Chronicles of the Dragon Pirate (42 page)

“None of us will try to make her a pet again,” he said as Pepper undid the top three buttons of her ruffled shirt so the gold touched bare skin as I fastened the chain around her neck, “nor will the Dark Sisters attempt to claim her. You have my solemn word of honor.”

Jeremiah had a look on his face as if he smelled something rotten. “How did you know Tomas and Pepper were to be betrothed?”

The Shadowman motioned towards the forest again. “Once we’re on the grey road, anything you ask will be answered, save one thing: the proposal Bill wants to lay out on the table. So Captain Hawkins, what say you?”

“The sooner there the sooner back,” Captain Hawkins replied. “I have questions I need William to answer, so lead on.”

The Shadowman touched the brim of his hat then turned and led us towards the trees. We fell into line, the captain motioning for me to walk beside him as Redbeard waited for the rest of us to pass so he could cover the rear. I looked back. All of the crew seemed to be on deck watching us leave, Mr. Smith standing at the bow with his massive arms folded and Master Khan in his grey robes beside him like a shadow, while the rest were fanned out along the deck rail or up in the ratlines.

Pepper motioned for me to turn around in time to keep me from stumbling over a fallen log, and I kept my eyes looking forward as we reached the forest and plunged inside. The air became cooler as our eyes adjusted to the gathering darkness beneath the trees, but at once we became the targets of stinging insects, all of us slapping at our arms and necks except for the Shadowman, who seemed unaffected. Ahead of us I could see the beginnings of a road, made up of grey pavers leading away into the approaching dusk. My bare feet went from feeling earth and crackling twigs to stone...and the whining in my ear went away as we left the insects behind.

At the captain’s request I had Star create two strands of bright-fire, which she wrapped around a pair of fallen tree branches Panther had found, the African woman holding one while Whistling John took the other. Captain Hawkins then said to the Shadowman, “You said once we were on the road you’d start answering questions. Begin with this: how did you discover the knowledge of Tomas’s betrothal to Pepper?”

The bright-fire torches threw strange shadows across the pale man’s face. “You have a spy in Haven.” Several voices snarled in anger and Tommy gave an apologetic shrug. “I don’t recall her name, but I can tell you she’s a skinny thing with a broken nose...which was neither my doing nor my brother’s, I assure you. Bill gave her a choice to either spy upon you or have her younger brother made into one of my brothers, so she chose to put her life in danger over his. Bill can give you her name, if you wish.”

The Mulatto growled, “How do we know we can trust your word? For all I know, it could be their shaman, or someone else.”

“The shaman is a spy, but not for us...or how do you think the Black Goat learned you were transmuting Artifact cannons?” At the incredulous looks we gave him the Shadowman shrugged again. “Olde Roger bred us to be gentlemen, which means we are incapable of neither telling a lie nor doing violence to another one of our brothers.” He gave us a sly smile. “That’s why there’s a colony of renegades here and not a smoking pile of corpses. Do you want to know how the transformation from human to one of my brothers occurs? I’ll tell you, if you wish.”

“Captain, this has to be a trick,” Pepper said, giving the Shadowman a suspicious look. “Scab and the other captains kept it secret from the mortals aboard ship. They would take a mortal man into the captain’s cabin, and when he came out he’d be on his way to becoming one of them.”

“We kept it secret because Olde Roger wanted the knowledge kept secret...but we no longer care what Olde Roger wants. The captain takes a very small measure of his blood, mixes it with an equal part of alcohol, usually rum since it’s handy, and then coats a slender, pointed object with it and stabs the mortal deep in the chest while the mixture’s still fresh. Most of the captain’s carry a pointed wand of transmuted human bone to carry out the transformation, but any pointed object would do.” He smiled. “I suppose you could coat a dagger and stab someone with it, but that lacks a certain amount of elegance.”

Captain Hawkins asked, “Why the captain? Is it because it’s his responsibility?”

“Actually, he does it to have control over the brothers he creates. When Scab transformed me, his blood made me eager to do his will. Olde Roger, in turn, uses his blood to further transform the captains, making them tougher, harder to kill, as well as eager to please him.”

“But Scab was never transformed,” Pepper said. “He used to complain about it right before he went into battle”

The Shadowman chuckled as if Pepper had made a jest. “Dear Olde Scab; was there ever a brother of ours more bitter? The truth is Olde Roger would’ve done it when the captains had their great gathering, which Olde Roger does every few years, but Captain Cholula put an end to him before Scab could be transformed. A lucky thing for me, because the moment Captain Cholula had her mercenary chop off his head, my loyalty to the cause vanished and I was able to escape.” He chuckled again. “I wasn’t the only one, of course, but Captain Cholula didn’t realize we were clinging to the Black Rose below the waterline. When she set the ship on fire and left, we put it out and made our way here.”

“So kill ze captain,” Claude remarked, “and ze rest of his men desert?”

“You’ve got to kill him first. We were loyal to Scab, but had Olde Roger transformed him, we’d have been fanatically loyal and would’ve fought to the last man to save him.”

“As Shadowmen normally do,” Captain Hawkins said, looking at the Shadowman as if he was a puzzle to be solved. “I assume you’re giving me this knowledge to show your good faith?”

“Also to show you we no longer do Olde Roger’s will but have free will of our own, as you do.”

“So who’s your captain now?”

“We have none,” the Shadowman replied. “A few of us miss not having a leader, and we do tend to argue incessantly before we get anything done, but for the most part we like having free will again. However, we’re worried that others don’t feel the same way, so with your permission I’d like your apprentice to look at something.”

The captain’s eyes narrowed. “Look at what?”

“Tracks.” The Shadowman turned towards me as we came to a halt. “Back in St. Augustine, the townspeople used to talk about you behind your back, saying your foster-mother was letting you get too close to the Timucua, that you were becoming one of them. Is it true?”

I shrugged. “If you mean can I read tracks then the answer’s yes... well, more or less. I mean, I can’t read them like Dancing Bear and the other hunters could, but they did teach me a few things.”

The Shadowman motioned towards the bare earth just off the road, a few feet from where grass began growing again. “As I was coming to meet you, I saw some strange tracks running alongside the road and I thought you might have an idea what they are.”

I looked to the captain, who in turn was giving the Shadowman a suspicious look. “Tomas,” he said without taking his eyes off the Shadowman, “take Whistling John’s torch and examine the tracks.” Whistling John handed me the torch and I knelt down where he pointed, Jeremiah leaving the road to join me. Beyond the light of the torch the forest was growing dark, but I heard no other sounds than the normal call of birds beyond where we’d stopped as I let my finger trace the footprint in the bare earth, part of a set running alongside the road. Captain Hawkins said, “Can you tell what it is?”

“It’s human, sir,” I answered, “definitely not animal. But whoever made it is twisted somehow, because the foot’s elongated and the toes have claws.”

Jeremiah looked up at me from the footprint. “Are you sure?”

“Look at the indentations into the earth. Whoever or whatever made these tracks has claws as long as my fingers.”

“You have a shape-changer following the road,” Captain Hawkins remarked as he motioned for us to rejoin the group.

Jeremiah and I climbed to our feet and I handed Whistling John back his torch as the Shadowman said, “I thought so as well, but one of the Dark Sisters remaining with us saw the creature when it realized I was coming and it left the road. She told me it’s a hybrid of man and beast, but the spirit inside is human and not a Dragon merged with his dragon-ghost.”

From the back, Redbeard said, “You be saying this is nae a shape-changer?”

“I’m saying exactly that. The Dark Sister spoke to the others and neither her sister nor my brothers have ever seen such a creature before today. The Dark Sister told me Bill thinks it’s a creature of the Draco Dominus, brought by the black ship docked on the other side of the island and let loose.” He spat, although nothing came out of his mouth. “They’re a twisted group of humans more than capable of doing such a thing to their fellow man.” Jeremiah gave a derisive snort and the Shadowman glanced at him. “You find aught amusing?”

Jeremiah looked him straight in the eye. “I find it amusing to hear someone who eats human flesh the way we eat pork call someone else twisted.”

Instead of being angry, the Shadowman merely chuckled. “If the pig could speak, would it not say the same to you? Why do you eat me, it would ask; have I not a life of my own you are taking away? The truth is that you are acting according to your nature. Men are of a higher order than the pig, and thus a man eats pork, as we eat you. My brothers and I are to be the masters of mankind someday...or so we were led to believe.”

“So what do you believe now?”

“That we are the masters of the village called Freehold. We had all the humans living there sign a set of Articles, with their rights and duties clearly spelled out as well as the punishments, and all who signed it now live under our hand, but in peace.”

Whistling John asked, “What about them who didn’t sign it?”

The Shadowman merely glanced back at him and smiled.

The grey-stone road had come to an intersection with three other roads and the Shadowman had led us down the right hand way, his conversation moving to questions about England and how easily a group of Shadowmen could survive there. But as the road curved around a bog and twin lights became visible ahead of us, he stopped in mid-question. “That marks the entrance to Freehold,” he said instead. “We’re almost there.”

The lights soon became twin dragon-globes hung in rope baskets and attached to wooden poles, one on either side of the road. But as we got closer I saw the light coming from the globes was dim, the bright-fire inside them flickering as if ready to go out. They were also dirty, with forest debris and dirt collecting on the glass. As we passed them by I noticed a wooden barricade started at each pole and stretched outward into the forest. The Mulatto noticed it as well. “Looks like you broke apart a ship to build yourselves a barricade.”

The Shadowman shrugged. “Humans were violating the Articles by leaving during the day when we were sluggish, and besides, we had a merchant ship unexpectedly dock and we had to do something with it after we took the crew.”

“What keeps the villagers from just walking out the way we came in?”

The Shadowman motioned back towards the road behind us. “The bog we passed has a nest of Black Stranglers, sluggish at night but active during the day. One of the women on the merchant ship had the black pox, so Bill gave her to the stranglers while the remaining villagers watched from the road. Made quite an impression.” He turned and motioned ahead of us. “Here we are.”

Before us were rows of small buildings made of the island’s white stone, each facing the grey-stone road on either side. But unlike the well kept up buildings of Haven, the white walls were covered in vines and small plants growing out of cracks in the stone. The buildings closest to the road were the best maintained, with the ones right behind them much less so, while the ones behind them were so swallowed up that the doorways and windows looked like holes in the foliage. But even there I saw fires burning as hollow-eyed people in clean but tattered clothes watched us pass.

No one greeted us but only stared as we walked by, the men armed with ill-looking gunpowder muskets or rusty steel swords and axes held loosely in their hands as the women cowered in the doorways of their homes, while stick-thin children peeked out from windows with fearful expressions. The knot of fear returned as Captain Hawkins casually remarked, “The villagers seem ill-disposed towards us.”

“They mistrust outsiders and with good reason,” the Shadowman motioning towards a large building ahead of us. “You’ll find more cheer in yon inn up ahead.” The building ahead of us reminded me at once of the House of Memory, being just as large with the grey-stone road ending at the base of its white stone steps. In the center was a large archway with two statues flanking it, but instead of warriors they were wingless dragons, standing on their hind legs at least ten or twelve feet into the air. Also, unlike the warrior statues these didn’t look carved but instead seemed molded, like someone had poured liquid plaster over a real dragon and let it harden, the plaster painted black as ink and the eyes red as blood.