The Trophy Chase Saga

by George Bryan Polivka

  “Once again John Hand is more vigilant than Moore Davies,” Scat mused to himself. He had read the flagman’s message, and was disappointed. He would always prefer that his huntsmen outperform his butchers, but it rarely happened that way. John Hand was as good a captain as there was.

  Scat lowered his telescope. He sighed. “Signal this back,” he ordered. “Coming about.”

  Jonas Deal looked askance at the Captain, but caught his return glance and quickly obeyed. Scat peered through the scope just long enough to see that his message was acknowledged. “It seems Captain John Hand has a question about our bearings. I’ll be meeting with him.”

  “Aye, aye,” Mr. Deal responded.

  “Storm!” came the cry from the crow’s nest, a hundred feet above them. “Starboard astern!”

  Scat raised his telescope and looked at the dark line along the horizon to the south. They’d all felt the atmosphere changing, but hadn’t seen evidence of what that change might bring. “Hmm,” he said. “Not a small one, either.” Before he returned to his quarters below deck, he said casually, “Bring her about, Mr. Deal. Then heave to on a port tack.”

  “Hard to starboard!” Jonas Deal commanded. “Reef the main four points! Strike the mizzen! Strike the top! Stand by to haul those sheets, ye swivel-yoked sea dogs! We’re comin’ hard about!” The bosun’s mate, Dumas Need, piped the orders on his whistle. The entire watch was in motion; any inward grumbling at the sudden flare of activity so late in the shift quickly dissolved into the unified motion that was the muscle and sinew of the great cat, moving in synchronous, instinctive motion in response to the command from the sleek animal’s brain.

  The Captain was the mind of the cat, but the bosun was its instinct, its reflexes. Andrew Haas on the port watch, and his mate Dumas Need on starboard, forever peered anxiously at each sail, piping orders anew whenever something might be done better, faster, more completely. When the bosun needed a better view of a sail, he stepped into the bosun’s chair and hauled himself up into the rigging using a series of lines and pulleys.

  His orders given, his men busy carrying them out with all the energy they possessed, Scatter Wilkins was content to think about the future.

  “So you’re worried about the Achawuk, are you?” Scat asked with a smile when John Hand and Lund Lander had joined him in his saloon. John Hand, a full professor of Nautics at the University of Mann, had left his ivory tower to join with Scat and now captained one of the escort ships. It was a disgrace to the university, of course, but only served to increase the mystery around Scat’s new dealings.

  “Never saw a sane man who wasn’t,” Hand replied with ease. He was a big man, not as lean as Lund but broader across the shoulders, with a bushy head of graying hair and a gray-peppered beard to match. “Are we headed far inside their territory?”

  “About twenty leagues.” Scat’s eyes were stony.

  Lund’s throat grew suddenly dry, and he threw a gulp of rum down it.

  Scat Wilkins had been a little surprised to see Lund Lander follow John Hand into the saloon, but not enough to let it show. It bothered Scat that Hand always had someone in tow. Maybe it was the professor in him that made him always want to be teaching someone something. Or maybe it was the desire for counsel; Hand was a great one for talking everything to death before acting. Or maybe it was weakness; fear of facing the odds himself, alone. Scat Wilkins knew for certain only that John Hand was very different from himself in this regard.

  “That’s a long way,” John Hand answered evenly. “All night in a good wind.”

  “We’ve got a good wind, and we’ve got all night.”

  “A good wind for sailing northeast.” The same wind, of course, was bad for returning southwest. “What do you expect to find so far into the territory?”

  “Firefish, Hand. Isn’t that what we’re out here for?”

  “There are other places to look,” Hand volleyed back.

  “We’ve been looking other places.”

  “Why there?”

  Scat squinted. “Don’t like taking a little risk?” Talon was forever telling him the men were getting soft, and she blamed John Hand for it.

  Hand stared hard and considered his answer. He was an easygoing sort, usually, but not when challenged directly. He knew all about Talon’s messages to the Captain. She was not afraid to speak them in his presence. Finally Hand smiled. “If a little risk bothered me, I’d still be standing in front of a chalkboard.”

  “Making a living impressing students with your brilliance.”

  Hand’s lips went taut. Scat was goading him; he liked to see John Hand angry. It comforted him. All three of these men knew that while the idea for hunting the Firefish belonged to Scat Wilkins, the course they had taken from idea to reality had been charted by John Hand and his chalkboards. Scat had had the idea, and had enlisted many a good man to the cause, Lund Lander and John Hand at the top of the list. Scat had hired the huntsmen, had staffed the Marchessa with a suitable captain in Moore Davies, and took great pride in their storied prowess.

  But John Hand and his sketches, Lund Lander and his diagrams, blueprints, and equations, together had created the ships, the processes, the science, and the fledgling, hugely profitable and yet more promising Firefish industry. Without Lund’s lures, Scat would have little to show but dead sailors and huntsmen.

  Not that John Hand and Lund Lander didn’t have great respect and admiration for Captain Scat Wilkins. They did. No fisherman or whaler or hunter or businessman had ever had the vision or the courage to do what Scat was doing. No one had thought of it; no one would have thought it possible. He was slaying dragons for profit. He was monetizing monsters. It took a pirate’s guts and a pirate’s greed to build this new world; and to John Hand, that was exactly what was being built. The entire economic life of the kingdom, of all known kingdoms, for that matter, would be turned upside down by this venture. That’s what John Hand loved about it.

  Hand was under no delusions: This was Scat’s business top to bottom. The pirate was simply shrewd enough to stand back and let Hand and Lander make it work. The Captain knew they could succeed, had already succeeded, and would succeed more greatly yet.

  But at what price in human life, if they were now to sail into the Achawuk Territory? The struggle between Hand and Wilkins was silent, but it was palpable, and Lund, for one, didn’t want to see it escalate. So he spoke.

  “Begging your pardon, Captain, but while no one on any of your ships is averse to a risk, the crew of the Camadan didn’t sign on to face the Achawuk, and they aren’t trained fighters. They’re mostly tradesmen, and no match for those warriors.”

  Scat turned on Lund, his voice cold. “You hired them.”

  Lund had indeed hired them. “To process the Firefish,” he reminded him.

  “How hard a job is that?” Scat asked with disdain. “Something a swordsman or a pistolier couldn’t learn?”

  Lund took a deep breath. Scat had always pushed John Hand to hire sailors, and fighting men, and then to teach them the trades they’d need. Hand had wisely held out for quality workers who knew what they were doing, the kind who could handle long voyages and demanding work below decks, who would put up a quality product worth buying. He didn’t need a shipload of pirates deciding they had gutted enough fish. But all this was moot at the moment. The sterner fact was that it seemed Scat wouldn’t hold them out of a fight just because they might all get killed.

  “Take your licks when you’ve earned ’em,” Scat said to Lund. “Then next time, you’ll know better.” Lund’s face flushed. Scat saw it and was satisfied. Lund was smart, Scat knew, maybe a genius at designing things, making them work. That was useful. But the world needed more people with guts, men willing to gamble for the big payoff. Scat had seen plenty of smart men like Lund die with cold steel through the belly. Scat had put the steel there sometimes himself. He had yet to see an unarmed genius outduel an idiot with a pistol. He’d rather stand with half a dozen fighters who co
uld swing a sword and weren’t smart enough to know the odds than two dozen Lund Landers who could make a clock out of chicken bones and clothespins.

  “What makes you think there’s Firefish in there?” John Hand asked.

  Scat shrugged. “Call it a hunch.”

  John was silent. Then he sighed and raised his glass. “Well, then, here’s to your hunches—may they make us all rich.” He drained it. Scat and Lund Lander locked eyes, both smiling through gritted teeth, and they both followed suit.

  “Any possibility I could have a conversation with this hunch of yours?” Captain Hand asked.

  Scat nodded. But it unnerved him that Hand knew about Packer Throme. He probably had sources of information aboard the Chase that Scat didn’t know about.

  Hand saw the suspicion, knew he needed to allay it. “Everyone knows about the stowaway. Talon took him below decks. Doesn’t take much to figure out he told her something.”

  Scat rubbed his beard. “Pimm!” he called, not looking away from John Hand.

  The steward entered. “Sir?”

  “Fetch me Packer Throme.”

  Deeter nodded and left, looking slightly more pale than usual.

  “I don’t know if the lad knows where the Firefish feed. But he says he does. And I know that I sure don’t.”

  A loud creak, followed by a howl, accompanied a leeward lurch of the ship. They all understood exactly what it meant, well before Jonas Deal burst in on them. “She’s blowin’ a gale, Cap’n,” he said. “A true gale, and no lie.”

  CHAPTER 12

  The Storm

  Panna could build and stoke a fire; she’d done it for cooking all her life. She could keep smoke to a minimum: dry, dry kindling, and one piece of fuel at a time as it burned. Overload it and it would choke, producing more smoke than heat. The thin plume of black wood smoke, which now rose from behind the gray tree trunk, was almost invisible. It was the best she could hope for. Panna could warm the woman by keeping the fire very small, so that the woman could lie close to it, virtually wrapped around it. But the black clouds approaching from the southwest promised rain, and she could do nothing about that.

  The woman’s leathers were dry now, at least in front, and the tree trunk behind her served as a heat reflector, warming and drying her from behind. Panna had opened the woman’s jacket and shirt, exposing more of her skin to the heat. The woman’s temperature had risen steadily by Panna’s reckoning, as Panna had checked it at the back of the woman’s neck.

  But now, the approaching dark clouds were more ominous. The smell of rain was in the air, and a dark wall loomed on the horizon. She had half an hour, maybe an hour at the most, and then she’d need shelter, some other way to keep the woman warm and dry. The simplest solution, and the only one that seemed practical, was to go to Inbenigh and bring back a stout piece of canvas, a tarpaulin like those the fishermen used to cover their boats. She couldn’t buy one, of course, without being spotted. But if she had a knife, she could cut one loose. And the woman had a knife.

  Panna spoke to her gently as she removed the knife from its sheath. “I’m just borrowing this. To help you. I will bring it back.” She covered the woman’s head and shoulders with her autumn cloak, leaving a clear airway. The fire might go out, but the woman would stay as warm and dry as possible, for as long as possible.

  “I’ll be right back,” Panna told her, hoping she could return before the rain arrived. It was moving fast. She stoked the fire with an extra piece of fuel. The woman would have its heat for as long as possible.

  Panna checked her hair to be sure it was still pulled up and tied securely. She pulled the hat down over her head. She looked up and down the beach to be sure it was empty and then headed south to Inbenigh, leaving her knapsack, her cloak, everything but the clothes on her back and Talon’s knife.

  The wind blew the rain into pellets, stinging the skin. Scat Wilkins, John Hand, and Lund Lander leaned into it. John and Lund were watching the Camadan, which had already been blown two hundred yards away from them. They could see the crew in the rigging, striking the sails. Hand knew there would be no return to his ship until the storm blew over. He was relieved; in fact, he had hoped for as much. Let the Camadan go her own way, and pray it was well out of Achawuk territory.

  Scat scanned the running rigging of his own vessel, watching as the hands worked to strike the mainsail.

  “Get it done, ye buzzards!” Jonas Deal screamed, his voice lost in the gale. “Get it done or say yer prayers!”

  Six crewmen were spread across the yardarm, feet on the thin footlines, hands pulling on the heavy, drenched canvas. But six wouldn’t be near enough in this gale. If they didn’t get the sail struck soon, it would either shred or snap the mainmast. If the mainmast went, so would every man up there.

  “All hands to the mains’l!” Jonas yelled, to no avail. “Where’s the bosun?”

  “Went up on the yard!” Lund screamed at him.

  Jonas cursed and started roaming the slick, rainswept deck like a madman, clinging to the railings to keep from being blown overboard, grabbing anyone he could find by the shirt-collar and pointing up at the yard, forcing him to the ratlines. Soon there were twelve struggling to pull the canvas up, and two more leaving the foresail, which was already shredded and hopeless.

  Every time they seemed to have sheeted the sail another point, a gust would blow it out of someone’s hands before it was tied, then it would fill and pull away from all their hands, and they’d have to start again. The mainsail was struggling hard now, the ship heeling dramatically with it, the deck pitched at forty-five degrees and plowing through heavy surf, its starboard railings only three feet above the waterline at the height of the ship’s lunge. The helmsman could do nothing but set the lock-timber in place so the rudder wouldn’t be battered back and forth and break loose. And so the great cat ran with the wind to God knew where, wild and out of control.

  Jonas Deal needed more hands. He climbed down below decks. “All hands! All hands to the mains’l or the mast’s a goner!” The first mate ran through the ship as though leading a bayonet charge on the forecastle, where he would roust every last soul he could find.

  John Hand quickly followed Jonas below. He still wanted to talk with this stowaway, and there was nothing he could do to help with the sail or the mast. As long as the outcome was in doubt, Scat would remain atop, he knew. He’d have the stowaway to himself.

  Scat stood firm, both hands on the quarterdeck rail, teeth gritted as he looked up. He cursed himself and then his crew for letting this storm sneak up on them. He’d have someone whipped for it; he just didn’t know who yet. He didn’t want to lose the mainmast, but if it was going, he was going to be here to see it. This was his ship, his mistress, the dearest thing to him on earth, and he would make sure all had been done to protect her.

  Lund watched the hands, scanning them through the storm, a close eye on their technique. Then he saw the problem. The sailor farthest out on the yard had clutched. He was bent over the yardarm as though working, but he wasn’t. He was frozen. It was in that spot, farthest out from the mast, where the wind kept catching the canvas and blowing each man’s work to naught. Lund inched his way toward Scat Wilkins and pointed up at the sailor. Scat couldn’t understand what Lund was trying to tell him.

  “He’s clutched, Cap’n!” Lund screamed. With the wind howling and the rain beating into Scat’s ears, the Captain couldn’t have heard cannon fire distinctly. “I’m going up!”

  Lund worked his way to the ratlines, careful to keep a good grip on something all the while—the railing, then the gunwale, then the lines. Scat looked up again into the rigging, trying to see what had gotten Lund’s attention.

  And then he saw it: the sailor, a young pup, good and strong, who had signed on at South Barnes Mooring. Dial, his name was, or Pile maybe. Not much experience, but a good way about him, knowledgeable and likable. Religious, yes, but not dangerous about it. He was clutched, that was a fact. Scat could see the
canvas billowing out, pulling away.

  Scat cursed. He reached into his jacket and pulled his wheellock pistol. With all its workings concealed within the steel wheel chamber, the flint and powder would stay dry for quite a while, even in a downpour like this. At no little danger to himself, Scat kept the mechanical spring wound tight so that all he needed to do was pull the trigger, and it would fire.

  He cursed the sailor more thoroughly as he took aim, a difficult task with the ship pitching and rolling. Lund had climbed quickly up to the running rigging and was now working his way out the yard to the frozen crewman. Lund would spend three or four minutes trying to get the man working again, and most likely that effort would be in vain anyway. Once a man clutched, once terror set in, there was no reasoning with him. Three or four minutes could mean saving or losing the mainmast in this gale.

  Scat waited for a moment when the ship reached the apex of its pitch, when he could hold the pistol true, and then he fired. At first, he didn’t know if his aim was true. He thought he saw the boy’s head jerk, but nothing happened. Then the boy’s hands fell loose, and he tumbled limply backward, somersaulting into the pounding sea.

  The sailors on the yard saw Marcus Pile fall, and assumed he had lost his footing. They all knew nothing could be done for him now, not in these seas, so they kept working, redoubling their efforts in order to avoid the same fate.

  But Lund knew. He looked down at Scat and saw the Captain putting his pistol back into his coat. Scat stared hard at Lund until the volunteer seaman went on with his work, taking Marcus Pile’s place on the yard.

  Undoubtedly he would have died anyway, Lund told himself as he began hauling on the canvas. Likely he would have stayed there, hugging the yardarm until his strength gave way, and the result would have been the same. Still, it was a cold-blooded thing to do, and Lund was repulsed by it.

  His fingertips burned and his arms knotted up with the effort. He wasn’t accustomed to this work anymore, not like he used to be.