The Tides of Avarice (16 page)

Just like Levantes, he thought, finally making the connection. It must have been this swine who killed him with a ball from one of those damned pistols.

His heart sank momentarily, then rose. Flintlock pistols fired only once before you had to refill them with gunpowder and another metal ball. Rustbane had fired twice to draw attention to his presence, and he'd been in Sylvester's open view ever since. He'd certainly not had the opportunity to reload the weapons. However fearsome a flintlock pistol might ordinarily be, just at the moment these two were completely useless to Rustbane.

“A flintlock pistol,” said Rustbane, “is the most wonderful armament ever invented. I'd be surprised if anyone ever invents a weapon wonderfuller than these two.” He smiled that disconcerting smile of his that showed a great many teeth. Too many teeth, Sylster reflected. “I imagine that it will be the last thing you ever see, young Sylvester, if you try to thwart me as I and my men make good our escape from here back to the welcoming home of the good ship Shadeblaze. You'll be looking into the pistol's muzzle, a hole that'll get bigger and bigger as you watch it, and then you'll see the dark shape of the ball, for just an instant, before—”

“You haven't let Viola go yet,” observed Sylvester.

“Oh, haven't I? You're right about that, you clever little hamster. I seem to have changed my mind about doing so.”

“Lemming.”

“Oops, so sorry. Clever little lemming. It's mighty hard to tell the difference between hamsters and lemmings. They're both small, hairy, irritating and a bit smelly.”

Sylvester stared at Rustbane, forcing himself to appear unresponsive to the insult.

The fox seemed to realize he'd lost this particular duel of wits, because his gaze dropped momentarily.

Not yet, thought Sylvester, hoping that Viola might pick up the message.

She seemed to, because she made no move. If the two of them struck prematurely, everything could be lost.

“Of course, you're assuming I will let her go,” continued the fox. “As I told you before, there's no particular reason why I should. Now that you've given me what I want, I might as well let my men have a bit of fun. It's been positively ages since they've had the chance to do any looting and pillaging.”

“You said you were a fox of honor.”

“I'm also a pirate. A pirate of honor? No, it doesn't sound right. A contradiction in terms. Besides, if Captain Terrigan Rustbane started keeping his promises of mercy, he'd stop being the most feared and dreaded fellow Sagaria's ever known. People might begin daring to speak his name without bolting all the doors and windows first.”

Sylvester winked at Viola. Get ready.

“You're a very extraordinary person,” he said to Rustbane. Keep this self-inflated fool talking about himself. It'll make what I'm going to try a bit easier. I hope. “Truly extraordinary,” he added, hoping he wasn't overbuttering the pudding of his flattery. So, the fox had never planned anything but to massacre the population of Foxglove, including Viola and, not to mention, Sylvester himself – although that seemed merely incidental at the moment. Sylvester sighed inwardly. He'd expected no better of the pirate, who was obviously a creature consumed entirely by treachery, and indeed he'd based his plan on exactly such a betrayal. Still, it was somehow disappointing to see his expectations confirmed.

“How right you are,” the fox was saying. “Truly extraordinary. A fighter without equal and a genius in the bargain. I possess powerful alchemical knowledge as well, the kind of arcane secrets that make ordinary magicians tuck in their skirts and run for the hills.”

“Is that so?” Just a few moments longer.

“It is indeed. Not for nothing do some people call me Deathflash. Or Doomslayer. Or Warhammer. Or … well, I can hardly remember all the different names people call me – not even the ones you can mention in polite company, which is by far the minority – but you can be sure most of them attest to the enormousness of my powers.”

Slowly, deliberately, making sure that Viola was observing him, Sylvester retracted one of the three claws he'd extended.

She nodded almost imperceptibly.

Message received.

One.

“You'll be in all the history books,” said Sylvester.

“Certainly, certainly. I'm the richest, greatest, most powerful and most feared pirate king Sagaria has ever known.”

Sylvester pulled in another claw.

Two.

“And because you've been good enough to acknowledge the fact, Sylvester, I'm going to grant both you and your sweetheart a quick and relatively painless death. Regarding the rest of your lemming compatriots I can't be so sure, but you two will hardly know what hit you. Isn't that kind of me?”

“Definitely.” Sylvester tried to keep the tremble out of his voice.

This is it.

He withdrew the last claw.

Three.

Now!

Obediently, Viola opened her mouth with its razor-sharp teeth and chomped down viciously on Cap'n Rustbane's hand.

There was the muffled sound of her teeth scraping on bone.

The pirate screamed – more from shock than from pain, even though the pain must have been extreme.

“You little—”

Rustbane instinctively tried to shake Viola loose.

Since this was exactly what she wanted to be, she released his paw and fled like the wind. For the moment the cutthroats were too stunned by the suddenness of what had happened to pursue her.

Just as Sylvester had hoped and prayed, the other part of his plan came right as well.

Rustbane dropped the map.

It fluttered awkwardly as it began to fall.

With a skill he hadn't known he possessed, Sylvester plucked it out of the air.

Then he, too, was fleeing, in the opposite direction from the one Viola had taken.

“Get after them!” shrieked Rustbane in fury.

His ruffians started to obey, but still their movements were sluggish. Sylvester had darted down an alley before the first of the pirates had begun to give chase.

Thoughts raced pell-mell through his mind, scampering faster even than his feet beneath him.

Okay, what next?

His forward planning had gotten him as far ahead as this moment, but no further. In truth, he never thought he'd get this far without being spitted on a pirate sword. It was a surprise to him he was still alive.

He needed to put the map somewhere where he, and only he, could retrieve it. He knew in a general sense where that somewhere was. Where his planning had faltered was in determining the particular location he should make for.

On a warm day like today, there weren't all that many possibilities to choose from in Foxglove.

If, in fact, there were any at all.

The sound of his running footsteps and frantic breathing, for a brief period, had seemed to fill the world but were now inaudible due to the racket made by his pursuers. He daren't slow down long enough to glance back over his shoulder, but it sounded as if there must be about a hundred of them, each swearing and shouting more than the next, each wearing hefty hobnailed boots that made the echoes ring.

Sylvester found that, without any decision on his part, his feet were taking him in the general direction of Doctor Nettletree's surgery.

He grinned grimly to himself.

Come to think of it, that's as likely a place as any to find what I need.

The question was, could he keep ahead of his pursuers for long enough? They seemed very close on his heels. On the other hand, he was young and relatively fit, and he didn't spend each and every day sozzling himself in grog.

And he wasn't wearing those heavy boots the pirates seemed to think were so fashionable.

He thanked Lhaeminguas, even though he no longer believed in the Great Spirit, that Rustbane still hadn't had time to reload either of his flintlocks. Cutlasses and cudgels could be outrun but not, Sylvester imagined, bullets.

Then he remembered that a couple of the vandals at work in the town square had been carrying crossbows.

He sobbed in despair and tried to force his feet to sprint even faster than they already were.

Yet no crossbow bolt came whizzing in his direction. Cap'n Rustbane's shout rose above the racket made by his fellow pursuers, which revealed why.

“Seize him!” yelled Cap'n Rustbane. “I want him alive, I tell you. I want to be the one to send the little maggot to perdition.”

Exactly how Sylvester reached Doctor Nettletree's cottage he could never remember afterwards, but he managed it. The motley rabble in pursuit could not have been more than twenty yards behind him as he turned into the little path that led up to the door.

Usually Sylvester would have knocked. Today, he simply barged through the door, blasting it from its hinges.

As he staggered across the little reception area he had a dizzying glimpse of Nurse O'Reilly rising from her post with a look of thunder on her hatchet face.

Of Doctor Nettletree there was no sign.

Nurse O'Reilly might be exactly what's called for here today, Sylvester told himself, amazed he was still capable of coherent thought.

But Nurse O'Reilly chose not to focus her bullying fury where it might have been useful, which was on the pirates who were milling around the front garden. Instead, she turned wrathfully on Sylvester.

“You, young Lemmington hoodlum! I always knew you'd come to no good!”

“Which side are you on?” gasped Sylvester.

“What do you mean by that?”

“I'm trying to save Foxglove!”

She snorted. “A likely—”

Her voice was silenced forever by the pirate blade that stabbed into the base of her back and ripped ruthlessly upward to her neck.

Sylvester closed his eyes as Nurse O'Reilly's blood spurted.

For all the wrong reasons, she's managed to do just what I wanted her to do, give me an extra few seconds before those murderers reached me. She has not sacrificed her life in vain. In time to come, Foxglove may remember her as a hero, a martyr.

Even so, those few seconds might not be long enough.

At the back of the reception area there was a wall. At the center of the wall was a hearth where the doctor generally kept a fire going, except on the hottest of days. It served two purposes. Firstly, for his patients who arrived shivering with fever and, secondly, to provide an immediately available, if somewhat rudimentary, means of sterilizing his various needles and knives. The joke around town was that it was Nurse O'Reilly who kept the fire going because it reminded her of home.

Sylvester felt a catch in his throat. There'd be no more jokes about Nurse O'Reilly, not after today.

Mercifully, there were no patients waiting to see the doctor. That was one less factor for Sylvester to have to consider. The doctor must still be out making his daily rounds. Perhaps he'd been caught up in the melee surrounding the town square, although Sylvester hadn't noticed him there.

Getting here, Sylvester had had the advantage of knowing all the nooks and crannies of Foxglove fairly well, whereas the pirates were operating in a town that was unknown to them. So much had been a part of his hastily cobbled together plan. Now he was here in Doctor Nettletree's surgery he discovered another advantage he had, one that he hadn't foreseen.

The reception area, like the rest of the cottage, was built for creatures the size of lemmings.

Most of the pirates chasing Sylvester were much larger creatures.

Only a few could fit themselves into this room. Even fewer because of Nurse O'Reilly's sprawled, still-bleeding corpse.

One of those few was, of course, Cap'n Rustbane.

The gray fox had to round his shoulders and tuck his head in under the ceiling in order to be able to stand upright. His tricorn hat had been lost somewhere along the way. Or maybe, recognizing where Sylvester was leading them, the crafty pirate had flung it to one side.

Rustbane, despite the discomfort of his stance, was wearing that fang-packed leer of his. He was holding an evil-looking dark-bladed dagger in one forepaw, and an equally evil-looking bright-bladed rapier in the other.

“This is the end of the line for you, you scurvy lubber,” he sneered. “Give me the map, and you've still got the chance of an easy death.”

Sylvester gave what he hoped was a reckless laugh.

“Stare defeat in the throat, scoundrel!”

He reached out the paw that was holding the crumpled map and—

Thwokkk!

Sylvester hadn't seen Rustbane's arm move, yet the dagger that had been in the pirate's left paw was now embedded deep in the wood of the wall . . . neatly pinning the sleeve of Sylvester's jacket.

He couldn't move his arm, no matter how hard he tugged. The pirate had thrown his knife so that the sharp edge of the blade was downward, so that Sylvester couldn't even use the sharpness to cut himself free.

“Please accept my apologies, young fellow,” said Cap'n Rustbane suavely. “I didn't mean to miss you.”

One of the pirates jammed into the room behind him cackled.

Oh yes you did, thought Sylvester. That dagger went exactly where you wanted it to go, to the nearest fraction of an inch. If you'd wanted me dead, I'd be standing here with that blade right through my windpipe or my heart. You want to take your time disposing of me, don't you? But first you want to make sure the map is safe.

Summoning up a huge effort, Sylvester suddenly threw himself backwards along the wall, away from the dagger that pinned the cloth of his sleeve.

There was a tremendous rrrrriiipppp and the seam of his jacket's shoulder tore apart. Still clutching the map firmly in his paw, Sylvester hauled his arm out of the tube of cloth, ignoring the pain as he scraped his flesh across the sharp blade.