Authors: George Bryan Polivka
Oh, he could hear it.
“I'll be true to you, Delaney, true for a lifetime.” She'd said that to him. Just that way.
“That's a long, long time,” he had answered, and his answer was a question, Did she really mean it?
“True for a lifetime,” she repeated.
A true lang time.
But he had left her anyway. Hadn't dealt her away, as did Wentworth, but left her out cold all the same. Delaney felt a heave start inside him, and shook his head to clear it. But it didn't come from his head. So he
took a deep, full breath, and then another. What was he doing, getting all weepy? How was that going to save him?
But there was nowhere else for his thoughts to go. Why did it all seem to mean so much, and yet there was so little point at the end?
A rustle in the forest to Delaney's right, to the south of his post, caught his attention. This time something was moving through the tangled underbrush. Or someone. The tops of fronds waved, and he could trace the movement all the way to the ground below them.
“Ahoy there!” Delaney called out, wiping water from the corner of his eyes. “Can ye hear me?”
The tangle went quiet and still.
“Ye there or ain't ye?”
Nothing.
Delaney watched for a while, then gave up and studied the sky through the gap in the foliage above him. It was still bright blue. Dusk was yet hours away. He studied the
Chompers
instead, still easily visible, though most of them were no longer in direct sunlight. He looked down past them and found he could no longer see the bone pile at the bottom of his post. On the surface of the pond, the line of shadow had moved ten feet away, inching steadily toward the eastern lip of the lagoon. Time turned onward. He looked back to the undergrowth, still saw no movement, heard no rustle.
“Fine, lie still then,” he said aloud. He knew it was probably just a critter of some sort. And even if it was a person, it was likely a Hant, and Hants knew better than to wrestle food from their
Onka Din Botlay
. If it was a Hant, he'd only come to check on the blaggard, the doomed, and the doorway through which he would soon pass.
Suddenly Delaney realized he hadn't been thinking of ideas. He'd gotten his water, but those idea tomatoes hadn't come. Unlessâ¦unless this was the time. Maybe there was something he could do with that rustle in the reeds.
“Tell ye what,” he said loudly to the quiet spot on the shore, “get me outta here and I'll get you all the
andowinnie
ye can drink!” He waited.
No response.
He thought some more. “How about I take ye to Nearing Vast with me,” he offered. “There ye'll learn a thing or two about living! I mean real living, with beds and baths andâ¦and pubs!” He thought about explaining a pub, but gave up. Too complicated. “Streets and carriages, how's that! And how about a horse? Bet you'd like to see a horse for once in yer life!”
Horses were simpler. He should be able to describe a horse to someone who'd never seen one. “It's a big thing with four hooves ye ride on.” He wasn't sure he'd done it justice. But then, he wasn't sure he could get a Hant out of this jungle and onto a ship anyway, much less get him all the way to Nearing Vast. And even if he could get him to the City of Mann, he'd have a hard time paying for things like beds and baths and carriage rides. Delaney was no longer a man with any means.
It was a bad idea, trying to bargain with a Hant who probably wasn't there anyway. It was no idea at all.
“Anyways,” he called out, his voice now lacking confidence. “If ye want to save my skin, I'll do somethin' nice for ye.”
Gloom settled on Delaney. He looked up through the hole in the canopy. The blue sky seemed alive somehow. There was a light in it, a glow that seemed it could penetrate anything, if it just wanted to. It occurred to him, from out of that blue, that maybe God was looking back down on him as he looked up. Maybe the God that those priests talked about, the Maker that Avery had worried over, maybe He looked down on it all.
It gave Delaney a very bad feeling, to be watched by God.
He lowered his eyes, scanned the water, hoping to find somewhere else he could take his thoughts. It was bad enough to die here; worse to die with God watching, with God knowing all the bad things he'd ever done in his life. God, who would surely send him to hell just like those priests said. If He was up there.
And then the whole of it, the black darkness that underlay the world while the bright sun shone down, all of it together felt like it would crush him. He looked up again, fearful that he'd see God, somehow, yet unable not to look up.
But it was just blue sky.
“I could be a better man again, like I was once,” he said to the round patch of blue. And he felt like he meant it. “Tell Ye what,” he said, “get me out of this pinch, and I'll go back to an honest sailor.” He thought about that a moment. Why wouldn't that work? Sure, that was something God would want of him. If God would rescue him, he could sneak away through the forests back to shore, and hide out somewhere, and then catch a merchant vessel back to Mann. Or Sandavale! He could just disappear, and turn up honest again. He could go to church, and help out folks who needed it. Help little kids with no place to go. And get himself a new knife while he was at it.
He felt a surge of hope. “If Ye jus' get me off this stump and onto my feet over there ashore, I'll be pleased to be a good man.”
He waited. A slight breeze blew, but it wasn't near enough to pick him up and take him to shore. The hole above him was silent. The blue sky did not change. No monkeys screeched, no birds sang out.
“Well. Think on it at least, will Ye? I'll be waitin' right here.”
And then he thought of Damrick Fellows. There was a man both strong and good. He never waited on anything. He was a man of action, who took the fight to his enemies. Avery Wittle had refused to join up, and had given up his life for refusing. Damrick also refused to join up, but he picked up a musket and a sword and a pistol and went full after them all. Fighting back the darkness like a farmer fighting wolves off a ranch.
Damrick
. Ideas or no ideas, there was a man worth pondering.
“W
HAT FAME
S
HARKBIT
Sutter had acquired in his brief sojourn in pirate lore was immediately transferred to his executioner,” Ham told his listeners as he picked up the story again the next evening. “Or at least it was so within the limits of the City of Mann. Damrick Fellows found himself suddenly central to festivities that seemed to bloom around him everywhere he went. He drew handshakes and pints and congratulations like a magnet draws metal shavings. You might say it was a perpetual party. Such was the circumstance one evening when he and Lye Mogene were taking their dinner in a modest tavern not far from his father's dry-goods store. But that evening it became plain that neither fame nor glory nor robust vittles could satisfy the sort of hunger that drove our ferocious foe. No, not by a long pull.”
“Somehow they seem to know you dragged me along against my will,” Lye said under his breath after a young woman, another in a seemingly endless line of admirers, waved goodbye and gushed a beaming apology without a trace of remorse, allowing Damrick and Lye to return to their cabbage and pork.
“I've told every one of them that you were there alongside me, pistol blazing, and that I could never have done it without you.”
“I know. And not a one of 'em believes ye.”
“But none of it matters.”
“Maybe not to you.”
Damrick's eyes went hard. “None of it matters, Lye. Who is it offering congratulations and giving us thanks?”
“Every man, woman, child, and dog.” He took a sullen sip of ale.
“No. You're wrong.”
Lye realized that Damrick wanted a serious answer. He thought a moment, then ticked them off on his fingers. “Men. Women. Children. Barmaids. Vendors. Merchants. Doctors. Bakers. Blacksmiths. Stable hands. A juggler. A fiddle player. Two piano players. Not many dogs, but one or two. What's left?”
“Anyone who has anything to do with the sea trade.”
“What are ye talkin' about?”
“Two merchant captains over there in the corner,” he said, pointing out the gray-whiskered men in their blue caps. “Six sailors at the bar. That old man with his niece, seated by the fireplace.”
“His niece? That's generous of ye.”
“He owns the East-West Shipping Line.”
“I'll be.”
“Not a one of them has come by.”
“Don't tell me yer gettin' all sensitive now.”
“You don't find it odd? Taking Sharkbit off the seas helps them more than anyone else. Yet they're the only ones that ignore us.”
Lye shrugged. “They've seen pirates come and go, I reckon.”
“Maybe. But I think there's more.”
Lye watched his eyes. “What more?”
“I'm thinking of Mr. Runsford Ryland and his paper, the one he gave to Sharkbit to get him out of the jam the
Defender
got him into. Why would a man like Ryland do that?”
Lye blinked a few times. “Because he was forced to. What are you sayin'?”
“I'm saying the reason these men aren't thanking us is obvious. They aren't thankful.”
“You mean the shippers
want
pirates? That don't make sense.”
A family of five came by, a firm and respectful father wanting his two sons and his daughter to meet Damrick Fellows, and as they did to shake hands firmly, look him in the eye, and stand up straight. A beaming mother wanted to be sure that both her boys' hair was plastered down and the girl's ribbons were straight, and that all three were polite enough to say hello to “the hero's friend, there.”
“He was by my side,” Damrick assured them, “Pistol blazing. I couldn't have done it without him.”
Five faces smiled at Lye for a second or two, during which he fairly writhed in painful embarrassment. His red face turned redder, and then his scowl turned them all back to Damrick.
“Well, thank you for what you done,” the father said with finality, “and bein' brave and bold to do it. That's the both of you. You children remember this day, and these men.”
The boys poked one another in the ribs. The girl looked at the bottom of her shoe.
“You're all quite welcome,” Damrick said easily. Lye grunted.
Once they were gone, Damrick was quiet for a long, brooding moment. Then he said, “Suppose I live in one town, and work in another. Every day I have to travel the same road twice, once going and once coming back. Say there are highwaymen on that road who know I get paid every day. And let's say there's nobody around who can jail the brigands. I still have to get to work and back home with my earnings. What do I do?”
“Go armed.”
“And what, shoot them? They'll shoot back, and I'm outnumbered.”
“Get an army?”
“I'm a poor man.”
“You move, then.”
“Say I can't.”
“Well, yer makin' it a hard game to win. I guess you give 'em your money.”
“Yes. But if I'm smart, I also make a deal. So they don't take all my money. Just some.”
“Why would they make that deal?”
“If they took all of it,” Damrick explained, “I'd quit that job and work somewhere else.”
“You said you couldn't do that. Yer changin' the rules.”
“I'm trying to make a point.”
“Okay. So they take only some a' yer money.”
“We come to an arrangement where I make enough to live on, and they take everything else. They get all they can, but not so much that I move off, go somewhere else.”
There was a long pause. “Are ye talkin' about brigands stealin', or the government taxin'?”
Damrick laughed. “I'm talking about pirates.”
The light dawned. “Yer sayin' that's what the pirates areâthe highwaymen.”
“Yes.”
“And the workin' men are all the freighters.”
“Not
all
the freighters.”
The light faded. “Just some of 'em?”
“Let's say there's a rich man who travels the same road as me, every day. He makes a lot more money than I do, but he's got the same problem. So he comes to the same arrangement. Only the highwaymen like him better, because with him they take away a lot more gold every day.”
“ 'Cause he can afford to give more gold, even though he keeps more himself.”
“Right. Now let's say the rich man wants me to go to work for him, and I refuse.”
“Why would you refuse?”
“Doesn't matter. Whatever the reason, I don't want to work for him.”