by Allan Jones
“We need to get to the docks without being seen,” Esmeralda whispered. “Got any ideas?”
“Yes, follow me,” said Trundle. “I know every alley and backstreet and passageway—I’ll get us there.”
Esmeralda smiled. “You’re a good fellow, Trundle,” she said. The warm glow he felt on hearing these words cooled somewhat when she added, “Even though you are a bit dim.”
With Esmeralda close on his heels, Trundle slipped alongside his cottage and made a quick dash for the cover of the long row of houses that formed one side of Lamplighter’s Lane.
It was very strange to be out and about so late, and he might have been intrigued by the experience had he not been terrified for his life. As it was, his mouth was dry as bone, and an iron fist was squeezing his stomach into a painful knot. He glanced at Esmeralda; her eyes were narrowed and her face was grim, but he got the impression she was more excited than frightened. Maybe this kind of thing was quite normal to her.
Who was she? How had she talked him into this?
No time! Questions could come later. Staying alive and uncaptured was the important thing now.
As they dashed from cover to cover, Trundle could see the pirates looting and pillaging their way through the town. They were an ugly, ferocious bunch, sporting bloodred earrings and gold teeth that glittered when they grinned their evil grins. They poured through the town, smashing windows and kicking in doors, sending the terrified townsfolk scuttling for safety. And as they rampaged, they sang and hollered and filled the night with their cruel laughter.
Market Square was crawling with the horrible creatures, firing their muskets into the air, dancing in the fountain, and climbing all over the statue of Furrowman Plowplodder. They had set fires in the lovely old buildings around the square so that the windows blazed with a grisly light and flames roared up through the roofs.
Trundle saw a group of terrified townsfolk being herded into the square. For a moment he stood in an archway, trembling with fury as he watched his friends and neighbors being poked and prodded by knives and swords and menaced by long, dreadful muskets.
“Empty your pockets, my lovelies,” bellowed a great scarred hog with a long purple feather in his hat and a huge evil-eyed raven perched on his shoulder. “Pop all your precious things into the sacks provided by my merry mates. Come along now, don’t be shy—let’s be having your jewels and gewgaws. No donation is too small.”
“Give till it hurts, my pretties!” croaked the raven. “Give till it hurts!”
“That’s Razorback,” hissed Esmeralda, standing at Trundle’s side. “He’s Grizzletusk’s bosun, and one of the foulest hogs ever to walk a windship’s deck. The raven’s called Captain Slaughter, and he’d jab his beak in your eye soon as look at you. Where Razorback and Captain Slaughter ply their trade, Grizzletusk can never be far behind.”
At that moment, a pirate rat turned his long, loathsome snout in their direction. His eyes glittered with malice. “Join us,” he squealed, gesturing with his pistol. “Don’t be shy!”
“Run!” yelled Esmeralda.
Trundle ran. A shot rang out, echoing under the archway. There was a sharp crack, and a splinter of stone sliced through Trundle’s spines, only just missing his eye.
“Blast you, you cockeyed son of a vole!” hollered Razorback. “Go get ’em, you fools!”
Trundle didn’t dare look back as he and Esmeralda raced through the narrow passageways behind Market Square. Above them, the upper floors of the half-timbered buildings leaned in toward one another, blocking out the sky.
“How far to the docks?” panted Esmeralda.
“Not far now,” Trundle gasped, horribly aware of the pounding of following feet and the raucous uproar of pirate voices getting closer by the moment.
He made a skidding turn to the left, grabbing Esmeralda’s arm and towing her along behind him. They raced on, passing the Slug and Cabbage Tavern, passing Spadge Hopper’s Ironmongery, passing Miss Dolly Buckfur’s Ladies’ Costumiers, passing so many shops and landmarks that Trundle had known all his life.
The street came to an end, and they found themselves looking out over the wide vistas of the Shiverstones docks. Trundle had never before seen such a terrible sight! Many of the tall warehouses were on fire, the flames leaping high into the night, sending clouds of thick black smoke billowing up to blot out the stars. Even some of the jetties were in flames, and the windships and smaller skyboats moored alongside were smoldering and smoking.
Animals were running hither and thither, pursued by gleeful pirates. Trundle even saw a few bodies: townsfolk killed by the wicked pirates even as they tried to run away.
“There’s the Iron Pig, Grizzletusk’s flagship!” said Esmeralda.
The huge pirate ship was moored alongside Tipplers’ Quay, its towering hull armored with overlapping sheets of gray iron, its great mast thrusting up into the night, its bloodred sails billowing.
Long gangplanks led from the Iron Pig to the quay and, even as Trundle and Esmeralda watched, more pirates were flooding down the wooden boards, while others were already returning, their arms filled with loot and booty.
“’Ware cannon!” yelped Esmeralda, pulling Trundle down onto the cobbles.
The next second, the air was split by a thunderous report. Fire flashed red and white from the side of the pirate ship as it rocked backward in its moorings. Trundle heard a shrill whistling overhead. A moment later, there was an explosion behind them and a chunk of the old Cabbagemongers’ Hall came crashing down into the street.
So that was cannon fire! Trundle had read about it, but he had never expected it to be so dreadful.
“There they are!” shrieked a voice. It was the rat again, and there were at least a dozen other pirates at his back.
Esmeralda grabbed Trundle and hauled him to his feet. Where could they go? There were pirates everywhere, and no matter which way they turned, they were confronted by flames or muskets or gleaming cutlasses.
Following behind in Esmeralda’s wake, for a few moments Trundle was just glad to be ahead of their pursuers. But then he saw where she was heading.
“No!” he gasped. “It’s a dead end!”
In her panic, Esmeralda had made the fatal mistake of running onto one of the jetties, the long wooden structures that jutted out beyond the rim of the island of Shiverstones. Didn’t she realize they would be trapped there? With murderous pirates on one side, and an endless, deadly fall on the other.
Being skewered by pirates was bad enough, but Trundle dreaded falling off the edge of the island. No one really knew what happened when a person fell from an island in the Sundered Lands. The stories said that you fell and fell, until the air got so thin you could hardly breathe and it grew so cold that your eyeballs froze in your head. Then, at last, you would drop out into an empty, starry blackness that went on forever and ever.
“Gotcha!” shrieked the rat as he and his companions blocked the landward end of the jetty. “Frogs ’n’ toadies, but you’ll regret putting us to such pains, my lovelies! Come on, boys, there’s merry work ahead!”
Holding hands, Trundle and Esmeralda backed away from the approaching pirates.
“We’re done for!” murmured Trundle. “We should surrender and throw ourselves on their mercy.”
“They don’t have any mercy,” said Esmeralda. “Keep a brave heart, Trundle! Something will come up.”
A terrific boom sounded from Tipplers’ Quay. Nearly shocked out of his prickles by the noise, Trundle snapped his head around to see another of those red-and-white flashes from the side of the Iron Pig. The cannon had been fired again.
A high-pitched whistling noise seared the air, horribly near, and the cannonball came crashing through the jetty, sending the wooden boards flying up in a thousand splinters.
“What did I tell you?” shouted Esmeralda. “They’ll not get us now!”
With a dreadful creaking and cracking, Trundle felt the planks under his feet give way. The cannonb
all had torn through the jetty from side to side, and the end upon which the two of them were standing was starting to break away.
There was a final groan as the last supports sheered off, and then the jetty fell away from under them, and Esmeralda and Trundle were sent plunging down into the endless darkness.
Chapter 3
Badger Blocks
The stars wheeled giddily around Trundle’s head as he plunged downward through empty space. He was just wondering whether death from a musket ball or the quick thrust of a pirate sword might be preferable to this long fall into nothingness, when he landed on something soft and yielding that sent him bouncing breathlessly up into the air again.
His momentum failed and he fell again, his arms and legs flailing. Bounce! He went once more. Up and down, three or four times, and all the while he could hear Esmeralda’s laughter ringing in his ears. He came to a final halt and looked dizzily around. Esmeralda was at his side, and the two of them were lying spread-eagled in the wide belly of a canvas tarpaulin.
“What did I tell you?” Esmeralda squealed with delight. “I knew something would come up!”
They had landed on an awning that stretched across part of the deck of a windship. Trundle sat up, gazing around in astonishment. He had never expected to see his homeland from such a peculiar angle.
The great stone crag upon which Shiverstones was founded loomed close by, filling half the sky, looking like a mountain turned upside down, huge and awesome and scary. He could see the broken end of the jetty from which they had fallen, while the other jetties of Port Shiverstones stretched above him, too, like black fingers thrusting out into the night. It was very odd to be looking up at the undersides of all the moored windships. Among the wooden hulls, he quickly spotted the rusty ironclad hulk of the Iron Pig.
“That was really lucky!” Trundle blew his cheeks out in disbelief. “What were the odds of landing on a windship?”
“Luck, my prickles!” said Esmeralda. “The Fates are looking out for us, that’s what it is.”
He eyed her. “You’re quite mad,” he said. “You know that, don’t you?”
A grin slipped up one side of her face, and her eyes sparkled in the gloom. “I’m hungry, I know that,” she said brightly. “Let’s see what kind of windship we’ve landed on. You never know—the captain may be a friendly fellow who will offer us bed and board for our voyage.”
“Our voyage to where?” Trundle asked.
“To the land where the first of the Six Crowns is hidden,” Esmeralda said.
“And what land might that be?”
Esmeralda laughed. “If I knew that, this wouldn’t be much of a quest, would it?” she said merrily. “Honestly, Trundle, I have no idea where the crown might be hidden—but the Badger Blocks know, and they’ll lead us to it.”
Trundle shook his head, gazing sadly upward. “Poor Shiverstones,” he said. “Will they burn everything, do you think?”
“Let’s hope not,” said Esmeralda, patting him on the shoulder. “But the best thing we can do for your friends and for everyone else in the Sundered Lands is to find the Six Crowns and then to use their power to rid us of Grizzletusk and his pirates once and for all.”
Trundle frowned at her. “There you go again, with your nursery stories,” he said, growing a little angry now that he was no longer in fear for his life. He folded his arms and gave her a long, hard look. “Either you tell me what’s going on, or . . . or . . .” His voice faded away.
She tilted her head, giving him a questioning look. “Or?” she prompted.
“I don’t know,” Trundle admitted grumpily. “Just tell me!”
“Very well,” Esmeralda began. “In case you haven’t worked it out for yourself yet, I am a Roamany. In fact, I am the niece of the one and only Millie Rose Thorne, Roamany queen, fortune-teller, diviner, auger, visionary, haruspex, and soothsayer, renowned throughout all the Sundered Lands for her perspicacity and foresight.”
“Never heard of her,” Trundle commented. “We don’t get many Roamanys in Shiverstones.”
“Why am I not surprised about that?” Esmeralda retorted breezily. “Anyway, you’ve heard of her now. This all began one fine day while I was practicing with the Badger Blocks in my aunty’s caravan.”
“You still haven’t told me what these Badger Blocks are,” said Trundle.
“They are a set of fifteen ancient wooden blocks, each with four pictures carved on them,” explained Esmeralda. “They’re kept in the Badger Blocks box. They’re extremely old, and they’re used to make prophecies and to tell fortunes. The blocks are tipped into a black sack, okay? Then the person wanting to make a reading has to take four blocks out of the bag without looking and lay them down side by side on a table. According to which pictures have come up, and which way around they are, the prophecy can be worked out. Do you get it now?”
“Yes, thank you,” said Trundle. “I get it now.”
“So, anyway,” Esmeralda continued, “my readings usually come out backward or inside out or just plain wrong, but there was something about this particular set of four blocks I’d chosen that made my paws tingle and my whiskers twitch. You see, it started by me choosing the Princess in Darkness, reversed—meaning the wrong way up.”
“That’s your picture, isn’t it?” Trundle said.
“Well remembered! And placing it on the table reversed—upside down—means problems. Well, the next block came up with the Lamplighter.” She looked at him. “That’s you.”
“Says you!”
“The third block showed the Windship in Full Sail,” Esmeralda continued. “That means a lot of traveling. And finally I picked the Six Crowns. And even a half-witted otter knows that the Six Crowns refers to the Six Crowns of the Badgers of Power.” She looked urgently at him. “Now do you see?”
Trundle sighed and shook his head.
“The Princess in Darkness and the Lamplighter are meant to go together on a windship to find the Crowns of Power,” Esmeralda explained very slowly, as if to a half-witted otter.
“I . . . see . . .” said Trundle, deeply unconvinced.
“I showed the reading to Aunty, of course, but she didn’t think it was right; she said I’d gotten things mixed up and I’d pulled out a false reading. I believed her at first, but now I’m sure my reading was a true one.” She frowned. “It’s odd for Aunty to be wrong about stuff like that, but this time she definitely was!”
Trundle looked at her, thinking how easy life would have been had he managed to get his front door closed before she’d jumped on him.
“And what if this windship doesn’t take us where you think we need to go?” he asked.
“It will,” Esmeralda said. “The Fates will make sure of it.”
Trundle was about to let her in on his opinion of the Fates when they heard approaching voices. Esmeralda put a warning paw to her mouth and indicated that they should keep quiet and listen.
“Is all windshipshape and bluffton fashion, Mr. Pouncepot?” asked a gruff voice almost directly under the tarpaulin in which they were sitting. “I’d have us well out of here before we get caught up in Grizzletusk’s little brannigan and hullabaloo.”
“Aye, Cap’n,” said a second voice. “The cargo is secure and the wind is set fair. Just give the word and we’ll up sails and be on our way.”
“You’ve scoured the ship for stowaways, have you, Mr. Pouncepot?” asked the first voice. “I’ll have no freeloaders and flibbertigibbets on my vessel. Just the sniff of ’em, and I’ll have ’em over the side as quick as galley slops!”
Esmeralda and Trundle looked anxiously at each other. That didn’t sound so good.
“Aye, Cap’n,” said Mr. Pouncepot. “All’s clear, bilges to crow’s nest.”
“Right you are, Pouncepot. Tear down this tarpaulin, and let’s be on our way!”
Trundle gave Esmeralda a horrified look as a pair of large clawed paws appeared over the edge of the tarpaulin and took a firm grip.
&nbs
p; So much for the Fates, Trundle thought, as the canvas was ripped down and they both went tumbling head over heels toward the deck.
Chapter 4
Stowaways in the Hold
Trundle plunged headfirst into a barrel half full of hard, lumpy objects, while Esmeralda came thumping down in a tangled heap at his side. He clamped both paws over his mouth to stop himself from yelling with the pain of his landing. Judging from the fading voices of Mr. Pouncepot and the Cap’n, the two of them hadn’t been spotted as the awning had been pulled down. Maybe Esmeralda’s Fates really were on their side?
Trundle twisted himself around and sat up. The barrel was full of a strong, sweet smell. He reached under himself and pulled out an apple.
“Ouch!” he said softly, rubbing himself here and there. “That hurt!”
“Cheer up,” said Esmeralda. “It could have been worse; we might have ended up in a barrel of salted pilchards or pickled eggs.”
“We’ll be in enough of a pickle if they find us,” Trundle said. “You heard what they said: any stowaways will be pitched over the side.”
“Then maybe we shouldn’t get caught,” Esmeralda commented. “From what we heard, this must be a cargo windship. I’d say our best hope of keeping out of sight would be to go down to the hold.”
“Whatever you say.” Trundle realized she probably had a better idea of how to deal with adventures than he did. He got up and reached for the rim of the barrel.
“Not yet!” said Esmeralda, pulling him back down. “There’ll be sailors all over the place while the ship gets going. We’ll wait till it’s well under way.”
They sat together on the lumpy bed of apples, listening to the creak of timbers and the whistle of the wind in the rigging as the sails were set.
The voices of the sailors rang out in a merry chantey as they worked.
