The two sat up a little straighter, and their simultaneous “Aye, aye, sir,” was more emphatic.
“Good. I always knew I had the best crew in the fleet.”
As we strode down the dock toward solid land, I noticed something and asked, “What’s that?”
A dozen ships were blocked off from the rest of the harbor by red buoys connected by stout chains. Armed men stood along the waterfront, isolating these vessels from land. None had any visible damage, or crew.
“There’s the Mellow Wine,” Jane said, pointing.
I recognized the abandoned ship we’d encountered before. “Are all those ghost ships, then?”
“Maybe that’s what everyone is-” Suddenly Clift stopped, staring at one of the ships behind the quarantine line.
Jane said, “What is it?”
“The Indigo Ray, ” Clift said in disbelief. “She’s one of ours. A pirate hunter.”
The ship he indicated had the same general lines as the Red Cow, but was painted dark colors to better suit her name. Clift headed toward her, only to have one of the guards move to block his way.
“Sorry, Cap’n Clift,” the guard said. “Nobody goes aboard. Harbormaster’s orders.”
“Who brought in the Indigo Ray?”
“I can’t really say. You’ll have to talk to the harbormaster.”
“Was she one of the ghost ships?”
The guard looked at his fellows, then leaned closer. “D’you remember me, Cap’n? Ah, well, no matter. You gave me a fair shake once when you didn’t have to, and I remember it. The Copper Lance brought in the Ray. She was found empty and adrift, just like the others. ’Tis one thing to have a cargo vessel overtook, but first naval warships, then one of the pirate hunters…” He shook his head. “Now no one will leave the harbor.”
“Anyone mention a strange mark left on them?” I interjected.
He looked at me suspiciously. “What sort of a mark?”
“A double X,” Clift said.
The guard turned his attention back to the captain. “Aye, I’ve heard rumors of that. Haven’t seen it myself. On the door to the captain’s cabin, they say.”
“Where’s the captain of the Lance?”
“No idea, Cap’n. Try the harbormaster, if you can get through the crowd.”
“Thanks, Mr.-?”
“Weston, sir.”
“Weston. Sorry, I don’t recall when we met.”
“Only one of us has to, sir.”
“We’ll not get answers here,” Clift said to us. He marched down the dock with such purpose that people instinctively stepped aside. We almost ran to keep up.
At the end of the dock stood a huge sign welcoming people to Blefuscola in a dozen different languages. The town’s motto was also repeated multiple times: “A safe place for all ships in need.”
That noble sentiment was balanced by the most godawful smell I’ve ever encountered outside a privy. I’d acclimated to the ship’s odors, to the point that the piss barrel didn’t even register on me anymore, but this was about a million times worse. Unwashed bodies, mud, urine, and rotting garbage contributed to a wave of aroma that made my stomach roil. Even Jane wrinkled her nose.
“Overcrowding,” she said. “There’s usually only about a tenth this many people here.”
“What do they want?” I asked.
“Safety. Protection. Answers.”
“I want answers, too,” Clift snapped in annoyance. “And we won’t find them cowering here, put off by a little stink.”
Those ashore who noticed us did not look happy to see us, and turned away as soon as we made eye contact. Our progress was significantly slowed by a crowd gathered in front of one of the little buildings to hear a wild-voiced man pontificate on something. We couldn’t avoid his harangue as we worked our way around.
“It was a cable’s length long, from maw to tail tip. And it came roaring out of the dark, with one big baleful eye. Whoosh! We’re smashed in to starboard. Wham! We’re crushed to port. And then, it come up amidships, tore away our masts, and sunk us. Thirty good and true sailor men, drowned and dead.”
The crowd murmured.
“And whatever is behind these ghost ships is part of the same vile family! I tell ye, it probably flies down and snatches the folks off the deck before they even know what’s coming! Flies out of the sun, I bet ye, like an eagle snaring a field mouse.”
“Flying monsters,” Clift said disdainfully, then added loudly, “Flies out of your goddamn liquor jug, maybe!”
“And who might you be?” the old man demanded.
“Someone who has sense enough to know there’s no flying one-eyed monsters out there. If your ship sank, friend, I’d be looking at the captain first; maybe he just can’t read a map, and decided a monster was a better cause than a reef he didn’t spot in time.”
I said nothing, but recalled vividly a cave in the hills above Neceda where I faced the last of the fire-breathing dragons. So I wasn’t so quick to reject the idea out of hand.
“You!” someone else cried. We looked around. A peglegged sailor hobbled through the mud toward us, using the shoulders of others in the crowd for balance. When he reached us, the one-legged man said, “You’re from the bloody AntiFreebooters, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Clift said guardedly.
“Then why are you here? Why aren’t you out there finding the villains who did this?”
“And who are you?” Clift challenged. “Doesn’t look like any of you are in a position to call another man coward.”
This raised some hackles in the crowd. I leaned close to Jane and said, “Should we expect a fight?” She shrugged, but surreptitiously moved away to guard the captain’s other blind spot. I folded my arms, which put my hand near my sword hilt.
“We’re not fighting men, you cur,” peg leg said. “We pay taxes and tariffs so your kind will do that dirty work. So why aren’t you out there?”
We were now the focus of the crowd’s ire, and they closed in around us. The fight would be long, and we’d take a lot of them with us, but eventually they’d have us by sheer numbers. I saw the muscles in Jane’s shoulders flex as she got ready.
Clift walked up to peg leg, looked him up and down, and then slapped him so hard, he fell to the mud.
“You stinking, bilge-sucking son of a bitch!” he yelled. “You want to pick a fight with me, get up and do it! I won’t stand for your slander.” He looked at the crowd. “What about the rest of you? Any of you feel lucky?”
When no one responded, he looked down at peg leg. “I just arrived in this stink-hole. I don’t have a clue what’s happening with these ghost ships, but by heaven, I’ll make a ghost of the next man who calls me a coward.” He yanked peg leg to his feet… well, foot. “Go sign aboard my ship, the Red Cow. Tell them Captain Dylan Clift sent you personally. Then when we find the source of these attacks, you can be right there to see for yourself. If your balls hang low enough for the job, that is.”
Peg leg wrenched free and disappeared back into the crowd. Clift glared around us, his gaze hot enough to make the crowd retreat wherever it fell. In moments, no one looked our way at all.
He turned to us and said, “That was fun.” I think he meant it.
People got out of our way even faster as we continued into town, the muddy street sucking at our boots. We reached a small building with a sign out front that announced, again in a dozen languages, that the man inside was both the town magistrate and the harbormaster. A crowd waited outside, while within, a dozen other captains shouted at one another. Clift pushed through them to the desk, where an old man with long white hair sat, a quill and inkwell before him.
“I’m Captain Dylan Clift of the Red Cow, ” he announced. “I need to see the harbormaster.”
The old man barely looked up. “Take a seat, wait your turn.” “I’m a pirate hunter, I get priority,” Clift said.
“Not today, you don’t. All those ships in the harbor? The captain of every one of them is ahead of you.”
Clift leaned down. “I don’t think you heard me. We get priority.”
