Pirate Emperor Read online

  “Ebenezer’s Floating Tavern.”

  “Exactly right!”

  It must be the loneliness, thought Griffin, full of pity. The poor fellow hasn’t seen another human soul for decades, and now he’s fantasizing himself an entire tavern full of them at once.

  “Anyway, I wish you much luck with it. Really.” Griffin stood up. “Now, would you please show me how I can get out of here?”

  “But I need your help!”

  “My help?”

  “Certainly! For months I’ve been waiting for someone to turn up who can take part of the work from me. You must of course begin small, on the lowest step, so to speak—as kitchen boy. But just think of the chances for advancement! If you do well, I promise you a fast promotion. I’ll teach you to prepare small dishes. Then bigger ones as well. You’ll serve the guests at the tables, pour the rum and the beer.” He clapped his hands happily. “It will be so wonderful!”

  The room suddenly seemed to become smaller. The walls closed in on Griffin as if they intended to press him into a shape, like dough. Behind his back he clenched one hand into a fist. “That may indeed be a marvelous offer. Honestly. But I have two or three other things that I have to get done. Besides, I was always a dud in the galley. What I cook is not edible. And … oh, well, and therefore I would like to go now.”

  “And where? Outside there’s nothing but the endless sea. Do you perhaps want to swim to the next island?”

  “How far away is the next island?”

  “Too far, that much is sure.”

  The surroundings seemed to peel like a banana before Griffin’s eyes. Beneath what had just a minute ago seemed to him fantastic, strange, and a little crazy, the reality now became visible as a rotten fruit. The scenery remained the same, as did Ebenezer’s joyful laughter, even the cozy room in the glow of the fire in the fireplace—and yet now it was all different.

  Ebenezer was mad. And he obviously intended to include Griffin in his madness, whether Griffin wanted it or not.

  “You’re going to keep me imprisoned here?” Griffin asked.

  “Do you perhaps see bars? Or keys? Nothing of the like, my boy. I ask only for your help. I will even pay you. Believe me, I have gold down here. We will of course earn more of it when our reputation is established. A twentieth of everything for you. Is that a deal?”

  Be very calm now, Griffin told himself. Give him no occasion to mistrust you. Then the chance to get away will occur all by itself.

  “When do you intend to open the tavern, then?” Griffin found it difficult to speak seriously about a matter that was the craziest thing he’d ever heard of. Against a tavern in the stomach of a whale, even the marvels of Aelenium paled to a paltry heap of coral.

  “Well, we have a lot of work ahead of us. Are you a good carpenter?”

  “I’ve often helped with repairs onboard.”

  “Outstanding! You can build the chairs. And tables. There’s wood enough outside, and you’ll find nails in the piles of debris. What do you think? Fifty places? Will that be enough for a start?”

  “I should make fifty chairs?”

  “Too few?” Ebenezer was dancing around excitedly and reveling in the images of an overfilled barroom. “Better eighty? Or a hundred?”

  “Fifty might be enough.”

  “We don’t want to overdo it, do we? Just fifty, then.” Ebenezer hurried behind the bar and pulled out a hammer and a pair of rusty pliers and pushed both of them across the bar. “Oh, yes, and you should take off that horrible uniform. Just look around in Jasconius’s stomach.” He winked exuberantly at Griffin. “I’d guess you’ll find everything you need there.”

  14

  At the Council of the Captains

  The pirate fleet was anchored in a wide ring around the island of Saint Celestine. In the darkness, the lamps aboard the ships were hard to differentiate from the constellations and their reflections on the water.

  “It’ll be just crawling with lookouts here,” said Walker gloomily as, crouching, they headed across the beach toward a grove of palms. Their sea horses had withdrawn into the security of the open sea.

  “Of course,” Soledad retorted. “But they’re on the look-out for uniformed Spaniards or English. Not every pirate knows the members of all the other crews. If anyone blocks our way, we simply claim we belong to the crew of another ship. Who’s going to check on that?”

  Saint Celestine was a tiny island, fifteen sea miles west of the Antilles island of Martinique. French colonists had tried to settle the island many years before. But the changeable weather and the swampy ground had finally brought them to their knees. Nature had recaptured what the settlers had wrested from it in their years of labor.

  The remains of old farmhouses were overgrown with bushes and vines. In other places, jagged remnants of walls rose out of the thickets like the bony jaws of a giant. Directly in front of a rock wall, under a mantle of fleshy leaves and vines, was an astonishingly well-preserved church tower. Its tip showed nearly intact above the jungle.

  Everywhere there was flitting, chirring, and screaming—the nightly hunters of the jungle were awake and on the prowl. It smelled of damp foliage and a lush array of exotic flowers.

  They’d gone only a short distance when Walker, in the lead, soundlessly pointed upward.

  Ahead of them rose the incline of a volcanic slope. On the flank of the mountain, exactly at the height of the tip of the church tower, gaped a huge gash, forming a natural platform. Voices could be heard, too far away to be understood. A cluster of torches illuminated the back wall and the overhanging rock roof of the plateau: without doubt the place of the secret meeting.

  They carefully followed the path and a little later came to a set of stairs cut into the rock. It must have been cleared of vines and bushes very recently. Chopped-off branches were still strewn around. Someone had stuck a single torch in a rock niche. Its firelight flickered over the wall of stone and vegetation that towered in front of them.

  “There’s no point in playing hide-and-seek any longer,” said Soledad decisively. “Either way, I have to show myself. Why not right now?”

  Walker closed his hand more tightly on the grip of his saber. Soledad saw that he didn’t like the situation. However, it wasn’t the fear of discovery that was causing him uneasiness but the fact that he wasn’t the leader of their troop. Even the Ghost Trader kept still and left the leading to Soledad. This was her terrain.

  “Ho there!” she called when they’d climbed halfway up the stairs. “We come with peaceful intentions!”

  Out of the darkness above them emerged two figures. One wore a cocked hat and a striped shirt, and in his hands were two pistols, cocked. The other held a saber and wore a weapons belt diagonally across his naked torso. His muscles gleamed in the light of two torches beside the stairs’ upper landing.

  “Who’s there?” called the pirate with the pistols. “Do you belong to Tyrone’s people? It’s about time.”

  “No,” she replied. “I am Soledad.” The princess spoke in a loud, clear voice as she mounted the last steps. “Scarab’s daughter. Presenting my unusual request to the captains: According to my birth and name I challenge Kendrick to a duel before the council of the Antilles captains.”

  Walker and the Ghost Trader exchanged alarmed looks. The captain laid a hand on Soledad’s shoulder from behind. “There was never any talk of a duel!” he whispered indignantly. “Will you quit this nonsense!”

  Soledad turned around and gave him a brief smile. “I never concealed anything from you, Walker,” she said. “It’s about Kendrick’s throne. That’s why I’m here.”

  From behind her came a rough voice. “And I am here because of you, Soledad,” the man called scornfully, now stepping onto the upper landing into the circle of torchlight.

  The princess whirled around.

  Kendrick, the pirate emperor, had drawn his saber, but the point was directed at the ground. His smile was icy, his eyes squinting with hatred. The golden ri
ng in his left ear glowed in the firelight. The right had been shot off years before in a duel, but vanity made him cover the scar with his abundance of wavy hair.

  “Soledad,” he said, and he spat on the ground in front of her. “Before the sun rises again, your head will be stuck on my bowsprit.”

  “Hear me!” cried Soledad, as her eyes moved from one face to the next. At the moment she had the sure attention of the twelve Antilles captains. She asked herself only how long that would remain so.

  “The pirates of the Lesser Antilles have preserved their independence for decades, and I know that the quarrel between Kendrick and me is not yours. Kendrick is not your leader, as my father also was not. But before you consider allying with him, you should know that Kendrick’s rule over the pirates of Tortuga and New Providence is built on lies, treachery, and fraud. And on cowardly assassination.”

  Her voice rebounded loudly from the rock walls. The tables at which the twelve Antilles captains had gathered in a circle stood in the center of the natural platform slashed into the volcanic rock by a mood of Nature. From here one looked out over the leafy roof of the primeval forest onto the night-dark sea. The ships lying at anchor out there were clearly visible in the moonlight. Only three or four yards from the edge of the rock rose the partially disintegrated framework of the church tower roof. The rest of the settlement’s ruins lay some fifty feet deeper, concealed in the thickness of the jungle.

  The old fireplace, where flames now blazed again, must stem from the time of the settlers.

  Torches were stuck into rusty holders on the rock walls. The shadows thrown by the light of the flames fell intimidatingly large across the rough stone.

  “We’re listening to you,” said the captain who sat to the right of Kendrick. “Say on.” He was a rough seadog with a voice that decades of rum and whiskey had transformed into a hoarse wheeze. He wore a dark red frock coat with a wide collar and a black sash diagonally across his chest. His feathered cocked hat lay before him on the table, right beside a silver wine cup. Soledad knew his name, just as she could name all the men gathered here. Rouquette was the oldest in the circle and did the talking, as tradition required.

  Kendrick had sat down beside him after he’d led Soledad to the table. Walker and the Ghost Trader stood outside the circle. They hadn’t been disarmed, but Kendrick’s men watched them with blades drawn. Indeed, Soledad’s throwing knives were still stuck in her belt.

  “We thought highly of your father,” said another man, before the princess could continue. He was younger than Rouquette and had black hair and an eye patch in whose center a ruby sparkled, large enough to buy a whole island with. His name was Galliano. “If we didn’t recognize your father as our leader, still we never quarreled with him and always counted him as our ally.”

  “You all know that Kendrick murdered my father. After that he had his body dragged through the streets of Port Nassau like a dead dog.”

  None of those present changed expression.

  “You all know it,” said Soledad once more, “and it is clear to all of you that I have a right to retribution.” She pointed at Kendrick. “And to his place in this circle.”

  “There has never yet been an empress of the pirates,” said Rouquette. “Still, that is of no matter to us. We admire you for your courage, Princess. But do you seriously believe that the pirates of Tortuga and New Providence would accept a female at their head?”

  “When this female throws Kendrick’s head at their feet, they will have to.”

  “Your retribution has nothing to do with your claim to the throne, Soledad. And that cannot be a matter for this circle. We are not in Port Nassau here.”

  A murmur of agreement sounded from the circle of the other captains. One thumped his approval on the table with his pipe. The thumping was thrown back from the rocks and resounded out into the jungle.

  “Perhaps you’ll change your thinking if I say to you that a danger threatens the whole Caribbean—also the Lesser Antilles—which we can only confront together. All the pirates together, the same whether they sell their takings in Martinique or New Providence.”

  Kendrick waved that away with a nasty laugh. “What a cheap trick. Something like that should be beneath even your dignity.”

  “I am here not only to demand my right,” Soledad continued, without paying any attention to his interjection. “My warning is serious. A deadly danger threatens us all.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked a captain with a forked black beard. His right arm ended in a three-pronged claw, whose end he scratched across the surface of the table over and over. “Who threatens us? A Spanish armada from New Providence? Perhaps an alliance of the Spanish with the English?” That was absurd, and he said it in a tone of voice that left no doubt that he considered Soledad’s warning a ruse.

  She chose her words very carefully. At this moment no one here would take seriously a mile-wide maelstrom, gruesome creatures from another world, and a war host of kobalins.

  She must approach the matter differently. “It is a danger that will sweep over us all like a storm and against which none of us has a chance alone.”

  “Hear, hear,” shouted Kendrick, laughing.

  Some of the pirates joined in the laughter, but a few of them scrutinized Soledad expectantly.

  “I cannot ask that you pay more attention to me than I am entitled to in this circle,” she said. “You shall learn everything—but only after I’ve proven through a victory over Kendrick that I am worthy to speak before you.”

  The Ghost Trader leaned toward Walker. “A clever plan,” he whispered appreciatively.

  “One that’s going to deprive her of her life,” retorted Walker.

  “That’s only a silly trick!” shouted Kendrick into the circle of the Antilles captains. “She’s fooling you by making your mouths water!”

  “No,” said Rouquette, without taking his eyes off Soledad as he spoke. “She’s right.”

  Kendrick leaned forward angrily. “But she—”

  “She is Scarab’s daughter,” the oldest councillor interrupted him. “You yourself have confirmed that. On the other hand, you’ve made us a good offer, Kendrick, which also is entitled to our appreciation. Probably none of us would have thought you capable of such a plan. And if it’s true that Tyrone would stand on our side in it, we wouldn’t hesitate to join in the business.”

  “What’s he talking about?” Walker whispered, staring at Rouquette as if he could read the answer in his face.

  The Ghost Trader remained silent, but in his expression there was alarm that was now no longer directed entirely toward Soledad.

  Apparently Tyrone hadn’t arrived on Saint Celestine yet. But if Kendrick actually had succeeded in entering into an alliance with him, the pirate emperor was holding the better cards here in the council of the Antilles captains.

  “But,” Rouquette continued, “even if we join with you in an alliance, that doesn’t mean we can close our ears to the princess’s just challenge.”

  Galliano nodded in agreement, and one by one the other captains agreed. It remained uncertain whether it was their sense of honor that Rouquette was appealing to or only their anticipation of a duel.

  “This is ridiculous!” Kendrick slammed his fist on the table. “I come here, promise you fabulous wealth and a victory over the Spaniards, and you ask that I undertake a duel with … with a half child!” He spat across the table in Soledad’s direction.

  “If you refuse,” said Galliano, smiling craftily, “that could mean that there’s some truth in her accusations. Consider that, Kendrick.”

  Soledad used her opportunity and struck the same note. “I tell you, he’s a coward! Murder from an ambush, that he can do. But you hear it yourself: He doesn’t even have the guts to stand and fight a woman.”

  Kendrick leaped to his feet. Obviously he was seeing his position endangered now. “This is neither the place nor the time to—”

  “It’s not for you to judge th
at,” said one of the other captains, a man with fire red hair and jagged scars on both cheeks. “You’re a guest here in the council. It’s reserved to us to judge the honesty of the princess, not you.”

  Again the murmur of agreement grew loud.

  “That decides it,” cried Rouquette to the circle. “Kendrick must accept the princess’s challenge. The fight will take place here and now. Are there objections?”

  Kendrick looked as if he had a whole lot of them, but he compressed his lips determinedly and shook his head.

  Soledad did not allow her triumph to show. She nodded to Rouquette, noticing out of the corner of her eye that Galliano winked at her suggestively, and planted herself confidently in front of Kendrick.

  “Here and now,” she said grimly.

  Rouquette raised a hand and brought the men to silence again. “Since Kendrick was challenged to this fight, the choice of weapons falls to him.”

  Kendrick supported himself with clenched fists on the tabletop. His eyes bored through Soledad like steel blades. Then he smiled.

  “Grappling irons.”

  15

  The Cannibal King

  “That Scurvy bastard!” swore Walker, hardly able to keep from rushing at Kendrick. One of the guards still had a pistol trained on him. “He knows very well that she doesn’t have a chance against him with a grappling hook.”

  The Ghost Trader also looked concerned, but he said nothing. He remained a quiet observer of the event, perhaps because that was a role that he had filled elsewhere for an eternity.

  The captains’ tables were drawn apart into a wide semicircle. They formed one boundary of the fighting area; the other was the rock ledge with the gaping drop-off behind it. There were no railings there, only the deteriorating roof of the church tower, which rose above the edge like a rib cage of wooden beams.

  Rouquette had directed his men to fetch two grappling hooks from one of the ships. Each of the two fighters, who had taken positions on opposite sides of the semicircle, received one of the lance-shaped weapons.