by Kai Meyer
The mere fact that the Maelstrom might have broken away from the Masters of the Mare disarranged the image that she’d made for herself until then, even if it didn’t make that image any less terrifying. She wondered once more what would have happened if the bridge had not caught fire and Griffin had not pulled her back.
One thing was certain: The answers to these questions were only to be found in Aelenium. Whether the gods who had withdrawn there were now acting in their own interest or not, they commanded the knowledge to save humanity. The kobalins must be stopped before they started their campaign of annihilation. And the Maelstrom must be halted.
What is bad? the water spinners had asked. Now Jolly realized that the answer to that question wasn’t important. The goals of the inhabitants of Aelenium were unimportant, so long as their battle served to protect the entire Caribbean. Jolly need not care whether jealousy or the old interests of the gods were driving them.
What was Griffin doing now? Was he still safe in Aelenium? When would the great attack of the Maelstrom begin, and how long would the city be able to withstand it?
And what about Munk? She shook her head so hard that Buenaventure, who was tramping along beside the others just as reflectively as she was, turned to her.
“Don’t reproach yourself on account of the worm,” he said.
She was grateful to be diverted from Griffin and Munk for a moment. Not that the reminder of the shipworm meant any relief. “If I hadn’t set out in the Carfax, you wouldn’t have had to follow me,” she said dejectedly. “And the worm would be in Aelenium now.”
“Where the good people of the Poets’ District would probably have roasted him on a spit, they were so upset.”
She gave the pit bull man a halfhearted smile. It was dear of him to want to relieve her of the responsibility for what had happened. Nevertheless, she knew the truth. She alone bore the guilt.
They sank into silence again as they hiked westward among the outermost trees of the jungle, just far enough inland not to be seen from the sea. In other circumstances, the walk to the bluff wouldn’t have taken an hour. But the soft sand delayed them, and they were all moving tensely and cautiously, for the danger of meeting enemies became greater with every step.
For a while they encountered no enemy sentries. Soon the land began to rise and grow rockier. The sand dwindled to soft drifts and then it was entirely behind them. There were no paths here; they had to hack their way through the increasingly dense bush with their sabers, through vines and leafy shoots. Walker and Buenaventure went ahead and cut a path in the thicket. Every stroke seemed to Jolly treacherously loud, and she was afraid the startled birds taking to the air would alarm Tyrone’s guards.
Their ascent now grew increasingly difficult. They were moving over a natural ramp of rock that on their right fell steeply to the sea. The fortress must be somewhere in front of them. But what was on the left side? Jungle, certainly. But if the lake lay there in the south somewhere, the land in between must drop away as well.
They found out a little later, when Walker and Buenaventure stopped. The forest thinned in front of them. The red-gold of the setting sun streamed through the tree trunks in small stripes, coloring their faces blood red. They’d already turned away from the cliff a while ago and had been walking farther to the left, always going where a break through the jungle seemed easier and caused less noise. And so they had reached the western edge of the rock ramp.
In front of them opened a chasm, as steep as the cliff at their backs and just as insurmountable. A wider strip of jungle hugged the rock wall a hundred feet below them. On the other side of it, shimmering like a plain of gold in the evening twilight, lay the lake.
“Jolly, you limb of Satan, you were right!” Walker took a deep breath. Here on the rock edge the air was clearer and fresher than under the oppressive leafy roof of the jungle. Jolly, too, felt that breathing was easier.
Tyrone’s fleet lay at anchor on the lake.
There were at least two hundred ships.
For a while no one said a word. They were all probably having the same thought. Each one recognized how hopeless a battle against such superior strength would be.
Finally Buenaventure spoke. “Where did he get them all?”
“Built them,” said Walker. “Look. Most of them have never been to sea yet.” He pointed to a row of piers, ramps, and wooden houses to the south, on the far side of the lake. “That over there must be the workshops.”
“But I don’t see any half-finished ships,” said Jolly. “Do you really think they were all built here?”
The Ghost Trader nodded in the shadow of his hood. “The fleet is ready. Those ships down there are only waiting for the order to run out.”
“Even if all the pirates of Tortuga, New Providence, and the Lesser Antilles joined together, there wouldn’t be such a large fleet,” Soledad said dully. “It must have taken years to build so many ships.”
As far as could be seen in the twilight, the jungle to the south had been extensively cleared. It was hard to make out where the forest began again. The humidity rose steaming from the ground, obscuring the horizon.
“That can’t have been done without help.” Walker said what they all were thinking. “The natives are no shipbuilders. He must have had architects, carpenters, sailmakers.”
“Spaniards,” said Soledad.
“Spaniards?” Walker repeated. And then he understood. “Of course! He isn’t just committing one treachery, but two at once. I’ll be damned!”
“Two?” Jolly asked.
Walker ran his hand excitedly through his long hair. “That damned whoreson! He guarantees the Spaniards he’ll lure the pirates into a trap. And he promises the pirates an easy victory over the Spaniards. As thanks for his double-cross, the Spaniards provide him with men and material to build his own fleet. Maybe they later intend to leave part of the Caribbean to him or to support him in his raids against the English.”
Jolly stared at him. “Don’t forget the third move in his game,” she said softly. “He betrays the Spaniards, because in truth he intends to use the fleet for an entirely different purpose.”
“The destruction of Aelenium,” murmured the Ghost Trader. “Tyrone is also a servant of the Maelstrom. He’ll send his ships to Aelenium to support the kobalins.”
“And I’d like to bet”—Soledad took the thought further—“that though the Spaniards are certainly figuring on an attack by the pirates of Tortuga and New Providence, they aren’t in on the fact that they’ve joined up with the Antilles captains. So the Spanish armada will face a much larger pirate fleet than they expected. Tyrone has also provided for that. This way he plays our people against the Spaniards, and vice versa. And in thanks for it, he receives a powerful fleet.”
“That is rotten,” growled Buenaventure.
“That is clever,” said Walker appreciatively.
“Indeed,” agreed the Ghost Trader. “Tyrone and the Maelstrom will take Aelenium in a pincer movement. The fleet on the water, the kobalins underneath. And who knows what other surprises he’s prepared for us.”
Jolly was silent. While the others still spoke of Tyrone’s plans, she was looking into the future. Forefather and the others had been right from the beginning. There was only one way to stop ruin: She and Munk must go down to the Crustal Breach and face the Maelstrom.
She stepped closer to the edge of the cliff and looked past the others to the west. A few dozen yards away rose the outer wall of the fortress. Still farther to the west a snaking path led down through the rocks to the city of huts and tents on the shores of the lake. Only now did she see that a broader, deeper water channel cut the settlement in two—the outflow of the lake to the Orinoco delta and to the open sea.
“Are we going farther?” Walker asked. “Or shall we turn around and warn Aelenium?”
“Farther,” said the Ghost Trader. “Maybe we can learn even more down there.”
“In that rats’ nest?” Soledad frowned
. “Is that really a good idea?”
“Have you a better one, Princess?”
But before Soledad could answer, there was a sudden racket down below. At first they heard only individual cries, but then came the sounds of shattering wood.
“There!” cried Jolly excitedly and pointed down below. “There, in front of the Quadriga!”
Just then they all saw it.
One of the ships had listed and sunk. It must have been a huge leak, for it went down with such speed that the water was sloshing over the railing within an extremely short time. Two other ships were also listing steeply, followed by a fourth. And a fifth.
“What’s going on down there?” Walker asked.
“Sabotage,” growled Buenaventure with satisfaction. “Someone’s making sure the tubs fill up with water.”
“Someone?” Jolly gasped breathlessly. Then suddenly she exulted. “Damn it all! I know who it is!”
How had they passed the fortress wall without being discovered by the guards? How had they succeeded in descending the path unseen, in spite of the troops of workers and tribal warriors who met them? How did they manage, against all reason, to pass the outlying houses of the settlement and get straight into the confusion of little streets without someone pointing a finger at them and identifying them as spies?
Afterward, Jolly didn’t have an entirely satisfactory answer to any of these questions. In her thoughts, the path through the rocks melted to a confusion of crouching and sneaking, stolen looks into the darkness, wide detours around sentries, toneless whispers, fingers clenched on saber grips, and rivulets of sweat running down her forehead and into her eyes.
But none of that really counted. Her relief outweighed any other feeling, even her fear of falling into the hands of Tyrone’s cannibals.
The Hexhermetic Shipworm was alive! No one had any more doubt of that now. He was responsible for the leaks in the ships around the Quadriga. After the Carfax’s sinking he must have eaten through the hull of Tyrone’s flagship, so close to the surface that hardly any water got in during the short trip to the harbor. Jolly found the whole thing astonishing: She wouldn’t have credited him with so much foresight. He could just as well have sunk the Quadriga out there on the sea. But instead he’d let himself be carried into Tyrone’s harbor in order to create even greater destruction there.
She imagined him snaking through the water from ship to ship. With his stumpy legs he wasn’t a good swimmer—in fact, at their first meeting Jolly had saved him from drowning—and yet it seemed that somehow he’d managed to go from one hull to another.
Good, dear, wise worm!
Jolly and Buenaventure exchanged looks, and both felt the same relief. The others still might not know how to cherish the worm properly, maybe didn’t even believe he was really responsible for the damage to the fleet. But Jolly and the pit bull man were agreed. Nothing was going to keep them from rescuing the little fellow now—at the very most they’d wait until he’d assisted a few more ships to the bottom of the sea.
And while Jolly was still indulging in her high spirits, the Ghost Trader suddenly said, “It won’t be enough.”
Jolly looked up at him. “What?”
He shook his hooded head. “There are at least two hundred ships lying out there. How many hulls can he eat a hole in before they catch him? Seven, eight? Possibly a dozen. And they may even be able to save some of the ships, if they stop the leaks fast enough. The fleet itself will scarcely be weakened; Tyrone won’t have to change his plans.”
The paths between the huts and wooden houses were full of men. Many were natives with teeth filed to a point like Tyrone’s, but most were in European clothing and had obviously been trained by Tyrone’s subordinates to become sailors. So he wasn’t manning his ships with only Spaniards and the scum of the Old World, but also with cannibals. Jolly shuddered at the thought of how long Tyrone must have planned this conspiracy. Many years, that was certain. And no pirate had known of it.
None except Kendrick, the pirate emperor himself. Or had he also fallen into a trap? Did he really think that the attack on Caracas had any chance of succeeding? It looked frighteningly likely. Kendrick was a perfect idiot if he trusted a beast like Tyrone.
The comrades reached the shore of the lake and hurried around it in a southerly direction. When they looked up at the rock over their shoulders, they saw the fortress of the cannibal king enthroned over the landscape. It was an unadorned building, similar to the defense installations the Spaniards had built on many Caribbean islands: high, sandstone-colored walls, along whose long defense galleries were places for numerous guns; no towers, but low buildings, which were protected from cannon shots by the parapets; and few entrances, probably only a main gate, which was secured by a moat and a drawbridge.
Tyrone had received more from his Spanish allies than just help in building his ships—they had erected for him on this rock at the end of the world a fortress that could match a governor’s palace in strength and defensive might.
It was gradually dawning on Jolly that Tyrone was far more than a mad despot who had forced the native tribes of the jungle to accept his command. He also knew how to influence the governors of the Old World.
The friends had almost reached the place where the sinking ships were anchored. Workers and sailors were running around excitedly. Apparently they were vainly trying to bring order to the chaos. Everywhere, orders were shouted and instructions given. Men with knives between their teeth leaped into the water to search out the culprit. They’d quickly realized that it must be someone who was diving from one hull to the next and hiding in the labyrinth of narrow waterways between ships.
Oaths rang out from dozens of throats, some in English, Spanish, or French, others in languages that none of them understood. The noise was deafening. One of the ships leaned to the larboard and rammed its masts into the rigging of a neighboring frigate. Yards splintered, ropes tore. Men who found themselves on the deck of the sinking ship leaped overboard, screaming, and landed across the paths of those who were already in the water looking for the saboteur. Soon it was so crowded down there that every attempt to catch the malefactor was inevitably doomed to fail.
Jolly gained new hope for the Hexhermetic Shipworm. If he didn’t drown, it had become highly improbable that anything would happen to him. No one was figuring that such an inconspicuous creature as he was responsible for the destruction. Maybe he could, small as he was, vanish unnoticed among the excited men.
“Well, I’ll be goddamned!” escaped from Walker. “Look at that!”
They were standing in the shadow of some boxes and piled lumber not far from the quay where the damaged Quadriga lay at anchor. There was frantic activity in front of them, and yet now they clearly heard shouting ring out over the wharf from Tyrone’s ship. The cannibal king and Bannon seemed not to be aboard any longer, but among the men who now streamed hastily onto land, Jolly recognized a whole line of members of her former crew. The sight of the familiar faces pained her. She hurriedly stepped back into the Ghost Trader’s shadow.
“Serves them right,” murmured Soledad, as the Quadriga, too, listed and slowly sank.
“There’s Bannon over there,” said Buenaventure, laying one of his huge hands on Jolly’s shoulder as if he wanted to keep her from running over to him.
Bannon and some of his men were making their way through the mass of men who were running around in confusion on the quay. Obviously no one had any idea how to stop the sinking of the ships, and so they followed all the different orders or stood around uselessly and in the way.
Bannon was yelling orders, gesticulating frantically, and trying to shoo some of the sailors who’d just left the Quadriga back on board to fix the leaks. The stench of hot tar wafted over from somewhere, but it was obvious that neither this nor any other measures would save the Quadriga. Bannon and his crew had to look on helplessly from the quay as the ship sank into the waters of the lake. It didn’t tip but sank down with majestic calm un
til water was washing over the deck. When it finally landed on the bottom, only the masts were still sticking out of the boiling surface. The rest had vanished into the lake.
Jolly counted thirteen ships that had already been sunk or could no longer be saved. Ever more new ones were added to them, but cannily, the worm wasn’t running along one row but apparently randomly flitting back and forth in the crowd of close-lying ships.
“It’s getting too dangerous,” said Walker. “We have to get out of here.”
Now men were streaming past them from all over; several hundred were already on the quay. More crowded onto the decks of every ship that had not yet been affected. And still it appeared that no one knew who or what was responsible for the catastrophe. Countless ships had let rowboats down onto the water. Other crews simply jumped overboard to get away from the suction of the sinking ships. And the ships damaged each other, too, if they poked one another or the broken masts shredded a neighbor’s rigging.
“Walker’s right,” said Soledad. “Someone in this hurlyburly is going to recognize us sooner or later.”
Jolly’s heart raced as she replied, “I’m not going without the worm!”
“You don’t even know that he’s responsible for all this,” said Walker, but a growl from Buenaventure made him throw up his hands in defeat. “All right, all right! Maybe he really is. But how are we going to get him out of the water?”
Jolly walked out in front of the Ghost Trader. “I’m getting him!”
“No, Jolly! Wait!” But Soledad’s cry came too late. Jolly got free of Buenaventure’s hand, ducked under the Trader’s arm, and rushed away.
Walker was beside himself. “That—that child!” she heard him raging behind her, but she’d already disappeared into the crush on the quay, snaking between sailors, natives, and harbor workers and approaching the water yard by yard. Was someone calling her name? As she ran she looked in the direction from which the voice had come. But she saw no face that seemed familiar. Nothing would be worse than having Bannon cross her path now.
