Deadweather and Sunrise

by Geoff Rodkey

“Diggin’ up the mountain, ’long with the others. Lookin’ for the Fire King’s voodoo.”

  “Did they force the field pirates to help?”

  “Didn’t have to force nobody. Percy said the new owner’d share whatever we found with us.”

  “What new owner?”

  “Man who adopted ye. It’s on the papers.”

  “What papers?”

  “Over ’ere.”

  Quint vaulted to the floor again, and we followed him as he waddled into the den, where Dad kept all the plantation paperwork in big, messy piles on a long table.

  He hopped onto a chair and pulled several documents from one of the piles, handing them to me one by one as he read their titles.

  “‘Certificates o’ Death’—probably need to rewrite yers, seeing’s how yer not dead—‘Certificate o’ Legal Adoption’… ‘Transfer o’ Title’…”

  I’d seen the adoption one before, although now it contained a signature forged as mine, right next to Pembroke’s. The death certificates were made out for each of our family members and signed by Archibald the attorney.

  The transfer of title to our plantation was signed by Roger Pembroke as the recipient.

  I handed them all to Millicent without a word. As she looked at them, her face grew pale.

  “Think I need to sit down,” she whispered.

  “’Ere, luv.” Quint hopped to the floor, and she sank into the chair, still staring at the documents.

  “Where on the mountain are they digging?”

  “Upper orchard, ’tween ’ere an’ Rottin’ Bluff. That’s where yer dad was ’eaded when he found whatever it was set him off. Stands to reason it’s the place to look. Course, nobody’s had much luck.”

  “Do the soldiers carry their guns with them?”

  “Not lately,” said Quint. “They’re in the next room.”

  I couldn’t believe our luck—five rifles were lined up in a neat row against the wall by the front door. While Guts and I loaded two of them, I gave Quint a quick summary of the past month.

  By the time I was halfway through, he’d started loading a rifle of his own.

  We gathered up extra powder and shot, then hid the remaining two rifles behind a cabinet in the den. Millicent was still sitting there, staring into space.

  “We’re going up the hill. Do you want to come?” I asked.

  She shook her head slowly.

  “Men do awful things sometimes,” I said. “All of them.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “We’ll be back soon,” I said, and we left her there.

  WE STARTED UP the hill, through the upper orchard toward Rotting Bluff. I carried Quint’s rifle for him so he could keep up with us by walking on his hands.

  Within fifty feet of the house, the holes started to appear, in sizes ranging from a few spadefuls to gaping, ten-foot-wide excavations. The farther we climbed up the mountain, the more plentiful they were. Pretty soon, we began hearing scattered voices.

  Then the field pirates started to appear, working alone and in small groups, digging here and there without any apparent strategy or direction. When they saw me, most of them gaped in surprise. A few smiled and waved.

  All the way up the mountain, I could feel my courage growing. Holding a rifle in each hand helped, as did having Guts and Quint on either side of me. But so did the fact that these were my family’s fields, and seeing them torn up so mindlessly was making me angry. I was going to find the men who had done this and throw them off my land. And it would be right and fair.

  A few hundred yards below Rotting Bluff, we ran into Mung, who gurgled an incomprehensible greeting and hugged me so excitedly I almost shot him by accident.

  Finally, he let me go and babbled something, a questioning look in his eye.

  “I’ll explain it later,” I said. “Right now, we’ve got to get rid of Percy and those soldiers.”

  He nodded, then picked up his shovel and brandished it with a fierce look. I smiled and nodded back, a little lump rising in my throat. Like Quint, he was on my side, no questions asked.

  By the time we got close to Rotting Bluff, a clutch of field pirates had abandoned their digging to follow us. Unlike Mung, I couldn’t tell whether they were joining our march out of solidarity or because they smelled blood and wanted to watch it get spilled.

  The trees were thinner at that point, and Rotting Bluff came into view when it was still forty yards away. It was unrecognizable—the rampart was still there, with its cannon pointed out over the cliff, but all the land around it had been dug out in a trench so wide that I was surprised the rampart hadn’t broken off and fallen into the sea.

  And they were still digging over at the base of one of the massive rocks near the cliff’s edge—a cluster of pirates, five Rovian soldiers stripped down to their bare chests, and Percy, who wasn’t actually digging so much as pretending to dig, leaning on his shovel as he wiped the sweat from his meaty forehead.

  I gave Quint his rifle and trained mine on Percy. We were twenty yards away when the first soldier noticed us and called out to the others, who gradually turned in our direction.

  Percy’s jowls sagged at the sight of me.

  “Egbert… so glad you’re all right. Feared the worst—”

  “Put down those shovels and get off my land,” I said. We stopped at the lip of the big trench, our guns pointed across the sunken no-man’s-land at them.

  “No need for that, boy—”

  “Put them down and get off my land,” I said again.

  The soldiers looked at each other, not sure how seriously to take this.

  “Put ’em down, or we’ll kill ye, ye——,” said Guts.

  Percy was trying to smile, but it looked more like a grimace. “Let’s us talk about this—”

  “There’s nothing to talk about. Put down the shovels and leave.”

  They didn’t move.

  “Do it!” barked Quint.

  They still didn’t move. The soldiers seemed to be waiting for a word from Percy, who was frozen in place.

  “’Oo do I shoot first?” asked Guts loudly.

  “Not yet!” I whispered to him. I was suddenly wishing I’d put a little more thought into strategizing. We had the guns, but even if you didn’t count the pirates, there were twice as many of them as there were of us, and once we’d each fired, it would take more time to reload than it would for them to close the distance between us. And if it came to a fistfight, I didn’t like our odds.

  Then there were the pirates. I had no idea whose side they were on. From the looks on their faces, I don’t think they knew, either. I could hear Mung growling supportively behind me, but he and Quint were the only ones I felt sure of one way or another.

  “You,” I said, pointing my gun at Percy, “and the five of you”—I waved the barrel at the soldiers—“need to get off my land. Or die.”

  I tried to sound calm and deadly, but I couldn’t quite get the flutter out of my voice.

  Percy set down his shovel and started down the far side of the trench, slowly moving toward me.

  “Trouble is, boy,” he said in a friendly voice—as friendly as he was capable of, anyway—“this isn’t your land. It’s your father’s.”

  “My father’s dead.”

  “Not your old father. Your new one.”

  “He’s not my father!”

  “Shoot ’im!” hissed Guts.

  Percy was halfway across the no-man’s-land, smiling up at me.

  “Afraid he is. I’ve seen the papers.”

  “Lies on paper are still lies.” My face was starting to burn hot, and the rifle was getting heavy. I was shifting its weight in my hands when I heard a pooft sound from off to my left.

  Everyone startled, turning toward Guts, who was glaring at his smoking flintlock, which had been aimed at Percy when it misfired. Guts shook the rifle, bellowing angrily at it, and it suddenly discharged with a loud roar. The round kicked up a harmless cloud of dirt in the trench twenty feet f
rom Percy.

  As Guts cursed with frustration and dropped to his knees, frantically trying to reload, two of the soldiers took a step toward him, only to stop when Quint turned his own rifle in their direction.

  With a nervous glance at Guts, Percy quickened his pace toward me, his voice growing urgent.

  “Think, boy! Can’t kill us all. Even if you do, more’ll come. Hundreds! There’s no stopping it.”

  He paused at the near end of the trench, just ten feet away from me. “Besides, you’re too good a boy to shoot an unarmed man.”

  “Shoot ’im!” yelled Guts, twitching so angrily that he spilled half the black powder he was hurriedly shaking into his rifle’s muzzle.

  Percy started up the short slope toward me, close enough now that he’d be impossible to miss. My finger tightened on the trigger.

  “Come any closer, and I’ll shoot!” I yelled at him.

  Percy stopped. Two more paces, and he’d be close enough to grab the barrel of the rifle.

  “Would you, really? Shoot your old Percy? Unarmed, helpless as a dog? You’re too good for that. You know your lessons. You know that’s a sin.”

  “SHOOT ’IM!” screamed Guts, his rifle cradled in the crook of his elbow as he yanked out the ramrod with his good hand.

  Percy looked at Guts and shook his head, his fleshy neck jiggling against his collar. “No. Egbert’s a good boy. He’d never shoot an unarmed man.”

  He looked back at me. “Isn’t that right?”

  “I’ll shoot you if I have to,” I said. But I wasn’t sure I believed it.

  Percy didn’t. He took another step toward me.

  “DO IT!” screamed Guts. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him drop the ramrod. Once he filled the pan with powder, he’d be ready to fire again.

  My heart was pounding in my chest. I could feel my finger against the trigger, but I couldn’t bring myself to pull it.

  “I will!” I warned Percy through gritted teeth.

  “You won’t,” said Percy softly, taking the final step, his hand reaching out for my rifle.

  Then the gunshot was echoing off the rampart, and he was tumbling backward into the trench.

  As Percy writhed in the dirt, crying out and clutching a shoulder stained red with blood, I looked down at the gun in my hands. The flintlock was still poised over the pan. It hadn’t gone off.

  I looked at Guts to my left. He was still on his knees, holding the open powder flask over the pan as he stared past me, his mouth open in surprise.

  I followed his gaze to my right, to the figure standing just behind Quint.

  It was Millicent. She was holding a rifle.

  She stepped forward and addressed the soldiers, her face cold with hate.

  “Get off this land, or we’ll kill you all.”

  NIGHTFALL

  After Millicent shot Percy, the soldiers put down their shovels and left in a hurry. We let them take their wagon and horses—Guts wanted to hang on to them, but it felt like stealing to do that, so we only kept the guns.

  The sun was beginning to set as we watched them rattle down the hillside in the wagon, with Percy clutching a rag to his wounded shoulder and crying out in pain with every bump. Quint had gone back to finish his stew, and the field pirates had disappeared to their barracks for dinner, leaving Millicent, Guts, and me alone on the porch of the main house.

  “Any chance that wound will kill him?” I asked.

  “Not if it don’t turn to cheese,” said Guts.

  “We can only hope,” said Millicent darkly.

  She was sitting on the porch steps, the rifle still in her hands. She held it by the barrel, digging the edge of its stock into the dirt as she brooded.

  “Are you all right?” I asked her.

  She looked up at me. Her eyes were still cold and hard. “He lied to me. About so many things.”

  “That’s what men do.”

  “Not my father. Not to me.”

  She lifted her chin and stared at the reddening sky. “They’ll be back, you know. Daddy won’t wait. He’ll come right away. With a hundred men, at least.”

  “We’ve got to find that treasure before they get here,” I said.

  “Say we do,” said Guts. “They’ll still come.”

  “But we won’t have to be here,” said Millicent. “We can run.”

  “I’m tired of running,” I said.

  Guts stared at me. “Gonna stay an’ fight a hundred soldiers?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Nuts to that! Couldn’t even shoot whatsisname. Standin’ right in front o’ ye.”

  I shook my head. “That’s because it wasn’t fair. He was unarmed.”

  “Won’t have that problem again. Be a hundred of ’em next time. Then ye’ll see what not fair is.” Guts’s whole face and shoulders twitched after he said it, like he was shuddering at the thought.

  “You can’t fight them with five guns,” said Millicent.

  “My father’s got a hunting rifle.”

  “So you’ve got six? Oh, that changes everything.”

  “Plus a cannon,” I said.

  “Still not enough.”

  “And fifty pirates.”

  They were both quiet for a moment, thinking it over.

  “Would they fight for you?” Millicent asked.

  I stood up. “I don’t know. Let’s find out.”

  THE FIELD PIRATES had just sat down to their usual meal of slop when we entered the long, lamplit barracks. It was noisy with chatter, but as they realized we were there, the talking fell away. It was an unwritten rule that only the field pirates were allowed in the barracks—even Quint wasn’t welcome in there—and a hundred unfriendly eyes glared at us.

  Although it was more like eighty unfriendly eyes, because a lot of them weren’t working with a full pair. And Mung actually seemed happy to see us.

  “What can we do for ye?” asked Otto the foreman coldly. He’d been the foreman for years, because he was the smartest of the bunch, and because he’d beaten the last foreman to death with a brick.

  “Need yer bottom wiped?” someone yelled at me from the crowd, to snorts of laughter.

  “Soldiers are coming to take back this plantation,” I said in as loud a voice as I could muster. “Will you help me fight them?”

  There were a few more snorts of laughter. Mostly it was silent.

  “Wot’s in it fer us?” Otto asked.

  “They’re after a treasure,” I said.

  “That’s hardly news, sonny.”

  “If we find it instead of them, we can all share it equally,” I said.

  Behind me, I heard Guts quietly curse. It must have occurred to him that he stood to keep a lot less than a third of the treasure if this deal held up.

  “Same offer the soldiers made,” said Otto. “Wot’s the difference?”

  “The difference is I’m not lying to you,” I said.

  “Not good enough, sonny,” said Otto. “Best o’ luck to ye.”

  He picked up his spoon and returned to his slop. The others followed, and the barracks quickly filled again with the clanking of spoons and the growling of voices.

  I thought for a moment. If I didn’t get them on our side, we were doomed—the best I could hope for would be to flee across the ocean and hope Roger Pembroke wouldn’t send anyone to follow us. But that wasn’t likely, especially if Millicent was with us.

  It was going to be a long shot stopping him with this bunch, anyway. But Burn Healy’s warning was fresh in my mind, and I felt sure if I ran away now, the odds of my killing Pembroke weren’t going to get any better down the road.

  So I had to convince them to help us, with whatever I had. And all I had, really, was one thing:

  “What if I give you the plantation?”

  The spoons stopped clanking.

  “’Ow’s that gonna work?”

  “Same as the treasure,” I said. “We’ll all own it equally. Effective immediately.”

&nb
sp; There was a short silence, followed by a sudden burst of noise as fifty pirates all started talking to each other at once.

  Otto stood up and pointed at the door. “You three wait outside. We gots to discuss this.”

  We didn’t have to wait long in the moonlight outside the barracks—within a few minutes, the door burst open, and the whole crew ran past us for the orchard. A few held lanterns. The rest carried harvesting hooks.

  Otto paused in front of me, his gray teeth glinting in the lanterns’ light as he smiled.

  “Got yerself a deal, sonny,” he said. He held out his hand, and we shook on it.

  “Where are they all going?” I asked.

  He rubbed his neck, looking a little sheepish. “Bit of a crisis. Cargo ship’s due into Port Scratch in three days. S’pposed to carry the early harvest to Pella Nonna. We been slacking off o’ late, first ’cause yer dad was gone, then ’cause we was lookin’ fer that treasure. But if we don’t get the harvest in and loaded on that ship, likely as not, the plantation goes under.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “Means the contract’s busted, ship sails without us, fruit rots in the fields, an’ we can’t lay in stores. No food, no money… whole racket falls apart.”

  I was furious. “Why didn’t you think about all that before a minute ago?!”

  “Weren’t our problem. Up ’til a minute ago, we just worked here.”

  I MANAGED TO CONVINCE Otto to let Stumpy the driver ride down to Port Scratch and let us know when Percy and the soldiers managed to set sail so we’d have some idea of how much time we had before the reinforcements returned from Sunrise.

  Other than that, Otto insisted he couldn’t spare any men to help look for the treasure in the morning. The pirates would only stop their frantic harvesting long enough to fight when the soldiers returned.

  And that wasn’t our only problem—none of them had guns (Dad had forbidden it, which if you think about it, was a pretty sensible policy), and there wasn’t any money available to go to Port Scratch and buy some.

  “There’s got to be money somewhere,” I pleaded with Quint when we got back to the house.

  “Not till we sell the harvest. And most of that’s pledged to provisions. Can’t buy guns with it ’less yer not plannin’ on eatin’ again till spring. And this lot won’t stand fer that.”