The Dagger X (The Dagger Chronicles) (11 page)

“Please! Please don’t hurt us!” Kitto’s heart pounded, his breath catching. “We can tell you what you want to know,” he gasped.

“
Oui, oui, oui.
Of course you will,” the man said, his voice rising in pitch. “You like this nose that God gave you, ah? I do not blame you! I was admiring it myself while you slept!

“
Ja,
you will tell me everyzing. Like how you and
your friend found yourselves on zis lonely island?” He looked down at Kitto’s stump. “I can see there must be little food here, ah?” The man jerked his head toward Van. “Did that one over there get hungry and eat your foot?” He wagged his finger at the older boy. “Not very gentlemanly of you!” The man’s grin vanished. He turned back to Kitto.

“How many more of you are there?” The man peered out toward the beach. Kitto swallowed heavily and his Adam’s apple bobbed. He said nothing, his mind spinning.

Should I tell them? What might they do to Sarah and Ontoquas? And Bucket?

The man’s smile grew wider, wilder. He giggled. It was a high-pitched twitter, almost like a little girl’s, and it made Kitto quiver with fear.

“You are not quick to answer my questions, are you? That leaves me with
more
questions! But do you know what my favorite question is, right at zis moment?”

“No, sir,” Kitto said, his voice weak.

“I will tell you. My questions is zis: If I lift you up with my hook, here, all zee way in zee air, will zee hook tear through your flesh, or is zee nose strong enough to hold your weight? An interesting question, do you not think?”

“Please, sir! Don’t hurt me!” Kitto said again.

The man shrugged. “The flesh of the nose . . . who knows the nose? I tell you, zis question burns me. And like all important questions in life, it can probably be
answered with a little experimentation. Let us try that now, ah!” He jerked the hook higher. Kitto’s nostril stretched out unnaturally and he let out a whimper.

“Please!”

The ugly bear of a man jamming the pistol in Van’s eye had turned to watch the comedy.

Van bared his teeth and shot up with his left arm, ramming it against the pistol. The weapon fired and the ball sent a splintered chunk spraying out from the tree. Van kicked savagely with his right leg, knocking the man’s feet out from under him. In an instant he scrambled up and lunged for the man accosting Kitto, but before he ever got there a blur of speed intercepted him. Van was thrown backward, falling into the brush unconscious. The man who had struck him stepped over him to assess the damage. He was naked from the waist up, tan skinned, and though short in height, his body was wide and muscled. His head was shaved bald, and it, along with much of his shoulders and torso, was covered in tattoos, mostly a series of squares connected at the corners like a chessboard grid. He turned back toward Kitto, his face flat with a wide nose and narrow eyes.

“Quid! I hope you did not kill him!” the man said, and for a moment Kitto thought he was genuinely concerned. Then he turned back to Kitto. “Let me guess . . . zat one is the fighter, but you are the smart one, ah?”

Kitto’s panic mingled now with anger at seeing Van so abused. “I have done nothing to you! Now get
your bloody metal finger out of my nose.” This brought chuckles from the men looking on from the edge of the glade, pistols and cutlasses leaning on their shoulders.

“
Ja
,
ja
, you are right. After all, I need to eat with zis thing!” The man withdrew the hook end and lowered the boot that held Kitto’s arm. “May I?” he said, but before Kitto understood what he intended, the man had bent to grab the tail of Kitto’s shirt. He let go of Kitto’s other arm so that he could polish his hook. Kitto used the moment to wipe at his nose. His knuckles came away bloody.

“Out to the beach with these fine lads,” the man said, waving his hook. “Zee other jolly boat should be along soon.” He reached down and picked up Kitto’s crutch. “After you, monsieur!” He spread out his left hand in the direction of the beach in a dramatic sweep, his gold-toothed smile returning. Kitto struggled to his feet with the help of the tree behind him, and as he did so, he caught sight of the dagger on the ground by his foot, half hidden in leaves.

I must hide it!

Kitto gave the knife a surreptitious kick as he reached for the crutch. The knife skittered underneath the cover of fallen leaves.

Someone has reached the island! But it is neither William nor Morris! Have we escaped one danger just to find ourselves in the midst of another?

T
he beach on which Van and Kitto had been practicing stretched wide and flat in the low tide. The pistols and ammunition they had used for practice lay in a tidy pile covered in oilskin. Kitto hobbled toward it. Two other men beat him to it. Both were clearly of African descent, very dark, one hardly any older than Van. Their clothes were ragged and their hats looked so salt worn that a stiff breeze might tear them apart. One of them picked up a pistol and sighted down the barrel.

Oh, please don’t kill us! And please, oh, please, stay hidden, Mum!

The men gathered themselves in a loose circle around Kitto and Van, who the tattooed man had deposited gently onto the sand at Kitto’s feet. Van stirred, his eyes blinking.

The gold-toothed man was obviously the leader of the rabble. He stepped forward. Kitto allowed his eyes to travel along the curious figure before him. The man’s beard was a wild collection of colorful beaded braids that jangled slightly when he moved, an adornment
Kitto had never before seen. The shirt beneath his frock coat was cut with the traditional ruffles, but the material had an intricate pattern of flowery blooms that looked—well—feminine! A rich woman in Falmouth could have worn something like it, and likely paid a fortune to do so. The man’s eyes were as pale blue as the Caribbean seawater and they seemed to protrude slightly from his head, adding to Kitto’s impression that he might be mad.

The man fetched a brown satchel from his belt, and poured from it a small pile of brown beans that Kitto did not recognize. The man pinched one with his fingers and popped it into his mouth. He crunched on it and closed his eyes with pleasure.

“Ah!” He hefted the bag in his hand. “My supply. It grows light!” he said. He eyed Kitto for a moment, then extended his palm out to Kitto. “Have a few! I feel badly about your nose.” Kitto wiped it again, but the blood seemed mostly to have stopped.

“What are they?” he said, looking dubiously at the odd collection of beans.

The man looked down on them, then back at Kitto, eyebrows raised.

“You do not know?”

“No.”

The man withdrew his hand. “Then I take back. I share with those who can appreciate. They are coffee beans, of course!”

Kitto had heard of coffee. He believed it to be a
Dutch drink. He had never seen it in Cornwall, just heard it mentioned occasionally down at the quay where all manner of goods came and went.

“I thought you
drank
coffee,” he said. The man stuck his tongue out and blew a raspberry. Kitto had never seen anyone older than Duck do such a thing with his tongue, and he would have laughed were his whole body not shaking with fear.

“Who has the time? The time to sit and drink? What for, zees? Just eat it, and feel alive!” Again he gestured his collection in Kitto’s direction. “Go on!” he ordered.

Just do as the madman says,
Kitto told himself. He reached out a shaking hand and pinched a few beans from the man’s palm, then lifted them to his mouth. He chewed, unable to contain a revolted expression when the bitter taste struck. The men in the circle chuckled.

“You do not like?” Kitto spit a few flecks from his mouth.

“Of course he don’t like your rabbit turds, X!” said one of the men. “Nobody but you does.”

The man shrugged. “More for me!” He giggled again. Next to Kitto, Van struggled to stand. He got halfway up and then sat down again groaning and holding his head.

“Ow,” Van said finally.

“Quid, he has a big fist. Like a hammer! But I see your jaw is still attached to your head. Consider yourself lucky!” He twittered. “Double lucky, even, for Fowler shot a tree instead of you.” Van glared up at the man, squinting against the bright sun.

“Who are you?” Van said.

“I could ask zee same of you, ah?” the man said, arching his eyebrows down at Van. “They call me X.” The man drew himself to a dramatic stand of attention that Kitto could see was meant to be ironic. “I am the captain of these fine men!”

“Not for long,” said Fowler, turning and spitting in the sand. X rolled his eyes.

“I found the island, did I not, you filthy pig?” X said. “You want to vote. Fine. We vote, just as soon as my sweet Pippin is brought to shore.”

They vote on who their captain is?
Kitto thought it the strangest thing he had ever heard. Van knew what it meant.

“So you are pirates,” Van said. Kitto looked at the faces around him worriedly, fearing they might take offense.
Don’t get us killed, Van!
Mostly the men seemed not to have heard.

X pursed his lips comically. “What you want me to say, man-boy? ‘Yes, I am a pirate’? No one who is a pirate says he is a pirate! Pirates would not do that, would they?” He threw his hands out wide in exasperation. “
Oui, oui, oui,
some people, they would call us zees. I prefer ‘sea dogs.’ It has a nice ring.”

Pirates.
Men who steal and kill for sport are here, on the island. But how did they get here?
Kitto wondered. He cleared his voice and decided to risk asking.

“Do you have a ship?” Kitto said, wondering if the idea that was occurring to him had occurred to Van.

The man called Fowler spoke up with a haughty tone. “Aye, X, do we have a bloody ship?”

X ignored him. He let out a long sigh. “Alas, a ship we do not have. We had a ship, but she has sunk.”

“From an attack?” Kitto said. The more this strange man talked, the more his fear lessened. After all, if they were going to kill them, would they not do so quickly?

“No, it was not the navy. It was the worms.”

“Worms?”

“Shipworms.” Now X turned to spit. “Devil-loving shipworms. The ship we . . . borrowed . . . from this fat little Spaniard piglet, it was full of them! But we did not know this when we traded his ship for our own. Two weeks later and our new ship is sinking beneath us.”

“So how did you get here?” Van asked.

“Shut your hole, you,” Fowler said. He spat again, this time quite near where Van knelt.

“Jolly boats, but nobody jolly in zem. Two, and we have been rowing with the current the last eight days to find this island—or another one like it.”

Kitto’s heart sank. A ship would have meant the possibility of freedom. It was hard to imagine that such men could be allies with them against Morris and Spider and the rest of the crew, but any assistance could have made a difference. X could see the disappointment register on his face.

“
Oui, oui, oui.
Not such good news for you two, ah? But let me introduce my fellow dogs. The mutt here, the ugly one, that is Fowler.” Fowler gestured rudely at
X. “The one who is all squares, that is Quid. There is Pickle and Xavier.” The two young men toying with the pistols looked up and raised a hand to their hats. “That one we call Pelota, and this savage here is Black Dog.” X pointed to a glowering man at his elbow. He had a stony, dark face and long straight black hair, much like Ontoquas’s, and Kitto assumed he must have been a native of the Americas. Black Dog stared at Kitto with a baleful look that made goose bumps run up his spine. He turned away.

It occurred to him as he looked over the pirates that very few of the men were European. In fact Fowler and X himself were the only two with skin as fair as his own. Pickle and Xavier were dark enough to be Africans—as were the other two men whose names Kitto had missed—Quid from the Far East perhaps, Pelota dark and indeterminate. Kitto was accustomed to seeing a variety of peoples spill off the ships that came to dock at Custom Quay in Falmouth, but never in such concentration.

Kitto and Van introduced themselves, first names only.

“Kitto,” X said, making a funny popping sound with his mouth. “I have heard this name before. What was it . . .” His puzzling ended when Fowler hailed out to a rowboat that came into view.

“Splendide!”
X said. “My Pippin has arrived.”

The jolly boat was paddled right up onto the sand, a handful of men leaping into the surf and hauling the boat the rest of the way up the beach.

“How is she?” X called, rushing for the boat. “Have you kept her watered?” The grumbling men assured him they had. “Little John, help and get poor Pippin out of zere.”

An enormous man in the boat waved back.

“You need to set the stake first,” Little John said, his accent indicating that he hailed from England, though not Cornwall. He tossed a long metal rod with a loop at one end to X, who snatched it up and walked farther up the beach with a heavy mallet.