by Kai Meyer
“Land ho!” he called down from the bridge. “Jolly, the coast lies ahead of us!”
A chain of hills was clearly visible on the horizon. The mainland. Somewhere there in the distance lay the mouth of the Orinoco—and, she hoped, a further clue that would lead to Bannon and the men of the Skinny Maddy.
She suppressed all further thoughts about the bridge, the MareTenebrosum, and the words of the worm. Now she had to concentrate on what lay ahead of her.
“Everything all right?” called Buenaventure.
“Yes … yes,” she said uncertainly, straightening, yet she thought that nothing was all right. With more clarity than ever before, she had to face the fact that she’d made a terrible mistake. With her flight from the sea star city she had betrayed everyone, the people of Aelenium, her comrades, and worst of all, Griffin. His face appeared before her inner eye, and this time it overrode everything else with such force that she writhed with pain and longing.
The Hexhermetic Shipworm said something more, but she didn’t hear the words and looked right through him.
“Jolly!”
That was Buenaventure.
She pulled herself together and turned her head in his direction. “What?”
“We aren’t alone anymore. Over there—behind us on the horizon!”
She ran toward him, through several ghosts who didn’t get out of her way fast enough, leaped up the steps to the bridge, and looked tensely over the railing. The two parrots fluttered behind her and sat down on the railing beside her.
A ship had appeared in the distance. Its sails were numerous and very large. “Looks like a Spanish frigate!”
Buenaventure said nothing. But after several minutes, when they could see that their pursuer was much faster than they were and was coming closer and closer, his dog eyes narrowed when he glanced behind them.
“That’s the Quadriga,” he said. “Tyrone’s ship.”
“Can we make it to the coast before them?” Jolly asked, although she knew the answer.
Buenaventure shook his head, his bent-over ears flapping. “No. If they want to catch up to us, they will.”
Jolly shouted commands to the ghosts on board. In a flash the cannons were manned and made ready to fire. Torches flamed, barrels were rammed, iron balls rolled down the barrels and clattered into place.
“There’s no point in it,” said Buenaventure, and for the first time Jolly noticed the strange undertone in his voice. The pit bull man was afraid—not for himself, but for her. And for his ship. She had never before seen him so rattled, and that caused her even greater fright than the appearance of the Quadriga.
“You don’t want to fight?” she asked, dumbfounded.
“I didn’t say that. But it’s pointless. The Quadriga is a warship and has three times as many guns as we do. And if they want to board us, the ghosts will be hardly any help.”
In her heart she knew he was right. But she wasn’t ready to accept it. Not so close to … yes, to what? Her goal? But what was her goal, anyway?
“Jolly,” said Buenaventure, “bring the worm here.”
She ran to the bow, picked up the knapsack with the scolding worm in it, and carried him back to the bridge. Buenaventure fastened him firmly to his back.
“Pull in your head, Diamond of Poetic Art!”
“If anyone had so much breeding to declare me—” The worm fell silent when he discovered the ship that was now flying along in their wake, only a few hundred yards from them. “Oh,” he said, and he crept into the knapsack without another word.
“Jolly, I’d like you to go below.”
She stared at the pit bull man. “Most certainly not!”
“Please, do what I say!”
“I’m the only one who can command the ghosts. They won’t obey you. Besides, I wouldn’t think of hiding away.”
The shipworm showed a tiny fraction of his head shield. “But hiding away isn’t a bad idea.”
“I’m staying!” she said to Buenaventure.
“And what if it’s you they’re after?”
She thought about that. Was that possible? What interest could the cannibal king possibly have in her?
“I will not go below,” she said finally.
Buenaventure let out a wheeze, which in an ordinary human would probably have been a deep sigh. “Then at least hide yourself behind the chests on the main deck.”
The monotonous hissing of the sea behind them was broken by the thunder of cannon.
“Oh, dear,” whimpered the shipworm deep in his knapsack. “They’re shooting at us!”
“That was only a warning shot,” said Buenaventure. “They want us to heave to.” His right eyebrow rose in his flat forehead. “Well, Captain Jolly?”
“Do what you think is right.”
“Then you’d better disappear now.”
She leaped down the steps to the deck and took cover behind some chests that stood next to the Carfax’s mainmast. “Ready to fire!” she called to the ghosts. When she saw Buenaventure nod to her from the bridge, she gave the order to heave to. The Carfax slowed.
A little later the larboard of the Quadriga slid into Jolly’s field of vision. She had to pull in her head not to be seen.
“Ahoy, Carfax!” someone called. Jolly didn’t dare raise her head. A ship like the Quadriga had a crew of more than a hundred men, and just as many pairs of eyes were at this moment directed to the deck of the Carfax. The risk of being discovered was too great.
“Ahoy, Quadriga!” replied the pit bull man. There followed a long pause in which Jolly wondered if Buenaventure had seen something over there that stopped his voice. There was a lump in her throat that she couldn’t swallow down.
Then finally the pit bull man called, “We have no cargo aboard, if that’s what you’re after.”
“Commander Tyrone wants to know if you have a young girl aboard.”
Anyway, it was now clear to Jolly that the voice did not belong to Tyrone himself. In fact, it seemed familiar to her. Where from was hard to say, however, as long as the man was shouting across the gap between the two ships and the wind was distorting the syllables.
Buenaventure let out a barking laugh. “Commander Tyrone? Did he name himself that?”
“Answer, dog!”
“The Carfax has no children aboard!” the pit bull man said grimly.
“We’d like to convince ourselves of that personally.”
“Do you intend to board us?”
Jolly changed her position a little so that she could see up to the bridge. Buenaventure’s left hand rested on the wheel, but his right held a cocked pistol. Something wasn’t right. He was acting strangely, much more restrained than usual. Was he only doing that in order not to irritate the crew of the Quadriga?
“We will indeed board you if we don’t receive your permission for a goodwill visit,” called the voice.
“An important word that you’re using carelessly there, traitor!”
Traitor? What the devil was going on? Damn it, she had to see why Buenaventure was acting so strangely.
Very slowly she rose between the chests and looked over the larboard side.
The railing of the Quadriga towered more than six feet over that of the Carfax. Dozens of figures were standing up there, staring down at the deck of the smaller ship. They all wore the colorful, ragtag clothing of the Caribbean pirates, even though some of them were islanders. She avoided looking into the faces of any of them. She walked briskly over to the steps and mounted to the bridge.
“Jolly, you ought not to—”
“That’s my decision, Buenaventure. Otherwise they’d sink the Carfax”
He sighed, and it sounded almost like a whimper. “I’m sorry.”
Only when she turned toward the bridge of the opposing ship and saw who was standing up there did she understand what he meant.
She fell back with a scream of surprise. It was as if she’d banged her head on an invisible wall.
“I’m really sorry,” said Buen
aventure once more.
“Jolly,” called the man. “It’s great to see you again.”
She couldn’t answer. Her jaw felt as if it were screwed shut, her tongue was paralyzed.
“Bannon?”
He gave her the beaming smile that she had always liked so much. His straw blond hair fluttered in the stiff breeze, and his white shirt bellied out in the wind like a sail. On his chest hung a silver amulet. His father, who’d been the first cannoneer aboard a freebooter in the pay of the English crown, had presented it to him before he was strung up in the harbor of Maracaibo. Bannon had intended to pass it on to Jolly someday, he’d always said. Someday it will belong to you.
“But … how come … ?” She spoke so softly that the words didn’t even reach Buenaventure.
The pit bull man lowered his gaze. Anger and pity in equal amounts gleamed in his eyes.
“Jolly, come aboard to us,” Bannon called. “We’ve missed you. Look around, everyone is here!”
Her gaze wandered over the faces that inspected her from the Quadriga, some smiling, others serious. She recognized every third one of the men. There was Trevino, the cook on the Skinny Maddy, who’d designed the tattoo on her back; Cristobal, the steersman; Abarquez, who’d taken her up to the crow’s nest for the first time; Long Tom, who didn’t fit into any hammock on the Maddy and had sewn himself a bigger one out of plundered brocade; Redhead Doyle; old Sam Greaney; Guilfoyle, and the black giant Mabutu; the silent German, Kaspar Rosenbecker; Lammond and Lenard, the best cannoneers on the Maddy; and also Zargoza, who swore by all that was holy that he wasn’t a Spaniard, even though everyone knew better.
Jolly recognized them all again and some others too.
She took a deep breath. She’d reached her goal. What she had longed for most: to find Bannon and her crew again. But it wasn’t at all the reunion she’d imagined and for which she’d given up so much—if not everything.
“What … what are you doing on that ship?” she called, and her voice didn’t sound half as firm as she wanted it to. “I saw the spiders … and …” She stopped again. Tears came to her eyes. She hoped no one could see them at a distance.
“We’re fine, Jolly!” replied Bannon. “Come aboard the Quadriga and I’ll tell you everything.”
She looked helplessly at Buenaventure, who shook his head almost imperceptibly. Why, devil take it, didn’t he say something?
“What are you doing on the Quadriga?” She called. She was too churned up to listen very carefully to what he replied. But she needed time. To consider, to weigh, to … Suddenly she didn’t know anything anymore. She doubted if she could ever make a decision, even if she were to mull it over for hours.
But she didn’t have hours. Not even minutes.
Behind Bannon appeared a man in black, towering almost a head over him. His skull was shaved bald up to a long black ponytail, which he vainly wore draped forward over his right shoulder. Paintings decorated his face, and there was something wrong with his mouth that Jolly couldn’t properly make out at this distance. With his teeth.
Bannon and Cristobal moved to one side to make room for the man at the railing.
“We’re all very touched by this heartfelt reunion,” he said in a tone of voice that belied his every word. “But we’re frittering away our time here. Either you come over on your own, girl, or I’ll send someone over to get you.”
At his wave, a plank was shoved over from the main deck of the Quadriga to the Carfax.
“And hurry up!” he called over to Jolly. “I’ve heard so much about you, I’d really like to get to know you myself.”
“That’s Tyrone,” Buenaventure whispered to her. “The cannibal king of Orinoco.”
So this was the man who’d cut off the ring fingers of Munk’s mother many years ago and shredded her earlobes because she hadn’t taken her jewelry off fast enough; the same man who, people said, led more than a thousand cannibals, whose atrocities had plunged even the bloodthirstiest tribes of Orinoco into utter terror.
But even more than all that, she was shocked by Bannon’s submissiveness to him. Tyrone’s appearance on the bridge had made all the men freeze, and Bannon, who’d never let himself be ordered to do something by anyone, acted like a ship’s boy toward him.
This observation finally roused Jolly from her numbness. Her goal of finding Bannon and the others and possibly rescuing them from the fangs of a tormentor dissipated like a cloud of smoke and left her with a huge emptiness. An emptiness that now gradually filled with the knowledge that she ought not to have been there at all. Her place was not with Bannon, who had betrayed her. Her place was with her true friends. With Griffin and Soledad and Walker and … yes, even with Munk.
Once again she looked at Buenaventure, and this time he must have realized what was going on inside her. He nodded, almost with his eyes only.
Do we need more time? she wondered.
No, the ghosts were already in their positions. The cannons were ready to fire.
“Give up, little girl!” said Tyrone. He didn’t have to bellow in order to be heard as Bannon had done. He spoke quite quietly, as if they were standing directly opposite each other, and yet she understood him without any straining. His voice halved the distance between them without any effort. “We have a full broadside aimed at you,” he added.
“Jolly,” shouted Bannon again, “be reasonable!”
“Do you remember what you taught me?” she replied in a trembling voice. “Never give up. You’ve said that to me over and over again, Bannon. Never give up, no matter who your opponent is and how bad your chances are.”
“There are no chances,” said Tyrone, savoring his words. “Not for you.”
There were about fifteen feet between the two ships, and the steep plank that connected them was scraping loudly on the railing. Several men aboard the Quadriga held grappling hooks on ropes in their hands, which they would hurl over at Tyrone’s command; with their help the ships would be firmly roped together so that the pirates could move from one ship to the other without risk.
Once the hooks were firmly seated, it would be too late to fire the cannons. Even now the ships were too close for a firefight; Tyrone and Bannon must know that. If a ball hit the powder magazine of the Carfax, the explosion might be big enough to seriously damage the Quadriga too.
Did Tyrone think he could take her in with a bluff like that?
“The commander gave us the antidote,” said Bannon, and for the first time he paid no attention to the look that Tyrone sent him. “He saved us. He won’t do anything to you, either, Jolly. Don’t forget, we’re pirates—you too! We’re always on the side of the ones who promise us the best take. That’s the way it’s always been in our business.”
“I learned from you that freebooting is more than just a business, Bannon.” Jolly shook her head sadly. “And as for the antidote: Maybe he did give it to you. But he was the one who lured the Maddy into the trap in the first place! Right, Tyrone? The galleon with the spiders, that was your idea.”
“Certainly.” The cannibal king grinned coolly. He had the face of a hungry predator.
“Who gave you the job of catching me?”
The cannibal king stretched his arm and pointed his bony forefinger in her direction. “I’m not here to chat with a child! Either you come over or my men will fetch you.”
“Was it the Maelstrom, Tyrone?” Her knees were trembling, but no one on the deck of the Quadriga could see that. “Spill it to them. Tell them whose service you’re in!”
Bannon frowned, but he didn’t dare look at Tyrone.
“Go, men!” cried the cannibal king. “Go get her!”
But Jolly was faster. Before the first grappling hook could sail over, she sprang to the Carfax’s little bridge gun, reached determinedly right through the ghost at the cannon, and aimed it directly at Tyrone. The arm-long gun barrel was mounted on a swinging joint and glided around, screeching. Jolly snatched the torch from the ghost and held it to the powde
r opening.
Several men on the bridge of the Quadriga cried out at the same time. They all stormed in different directions, and even Tyrone started back in surprise. He might have reckoned with much, but not that Jolly—the child, as he’d called her—would attack.
“Show ’em!” Buenaventure roared grimly and pulled the wheel around.
The jolt of the cannon shot almost tore Jolly’s right arm out of her shoulder. She was thrown backward, and the pressure wave hit her in the face like a box on the ear. For a moment smoke veiled her sight, and tears now ran down her face whether she wanted them to or not.
Piercing screams pealed over from the opposing deck. But in all the smoke it was impossible to tell if she’d hit the cannibal king.
She didn’t wait but bellowed orders to the ghosts, as she had once learned from Bannon. In a flash, the Carfax was moving again.
“They’re going to shoot us to pieces,” shouted Buenaventure doggedly. “But they certainly won’t forget this day for a long time.”
At first she didn’t know what he meant. But when she looked back at the Quadriga, it was instantly clear to her. The bridge railing on the starboard side had almost vanished. Their shot had torn a wide breach in her planking and exposed the cabins that lay behind it. Men had fallen into the hole and now found themselves one deck deeper. She recognized Bannon, who stared back at her, his face grim, perhaps in rage, but perhaps also because he knew that she’d signed her death warrant.
Where was Tyrone?
She discovered him a few seconds later among the men who’d fallen into the open cabins. He scrambled up in the midst of the debris and rubbed the blood off his face, obviously not his own, for soon he roughly pushed the injured aside and stepped into the breach that Jolly’s hit had blasted in his bridge.
He called something after her that she didn’t understand.
Bannon stood farther up, on the edge of the hole, supporting himself on a split wooden post and shaking his head. He knew what was going to happen now, but before Jolly could tell whether his expression was of sadness or at least sympathy, a cloud of smoke drove between the ships and covered her sight.
She had no time to consider the reactions of her former friends, all those men who’d raised her as if she were their daughter. Instead she wiped the tears from her cheeks, swallowed down her grief, and turned around to Buenaventure.
