The Tides of Avarice (60 page)

Rustbane harrumphed. “You wouldn't like to be the next to swim to shore, would you, m'dear?”

“I'll be doin' that,” said Mrs. Pickleberry.

Before anyone could stop her, she dove over the side.

“I never knew your mom could swim that well,” said Sylvester a few momenta later as Mrs. Pickleberry clambered up on to the rock alongside Pimplebrains.

“Neither did I.”

Somehow or other, it turned out Sylvester was the last one to swim. By then, the longboat was beginning to feel a very cold and lonely place and he was glad to leave it. He'd have been even gladder if leaving it didn't mean having to plunge into roiling waters that looked as if they'd enjoy nothing more than ripping a young lemming limb from limb.

He stood at the bow of the longboat, giving the little craft one last farewell.

The sea surged.

The stern of the longboat went down under the impact of a house-sized volume of water.

The bow went up, making a noise like the cracking of a whip or an elastic band suddenly released from tension.

Making a noise that wasn't like the cracking of a whip, or of an elastic band suddenly released from tension, but more like the air erupting from a punctured balloon, Sylvester shot skyward.

The next thing he knew he was clinging onto a small thorny twig that stuck out from the face of the Mighty Enormous Cliff about twenty yards above water level. Looking down at the waves hammering against the craggy rocks, Sylvester couldn't decide whether this was twenty yards too high or not nearly high enough.

“Ah, hello!” he called down to his friends.

Viola shouted something back up at him, but he couldn't make out what it was. The thunder of the waves was louder than he'd ever thought a sound could be.

He could hear Pimplebrains, though, or maybe he was just reading lips, when the beaver called up to him, “Catch the rope!”

A moment later there was a lasso of rope around Sylvester's neck.

“Thanks for the warning!” he cried. Looking down, he realized Pimplebrains hadn't been able to hear him.

A good thing too, he thought, just as he realized the root of the plant he was gripping was beginning to think of tearing itself loose from the rocky crevice in which it had grown.

He looked despairingly around for a pawhold.

There!

Just above him there was another crack in the surface of the rock. If he could only stre-e-e-e-e-tch an arm far enough, but that meant removing one clutching paw from his only support, the plant to which he clung. And once he'd released that grip he was committed to …

Sylvester's mind reached a point of panic so intense that suddenly he burst through it into an area of total calm.

He could reach that fissure in the rock face, no problem.

Easy.

See, he'd done it already!

It was easy to jam a claw down into it, mooring himself securely.

As if on cue, the little branch he'd been holding on to broke, tumbling away toward the anxious, upward-looking faces of his friends.

Sylvester dangled by a solitary claw.

Let's not panic, he told himself.

He dangled a little longer, swaying gently from side to side with the wind. There was no other pawhold in sight.

On second thought, let's!

✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿.

“It was the most astonishing thing I've ever seen,” said Pimplebrains as the party rested on the grass at the top of Mighty Enormous Cliff. “Quite astonishing.”

Sylvester smiled modestly. “It was nothing. We lemmings do that sort of stuff all the time.”

“Mrs. Pickleberry didn't.”

“Well, she's, er, she's built differently and she's, ah, less callow.”

“You were marvelous,” Viola told him.

I was just terrified, he thought. That was all. And because I was terrified I was able to …

What his friends had seen was Sylvester dangling by a precarious grip, staring back down at them with a look that could have been painted on stone and still given small children nightmares. Then, even as they watched disbelievingly, he'd blurred.

While they were still blinking their eyes at this, they'd noticed that, somehow, Sylvester was already at the top of the Mighty Enormous Cliff despite appearing not to have touched any intermediate point between there and his immediately previous perch. Viola and Mrs. Pickleberry and Rasco had seen the effect before, of course, but even they had marveled at its repetition here.

Once at the top, Sylvester, as baffled as anyone else by his prowess, had cast the rope down so the others could climb up. For Pimplebrains and Rustbane, the smaller animals had had to tie the rope to the base of a convenient birch tree.

Jasper put a paw on Sylvester's shoulder. “Whatever you say, son, I'm proud of you. You did good.”

Sylvester wished they'd all just shut up about it. He was getting more embarrassed by the moment.

Rescue came from perhaps the most unexpected direction of all.

“What's that?” said Rustbane suddenly, sitting up and scenting the air, his nose and whiskers twitching.

“I don't hear nuffink,” Mrs. Pickleberry replied testily.

Sylvester wondered why she sounded so worried, then realized she must be apprehensive about the welcome the returning adventurers might receive from the likes of, say, Mayor Hairbell.

“Hush,” insisted Rustbane. “It's the sound of people – lemmings – chanting, I think, and drums.”

Jasper obviously heard it too. He'd gone completely still. Under the gray fur, his face paled.

“What is it, Dad?”

“Something I remember all too well, my lad. Things haven't changed at all since my day, have they?”

“Stop talking in riddles, Dad! What hasn't changed?”

But Sylvester already knew the answer.

By good fortune or bad, they'd returned on the day of the Exodus that Mayor Hairbell had been planning all those weeks ago before Sylvester and the Pickleberries had been abducted by the rioting pirates. The devastation the pirates had inflicted on Foxglove, not to mention on Hairbell himself, must have caused the mayor and High Priest Spurge to postpone the event until order could be restored.

But not indefinitely.

Today a new generation of “troublesome” lemmings was heading toward a watery death at the base of the Mighty Enormous Cliff.

Unless …

“Come on!” cried Sylvester, leaping to his feet. “We can stop this!”

“Whyever would we wish to?” said the gray fox languorously, lounging on the grass, sniffing a daisy he'd just picked, twirling its stem. Yet Sylvester could see a gleam of anticipation in the pirate's eye. There was the prospect of action here and Cap'n Terrigan Rustbane never turned his face away from fighting if he could help it.

Jasper looked dubious. “There's barely a pawful of us and who knows how many hundreds the mayor can call upon if his authority's challenged?”

Mrs. Pickleberry had set her jaw like rock. “Are you man or are you mouse, Jasper Lemmington? Don't answer that question.”

Jasper's shoulders slumped. “You're right, of course. It's our duty to stop it if we can.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” cried Rasco, jumping up to stand by Sylvester. From somewhere he produced a diminutive cutlass and slashed experimentally with it at the air in front of him.

“Terrifying,” remarked Rustbane, looking down his nose at the mouse. “Such ferocity in one so small.”

Over the brow of the plateau that led to the Mighty Enormous Cliff came the first few lemmings. They halted abruptly on seeing the ragamuffin party that stood between them and the precipice. Others backed up behind them. The chanting that had been growing ever louder trailed off in unharmonious disarray.

“Keep going! Keep going! You'll be proud of yourself when you venture forth. It's your good fortune to seek out the Land of Destiny. The great spirit Lhaeminguas calls upon you to take the leap of faith.”

His heart sinking, Sylvester recognized the voice as that of Hairbell, and a few moments later the portly mayor himself came into view. Sylvester had been looking forward to his final showdown with the tyrant, but now that it was actually imminent he wished the moment could be delayed a little. This was all happening too quickly, too soon.

Immediately behind Mayor Hairbell came High Priest Spurge, clad in his ceremonial robes and an aura of acute piety.

“Rat-a-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat!” went the drums, but then they lost their rhythm. “Rat-a-tatter-tatterta! Rat-rat-a!”

Hairbell saw Sylvester and he gave a contemptuous laugh. “The spratling's returned, has he?”

Then Rustbane nonchalantly got to his feet and Hairbell lost a whole lot of confidence in a whole lot of a hurry.

“The p-p-pirate!”

The word went through the ranks of lemmings as a wave of whispers. “The pirate. The pirate. The pirate. The pirate.” Sylvester couldn't tell if the marchers were terrified or excited at the prospect of seeing their mayor discomfited. Although the people of Foxglove bent to Hairbell's will because lemmings tend to be law-abiding folk, the mayor was far from popular. The last time Rustbane had confronted him, Hairbell had been comprehensively humiliated. It was surprising, really, that the mayor had been able to regain any authority at all.

Rustbane pulled one of the flintlock pistols from his belt and blew across the top of its barrel suggestively. With his other hand, he drew his sword from its scabbard and tossed it to Sylvester, who caught the weapon deftly enough but staggered a little under the weight.

“I've a feeling you might need this, young hamster.”

“Lemming.”

Sylvester gave the gray fox a grin. Once upon a time, the pirate had treated him as vermin. Now, it was as if they were equal partners.

“Watch my back then.”

Rustbane laughed. “But of course.”

“We're all in this together,” said Jasper sternly, “and me more than most of you. That swine lied to me to make me go on the Exodus. Really he wanted to kill me. And you tell me he's been pestering my wife.”

Before anyone could move to stop him, Jasper was striding across the grass of the plateau toward where Hairbell and Spurge stood open-mouthed. The drummers had by now stopped all attempts at sounding their tattoo. In other circumstances, Sylvester might have laughed to see them with their sticks, forgotten in the drama of the unfolding scene, still raised as if held in the air by invisible threads.

It was only when Jasper had come within a few yards of Hairbell that the major recognized him.

“You!” Hairbell spat.

“Thought you'd never see me again, didn't you?”

“I—”

“Thought I was dead and gone? Drowned. A victim of your vile plottings, like so many others before and since.”

“No, no, of course not.” Hairbell was doing his best to recover both his composure and the ascendancy. “I'm delighted by your return, Jasper. It is Jasper, isn't it? Tell me, what is the Land of Destiny like? Did you meet the great spirit Lhaeminguas himself? Was he as mighty and imposing as all the sacred texts say he is? How many of our people have made it to the Land of—”

“There is no Land of Destiny!” cried Jasper.

“Surely that can't be true!”

“There's no Land of Destiny like the one this holy fool” – Jasper turned a withering glare on High Priest Spurge, who cringed away as if from boiling acid – “prates about in his temple. Or, rather, there are lots of lands of destiny. The whole world is full of lands where lemmings like us could follow their fortunes. But the way to find them isn't by leaping over the Mighty Enormous Cliff into the Great Wet Without End. The only place that route takes you is to drowning. The way to all those lands of destiny is by ship across the seas, sailing under the scudding clouds with the slap of canvas and the creaking of timbers. Or it's inland, trekking over the mountains to find those countries whose people sometimes come to visit us but which we're too pusillanimous to venture to ourselves.

“But it's suited you well, hasn't it, Hairbell? You and all the Hairbells before you, whatever their names. It's suited the preachers like your pathetic crony, Spurge, to keep the lemmings imprisoned in Foxglove as your near-slaves as surely as if there were iron bars around the town stretching from the ground to the sky. Then, every few years you've culled every lemming who's shown the slightest signs of initiative by sending them on the Great Exodus. Not content with having got rid of me, you were planning to send my only son to the same watery grave. Great Exodus, huh?” Jasper spat on to the grass between them. “Great Suicide Leap, more like!”

Hairbell fluttered his paws. When the Mayor spoke, Sylvester could tell the words were addressed less to Jasper than to the crowd of lemmings behind, some of whom were beginning to rumble angrily.

“This is all delusion, Jasper, delusion, conspiracy and slander. Or maybe just a misunderstanding.” The Mayor chuckled a ghastly, artificial chuckle. “Yes, that's it. Just a misunderstanding. Come, come, Jasper” – he moved as if to put an arm around the other lemming's shoulders – “surely we can talk this over, two old troupers like us.”

Jasper dodged away. “And you've been making up to my wife!”

“Your widow, dear fellow, your widow. At least, that what everyone thought she was. She thought she was your widow too, which makes it all the more remarkable that she's consistently rejected my adv—dear me, what was I talking about. I can hardly get my words in order on this happy, happy day, when one, two, three, four of our citizens have returned to us. That's Daphne Pickleberry back there and young Viola. I'm so charmed to see—”

“Another who's suffered your unwelcome advances,” said Sylvester darkly. “What is it about the Lemmington clan's women, Hairbell. It seems you can hardly keep your paws off them and you don't even try.”