The Tides of Avarice (38 page)

Jeopord shook a paw as if shaking a fly off it. “The lemmings aren't of any consequence, Bellowguts,” he said. “You ask me, they're just another of the old buzzard's distractions. Summat to keep the hearties busy so they'll forget there's still no more of a sign of Adamite's treasure than ever there was.”

Bellowguts sniggered, wiping his nose on the back of his paw. “Still an' all, Rustbane'll not let them escape. He don't not never let no one escape, he don't.”

Jeopord guffawed. “Sure as rain is rain, you've got that right, me old faceache!”

The two pirates laughed long and loud together, though for the life of him Sylvester couldn't see what was so all-fired funny.

“But, truly,” said Jeopord at last, drying his eyes much as Bellowguts had wiped his nose, “the lemmings needn't concern us. And, by the time we're done with him, Rustbane won't be bothering them either.”

Again the two cutthroats gave themselves up to laughter.

“Seriously, though,” said Bellowguts eventually, “what if something should go wrong? There's been times a-plenty folk 'ave tried to put an end to Rustbane's charmed existence, and all of 'em have found theyselves swingin' from the yardarm while diverse bits of they's anatomy is already feedin' the fishes.”

“Not this time, me old blaggard, not this time,” replied Jeopord, rubbing the side of his nose with an evilly long claw. “You mark my words on that.”

“Ye so sure?”

“Aye, I'm sure. There be fifty of us, maybe twice that, and Rustbane, damn his eyes, is growing old. He ain't half the fox he used to be, and that was even afore his vision went all cloudy over this tomfoolery about the magical chest of the Zindars.”

“Ye don't think there's any such thing, do ye, eh, Jeopord?”

There was something in Bellowguts's eyes that told Sylvester the raccoon knew a bit more about the treasure than Jeopord thought he did. If the ocelot saw that cunning little light, he paid it no attention.

“A bit o' mythology, mate,” said Jeopord. “That's all it is, a bit o' mythology.”

Sylvester, still watching Bellowguts's eyes, saw something change as decisively as if a switch had been turned from on to off, and wondered if he'd just observed Jeopord's death sentence being signed. The ocelot was not nearly so clever as he thought he was, and the raccoon far cleverer.

Aside from that little flicker in the eyes, Bellowguts gave no sign he was anything but Jeopord's gullible acolyte.

“When are ye going ter brief the crew, Jeopord?”

“When I'm good and ready, is when.” The ocelot put the heel of his paw on his cutlass's pommel and strutted up and down the little clearing where the two had paused. “This ain't going to be a plan that gangs agley because too many people know about it ahead o' time, oh no it ain't, not with good old Jeopord in charge o' things, it ain't.”

Before he could stop himself, Sylvester let out a tiny hiss of disbelief at the pirate's vanity.

“What was that noise?” said Jeopord, stopping suddenly mid-strut.

“I 'eard nothin'.” Bellowguts's reply was very quiet, dangerously so. Already his own sword was in his hand, its tip dancing a menacingly casual dance in the air in front of him.

“A hissing noise,” said Jeopord. His sword was circling in the air too, as his gaze searched the foliage around him.

Rasco and Sylvester stayed as still as stone, not daring even to breathe.

“It came from … from over 'ere, I think.” The ocelot's eyes seemed to focus on the chubby leaf directly in front of Sylvester's nose.

Cutlass raised on high, Jeopord pounced forward.

Sylvester shut his eyes tight, expecting this moment to be his last.

He waited for the blow to fall.

It never did.

At least, not on him.

There was a swwwiiiissssh as something whistled through the air next to his face, almost close enough to take off a few whiskers, and then there was a commotion just a few inches from where his toes lay quivering in the jungle mulch.

“Got it!” crowed Jeopord loudly, the shout sending brightly colored birds high above into a new cacophony of chattering and squawking.

With a courage he'd never known he possessed, Sylvester managed to prize one eye open.

Back in the center of the clearing, Jeopord, cutlass back in its scabbard, was proudly holding aloft the two dripping halves of a serpent that was as thick as one of his own arms and twice as long as one of his legs.

“Told you I'd heard something,” the first mate informed Bellowguts triumphantly.

“A snake,” said the raccoon.

“And not just any old snake.” The ocelot laughed. “Don't you recognize the markings?”

From where Sylvester crouched trembling, the markings of the dead creature seemed as gaudy as the plumage of the jungle birds.

The raccoon peered. “Nope.”

“That's a yellow-headed colonswallower, that is.”

“It is?”

“Nastiest reptile in the whole jungle.”

The raccoon looked suitably impressed.

“Yes,” said Jeopord with affected casualness, casting the two halves of the snake away from him in opposite directions. Where they landed in the greenery there was a sudden commotion as jungle creatures moved in swiftly to fight over the fresh carrion. “It tends to lurk in latrines, that's the place it likes to haunt the most, and when it sees its opportunity it moves like a streaking arrow and buries itself, all unnoticed, right inside a fellow.”

Bellowguts gulped. “Ye mean it . . .?”

Jeopord gave him a long, significant look. “Like a terrier down a rabbit's burrow.”

Bellowguts gulped again, this time violently enough that Sylvester heard it distinctly. “An' then?”

“Slowly, over weeks, or maybe even months, it gobbles him up from the inside out!”

Sylvester had never seen a green-faced raccoon before. He did now.

“I'm gonna wear two pairs of trousers in future,” muttered Bellowguts, looking around him suspiciously.

“Good idea.”

“Three.”

“Even better.”

“Ah, Jeopord?”

“Yes?”

“Why did ye want to … call this meeting?”

“Because you are my best and most trusted fellow conspirator, o' course, Bellowguts.”

“Ye said ye had something ye wanted to talk about.”

“I did. I do.”

“Well, we ain't talked about it yet.”

“We haven't? Why, yes, Bellowguts, you're perfectly correct. What I wanted to talk about with you was … this.”

Faster than the eye could see, Jeopord's cutlass was back out of its scabbard and moving in a screeching arc toward the raccoon's exposed throat. Bellowguts reached for his own weapon but, too late, too late! The tip of Jeopord's blade seemed merely to nick the flesh of his crewmate's furry neck, but there was a sudden fountain of blood.

The ocelot stepped back sharply as, making a hideous bubbling noise through his torn throat, the raccoon slowly collapsed forward.

In an instant it was all over, and Bellowguts's body was still. The stillness of death. All that moved was the pool of blood in which the dead raccoon lay, its surface rippling in a small breeze that shifted sluggishly among the densely packed trees. The scent of blood's sticky saltiness was strong in the air.

“Thought you'd sell me out to the skipper, did you?” said Jeopord to the corpse at his feet. “Thought you could be his spy among us, then betray us at the last possible moment after we'd cast our die? Well, this is what happens to traitors. Just be thankful, wherever you are, I didn't have the opportunity to take me time over it and give yers a proper send-off from this scurvy life.”

He drew back his foot to kick the dead raccoon, then obviously thought better of it. Instead, he wiped off his blade on some grass until it was shiny again, and put the weapon back in his belt. He gave off the air of one satisfied by a job well done.

But not completely done, not quite yet.

“I hear you!” cried Jeopord, turning slowly in a circle, addressing his words to the riot of vegetation on all sides. “I hear you!”

For a moment, Sylvester thought the pirate must be speaking to Rasco and himself, must have known all along that the quivering smaller creatures were spying on everything that had been happening, but no.

“You out there,” the ocelot called. “You carrion-eaters. I know yer watching. Come here and have yer fill. Come and get rid of me evidence for me.”

There was a rustling in the bushes, lots of rustlings in lots of bushes. The wild creatures of the jungles were waiting only for Jeopord to leave them alone with their meal.

And, if the dead raccoon didn't provide enough to sate their appetites, to what else might they look as provender?

“We best get out of here,” whispered Rasco.

“I was thinking the same thing.”

They both eyed the ocelot's back, willing him to leave quicker. He was clearly unaware of their mental urgings, because he sauntered slowly from the clearing, his forepaws hooked into his belt, whistling softly to himself as if he hadn't a care in the world.

“Get a move on,” said Sylvester under his breath.

At last, Jeopord was out of sight. The rustling around them grew louder.

“You know where the gals are, mon?” said Rasco.

“You know I don't.”

“We best find 'em.”

“We had.”

In the end they didn't have to find Viola and Mrs. Pickleberry – the two female lemmings found them.

“Did you see that?” said Viola, her eyes saucer-wide, as she ran into Sylvester's arms. “That … that brute just murdered the poor raccoon.”

“I'm not certain the ‘poor raccoon' was exactly a little innocent,” murmured Sylvester, but not very loudly, not loudly enough for Viola to hear, in fact. It felt good having her in his arms and her head on his shoulder, and there was nothing he was going to do to end that situation sooner than he had to.

Then his eye fell on the corpse of Bellowguts. Already the sight of it was largely obscured by the clouds of fat, shiny black flies that had descended upon it. A couple of small creatures had dared to slither out of the undergrowth, their beady eyes intent on the raccoon's flesh. They seemed to have teeth larger than the rest of their bodies. Holding Viola tight was a luxury he'd have to save for later.

“Let's go!” he cried.

Mrs. Pickleberry was staring at him askance. “And none too soon, if you ask me.”

“Um, yes,” said Sylvester self-consciously, gently pushing Viola away.

“Sheesk!” said Rasco.

The single syllable summarized it all.

With the black mouse in the lead once more, the little party resumed their trek through the dense jungle growth. Viola was directly behind Rasco, then Mrs. Pickleberry with Sylvester taking up the rear.

I suppose I should be glad Rustbane's facing a mutiny, Sylvester told himself, holding up a paw to deflect a whippy branch that seemed determined to crack him across the face. I suppose I should be glad that soon the murderous scoundrel will be walking the plank. Yet … somehow I can't make myself feel good about it. Yes, Rustbane's cruel and despicable and he's got more blood on his paws than a thousand tyrants, but he's also something more than that.

Sylvester's thoughts ran back to the time he'd spent with the gray fox in the cabin aboard the Shadeblaze. Somehow, Rustbane had seemed as much at home in that book-lined place as he did when he was swaggering across the deck of a pirate ship, condemning some poor mortal to an excruciating death. It's as if there are two people inside him, but one of them's hardly ever allowed to show his face.

Phew, but it was hot here in the jungle. Even though it was still early in the day, the air was like that in front of a just-opened oven door. Sylvester felt as if he were in danger of being cooked alive. It was difficult to walk and think at the same time in this baking heat, especially when the ground underfoot was a treacherous maze of snaking roots and grasping grasses, all of them eager to trip up an unwary lemming and send him sprawling.

Perhaps I should try to work out some way of warning Cap'n Rustbane of what's going to happen?

Without having made any conscious decision to do so, Sylvester found he'd paused on the track and was leaning against a conveniently situated tree trunk.

Idly, he wondered how long he'd been here.

And where the others might have gotten to.

He was on his own.

Snakes.

Lizards.

Poisonous insects.

Wild carnivores.

“How much longer?” he wailed.

Quite a lot longer, mon, if you're proposing to just lean against a dead tree until a boa constrictor comes along to ingestify you.” Rasco's voice, coming from thick undergrowth almost next to Sylvester's ear, startled the lemming. He kept his balance with difficulty as he pushed himself away from the tree.

“Don't creep up on me like that,” he hissed.

Rasco made the sound of a shrug. “There was no creeping up involved, mon. You were looking to me like someone who done fallen asleep with his eyes wide open.”

“I was?”

Now Rasco stepped daintily out of the vegetation, dropping from a gnarled but hideously fecund-looking root onto the mushy forest floor. “You were.”

“Where are the others?”

“Waiting for us.” Rasco indicated, with a twitch of his nose, the jungle behind him. “Waiting in a small clearing where the insects buzz as they decide which bit of you to bite next, and where that log in the swamp could as easily be an alligator as a log, only you'll never find out until you trustingly put your foot on it. That kind of waiting.”

“We'd better join them at once, hadn't we?” said Sylvester, looking anxiously from one side to the other, as if an enemy could spring out at them any moment.

Rasco sighed. “I was hoping you'd say that. Come on now.”

Heart pounding, Sylvester followed the mouse through a maze of snaking greenery until finally, just as Rasco had described it, they came into a clearing where Viola and Mrs. Pickleberry stood. Neither of the females was displaying much by way of patience.

Mrs. Pickleberry was the first to notice their arrival. “You've found the stupid dope, have you?” she rasped.

“He had discovered something of interest,” Rasco lied smoothly. He clearly subscribed to the notion that males should stick together in self-defense against the onslaughts of the supposedly weaker sex.

Viola gazed at Sylvester. “He'd discovered the sheen on a leaf or the sparkle on a butterfly's wing, you mean.” The expression on her face finally opted for affection rather than exasperation. “Just my luck to fall for one of life's natural-born dreamers.”

“I'll have you know—” Sylvester began.

“Leave it,” whispered Rasco behind him. “You're ahead at the moment. Anything else you say's only going to dig you deeper into trouble, mon. Call her your darling honeybunch and be quick about it.”

Sylvester wondered how old Rasco was. It was always difficult to tell with mice. He seemed to know much more about the ways of the world than Sylvester did himself, and to be so much wiser in them.

“Now that we have all had a rest,” said Rasco, blithely ignoring the fact that he himself had not, “I suggest we push on as fast as we can. There is much of the day still to pass, yet we are a mighty long way from the home of Madame Zahnia, and I would not wish to be still out in the jungle wilds after darkness has fallen and the nighttime creatures have become … ravenous. Do the rest of you have opinions on this matter?”

The lemmings let their feet do the talking. They scrambled to make as much haste as possible.

After an hour or so had passed, Sylvester began to notice a strange sound. Well, all the sounds in the jungle seemed pretty strange to him, and there were a heck of a lot of them to be shocked and bamboozled by: the screeches of birds that were rarely seen as anything more than a brightly colored blur out of the corner of his eye, the ghastly screams of small animals as they fell prey to larger ones, the lugubrious plop plop plop of unseen nectar dropping from high leaves onto lower ones, and so on. But this new sound, which seemed to be coming from somewhere ahead of them and yet at the same time to fill the jungle in all directions was, well, different.

He and Rasco were sitting on a branch waiting for the two Pickleberries to reappear from yet another foray into the darker depths for purposes unstated yet perfectly obvious.

“What is that noise?” said Sylvester.

“That is veggie music, mon ami.”

“‘Veggie music'?”

“Veggie music.”

Sylvester nodded and for a few moments said nothing more. Then he realized the mouse's answer had explained exactly nothing to him.

“What in the world is veggie music, Rasco?”

“Music made with vegetables, o' course.”

A few more moments passed. Then Sylvester realized, once more, that he was no wiser than he'd been earlier.

“Could you perhaps explain that a bit more fully, my friend?” he said.

Rasco started, as if his thoughts had been far away. “Oh, OK. See, Sylvester, the instruments are all made from dried vegetables, gourds and things. Our people hollow them out, then dry them until they're hard as wood, or maybe they do the drying first and the hollowing after, I'm not sure. I'm not so much of a musician myself. Whatever, once you got these hard, hollowed, dried-out fruits and veggies, you can make drums out of them, or put strings on them, or you can …”

Sylvester wasn't really interested in the details. What was important was that the source of the rhythmic, pounding music seemed to be not too far away from them.

“Does this mean we're close to where your Grandma Zahnia lives?” he demanded.

“Sure does,” said Rasco, shifting on the branch. “In fact, I'm wondering where those womenfolk of yours might've gotten themselves to. Could be they've run into some of my kin. Be a bit embarrassing for them, I guess, if they've got their knick—”

“Sorry to have been so long,” said Mrs. Pickleberry, appearing suddenly beside him. “Viola found a toad.”

Sylvester was as underinformed by this as he had been by Rasco's explanations earlier. He thought about it briefly, but decided not to inquire any further. Whatever it was that had gone on between Viola and the toad didn't seem to have done her any harm. She put her arm through his and smiled brightly.

“How far do you think we have left to go?” said Sylvester, directing the question toward the mouse.

“You can see the village from here,” replied Rasco, grinning.

The three lemmings looked ahead but could see nothing.

“Where are all the houses?” said Sylvester.

Rasco's grin broadened even further, if such a thing were possible. “I can see them. You should be able to as well.”

Then Sylvester did see the houses. His jaw dropped open.

“Look,” he said softly, nudging Viola and pointing.

She obeyed. “Wow,” she breathed.

Their mistake had been to look for the village on the ground.

At first, Sylvester had thought the trees around here must be infested by unusually large spiders which had slung their webs from one branch to another and from one tree to another, and built big nests here and there in the crooks between branches. But, as he squinted against the bright flares of sunlight that stabbed through the jungle foliage above, he realized this first impression had been wrong. Those weren't nests, they were well-constructed wooden houses, perched precariously among the high canopy. And those thin strands weren't as thin as he'd thought – they were vines, placed as bridges to link the various parts of what was quite an extensive habitation. Along the vine bridges scuttled small dark shapes that he could barely distinguish from here.

Sylvester glanced sidelong at Rasco. Mice. That was what those quickly moving shapes must be. Lots of mice, just like their guide. They must have found Rasco's people at last.

One of the houses was larger than the others and sat a little apart from the others. As Sylvester stared at it, Rasco saw the direction of his gaze and said with a chuckle, “That's my grandma's house. Madame Zahnia's house. Welcome to Ouwinju. She'll be looking forward to seeing you.”

Sylvester looked skeptically upward. It seemed a very long way indeed from where he stood to that wooden house in the sky. “But … but how are we going to get up there?” he asked.

Rasco winked at him. “Easy. We're going to climb.”

“Climb?”

“That's what I just said, my friend.”

Before Sylvester could ask him for any more details, Rasco put two claws to his mouth and let out a piercing whistle.

Above, all the moving shapes abruptly froze and Sylvester could sense that he and his friends were now subject to the scrutiny of hundreds of small, beady eyes.

Then the mice slowly resumed their business.

Not all of them, though.

“'Zat you, Rasco, y'old stinkyguts?”

“Sure is, Gasbag. You gonna let me come up an' see my grandma?”

“She got better things ta do 'an see a bumhead like you, no?”

“You want your features readjusted?”

There was a fusillade of crazed laughter from the mouse hanging upside-down under a liana a dizzying distance overhead. “You been takin' bodybuildin' classes?”

“Don't need to, a little runt like you.”

“Yah-ha!”

“How long is this going to go on?” said Viola in a world-weary voice. “We could always turn around and throw ourselves on the mercy of the good folk of Hangman's Haven.”

“Who're yer friends?” Gasbag called down.

“Three lemmings, need to see Zahnia.”

“Lemmings?”

“That's what I just said. Lemmings.”

“They too big for up here, man.”

Sylvester privately agreed with Gasbag's assessment. The vine bridges and little wooden houses were all designed for mice, not for much larger and heavier creatures like lemmings. That was an important part of the village's defenses against invaders, he reasoned. Larger animals trying to make an attack would soon find themselves plummeting toward the ground in the midst of a cloud of splintery debris.

Gasbag cackled again, even longer and louder than before, and it was clear he'd just been making a joke. A moment later, he hurled something down toward the group on the ground. Sylvester flinched as the dark object unpeeled itself through the air until one end slapped into the sludge just a couple of paces away from where he and his friends stood.

A rope ladder.

A rope ladder designed for mice.

As Sylvester looked at the too-narrow, too-closely spaced rungs, he felt his stomach beginning to mount what promised to be a full-scale war of resistance.

“I … am … not … climbing … that,” said Mrs. Pickleberry, speaking Sylvester's own thoughts aloud.

Bless you, Daphne!

“Oh, I don't know,” Viola chirped. “It could be rather fun.”

“Nope. No way. No how. Not a thing a lady should be doin'.”

“But, Mo-om—”

“Little flibbertigibbet.”

“Mom!”

“No better than you hadn't oughter be!”

Viola snorted and reached for the ladder. Within moments, she was hauling herself up it, an expression of grim determination on her face as she spun and swung crazily. From far above there was the sound of a branch creaking in protest.

“Hey, mon!” wailed Gasbag. “You done sent the fat one first!”

Viola climbed with even greater resolution. Sylvester would not like to be in Gasbag's shoes when she reached the top.

He was startled out of his aghast reverie by a chuckle.

Mrs. Pickleberry was giggling.

“How on earth did she get up that fast?”

“Young fellow,” she said, face covered in smiles, “you got a lot to learn about the best ways of handling that daughter o' mine. You ask her all sweet and kind to do something, you can be asking away until the sun's gone to bed and the moon's high in the sky and still Viola won't have moved so much as a hair. But you tell her she's on no account to do something, and it's done afore ye've had time to turn around. We'd never have persuaded her to climb up to this Zahnia person's lodgin's, but she gets strict orders from her crusty old ma to keep her feet firmly on the ground an' she's off up that ladder like a rat up a drainpipe, she is. See?”

Mrs. Pickleberry jerked a thumb skyward. Viola had already reached the branch where Gasbag awaited and was now looking, so far as Sylvester could discern from the ground, somewhat seasick. Perhaps the mouse would live to see another day after all.

There was only one problem, so far as Sylvester was concerned, with the stratagem Mrs. Pickleberry had deployed.

It meant that he was going to have to climb that rope ladder as well.

“Er, after you,” he said to Mrs. Pickleberry, bowing slightly and gesturing with a paw toward where the lower end of the ladder jigged and hopped.

“You gotta be kidding.”

“But—”

“And have the likes of you lookin' up me skirts? Dream on, buster.”

“But—”

“Better just go, mon.” They'd both forgotten briefly about Rasco. “If I had known what pains in the neck lemmings could be, I would have left you all to your fate in the basement of The Monkey's Curse.”

“It's not that we mean—” Sylvester began.

Rasco gestured at him impatiently. “Go, dimwit.”

Climbing a rope ladder isn't as bad as I'd expected it would be, Sylvester told himself a little while later. He kept his gaze focused on the rung directly in front of his nose and remembered the immortal dictum: whatever you do, just don't look down. This is all going rather well. So far.

“You're supposed to take your feet off the ground, you daft lummock,” said Mrs. Pickleberry savagely, “not just stand there holding the ladder to stop yourself fallin' over.”

“Ah, yes,” replied Sylvester. “Just, ah, testing it, see?”

He tugged the side of the ladder as if to reassure himself it would take his weight.

Behind him, Mrs. Pickleberry gave a girlish shriek. “Oh, no! It's that poisonous snake from the pub basement!”

“Hello,” said Gasbag, helping Sylvester pull himself up the last little way onto the branch beside Viola. “You got here quick.”

“Ahem, yes,” said Sylvester, attaining his balance and patting his chest clear of imaginary dust. “Climbing. Yes. Nothing like it, is there? Excellent sport. Something of a specialty among we Lemmingtons. I remember there was an uncle of mine, or was it a great-uncle? I always get conf—”