The Trophy Chase Saga

by George Bryan Polivka

  CHAPTER 8

  Mutiny

  The docks groaned as the fishing boats bobbed up and down in their moorings, leaning into and then away from the wooden posts, stretching lines taut, releasing them slack again. Panna stood in the darkness of the woods, behind a tree, peering out from the shadows at the warped boards of the docks and the jumble of boats, all gray and haphazard in the moonlight. The place smelled of rotting fish, and a fly buzzed around her face. There were a dozen or so small boats here, none bigger than perhaps twenty-five feet stem to stern. Panna could see lights shining from under the canvas, or within the tiny cabins, of several of them.

  During her walk down the switchbacks from the village, she had concluded that if she were to find Packer, she would need three things: a boat, a sailor, and information about the Trophy Chase. But she didn’t know how to go about acquiring any of them, or what they might cost her. The two gold coins she carried were all the money in her father’s house, saved scrupulously by the priest over many years. They would buy a lot of flour and meat, but the price of things like boats and guides was a mystery to her.

  She didn’t feel guilty about taking her father’s money, a fact that surprised her a little. He had always said it was being saved for a special reason only God knew. She couldn’t imagine a more significant one than this. But she didn’t want to squander it, either.

  Now Panna heard voices from within the lamp-lit boats, then a burst of laughter that startled her, made her pulse race. She took a deep breath. Fishermen were drinking and playing cards, nothing more. Perhaps in some of the darkened boats other men were sleeping off the effects of having done the same. The place seemed to be unguarded, despite the pirates who’d been about just last night. Apparently, danger had passed quickly and completely.

  She knew she needed a plan, but her mind could not seem to form one. These were not heroic men in general, these fishermen, but they were not usually cowards either, and she was not anxious to be caught. Any man here who spent an hour on Sunday in her father’s church would put a quick end to her journey. Or at least try to.

  The small inn was clearly visible from her spot in the woods. It was an unpainted and uninviting ramshackle wooden building with maybe four rooms above a saloon. A lamp burned inside the closed front door. Did that signify it was open for business? Would the door be locked? Panna didn’t know. She did not want to stand outside and bang on that door, calling out to awaken some groggy innkeeper from his slumber. The more she looked at the inn, the less she liked it. How could anyone trust a place that would let any random person enter and stay the night just because he had money?

  She pulled her hat down farther over her eyes, and looked at the other two buildings. One sold fishing supplies, nets mostly, and the other, she couldn’t tell. Both were dark. She tried to recall conversations, any scrap of a recollection that would help her make a decision. But topics like this were precisely the ones that were unimportant to a woman’s work in a woman’s world.

  She remembered that Mr. Sopwash had been hit over the head by a scoundrel who then stole his money and his boots. The next day, Danny Strewn had given up his day’s earnings and all his clothing to the brigand, who had been living in the woods for months. Dog Blestoe had been outraged, organized a group of armed vigilantes, and caught him the next day. It turned out the scoundrel was wanted in the City of Mann for several robberies.

  Panna swallowed hard. She had to find a safe place. She was angry with herself for taking so long to make a decision. She did not want to be weak. And so Panna made her choice: She would brave the boats. She steeled herself and stepped out of the woods.

  But no sooner had she passed from shadow to moonlight than the choice was made moot. She came face-to-face with the silhouette of a man standing less than five paces away from her, a dark shape in the moonlight, with the inn’s single lamp behind him. Panic seized her. Where had he come from? How long had she been watched? She groaned silently, her mission over almost before it began.

  The lantern swayed crazily, casting shadows that grew and shrank, grew and shrank. Packer squinted past it, trying to see who held the lamp.

  “Alive now, are you?” the sailor whispered, finally holding the lantern still. His breath smelled of garlic and ale. “You hardly look it.” He was a stoop-shouldered, glint-eyed, leather-skinned man with a large chunk of his right ear missing and a gold earring in his left. His age was impossible to determine; he could have been less than thirty, weathered and withered from a hard life, or he could have been a well-preserved and healthy forty-five. He wore a greasy blue bandana tied around his neck.

  The sailor held up a large gray iron key. “Bet you’d like to get out of them manacles, now wouldn’t you, sonny?” He set the lantern down and, with a smile that was almost gleeful, unlocked the iron bands around Packer’s wrists and ankles.

  “Thank you,” Packer managed as the last iron clanked and dropped from him. His mind still felt numb, and his newly freed limbs were aching and stiff. His arms moved with such difficulty he would not have been surprised to hear them creak. His left shoulder shouted in pain. How long had he been bound? It seemed to him like years, but in the darkness of this hold, how could he know? The stiffness, though, was almost welcome. He realized that for the first time since he’d left Hangman’s Cliffs, he felt rested.

  “Delaney’s my name,” the sailor said, reaching out a hand. Packer took it; it was hard, and strong as a wooden vise. The sailor pulled Packer painfully to his feet. His head spun; he almost blacked out. As he rocked unsteadily, Delaney caught him at the elbows, causing a slicing pain through his left shoulder, which was still wailing its grief over having been wrenched from its socket.

  “Bad arm, eh?”

  Packer nodded, rubbing his shoulder.

  “Take ’er easy. Maybe you better sit.”

  “No, thanks. Been sitting.”

  The sailor backed away cautiously, watching Packer get his legs under him. Delaney was a smallish man, but he was wiry and strong. The knotted muscles of his thin chest and shoulders were outlined through his ragged shirt, a piece of clothing that had long ago reached its faded, gray-green color of destiny. He had two swords tucked in his belt, one at each hip.

  He also sported a recent tattoo on his upper left arm, an enormous blue and red cross with the vertical piece from shoulder to elbow, the horizontal piece covering a knobby bicep. Decorative swirls surrounded the crucifix, and a banner of some sort draped it, with a single word tattooed in fancy lettering. Packer couldn’t read it.

  “You have a knack for stayin’ alive,” the sailor told him. He picked up the wooden bucket Scatter Wilkins had left behind. “That’s a good gift to have around here.” He sniffed the bucket, raised his eyebrows. “Thirsty?”

  Packer nodded, accepted it, brought it to his mouth, and poured cool water down his throat until he gagged. As he spluttered, the sailor laughed. Packer felt his body absorb it like a sponge.

  “Let’s see what else I’ve got here.” He took a small package from his shirt, unwrapped a piece of dried white fish from its sheaf of brown parchment, and gave it to Packer. It was strong-tasting, like squid or ray, and required a bit of chewing, but he ate it ravenously. “Thanks,” he mumbled around it.

  “Pleasure.”

  The ragged sailor’s easy smile showed more gum than teeth, and his eyes sparkled with mischief. Packer searched his memory for this face, trying to find it on deck as he walked to or from his death sentence. He couldn’t.

  “Did the Captain send you?” Packer asked. His voice still sounded ragged, not much more than a croak.

  The sailor just kept grinning, and he drew one of his swords, turned the handle to Packer. “In a manner of speaking. Here. You’ll need this.”

  Packer accepted the weapon without hesitation. “Is there trouble?” The blade was a two-edged broadsword, short and straight and heavy, a no-nonsense weapon for hacking and slashing and stabbing. A pirate’s tool.

  “Oh, yes. Lo
ts of trouble. For the Cap’n, anyway.” Delaney’s smile showed even more of his red and black gums.

  Packer stepped back, and as he did the room spun again. He closed his eyes for a moment while he processed the words. “What are you saying?”

  “Mutiny!” the sailor whispered with glee, leaning in close. “Most of the boys are with us, and some officers too. But what’s left can fight. We need every swinging blade.” He waved his own broadsword through the air twice, showing great confidence, if not much grace. Then he motioned for Packer to follow him. “Come on, sonny, let’s go!”

  Packer stood still, the sword in his hand, feeling baffled. “Go where?”

  “You there! State your business!” a gruff voice called from the silhouette.

  Panna didn’t answer.

  “I said, state your business!” There was tension in the man’s voice, an urgency that cut through her, electrifying her with fear.

  Panna lowered her head to be sure he couldn’t see her face. She didn’t dare speak. She considered answering in a gruff voice of her own, trying to bluff her way past him. But she knew such a ruse wouldn’t work. Her clothing might fool him, but her voice never would. How many people had told her over the course of her life that hers was an angel’s voice, that she sang like a dove? The gift for which she’d been most thankful was now worse than useless.

  So she turned to run back into the woods.

  He caught her easily, almost instantly, by the wrist. He was strong; his grip was painful. She was helpless. If he hadn’t figured it out already, in another instant he would know for certain she was a woman. He would laugh at her weakness, and her quest would be over. He’d send her home. That would be it. He would send her back, where she would be the focus of talk and gossip about how Packer Throme had left her again, how distraught she was, how out of her mind she was with pining for him. Poor girl.

  Pining. She despised that word.

  So she rejected it. She felt a determination rise in her that she had never felt before; she could almost hear the locking and clicking of her will as her body tensed to take the required action, which she now knew she would take. She would find Packer. She would not return home. This man would not stop her. He would never know who she was, would never guess, would never believe she was a woman, even if someone told him. He would never know what, or who, had hit him.

  Her fear and her anger and her iron resolve now flowed together into a volatile mix, kerosene and fire. She knew she must fight like a man, so she balled her free hand into a fist and drove it into his face to block his vision, and her legs drove him backward. When she wrenched her wrist from his grip, his forearms went up to shield himself. She kept him moving backward, kept pressing the attack. She didn’t know how hard to hit; she had never hit anyone before. She just knew it had to be hard, so she backed each blow with every ounce of strength she had, aiming instinctively to punch through him, following through in case he stepped backward. She did not want to miss.

  She did not miss. She heard and felt the crack of sinew beneath her knuckles, something breaking. She didn’t know if it was her hand or his nose, but she didn’t care, couldn’t worry about it now.

  He tumbled backward, and she followed, driving, pushing, still striking as hard as she could. He hit the ground hard, gasping as though he had landed on something; she fell with her full weight on top of him, knees into his stomach. His eyes were wide, fear in them; his body groaned with the sudden escape of breath. She could smell the alcohol he’d been drinking, and could see now the wrinkles around his eyes, the white in his hair and beard. She didn’t know him, but all she could think was that he might recognize her, that he must not recognize her, that she must close his eyes so he could not recognize her.

  She didn’t know how many times she hit him. She wasn’t thinking about anything except her own aggression, fearing it was too little, too puny to be manly, forcing more and more ferocity from somewhere deep within, from the seat of her frustration, her years of loneliness, her newfound anger, and her fear. She didn’t notice when he started to moan, or when he began to cry out in a high-pitched whimper; she didn’t recognize these sounds, being unprepared to believe they meant what clearly they did mean. But finally, after many blows, she realized he had ceased to resist. The rain of fists slowed. And then she heard him. He was sobbing. Her hands were wet with his tears. She heard footsteps and looked up, saw men running up the docks toward her, heard them shouting at her. She jumped up and bolted for the woods, for the darkest spot she could see. They called after her, shouting for her to stop. Someone fired a pistol, and she heard the ball strike wood just ahead of her.

  She ran uphill into the woods in a full panic, avoiding trees that appeared from nowhere, knowing she was being chased, afraid to look back, fearing another iron grip from someone, some man who would catch her just as easily as she had been caught once already. She willed speed and strength into her legs and kept running, unwanted tears now blocking her vision. Cool air tore in and out of her lungs. Branches whipped at her. She cursed her own blindness as she crashed through shrubs, tripped on roots, her knapsack bouncing painfully, throwing her off balance. She could hear her pursuers behind her, crashing through the same branches at almost the same time she did. She ran uphill all the while, her legs burning, moving far too slowly, a nightmare of flight in which she grew slower and slower, when she needed more and more speed. Finally, she topped a rise, her enemies upon her, and she stumbled and fell headlong, tumbling down a steep ravine, coming to rest at the foot of a large tree. She lay there in tears, unable to catch her breath, ready to surrender. She could run no more.

  But nothing happened.

  When her breath began to come more evenly, she sat up. She wiped her eyes and peered up at the dimly lit slope she had rolled down. There were no signs of movement, no sounds. Nothing. She shook her head, trying to understand what had happened. Had she somehow lost them? They had been on her heels. Hadn’t they? She should have been caught. But she could hear nothing.

  She stood and looked around her. The tall trees waved their leaves in the wind high above her, allowing rare moonbeams through to the forest floor. Insects, katydids and cicadas, buzzed and hissed. She was alone. She must have imagined them behind her, so close as to be able to touch her. She must have heard her own footsteps, the rustle of leaves and branches she herself had disturbed. She laughed silently at her imagination.

  And then the reality of her actual predicament crept up on her. She was in fact alone, deep in the woods, deep in the night, with no idea where she was, and only the most general idea which way she had come. And that was the one direction she could not go.

  Monkey had grown numb. His hands were blistered, and his muscles were knotted and cramped with the effort of rowing. The wounds on his back had torn open, bled, and then stayed raw under the chafing of his sweat- and spray-soaked shirt. His throat was parched and his tongue was swollen. But he hardly noticed any of it. His mind wandered pitifully, uncontrolled, until he was barely conscious.

  His heart had been gutted by the sudden, bloody loss of the only person he considered a friend; in truth, his mentor, protector, and guide. Ox had said they might row straight to hell, and Monkey believed it. And so he rowed in great agony, unable to escape, or to quit, or to rest, or to die, enslaved by the devil beside him, sent to torment him.

  Talon was a tormentor, perhaps, but she wasn’t the devil. The devil would have greater power than she. The devil would have the strength and the will to destroy them both in a single blow. He would be cunning beyond their imagining, and would desire their destruction simply to satisfy his own unending and ravenous appetite. He would be a predator of mythical proportion, but one who promised life and riches and power, seducing men and women to their own destruction.

  The devil was about to pay them a visit.

  “Are you with us or agin’ us?” Delaney’s eyebrows rose, the glee fading.

  “And if I’m against?”

  “Sonny
.” Delaney took on a fatherly air. “You been keelhauled by the Captain and tortured by the witch. You’re a prisoner, not a sailor. You owe nobody nothin’.”

  Packer closed his eyes, trying to come to grips with this.

  “What’ll it be? No time for discussin’.” Delaney’s voice was still light, but his visage was noticeably darker.

  Packer wished he knew more about what was happening, but he knew for certain that mutiny was a crime punishable by hanging. “I made a bargain with the Captain. I can’t fight against him.”

  Delaney’s dark look brightened. “That’s easy then. You’ll fight against me!”

  Packer shook his head. Not another duel that he did not seek. “I didn’t ask to be freed. Put me back in irons. I’ll take my chances.”

  “That’s not in the cards, sonny.” The man’s look was flint.

  “And if I refuse to fight?”

  “Then you’ll die here.” He grinned.

  He meant it. Packer did not doubt that the man had killed before. This was a pirate ship. Packer took a deep breath. Fight or die. He looked at the blade in his hand. He hefted it, turned it around. It felt awkward, too heavy to use. It made him feel weak and small, as though the only sword he knew how to use was a child’s plaything, and this was a weapon for grown-ups.

  Fight or die. Suddenly he realized he was facing another opportunity to “resist not evil,” presented this time without any ambiguity whatsoever. Here was the choice, stark and brutal, and in so many words. Retaliate, or turn the other cheek. Now Packer smiled. God had given him another chance. This one should be easy.