The Dagger X (The Dagger Chronicles) (12 page)

In a moment he was pounding the stake into the sand a few yards from Kitto and Van.

What is a Pippin?

Two men held the jolly boat steady while Little John braced his feet on the sides and reached down to where Kitto could not see. When he came up, he had his huge arms wrapped about a massive crocodile, although Kitto did not know that name. He thought it to be some sort of overgrown lizard. A thick leather belt wrapped about the creature’s snout. Little John arched his back, trying to clear the crocodile’s thick tail over the gunwale.

“Careful! Careful!” X said, and too late.

The beast writhed its tale savagely, whipping it back and forth. Little John lost his balance. The huge man and the crocodile both tumbled headlong out of the jolly boat, knocking into the wash one of the men who had been steadying the boat.

The three figures fell in a thrashing heap shouting
a fusillade of foul language. X had commenced to shrieking, incensed with worry about the crocodile who scuttled off down the beach at a terrific speed. It stopped short thirty yards away.

“Pippin! Pippin, my sweet!”

Kitto watched in astonishment. Somehow in the fall, the belt clamping Pippin’s jaws closed had slipped off. Pippin opened his jaws wide, displaying a frightening array of teeth. He snapped them shut with a clack that could be heard over the breaking surf. X turned back on the men.

“Robbie, the fiddle! Give it to me!” A young man sprang to the leaning jolly boat and dug about its contents. Shortly he produced a wooden case, which he opened, revealing to Kitto’s surprise a violin, its polish glinting in the sunlight. Robbie raced it to X, who continued to call to the crocodile.

“I am coming, my darling! Do not be upset. Daddy is coming!” The captain tucked the violin under his chin and immediately launched into a lullaby, a slow melodic strain. Kitto and Van looked at each other in wonder.

“Do you think he is mad, Kitto?”

“I don’t know. They vote him captain. Must say something.” A thought came to him. “Do you think there is enough of them to take Morris’s crew?” Van shook his head.

“Shut up, girls.” Fowler stood over them with his pistol bared. “Scheming, that’s what the two of you are doing. Scheming.” He pulled back the hammer on his
pistol. It clicked. “Open your mouth again, cripple, and I’ll fill it with lead.”

The pistol flew from Fowler’s hands in a blur, its pieces scattering in the wash beyond them as the sound of a shot rang out from somewhere indeterminate in the thick jungle.

T
he men shouted in alarm, and suddenly every pirate had his hands on a pistol or a cutlass or both. Several scrambled behind the beached jolly boat for cover. Only X ignored the shooting, slowly walking down the beach toward the crocodile, never missing a note.

Pelota raised his arm and fired a shot into the greenery. Whether he knew the direction the first shot had come from Kitto could not tell, but the other pirates joined in, dispensing a hail of fire toward a bend in the beach fifty yards away. Kitto looked on breathlessly, but he could see no sign of either Sarah or Ontoquas.

X turned. “Idiots! Idiots!” he shrieked.

Pippin bolted again, but rather than heading farther away down the beach, the crocodile had sprinted past X and back the way it had come. It stopped ten yards short of the men huddled behind the jolly boat reloading their weapons.

“Shoo! Shoo!” Pelota waved at Pippin with his dispensed pistol. “Somebody shoot it!” X ran toward them, sawing madly at his violin.

“Anybody shoots my baby I cut his heart out!” he said in a singing voice to match his notes. X drew closer.

The music did seem to work some sort of magic on the crocodile. Pippin flexed his jaws several times in a lazy way.

“
Oui, oui, oui,
sweetheart!” X cooed. “You are so thirsty. Too long you have not had a swim. Just a few moments longer.” He played a few more bars.

“Robbie, the harness and belt!” X sang, trying poorly to match the tone of the sweeping melody. The young man fetched the belt from the sand and tossed it over the crocodile to land at X’s feet. The men finished reloading their weapons, but they could not decide where to point them: out at the unseen foe in the jungle, or at the crocodile that might any minute attempt to devour them.

Robbie rummaged in the leaning rowboat and produced another contraption of leather and iron. He held it up toward X.

“Come and get it!” Robbie said, fear in his eyes. X shook his head at the man’s stupidity.

“If I stop playing this song, you idiot, you are going to be a snack for poor Pippin. Now bring it here and put this strap on!”

Robbie replied in foul terms that he would not do so. Fowler called out from behind the rowboat. He pointed with a new pistol at Van.

“You! Get up and take it over there.”

“Me?” Van looked up. Kitto could see the fear in his eyes, perhaps the first time he had noted it in Van.

“What do you think?” Van hissed to Kitto.

“Try not to get too close.”

Van shook his head, but he got up slowly. His jaw still throbbed and his first few steps were wobbly, but he made it to the rowboat. The man called Robbie handed him the leather bundle.

“Go on!” Fowler said from behind the boat. “Take it over there. X will show you how to put it on her.” Van glared before answering.

“Her?”

“Aye, Pippin’s a girl. But she ain’t no lady,” Fowler said, his lips parting to show a tangle of brown teeth. “Go on and take it.”

“What is it?”

“A harness,” Fowler said. “Now get on.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Because I’ve got the pistol, now don’t I?”

Van turned with the harness, and making a wide and slow arc up the beach, he walked around the enormous crocodile and came to stand at X’s side. X was into his fourth or fifth verse of the melody now, but Pippin did not seem to mind the repetition.

“Here,” Van said, holding it out toward the pirate. X scowled.

“You have to put it on her!” X hissed. “I cannot stop playing. She is very upset!” Van shook his head disbelievingly.

“I ain’t touching that lizard.”

Kitto watched, his mind spinning. Seeing over a
dozen hardened sailors—bonafide pirates, even—had inspired a vague idea that had not yet taken form but that he could not quite shake.
We could use these men, perhaps! But why would such men allow themselves to be used?

Kitto took a few jerky steps toward Van and X, leaning on his crutch. The crocodile, still enraptured by the music, chose not to notice him. Kitto took a few more, following the path of Van’s footsteps in the sand. In a few moments he stood beside Van and the pirate.

“How does it work, the harness?” he said. Van threw him a stern look, but X launched into a musical explanation of how the two pairs of longer straps wrapped around the creature’s midsection, one pair just inside each set of legs.

“Just slide zem under her belly, very gentlelike,” the captain said. “She will let you do it.” X pursed his lips in disapproval. “She is usually much better behaved. . . .”

“Come on, Van,” Kitto said, turning to him. “We can do it.”

“You are as mad as this pirate!” Van said. X giggled. Van and Kitto locked eyes a moment, and Kitto tried to communicate how important he thought this could be for them. Van scowled fiercely but stepped forward with Kitto.

“Stupidest thing I ever done!” he said under his breath.

Pippin’s back was to them as she eyed the motionless men at the jolly boat whose heads pivoted back
and forth between the jungle where the shots had been fired and the terrifying beast. Kitto angled toward the reptile’s left side, Van to the right, carrying the bundle. They stepped over the massive tail, its very end tracing a small arc in the sand.

“If he comes at us, jump on top of it,” Van hissed. “I don’t think they can get at you that way.”

“She!” X shouted, then cringed at his own words. “Pippin is a girl!” he spat.

Kitto did not reply. He reached the midsection of the crocodile. A simple spin and the beast would be upon him with that hideous mouthful of teeth. Kitto beckoned for the first strap, which Van produced from the bundle. He pointed to the creature’s side, indicating for Van to slide that end under the animal. Van scowled fiercely, but he edged closer.

“Pet her!” X said behind them. “On the top of her sweet head. She likes zis very much.”

Kitto and Van looked at each other. Van jerked his head to Kitto, assigning him that task. Kitto reached out and ever so gently stroked the crocodile on the top of her bumpy skull, just behind the eyes. Pippin jerked her head up a few inches.

“Yes, yes,” X said. “Keep doing that, a little harder. With the fingernails. She will stand for you.”

“This is insane,” Van said.

“Hush.” Kitto petted a bit more vigorously, bearing down with his nails to scratch at the scaly armor. Sure enough, Pippin’s whole body shimmied, and then the
crocodile pressed its weight up onto its four diminutive legs, lifting its entire ponderous belly off the sand.

Van wasted no time. He fed one belt under the crocodile’s belly where Kitto was able to grab it—while making sure never to stop petting—and send it over Pippin’s back for Van to work the buckle. In no time Van had moved to the reptile’s hind legs and repeated the action, this time able to do so without Kitto’s help.

“
Oui, oui, oui. Splendide!
” The two belts were connected to each other by a thick leather strap that ran along Pippin’s spine, and at its center was sewn a hefty metal ring. “Now for the tether.” X lifted his bow from the fiddle.

“Little John! The rope. She is ready—” Irritated that the music had stopped, Pippin convulsed, her massive tail sweeping wide and knocking Van at the ankles. He spun through the air and landed flat on his back on the packed sand. Kitto petted the crocodile harder.

“Keep with the music!” Kitto hissed. X’s strings gave a squawk and resumed the melody. Pippin lowered her snout and belly again to the moist sand. Van picked himself up slowly and retreated behind X.

Back at the boat Little John retrieved a stout rope and handed it to Pickle.

“Not me!” Pickle said. “Fiddle or no fiddle.” Little John turned to Fowler next, who glared angrily and shook his head. Without another thought Little John heaved the bundle into the air. They all watched in fascinated horror as the rope uncoiled as it spun along its
momentous arc. Kitto scratched and petted even more fiercely on Pippin, but held one hand over his head to protect himself.

“Imbécile!”

The mass of rope landed directly on Pippin’s skull, and one of the metal locking hooks attached to each end thumped the beast squarely on the eyeball. Pippin went berserk. Emitting something like a roar, she thrashed her head and tail. X—who had stepped closer when Little John threw the rope—was knocked backward by the tail, his hat and the fiddle bow hurtling off with the wind.

“Run!” X screamed as Van yanked him to his feet. It was good advice, too, because Pippin had spun and lunged in their direction and snapped her jaws in the air where X had been sprawled an instant before. X and Van ran pell-mell down the beach, X’s violin waggling in the air. Pippin shot off after them, abruptly stopped, then turned around slowly, the bundle of rope splayed out over her body.

Kitto looked at Pippin. Pippin looked at Kitto. The beast’s eyes were two slits of black. Kitto tensed. His natural reactions told him to run, but he had seen how fast the crocodile could move, and he knew he stood no chance.

“Get out of there, lad!” called one of the pirates from the jolly boat behind him. Kitto held his crutch out in front of him as if it might provide some defense.

And then Pippin charged. The crocodile raced
straight at Kitto, its huge reptilian grin growing wider as it neared. Sand flew out beneath her claws. Without thinking Kitto stabbed the crutch into the ground and vaulted himself into the air just as Pippin reached him. He flew over the reptile’s snapping jaws and landed on her back. Pippin whirled about, and Kitto found himself clinging to the metal ring of the harness along the crocodile’s spine. Again Pippin thrashed, writhing her head in an attempt to get at the boy.

Kitto clung to the harness for dear life. Pippin went still finally, and Kitto took the opportunity to get a good grip on the leather strap as well as the ring.

Behind him Van and X were half watching Kitto and half desperately trying to find the fiddle bow, which had gotten lost in the wash of waves.

“Zere it is!” X yelled, pointing into the water. “Go and get it.”

“I don’t swim!”

“Neezer do I!”

With Pippin still motionless, Kitto had time to see that one end of the rope with its steel locking hook lay just inches from the metal ring of the harness. Kitto risked releasing one hand to grab the hook and neatly attach it to the ring with a click. No sooner had he done so than Pippin whirled again and charged the men at the jolly boat.

The crocodile was amazingly fast, covering the distance of thirty yards in just seconds, even with Kitto weighing her down. Little John, Fowler, Pickle, and two
other men leaped gracelessly into the jolly boat, which teetered on its keel and tipped back to its port side, nearly dumping the men right into the approaching predator. Little John heaved a leg against the beach and the jolly boat swung up onto its keel again and flopped to the starboard, exposing the hull of the boat to Pippin in time for the reptile to crack her head on the bleached planks. Kitto still clung tenaciously to the animal’s back, his knuckles white and his eyes wide.