There was no time to retreat. The veteran saw them and began yelling at the top of his aged lungs. “Up, everybody up! By my tail, the water rat and the magician have come back for us!”
Mudge let Weegee balance against the raccoon, slipped his longbow off his back, and put a feathered shaft into the alarmist’s neck. Too late. The cry did none of Weegee’s recent tormentors any good because Cautious, utilizing a wicked little curved knife, rapidly made the rounds of the inebriated and cut their throats where they lay.
The only survivor was a lynx who had passed out unnoticed beneath a bush. He reached out to trip the retreating Jon-Tom and send him sprawling.
“Clumsy man,” Weegee chided him, “get on your feet!”
Not enough time, as pirates erupted from the warehouse.
“This way quick or we are lost.” Cautious beckoned frantically from the undergrowth.
Jon-Tom rolled to his knees and stood, holding his ramwood staff out in front of him. Weegee and Cautious had already vanished into the vegetation and Mudge wasn’t far behind. He was alone in the middle of the clearing.
A great calm settled over him. Perhaps it was better that it end this way. Mudge had helped him so many times it seemed only fitting that Jon-Tom should perform a final service for the otter. After all, this was their world, not his. Better Mudge and Weegee should live out their lives where they belonged than sacrifice themselves in aid of an alien. He flicked the concealed switch in the staff’s shaft and six inches of steel snapped out of the base.
“Come on then. What are you waiting for?”
The onrushing brigands slowed to a halt, eyeing him warily. “I know ’im.” The speaker was a muscular beaver with a patch over his left eye. “That’s the spellsinger, it is.” Murmurs of recognition came from those around him.
None wanted to be the first to challenge the tall human. Those who had sailed with Corroboc remembered the havoc Jon-Tom and his companions had wrought. They rapidly enlightened those newer recruits who hadn’t been on that earlier expedition.
The stand-off was purely mental. The instant Jon-Tom turned and tried to run they would realize he was afraid of them and cut him down in a minute. If he charged they might scatter in panic—but if just one stood his ground and fought back, the others would realize they had nothing to fear from their taller opponent. Nor could he allow the stalemate to continue indefinitely. Time favored numbers.
Carefully he set the ramwood aside and swung the suar around in front of him. He was relying on the hope that enough time had passed for the pirates who remembered him to have forgotten the details of what his duar looked like. If he could conjure something, anything at all, even a small cloud of harmless gneechees, it might be enough to frighten his opponents away.
But before he could commence playing, a new figure, taller and more massive than any of the other brigands, forced his way through the line. He halted a safe distance from the spellsinger. Half a dozen stilettoes were sheathed in the bandolier that crossed his broad chest. His tail twitched back and forth, back and forth, and only the first half was flesh, fur and blood.
“Greetings, man. I never expected to see you again.”
“Hello, Sasheem. Roseroar sends her regrets.”
“Regrets? What regrets would the tigress leave with me?”
“That she wasn’t able to bid you farewell in person.”
The leopard chuckled, quite able to appreciate the bloodthirsty humor inherent in Jon-Tom’s remark. “I’m sure the big lady would have made a coat out of me if she’d had half the chance.” He examined the clearing, the rope dangling empty from the tree, the several sailors lying sprawled on the ground with their lives leaking from their slit throats. “You’d risk your life for a single female?”
“I see no reason to trouble you with my motives, which I doubt you’d understand. You remember me. You remember Roseroar. You should remember the others as well.”
“Ah, the otter with the touchy manner and toilet mouth. One arrives, two depart. A relationship?”
“Weegee was his,” Jon-Tom struggled for the right word, “fiancee.”
Sasheem nodded. “Some sense at last. Not a bad swap; a spiteful and sharp-toothed female for a spellsinger.”
“Who said anything about a swap? I’ll be leaving now.” He took a step backward.
Sasheem kept the distance between them unchanged. “No, I don’t think you will, spellsinger, or you would have gone already.” Sure enough, the sharp-eyed leopard had spotted that which had escaped the notice of his colleagues. “That’s not the same instrument you carried before. I know that a spellsinger must have a certain special instrument else he will be unable to perform his magic. Can it be that you have misplaced both?”
Jon-Tom strummed the suar, smiled thinly at the big cat. “Take another step closer and find out.”
“Careful, mate,” said the lynx on Sasheem’s flank. “Remember how he betwitched us the last time. Maybe he’s just taunting us. Mayhap this stringed snake he holds is as dangerous as the other.”
“If it is, then why is he standing there wasting his time talking to us while his friends put space between them?”
Jon-Tom was staring at him. “‘Mate.’ He called you mate. Aren’t you the captain now?”
Sasheem seemed surprised. “Captain, me? Of course I’m not the captain here. I’ve never aspired to captaincy.”
There was a commotion among the brigands in back. Jon-Tom watched as the pirates parted to let someone through.
“No. It can’t be. I saw Roseroar take you apart.”
Recent memory notwithstanding, it was a three-and-a-half-foot-tall parrot that hopped out in front of the semicircle of respectful, edgy buccaneers to glare sourly at the dumbfounded spellsinger.
VII
JON-TOM REALIZED he was not going mad. The parrot was not Corroboc, though the relationship was unmistakeable. Though no expert in the distinguishing characteristics of fowl, there were too many similarities of aspect and posture between this bird and the late pirate commander for coincidence. At the same time the differences were as blatant as the similarities. Corroboc had boasted one false leg and an absent eye while this new arrival was missing neither. He was quite intact save for his left wing, which was splinted and bandaged.
“Captain Kamaulk.” Sasheem favored Jon-Tom with a toothy smile. “Brother to our lamented missing captain and inheritor of his titles and property.”
“Better he should’ve left you alone,” said the parrot, “and I could have stayed with my ledgers. Or did you maybe think my featherbrained fool of a brother ran this business by himself? Because pirating is a business, make no mistake of that. Corroboc was clever with a ship and a sword but not with figures. That end I handled. Now I am forced to manage both. So a mutual acquaintance of yours took him apart, har? We wondered what had happened to him. What a nice surprise that the guilty parties should choose to drop in. It seems we will have vengeance out of this last raid if not much profit. Your death will salve my poor brother’s heart.”
“He didn’t have a heart. Corroboc was the most vicious, evil, sadistic, venal low life it was ever my displeasure to encounter.”
Kamaulk looked pleased. “I’m sure that wherever he is now he’s delighting in your flattery, but it will do you no good. He’s dead and it’s up to me to decide your fate.” He rubbed his beak with his unsplinted wingtip. “What do you suggest, Sasheem?”
“Sell him in Snarken. Money’s better than vengeance. A spellsinger will bring much more on the open market than an ill-tempered lady. A fair trade, I calls it.”
