by James Axler
“You could spend your entire life perfecting it.” Mildred scanned the empty, snow-drifted beaches. “There were dancers in my time who did nothing else.”
Doc joined them. He wore both his uniform coat and his frock coat over it. “Oh, the tango, the samba, the dances of South America, they were such exquisite things, Ryan. I do hope they have been preserved.”
Ryan tried to wrap his mind around doing nothing except dancing.
Mildred’s voice dropped. “Now there’s something you don’t see everyday.”
Ryan snapped up his spyglass. A man was riding along the beach atop what appeared to be a giant long-necked bird without wings. The man wore a broad-brimmed black hat. His long black hair flew behind him as did his fancifully colored woolen cape. He pulled off his hat and waved and shouted. Sand and snow flew from beneath the huge bird’s massive clawed feet as the rider spurred his mount to renewed speed. Ryan had to admit this was a new one for him.
“Cowboys, riding ostriches.” Mildred shook her head. “Wow, we missed Argentina completely and raised the Island of Misfit Toys.”
Ryan chalked it up to one more bastard obscure, predark Mildredism.
Doc tsk’ed. “No, that is a gaucho riding some mutated or upbred form of rhea, I should think.”
Mildred rolled her eyes. “Fine, gaucho and the Technicolor Dream Poncho, whatever.”
The one-eyed man scanned the bird rider. He didn’t appear to have a blaster, but he carried some sort of coiled rope whip or flail on a wide leather belt sewn with silver coins. Beneath the belt he bore what appeared to be a silver-handled chef’s knife big enough to behead a horse. He carried a small guitar-shaped case on his back and saddlebags across his bird.
“Miss Loral!” Ryan called. “Contact on shore!”
Loral squinted through her binoculars. “Don’t see that every day.”
Mildred sighed. “That’s what I’m saying.”
Miss Loral snorted at the sight. “Rad-addled ridiculous.”
Koa glanced at the rider and then up at the sails. “Ridiculous or not, the way he’s catching up, Bird Boy is doing close to thirty knots.”
“Thay!” Onetongue lisped admiringly. “That’th one fath’t bird!”
“Fast indeed,” Doc agreed. “The African ostrich has been known to sustain speeds of up to forty miles per hour. However, this Ratite seems twice the size of any ostrich I have ever heard of, and, unlike the African ostrich or the usual South American rhea, which mainly eat plants and insects, the overlarge and somewhat scimitar curve of this noble creature’s bill bespeaks of a predatory bent.”
Oracle called from the quarterdeck. “Miss Loral, take us into the cove! Furl sails and break out the sweeps. Bring us within hailing distance and have Mr. J.B. load canister! Sharpshooters to the tops! We are on foreign shores. Let us see if this man has anything useful to say.”
“Aye, Captain! Sweepers to the blaster deck! Prepare to furl sails!”
The Glory turned landward. The bird rider noticed this development and spurred his bird on. The topsmen rolled up sail and down on the blaster deck six pairs of very long oars slid out the blaster ports and began back rowing to bring the ship to a halt.
J.B. shouted up the gangway. “Starboard battery loaded with canister, Captain! Blasters run out!”
“Thank you, Mr. J.B.!” The Glory slowly stroked into the cove. The cove contained a cracked concrete quay that looked like it might service a fairly large ship. A few collapsed buildings bore the unmistakable signs of having been harvested of all valuable metal and timber long ago.
“Mr. Hardstone! Throw the lead!”
Hardstone stood on the ship’s chains and heaved the lead. The weight plunged into the water, and he payed out line. “Seven fathoms by the deep, Captain!”
“Back sweeps!” Oracle ordered.
The sweepmen groaned like galley slaves belowdecks as they heaved against the oars and stopped the Glory’s forward motion. She came to a halt about thirty meters from the quay. The bird rider came tearing up to edge of the barnacled concrete and leaped from his saddle. He swept his hat and bowed low.
“Hello, ship!” the man called out in a thick accent. “Hello, ship! Ahoy!”
Oracle strode to the rail and called out across the nearly still surf. “Buenos dias, Senor!”
“Buenos dias, Capitán!”
Oracle called out in English. “May I ask your name?”
“I am Strawmaker! Walter Strawmaker!”
“How may my ship and I be of assistance to you, Senor Strawmaker?”
“I wish to take ship with you immediately.”
“You wish to buy passage?”
“I will work for my passage.”
Oracle regarded the man shrewdly. “Passage to where?”
“Well, wherever you are going.”
“I see.” Oracle shrugged. “What skills have you?”
“Well.” Strawmaker grinned. “I have my ax!”
Atlast scowled from the bowsprit. “Doesn’t ’ave an ax, does he? He’s got a great big knife!”
Mildred struggled for patience. “An ax is a guitar.”
Strawmaker reached over his shoulder and a dozen blasters locked on to him. He slowly held up what appeared to be a ten-string ukulele.
“Well, then he doesn’t have a guitar!” Atlast protested. “He’s got a bloody opossum with a stick in its mouth!”
“I believe it is called a charango,” Doc mused.
“Ah!” Strawmaker pointed at Doc happily. “I see you are a man of culture and discernment.”
Ryan sensed Oracle was using the banter to his advantage. The captain stood impassively. Strawmaker reached into his saddlebag and produced a gleaming brass instrument. “I play the trumpet. And the piano. Do you have a piano?”
“Am I to understand you are a minstrel?” Oracle asked.
“I prefer the term travador, Capitán, but given my circumstances, perhaps wandering minstrel might truthfully apply.”
Ryan was keeping one ear on the conversation and his one eye through his spyglass on the surroundings. “Captain, mebbe fleeing minstrel might be more accurate.”
All eyes scanned inland.
Oracle nodded. “Indeed.”
Mildred deadpanned. “Wow, charge of the chicken brigade.”
Nearly a hundred men riding birds like Strawmaker’s boiled out of the dunes for the quay. They carried gleaming eight-foot lances held over one arm, and most had some form of single-or double-barrel blaster over their saddlebows.
Oracle’s voice went positively droll. “Senor, am I to understand there is a ville whose baron you have offended?”
“Baron? Ah! Barón! No, Senor Spada would be the Jefe of the estancia.”
Doc spoke low. “An estancia is a cattle ranch, Captain. Jefe is a chief. In my time, in this land, some estancias were rumored to be the size of small countries. Spada will be every inch a baron. Oh, and Spada means sword.”
“Thank you, Doc.” Oracle raised his voice. “Tell me, troubadour, how many of Jefe Spada’s women did you impregnate?”
Strawmaker kept snapping looks backward, but he made a show of offense. “Impregnar!”
“Despite the willingness of both parties, how many of those lancers have you given good reason to chill you?”
“I will modestly say...a number. However, in my defense I will also say that one of the said senoritas whispered to me that Spada intended to make me a permanent part of his estancia, and he intended to ensure my service by cutting off one of my feet.”
“And now?”
“Now? I believe they intend to strip me and paint my pene white, like the ñandú’s favorite grub.”
“I gather the ñandús are the birds you ride?” Oracle inquired.
&
nbsp; Strawmaker started taking desperate looks back at the avalanche of oncoming ñandú riders. “Yes.”
“Go on.”
Strawmaker cleared his throat. “Then I shall be dragged behind one ñandú at speed while they entice several others to give chase and fight for the prize.”
Mildred made a face.
“Then they shall hang me by my hands and use me for lance practice. After that they may decapitate me and play some polo to bring back Jefe Spada a properly abused head, though it is a little cold for it.” Strawmaker took a knee and spread his arms as the lancers descended. “Capitán, I am at your mercy. I will tell you I am not afraid of hardship, and I have played from the Rio Del Plata to the shores of Ushaia. I can be of use to you as a guide, if nothing else.”
“Do your people recognize the white flag as a sign of truce?”
Strawmaker sighed as he saw his death. “Si, I believe it is universal.”
“Commander!” Oracle ordered. “Run up a white flag!”
The white ensign rapidly shot up the flag line and caught a bit of breeze. Krysty spooned into Ryan unhappily. “What’s the captain doing?”
Ryan didn’t like it any more than Krysty, but he understood it. “Oracle needs supplies and with luck permission to recruit men, which he needs more than he needs a minstrel. Much less a possible war with a baron and giant chickens riders runnin’ up and down the coast sayin’ the Glory is hostile.”
Strawmaker carefully put his musical instruments in their cases and neatly piled his belongings. He donned his black hat, wrapped his cape around his left arm, drew his knife and turned to face his tormentors. Four gauchos leaned far out from their saddles and whirled their bolas in huge blurring arcs. They released and the weighted straps scythed toward the musician. Strawmaker sliced one bola neatly out of the air. The next two hit him a heartbeat later at chest height to entangle his arms. The fourth hit him at the knees and toppled him. Ryan’s eye narrowed. Strawmaker was down, but the gauchos weren’t slowing. They spurred forward, lances leveled. Bolas whirled. Those with blasters drew them. Krysty blinked. “You don’t think...”
The gauchos let out a battle cry. Their birds gave a booming hoot in unison and shoved out short stub wings. The formation charged off the edge of the quay like lemmings. The giant birds spread their massive clawed feet to display webbing. Their wings vibrated and drummed the air like hummingbirds. Some sank up to their backward knees and rose back up, legs churning. Some barely dipped into water at all.
The charge continued straight across the water.
“By my stars and garters!” Doc exclaimed. “I have had the pleasure of seeing the Western Grebe dance upon the waters with its mate in courtship, but a giant ratite! Bearing an armed rider and water running! Such adaption is—”
“Drop the flag of truce!” Oracle ordered.
The gauchos charged across the cove on their terror birds in a wedge. The cold black waters of the cove boiled white beneath them.
Commander Miles sliced the cord holding the white flag and it fell toward the deck like a ghost that had been shot out of the air. Oracle watched its descent. Ryan leaped to mainmast and grabbed a half pike from the rack. Krysty took a knee with her ship’s knife and marlinspike in either hand. “Gaia...give me strength...”
The gauchos howled and whooped, firing their blasters and sending bolas humming through the air. Crewmen ducked. The marksmen in the tops glanced down for the order to fire. Ryan dodged a bola and glanced to Oracle.
Oracle watched the flag of truce descend. It hit the deck in a sad, white wad. “Full broadside! Mr. J.B.!”
“All blasters!” J.B.’s voice echoed up the gangway. “Fire!” All eight weapons of the starboard battery discharged canister shot in unison. The Glory rocked upward with the recoil. Huge gray clouds of powder smoke obscured everything. “Reload!”
Ryan knelt with his lance in one hand and the other on Krysty’s shoulder. She had stopped her Gaia mantra. The fog of powder smoke slowly lifted. The sight of the shredded remains of the gauchos and their mounts bobbing in the surf was horrible. Despite their size, the giant rheas were hollow boned and, having adapted to water, had waterproof plumage. Their canister-cleaved bodies floated on the surface. Some were still alive and honking piteously. It appeared that gauchos did not know how to swim. Most had sunk into the dark water, weighted down by their silver belts and equipment, in addition to the huge lead balls riddling their bodies. Three men clung to their destroyed, still-buoyant mounts, shouting and crying out in Spanish.
“Mr. Ricky!” Oracle called.
“Yes, Captain!”
“Ask those men if they would prefer to swim back to the quay or take ship!”
“Aye, Captain.” Ricky shouted out in Spanish. The three surviving gauchos shivered in the near freezing water and shouted a response.
“They would take ship, Captain!”
“Did they tell you their names?”
“Gusi, Boca and Gaudiel!”
“Mr. Forgiven, enter Mr. Goose, Mr. Mouth and Mr. Gaudy as lubbers until signed or proved otherwise!”
The purser scratched in the book. “Aye, Captain!”
“Mr. Hardstone, take a few men in the whaleboat and fetch our new shipmates. Take anything of worth off the bodies, man and bird.”
“Aye, Captain!
Strawmaker managed to work his bound body up to his knees. “Capitán!”
“Yes, Senor?”
Strawmaker raised his chin at the bobbing sea of bloody, giant birds. “I know several excellent methods of barbecuing ñandú!”
“Mr. Forgiven!”
“Yes, Captain!”
“Mark Mr. Strawmaker temporary cook’s assistant, South American affairs consultant, ships minstrel and lubber until signed or proved otherwise.”
Forgiven’s pen hovered while he briefly internalized all this. “Aye, Captain.”
Oracle turned his head and regarded the lance in Ryan’s hand. “Make him Mr. Ryan’s responsibility.”
Chapter Sixteen
Ryan’s responsibility for Strawmaker was pretty easy. The troubadour had spent the past forty-eight hours mostly vomiting over the rail and moaning in his hammock while Broiler and Skillet had barbecued, boiled and salted away several thousand pounds of ñandú meat without his help. Ryan had spent that time up in the rigging with Koa. Standing on a rope forty feet in the air, leaning over a spar and hauling up sails by hand in all weather day and night was some of the most dangerous, ball-busting work Ryan had ever engaged in.
The Lantic was bitterly cold and windy but a hard, bright sun had broken out. Ryan smiled despite himself as he balanced in space and hauled up hundreds of pounds of wet canvas foresail with the rest of the topsmen. Koa snarled in outrage and as yet untamed fear. “You like this shit!”
“Reef, Koa!” Ryan laughed. “You’re slowing me down!”
“Fuck you!”
Koa reefed.
Manrape called from the other side of the mast as the crew furled and secured the sail. They were so shorthanded the bosun was up in the rigging. “I see your chicken is up and about, Ryan!”
The one-eyed man looked down and saw Strawmaker stagger toward the rail. He noted that the troubadour wore freshly sewn, stiff pants of ship’s canvas and a bloodstained and patched jersey.
“Hee’th up and about!” Onetongue called out gleefully as he made a shroud taut on deck. “Give u’th a th’ong, Th’trawmaker!”
“Yeah, Strawmaker! Sing something sweet!” Sweet Marie chimed in. “That last one you sang for the sea, and it sounded like two sea lions screwing!”
Strawmaker threw up over the side.
Sweet Marie shook her head. “I swear it’s the only song he knows!”
Coarse laughter followed Strawmaker’s gastrointestinal co
ntortions.
“Ryan, go see to your chickadee,” Manrape ordered.
“Aye.” Ryan shot down a ratline at a pace he was starting to feel was seaworthy and hit the deck.
Strawmaker looked up at him miserably. “Senor Ryan...”
Ryan’s cold blue eye narrowed. Strawmaker flinched. The Deathlands warrior knew the troubadour was yet another test Oracle had thrown at him, and he had very little time to whip Strawmaker into some kind of usefulness.
“Don’t Senor me, Strawmaker. I’m a seaman. I work for a living. Save it for the captain, the commander and Miss Loral, and save it until you’re spoken too directly. While you’re at it, I’d shit can the Senor and learn sir and ma’am real fast.”
“Ah, I see.” Strawmaker groaned and clutched the rail. “Thank you, Ryan.”
Ryan relented slightly. “I see you dressed for work today.”
“I told the Capitán I would work my passage. I am a man of my word.”
“Glad to hear it.”
Strawmaker gagged again but hardly anything came up but a few viscous strands of spit. He coughed and wiped his chin on his wrist. “Uno momento, Ryan.”
“Make it fast.”
Strawmaker tottered unsteadily across the rolling deck.
“One hand for yourself, one for the ship,” Ryan advised. Strawmaker grabbed a shroud and pulled himself forward. Ryan suddenly realized where he was going.
Strawmaker shoved his head into the cold water of the open sea barrel to buck himself up. The troubadour erupted backward, screaming, with his long hair sheeting spray.
Wipe clapped his hands. “He made a rainbow!”
Strawmaker managed to grab a shroud and his hand went for the knife at his belt he no longer carried. Mr. Squid’s head bubbled up from the barrel, and the golden eyes stared at Strawmaker in what Ryan thought might pass for cephalopod befuddlement.
“Ryan!” Strawmaker clutched the shroud in horror. “This ship keeps a pet octopus?”
“Pet!” Atlast walked up and brutally poked Strawmaker in the chest with each exclamation. “He’s a member of the crew. A subaqueous specialist!”
