and the leader of our brotherband.”

  “Yet you are the older?” Mohegas said. In his world, authority tended to equate with seniority in years.

  Thorn smiled. “But not the wiser,” he replied easily. He had no qualms about admitting to Hal’s authority over him.

  “Thorn is our battle leader,” Hal explained and Mohegas nodded. Among the Mawagansett, the war leader and the chief of the tribe were often separate positions.

  “You have the look of a warrior,” he said, allowing his glance to drop to the massive club that Thorn wore on his right arm. He paused, allowing this information about these mysterious visitors to sink in. Then he made a sign to his two companions. They stooped and retrieved their shields and spears.

  “It’s all right, Lydia,” Hal called, without turning. He knew that the moment their hands had touched their weapons, Lydia would have readied her atlatl. Mohegas’s faint smile told him he was correct.

  “She is a warrior too,” the Mawagansett elder said.

  Hal nodded. “One of our best.”

  Mohegas raised a hand in farewell.

  “I’ll return for you before sunset,” he said. Then he uttered a command to his two companions and they turned and headed across the beach to the forest. Hal and Thorn watched them go, waiting until they had disappeared into the shadows under the trees. Then they exchanged a quizzical look. It was a day of surprises, Hal thought.

  “Let’s go tell the others,” Thorn said and they headed back to the stockade, where a crowd of curious faces now lined the fence.

  • • • • •

  “But I’ve got nothing to wear!” Lydia exclaimed when Hal told the crew they had been invited to a feast.

  He cocked his head curiously. “You’re kidding, aren’t you?”

  She allowed herself the ghost of a smile. “Of course I am. It’s just I’ve heard that’s the girly sort of thing young maids say when they’re asked to a feast.”

  Hal raised his eyes to the heavens. “Loki save me from girly young maids then.”

  “No need to invoke the god,” Stig put in. “From what I’ve seen, you’re rarely bothered by girly young maids. Most of the ones I’ve seen are totally disinterested in you.”

  Which wasn’t true, of course. As a matter of fact, Hal was quite in demand among the eligible girls in Hallasholm. He was, after all, a dashing and successful young skirl who had fought, and won, several battles. And he was the leader who had recovered the Andomal, the sacred belonging of the Skandians, from the pirate Zavac. That gave him a definite cachet among the young maids.

  The fact that he was also the one who had allowed the pirate Zavac to steal the Andomal in the first place did nothing to reduce him in their eyes.

  “Who’s invited?” Edvin asked.

  Hal and Thorn exchanged a quick glance. That hadn’t been stipulated.

  “I think all of us,” Hal said and Thorn nodded agreement.

  Stig frowned. “Shouldn’t we leave someone here to guard the camp?”

  Hal hesitated. He had been thinking over that question himself. “From whom?”

  Stig shrugged. “How about these Ghostfizzers they mentioned?” he asked. “They sound unpleasant.”

  “It’s Ghostfaces,” Hal told him. “And I get the impression that they’re not around all the time.” He chewed on his lip thoughtfully. “I think we’ll all go. It might be insulting to leave someone to guard the camp. After all, there’s nobody to guard it against, other than our hosts.”

  “And if they want to rob us, they can simply kill us at the feast and take everything,” Ulf said.

  “What a ray of sunshine you are,” Hal replied.

  PART THREE

  THE MAWAGANSETT

  chapter twenty-two

  The rest of the day passed slowly, the hours seeming to crawl by. The crew were excited about the prospect of meeting the local inhabitants and spent most of their time discussing what might happen, what the locals might be like and what sort of food they might be served.

  “Goats’ eyes,” Jesper averred with the tone of one who knows. “They’ll probably serve us goats’ eyes. It’s a great delicacy.”

  “I’m not eating anything that’s looking back at me,” Stefan said emphatically.

  Ingvar, however, regarded Jesper with a small frown and shook his head in wonder at the other boy’s stupidity.

  “What makes you say that?” he asked. Jesper regarded him back, with the lofty expression of one who knows he is talking utter rubbish but refuses to admit to it.

  “It’s a well-known fact,” he said. “Goats’ eyes are highly prized among foreign people.”

  “What foreign people ever gave you goats’ eyes?” Ingvar challenged and Jesper hesitated. He hadn’t planned on having to defend his statement to this degree but he wasn’t giving in now.

  “The people of Arrida,” he said. “Remember how they served us goats’ eyes at the feast after we took the city of Tabork?”

  “I recall that they served us minced goat meat and salad and flat bread,” Stefan said slowly. “I didn’t see any goats’ eyes.”

  “Maybe not. But they saw you,” Jesper told him.

  Then Ingvar challenged his assertion again. “These people look nothing like the Arridi.”

  “They’ve got dark hair,” Jesper said defiantly.

  “Maybe so. But the Arridi are tall and slender people. These Mawagansett are quite stocky and muscular. At least the ones we’ve seen are.”

  “So who’s to say the ones we haven’t seen aren’t tall and slender, like the Arridi?”

  Ingvar shook his head in resignation. “Will you ever admit you’re wrong?” he asked, but Jesper shook his head.

  “I never am,” he said.

  Ingvar turned to where Hal and Thorn were discussing the invitation to the Mawagansett village. “Hal, would it be all right if I threw Jesper in the bay?” he asked.

  Hal looked up, considered the request and nodded. “Any time you like, Ingvar,” he said. “I trust your judgment.”

  Ingvar nodded in satisfaction and turned back to look at Jesper. The big boy had recovered his spectacles after the fight with the bear, but he wasn’t wearing them now. He often didn’t for close work or short-distance viewing, and his blue eyes seemed to bore into Jesper. As the former thief met his gaze, he could see a sense of resolve there and realized he was only seconds away from an undignified ducking.

  “Well . . . ,” he prevaricated, “maybe I was mistaken about the goats’ eyes.”

  Ingvar nodded several times. “Maybe you were.”

  Stefan chuckled. But Jesper wasn’t giving in so easily.

  “It’ll be something different, you wait and see. Like larks’ tongues, maybe.”

  “Or ants in honey,” Ulf put in.

  Wulf looked at him. “Who ever heard of ants in honey?”

  His brother smiled as he sprang the trap. “Ants are always getting into the honey at
home.”

  “But you don’t eat them there,” Ulf protested.

  “You could. You just need a more sophisticated palate than you possess,” Wulf told him.

  Sitting a few meters away, Thorn couldn’t help smiling. “Nice to hear things are back to normal,” he said.

  Hal nodded. His crew had been a little subdued over the past week or so. Now that they were talking and teasing one another again, with Ulf and Wulf bickering good-naturedly and Jesper talking through his hat with a tone of total conviction, things felt more normal. It was probably the fact that they had made contact with other people, he thought. Up until Mohegas had arrived that morning, a sense of uncertainty had hung over all of them. Were they alone in this foreign land? Would the locals, if there were any, be hostile or friendly? Mohegas’s visit had reassured them all and restored a welcome sense of normalcy to life.

  “What’s Edvin up to?” he asked. “He doesn’t need to cook today.”

  After Mohegas and his two companions had left, Lydia had slipped away into the forest to hunt, returning with another of the large birds. Edvin had set to plucking and cleaning it and had Ulf and Wulf, who were on kitchen duty that day, dig him a large fire pit and set a fire to burn down to coals.

  While he was waiting for this to happen, Edvin chopped some of the wild onions and herbs he had found growing in the forest and stuffed them into the plucked bird’s cavity. Then he wrapped the large body in bark and proceeded to smear mud thickly over it, until it was completely covered. Hal and Thorn strolled over as he was raking the coals back in the fire pit to form a hole for the bird. He lowered it in and raked coals over the top of it again so that it was completely covered. He glanced up at Hal.

  “I reckon maybe three hours and it’ll be done,” he said.

  “But you don’t need to cook. The locals have invited us to a feast,” Hal told him.

  Edvin shook his head. “You can’t go to a feast empty-handed. Everyone knows that.”

  Hal looked at Thorn. “Did you know that?”