The Tides of Avarice (35 page)

Overhead, Rustbane had clearly cornered one of the regulars at The Monkey's Curse. From here, the voices sounded crystal clear.

“Far as I can see, old chap,” said Rustbane, belching discreetly, “those infernal lemmings vanished as if by magic from the middle of a heap of” – a sudden drunken shout drowned out his next word – “in that alley that runs up the side of the tavern.”

“An' what these lemmings ever been a-doing to you?” said the other, clearly trying to show he wasn't such a pushover as everyone thought. “Another pint o' mead, I'll trouble you for,” he added in a lower voice, indicating that in fact he was.

If the entrance from the alley into the earth cellar was widely known among the tavern's habitués, Sylvester and the Pickleberries were as good as dead. Rustbane's persuasive charm would have the secret out of someone, probably this old sousehead, within the next few minutes at most.

“We 'ave to be moving,” said Rasco.

“You said it,” confirmed Sylvester.

“What's your accent?” said Mrs. Pickleberry with the air of someone who's been locked out of a conversation quite unreasonably and for far too long.

“It ees irresistibly exotique, zou are zinking, non, ma charmante?”

“No,” said Mrs. Pickleberry, looking wistfully at the rolling pin she'd managed to keep firmly clutched in her fist all the way through the rigors of their escape from the alley. “I was thinkin' more along the lines of how it was infuriatingly difficult to understand.”

“But, ma belle, 'ow could you zay such a thing?”

“Easier than you might imagine,” replied Mrs. Pickleberry ominously.

“Um,” said Rasco.

All four waited for someone to make the first move.

No one did.

“Truth is,” admitted Rasco after a pause, “the exotic accent is expected of us folks who live out here on the islands.”

“It is?” said Sylvester, intrigued. He'd never heard of anything like this before.

“Yeah,” said Rasco. “See, the job most of us mice have is to make the females who come here on the tourist ships feel at home. Right at home, if you know what I mean?”

“Your job's to be a holiday fling?” said Mrs. Pickleberry, looking at the little black mouse suspiciously.

“You have hit the nail right on the thumb,” said Rasco, nodding vigorously. “I'm the cutie-pops every gal dreams of spending a week with, then never having to see again no matter how long she lives. You'd be surprised how many gals are prepared to pay just for the privilege o' swanking me around in front of the other gals, y'know, the gals that are supposed to be their friends.”

Mrs. Pickleberry started to giggle.

“Bit of a dreamboat, aincher?”

“That's the general idea, Mrs. P.”

She cackled again.

“Now,” said Rasco, “I really do think we ought to be getting out of here. Right now. Not a moment more's delay.”

“He's right,” Sylvester said to Viola and Mrs. Pickleberry.

“Good. We's all agreed then,” said Rasco, clapping his paws together.

“Only,” he added, “where do you guys think it might be a good idea to escape to?”

✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿.

It took a long time for Viola and Sylvester, between them, to tell Rasco the story of how they had been bamboozled then seized by the dastardly Cap'n Terrigan Rustbane and his equally vile crew. In a way, the pair of them realized as they were telling it, it was a story with everything: violence, pathos, remorse, romance, comedy, tragedy …

“Blimey, mon,” said Rasco when at last their narrative petered out, “that ain't half an epic, ain't it?”

“Well, I, ah …” said Sylvester, aware he was sounding even more of a pompous ass with each extra syllable.

“This Rustbane o' yours,” Rasco cut in, covering up Sylvester's confusion gracefully, “he sounds more than a smidgen like someone who's made himself a bit of a legend around here. But the one I'm thinking of isn't called Rustbane.” He tapped his chin with little sharp claws. “His name is, ah, that's it, his name's Deathflash.”

By now they were some considerable distance from the wine cellar of The Monkey's Curse. At least, Sylvester hoped they were. Rasco had shown them a tiny opening at the join between wall and floor, concealed behind a large tun of malmsey.

“Malmsey?” said Mrs. Pickleberry with a grin, pausing to sniff appreciatively at a puddle of the stuff that had leaked out onto the floor.

“Away with you, Mrs. P!” cried Rasco, laughing, pulling her away from the heady liquid.

The crack in the clay seemed barely large enough for a mouse to get into, let alone a full-grown lemming (not to mention a full-grown, rather plump lemming like Mrs. Pickleberry) but Rasco vanished into it with an adroit wriggle and clearly expected the others to have no difficulty following him. Sylvester looked at Viola, who shrugged, so he shrugged too and they both looked at Mrs. Pickleberry.

“Hold Elvira, there's a dearie.”

Viola took the rolling pin and the two younger lemmings watched in amazement as Mrs. Pickleberry disappeared into the gap with the same ease Rasco had displayed.

They had more difficulty getting the rolling pin through the crack than its owner seemed to have had.

Viola went next.

“It's not as difficult as it looks, Sylvester,” she called back to him.

Skeptically, he put his forepaws on the two edges of the crevice, then pushed his nose into it, then gave a little thrust with his back legs just so and … got firmly stuck. It felt as if some monster had snatched him up in its mouth and was slowly tightening its teeth around his midriff.

The worst of all was that he could see his three companions watching him with perfect calm. Rasco had produced a lighted candle from somewhere and was holding it high above his head. The two lemmings and the little black mouse were standing in a cavern that, though not as big as the wine cellar, was plenty spacious enough for them. The floor was comprised of old crumbly brick. It was harder to see the walls in the flickering shadows created by the candle, but Sylvester could discern just enough of them to know he didn't want to see them any more clearly. There was a definite sense of evilly fluorescing fungal ooze and clammily lurking spiderwebs.

Not that he had much brainpower left over right now to spare for thoughts about carnivorous fungi. Right now, he was firmly stuck in a sharp-edged hole and it seemed as if the only way he'd ever get through it was to leave his rear half behind him for the pirates to find.

“Just give one great big heave,” said Rasco helpfully.

“I've already tried that,” gasped Sylvester. “Several times,” he added.

“Pizza,” said Viola.

“Eh?” said everyone.

“Pizza,” she explained. “Sylvester tends to eat too much of it. I've told him and told him. Mom, why're you looking at me like that?”

The final question seemed to be addressed not so much to Mrs. Pickleberry as to Mrs. Pickleberry's rolling pin.

Through the red haze of his own panic, Sylvester saw Viola's mother come to some sort of decision.

“Sylvester,” said Mrs. Pickleberry.

“Yes?”

“You ever been bit by a rattlesnake?”

“Er, no.” What in the world, thought Sylvester in a rare moment of clarity, is the daft old bat talking about?

Like all lemmings, he had a distinct aversion to snakes of any sort. Rattlers weren't the worst, that'd likely be cobras, but at the same time they weren't far from it.

“A rabid rattlesnake?” probed Mrs. Pickleberry.

“Most certainly not!”

“Cos I think there's one o' them rabid ones back in that wine cellar wot we just left, and he's got his fangs all shiny and eager and his greedy little eyes on yer bum. In fact, I think if yer lissens real careful yer can just hear his dinky little rattle-rattle-rattle …”

“Oh, hello, Sylvester,” said Viola, surprised to find him standing beside her, puffing and panting a lot. “How did you get yourself out of that hole in the wall?”

“I haven't the faintest idea,” answered Sylvester, honestly.

Mrs. Pickleberry cackled irritatingly.

“Are we ready to get a move on now the pantomime's over?” said Rasco in a bored voice.

“Just let me catch my breath,” Sylvester replied.

“Or the pirates catch you,” said Rasco pointedly. Without waiting for any further response he turned and, holding the candle aloft in front of him, scuttled toward the darkness at the rear of the cavern.

After a moment's pause, Mrs. Pickleberry chased after him, with Viola and Sylvester, arm in arm, coming along behind her.

The next hour or so was a bit of a blur in Sylvester's memory, but at last they found themselves in the sanctuary of a small cavern that smelled of lots of warm mammalian bodies snuggled closely together. Of that and, just faintly, of mature cheddar cheese. Miraculously, Rasco's candle was still flickering happily. He'd used the candle's own hot wax to stick it firmly upright in the middle of the cavern floor, and the little gang had sprawled around it like explorers might sprawl around their nighttime campfire.

“Deathflash,” Rasco repeated, staring at the small flame.

Sylvester was sure he'd heard the name before but he couldn't remember quite where or when. Then he remembered! Back in Foxglove, what seemed like a million years ago, when he and Viola had been pretending to listen worshipfully while letting Rustbane brag away about his own magnificence. What was it the gray fox had said? “Not for nothing do some people call me Deathflash. Or Doomslayer. Or Warhammer. Or … well, I can't hardly remember all the different names people call me, not even the ones you can mention in polite company, which are by far the minority, but you can be sure most of them attest to the enormousness of my powers.”

“That's him!” Sylvester exclaimed, leaning forward enthusiastically. “That's Rustbane, sure enough. It's one of the names people have given him or he's given himself, more like. Such a boastly fellow, he is.”

“If it's Deathflash we're up against,” said Rasco slowly, looking off into the moving shadows in a corner of the room, “then we sure got ourselves a problem.” He shuddered theatrically. “They say even the monsters of the ocean depths are terrified of the gray fox, despite the fact he feeds 'em so well with all the corpses he casts their way.”

“Thanks,” said Viola, pressing herself close up to Sylvester's side. “That's cheering.” But, glancing sideways, Sylvester could see her eyes were gleaming.

“I thinks,” continued Rasco, paying them no attention, “we ought to go consult my grandma.”

“Your grandma?” said Viola's mom.

“None other, Mrs. P.”

“And who is this grandmother of yours, dearie?”

“My grandma, Mrs. P, is Madame Zahnia.”

The mouse paused for effect – an effect that did not come. The three lemmings just stared at him expectantly.

“You haven't heard of Madame Zahnia?” said Rasco.

“Not entirely,” Sylvester said after a brief, embarrassed pause.

“The greatest voodoo priestess this side of the yawning chasm between the living and the dead?”

“The name rings a bell, I'm sure it does,” lied Sylvester.

“Does she write a newspaper column?” asked Mrs. Pickleberry, brows wrinkling.

“She could,” Rasco assured her, “but in point of fact she, ah, doesn't. Instead, she is content to accept the reverence of every god-fearing mouse in the Caraya Islands – and many a rat and porcupine too. She is a woman of” – he sucked in his breath and looked at each of their faces in turn – “of power.”

“Oh,” said Sylvester.

“My sisters are likewise all trained in the finer and subtler arts of voodoo,” Rasco carried on after a dramatic pause, “but not one of 'em is a patch on me old gran. She is mighty wise, is Madame Zahnia, and there ain't a voodoo-practicing mouse under Sagaria's blue skies that don't respect her. I'm sure that, if anyone can, my gran can help you.”

The three lemmings glanced at each other. When Viola spoke she knew she was speaking for all of them.

“Thank you, Rasco. We'd really like to meet your grandmother, as you suggest. Where does she live?”

“Quite a distance from here, in the middle of the jungle.”

“How are we supposed to get there?”

Rasco looked down the length of his hindlegs to the feet at their ends and curled the claws there.

“On foot?” said Mrs. Pickleberry.

“You got it in one, Mrs. P.”

How much longer?” gasped Sylvester. Fortunately, there was no one to embarrass him by being within earshot. Even more fortunately, one of the people who wasn't there was Viola.

Somewhere far above, amid the canopy of foliage that hid the sky from view, a leaf tilted to send a drop of sap plummeting toward the thick, moldering sludge of the jungle floor. The droplet hit the back of Sylvester's neck just before reaching its intended destination. By that time, it had cooled down to a temperature not significantly above boiling point.

“Owwwwww!” Sylvester wailed in misery.

He was glad Viola wasn't near enough to hear him say that, either.

“Jungle life isn't all it's cracked up to be,” he muttered crossly to himself, as the sap peeled painfully from his hairy neck and he began pressing his way forward through the vegetation once more. “I wonder if that's just a big root or if it's a huge snake planning to squeeze me to death and then swallow me whole?”

The question seemed, in his current state of abject exhaustion, to be more of academic interest than anything else.

He felt like it had been forever since Rasco had led them to the place where they could escape from the block of buildings of which The Monkey's Curse was a part. By then the whole night had gone by and the sun was already drifting clear of the horizon.

The little mouse had gestured them to stay back. “We wait until nightfall,” he said firmly.

“But that's hours away!” cried Viola. “We can't wait that long.”

“Better to wait a while than to find ourselves fried by the noonday sun,” Rasco told her, lowering his voice ominously. “If we even live that long.”

All he got from Viola by way of reply was a gasp.

“Predators?” said Sylvester, trying to maintain his cool.

Rasco nodded. “Back where you folks come from, perhaps they don't have boa constrictors, rabid crocodiles, venomous spiders the size of hunting dogs …”

Sylvester had the obscure feeling he ought to stick up for the dangers of living in Foxglove.

“We do have some very fierce sheep,” he said.

Rasco looked at him from under deeply drooping eyelids. “And soldier ants that can strip a lemming down to the bone in less time than it takes to hiccup,” he added.

“How hot does it get out there?” asked Mrs. Pickleberry, clearly bored by this display of bravado by the two males.

“As hot as a furnace,” said Rasco. “Hotter. The sun's rays can have the blood boiling out of your veins in fountains soon as look at you. That's why we should stay here until darkness and get some sleep, rather than take the risk of being caught out in the open at midday.”

Sylvester recognized there was no point in arguing. If Rasco didn't want to go any farther until evening fell, then no one was going anywhere. The lemmings wouldn't last ten minutes in the open in this strange and vicious town. Anyway, they'd never be able to find Madame Zahnia on their own. So, the four of them made themselves as comfortable as they could, sneezing in the dust of a dark cavity, and soon dropped off to sleep.

To Sylvester's surprise, none of them woke until the outside world was growing dark once more. The mouse and the three lemmings, noses in a neat row, peered beneath a ledge of brickwork that hid them from the sight of anyone who might pass on the sidewalk.

“Do you,” whispered Viola, “think Cap'n Rustbane will have abandoned the search for us?”

Sylvester fought the impulse to snort derisively. “Some chance,” he said. “Not if I know Rustbane. He'll still be hunting us, up one street and down the next, and he'll not give up unless there's something that forces him to.”

“Oh,” she said in a very small voice. “That's not terribly good news, is it?”

“Not really,” cut in Rasco with an attempt at joviality, “but it could be worse, couldn't it?”

“How?” said Mrs. Pickleberry.

“Oh, look,” said Rasco. “See that pretty moth over there?”

“Well, let's get ourselves out of Hangman's Haven, anyway,” said Sylvester. “Once we're in the jungle, surely he'll never be able to find us. Not once we're under the protection of your famous voodoo grandmother, at least,” he added as a courtesy to their guide.

“I'd almost hope Deathflash did track us down to grandma's place, mon,” said Rasco darkly. “She'd put paid to him and his murderous scheming, she would. A strong dose of voodoo would do for him, you can be sure, and if it didn't she could get some of her zombies to eat his brains.”

There was a horrible stillness of soul among the lemmings.

“Your people do much of, ah, that?” said Sylvester at last, wondering if that really was his own voice that had said the words.

“Much of what?”

“Eating, ahem, people's brains.”

“Not as a matter of course, no. It's just, like, when a zombie gets hungry, you don't want to be standing between it and the nearest head, is all.”

“Ah.”

“And you most particularly don't want to be the owner of that nearest head, see? The zombies ain't too fussy about making sure you're dead before they start crackin' your skull open.”

“I think I'm going to—” began Viola.

“Me too,” said Sylvester.

There was a sort of faint gulping noise from Mrs. Pickleberry before she added, “I already have.”

“Then that's a second reason we want to get out of here as quick as we can, ain't it?” said Rasco in a reasonable tone of voice. “Come on, let's go.”

He shot out of the narrow gap like a bullet from a gun, and the next time Sylvester saw the little mouse as anything other than a disconcerting blur, Rasco was standing on the far side of the street, waving at them urgently to join him.

“You next,” said Sylvester to Daphne.

“I can't run that fast.”

“Me neither.”

“'Specially with me rolling pin to weigh me down.”

“I'll carry it.”

“You better not lose it.”

“I won't.”

“Okay. Here goes.”

If Mrs. Pickleberry made it to the other side of the street any more slowly than Rasco had, Sylvester's eyesight was too insensitive to detect the difference. He looked at the rolling pin in his paws and wondered how in the heck he'd been so stupid as to allow himself to be lumbered with it.

“Now you,” he said to Viola, hoping she'd assume the tremble in his voice was brought on by adoration.

“You scared?”

“Scared? Me? Nah.”

“Okay, you go first.”

“Ahem. I think it's the role of the male to hold himself in readiness to come to the rescue of the lovely ladies in distress.”

“You are scared.”

“I am?”

“Never mind, though. So am I.”

And with that she was gone from his side. The next he saw her, she was standing between Rasco and her mother and, like them, beckoning to him. Even more startlingly, she was holding her mother's rolling pin in her non-waving hand. Sylvester looked down at his paws. He'd never even noticed her taking it.

Oh, well, Sylvester Lemmington, he thought feverishly. This is the moment. This is where the adults get sorted from the children. When the tough get going the going gets tough. Now ain't that true and reassuring? Wait a moment, I think I got that the wr—

Without his brain having given them any command to do so, his plump little legs were running out of the shadows of the overhanging wall and into the full brightness of a pair of streetlamps, and a full moon that chose precisely that moment to emerge from behind a cloud.

Sylvester was certain he must be making a riveting sight for the entire population of Hangman's Haven. Who could fail to notice the spectacle of a not so slender lemming, already beginning to gasp for breath, as he stumbled and skittered on the first part of a journey that had unanticipatedly multiplied many times over in length?

As if in answer to his question, something was going awry with his legs. Well, it wasn't really his legs' fault, so far as he could ascertain. Ascertain without looking down, that is, because he knew that if he looked down he'd certainly trip and fall flat on his face. It felt as if, in place of ordinary air, the ground had become covered in honey or molasses. His feet were definitely sticking to the sidewalk every time he tried to lift them up, and his lower legs were struggling to make progress through a liquid so viscous it was the very next thing to solid.

He wasn't running. He wasn't even walking. He was swimming – and not so much faster than a fly stuck in wet concrete. Surely everybody must be watching him, their hands on their hips as they guffawed with laughter at his predicament. He was the object of derision for every cutthroat and miscreant in Hangman's Haven on the whole of Blighter Island. They'd be talking in the taverns for years about the plight of the fat little lemming that got himself stuck in an ocean of syrup and kept flailing away until he hadn't any strength left to flail with and how, at that point, Cap'n Terrigan Rustbane had stepped in and announced the most sadistic and revolting method of execution he'd ever devised—

Cap'n Terrigan Rustbane!

The three words went through Sylvester's consciousness like a red-hot wire through butter.

Legs that, until an instant before had been made of solid lead, were now suddenly light as a feather.

I could run along the surface of this molasses lake!

No sooner said than done.

“I think you got across here quicker than any of us, darling,” said Viola. “That's twice you've done that. Moved faster than the eye can see. You must tell me how you do it. But,” she added as Sylvester puffed out his chest and began to preen himself in preparation for a long, not entirely self-effacing explanation, “not now. At the moment, dearest, we have to make tracks for the jungle.”

For the jungle! While the three words “Cap'n Terrigan Rustbane” had struck the most fiendish form of terror into Sylvester's heart, the three words “for the jungle” filled him with exhilaration. There was a strange whiff in his nostrils, an odor he'd smelled somewhere before, and it took him a moment to recognize it for what it was: the salty tang of brine as the sun begins to rise over the horizon of a brand new day at sea.

For a moment, he thought one of the pirates must have crept up on them, but then he realized what he was smelling was his own excitement.

“For the jungle,” he echoed, then began to wonder what being in a jungle could possibly be like.

He was to learn soon enough. It was a place where molten balls of sap fell from the skies onto the necks of perfectly innocent, unsuspecting lemmings, and where tree roots looked like giant boa constrictors.

But first they had to get out of Hangman's Haven.

Rasco was a sure guide, but he was small and swift-moving and very much the same color as the shadows – of which there were more of than there were sunlit patches. He had a habit of getting a long way ahead and then wondering why they hadn't caught up yet. After a while, the little mouse started becoming less prone to committing this error. Well, after the couple of times when Mrs. Pickleberry had been the first of the lemmings to reach him, in any case. Even so, he was still infuriatingly easy to lose, especially after they'd left the center of Hangman's Haven behind and were making their way through the more sparsely housed outskirts. There, the lights came only from windows and the homes were few and far between that hadn't boarded up their windows in self-defense.

Come what may, though, the three lemmings couldn't afford to lose him. As complete strangers in this town where lives were worth less than spit in the wind, they were more vulnerable than they'd ever been before – even when Cap'n Rustbane had them in his merciless grasp. Without the mouse, it would be only a matter of time before their corpses joined the long, somber line of those floating down the dark gutter that leads to oblivion.

Sylvester tried to say something of this to Viola at one stage when Rasco had allowed them to pause to regain their breath.

“You mean we're dead as doornails unless we stick close to the little—”

Sylvester clamped his paw over her mouth, hoping she'd not bite.

“Sssh.”

“She's right,” said Rasco brightly. “I am little. I know it. There's no need to be so sensitive 'bout me feelings.”

Sylvester gave him a watery grin.

Then they were off again.

What was worrying Sylvester all this while was that there were no signs of pursuit by Cap'n Rustbane and his bloodthirsty cronies from the Shadeblaze. Surely the pirates wouldn't have given up this easily? Surely they would be combing the town for the fugitives, especially since those fugitives had already made them look foolish. Sylvester's estimation of the pirates wasn't all that high, and he knew for certain many of them would have been happy enough to call it a day early on and head back to the Shadeblaze to spend a few hours in the muzzy grip of a quadrupled grog ration. But Cap'n Rustbane himself – and Jeopord, plus a few others – were made of totally different stuff, and they'd not rest until they'd tracked down the lemmings and extracted horrific revenge for crimes real and imagined.

So, where were they, the pursuers?

He tried to ask this question of Rasco at another moment when the mouse stayed still long enough for speech to be possible.

The little fellow shrugged. “I just live here.”

“Yes, but—”

The worst moment of the whole night, Sylvester later decided (at about the same time as he was deciding that nothing which had happened to them during the escape from Hangman's Haven was even on the same page as the horrors they discovered in the jungle's lush, overpoweringly fecund embrace), was near the end of it. The air was full of bizarre cries and unearthly screams, all coming from the miasma of blackness that lay between the runaways and the first paling of the eastern skies. Rasco had left the lemmings on their own for a few minutes, sheltering in the lee of someone's gateway, while he scouted on ahead. He was sure, he told them, that he knew some people hereabouts who'd give them a safe haven and some food while they recuperated from their hours of flight.