White Eyes (part seven)

He found Morgan waiting for him just inside the gates of the city. She eyed his dusty face with ill-concealed mirth as he reached her.

“Well, what happened?” she snorted. He scowled at her and she shut up.

“Anyway,” continued Morgan, changing the subject, “I think I have a lead. I questioned this funny old chap sitting by the gate over there – ’’ she pointed, “ – and he says he saw a boy pass through not too long ago, carrying a big heavy sack. He says – ’’ she lowered her voice, “ – he says that he’s seen the boy before, always with the same pack, although sometimes the pack is more full, sometimes practically empty. I think that’s a start.”

“But which way did he go? That’s what we need to know.”

Morgan fidgeted with the rim of her dusty frock.

“Truth be told, I don’t know,” she admitted. “The funny little chap over there said I had to pay him for any more information. Said he’d already given more than he should.”

Argo bristled with indignation.

“Did he now? Well, I’ll teach him a lesson or three…”

He was stopped in mid-stride by Morgan’s arm.

“No,” she said. “Not that way. Look at him, he guesses what we’re up to. We should pay him and get on with it. Do you have any money?”

Argo reluctantly stepped back.

“Yes,” he muttered. “But not much. He’ll have to make do. And if he doesn’t …” he shot the sneering man a murderous scowl.

“Fine,” said Morgan. “But we’d best be quick.” The two of them strode casually towards the little man. He sat hunched in a shadow behind the gate. He eyed them warily, but did not cease grinning his crooked little sneer.

“Whaddya want? I’m bizzy.” He began fiddling with a bundle that sat beside him. A pungent reek emanated from it, and Morgan tried not to guess what was wrapped in it.

Argo looked slightly sick as he attempted to look the man in the eye.

“You told my friend here,” he forced out, “that a boy with a sack passed through here not so long ago. We want – we want to know where he went.”

The man’s sneer broadened, displaying cracked, black teeth with all manner of nasty substances stuck between them. Argo almost retched.

“An’ why shid I tell you?”

“Because,” explained Argo, “I have money.”

A noticeable change came over the man’s eyes. There seemed to be a greedy light in them, and they roved restlessly over Argo’s tatty attire, obviously searching for a pocket of some sort.

“Weel now, why dincha tell me dat afore? Sure I’ll tell ye, as soon as ye hand over da dosh, mate.” He held out a grubby hand.

Argo backed off a few steps, eyeing the hand with distaste.

“I’ll only give it to you when you tell me where the boy went.”

The man’s sneer seemed to become a little strained.

“Ah, sure an’ ye don’t mean that, mate? Ye can trust me, I’ll keep me werd.” He stretched out his bony hand a little further.

Argo scowled.

“No,” he said. “Only when you tell us.”

The man’s mocking smile disappeared.

“Yew don’t know who yer dealing wif, mate. Gimme the money or yew’ll know egzaccally who yer dealing wif!”

Argo did not bother to ask what ‘egzaccally’ meant. Thinking fast, he fetched his scruffy wallet from his vest pocket, and held it high above his head. The man’s smirk suddenly reappeared, and he appealed to Argo.

“C’mon, mate. I knew ye’d warm up to me. Now, just hand it over.” His hand was stretched out even further than before. “C’mon,” he chided.

Argo rummaged in his wallet and pulled out a silver coin, placing it in the man’s grimy palm. The man looked at it incredulously.

“Aww, mate, c’mon. That’s hardly enuf to knit me ole skin an’ bones together.” Argo placed one more coin into the man’s palm. “One more,” said the man. “One more an’ I’ll tell ye all I know.”

As soon as the last coin had landed in his filthy palm, he was scrambling to his feet and scurrying away with surprising speed. Argo had not been expecting that, and he took a moment to come to his senses and spring after him.

“Stop!” he yelled. “Stop, thief!” The fact that nobody helped him made hardly any difference – Argo was faster than the man, and anger lent speed to his feet. The man had hardly run thirty metres when the boy caught up with him and tackled him to the ground. He almost vomited all over him as he caught a whiff of the man’s breath. He grunted and panted as he struggled to hold him down – no matter how slight the man was, it was clear he was no weakling. However, Argo was bigger and overpowered him quite easily. No sooner than he had slammed his opponent against the wall of a nearby building than Morgan raced around the corner and helped her friend pull him down. She also noticed that one of the man’s hands was tucked inside the folds of his scruffy clothing, and grabbed his wrist as he attempted to pull it out. Argo noticed the danger and, quick as lightning, he wrenched the knife from the man’s clenched fist and held it firmly, the point a millimetre from the man’s left eye. Immediately all struggling ceased. The thief’s eyes were fixed in terrified wonder on the cold steel point hovering right in front of his nose.

Immediately he began to whimper.

“Please, mate … I didn’t do nothin’ … please, ‘twas only a joke …”

Argo brought the knife a little closer to his eye and snarled at him.

“Stop sniveling, thief. I want you to tell us now – where did the boy go?”

“I dunno, honest I don’t …”

The knife point nicked his eyelid and he screamed.

“No! No, don’t blind me, please, I beg ye! I never did nothin’ ter no-one, I –’’

“If you don’t tell, I’ll carve your eye out with this knife – nice and slow like, so as you can feel it before you bleed to death.”

“Alright! Alright, I’ll tell. He went to the port, the port, like he always does – please don’t kill me!”

He was released before he knew it, and found himself alone, cowering against the building with his hands covering his eyes. The two children were already twenty metres away – the boy still clutching the knife.

“The port. Are you sure that’s what he said?”

“Yes, for the third time. That’s what he said, and that’s where we’re going.”

“But what if he was lying? I wouldn’t put it past him.”

“It can’t do any harm checking, can it? It’s the best bet we have.”

Morgan and Argo were striding at a brisk pace through the busy streets of North Bridge, attempting to locate the port. They had taken numerous directions from stall owners and passer-bys, and finally it seemed they were nearing their mark. Morgan could catch the distinctive calls of sailors and of heavy objects thudding onto wood. She frowned. She knew that there was a high likelihood that the man had been lying, or that they had been roped into an ambush and, once they had reached the port, would be robbed blind before Argo had the chance to say, “I told you so.” Whatever the risk, however, Morgan was determined to take it. She was not overly fond of the possibility that they had come all this way for a filthy man’s knife and dusty faces.

Argo still harboured doubts, but decided to take the diplomatic option. He shrugged his shoulders and mumbled a meek sort of last stand: “Fine, then. It’s your funeral.” After that he plodded on in silence.

It was not long before the two reached the port. The deck was a long, creaky stretch of wood that jutted out at an odd angle over the water. It was here that Morgan caught her first glimpse of the river Hel’zyne. If she had ever seen the sea, she would not have been able to tell the difference between it and the vast expanse of water now stretched out before her. The river was wide indeed – if Morgan had had a telescope she would only just have been able to distinguish the dark line that marked the bank on the other side; the water seemed to disappear into swirling mists and patterns about halfway across. Morgan imagined the lonely moor on the opposite bank – flat, lifeless grassland swathed in a blanket of grey fog, stretching away east for as far as ever a wanderer travelled. Standing there on the deck, she vowed that one day she should go there herself, and explore the nothingness– and the dark courtyard that lay at its easternmost end.

Tugging her head back out of the clouds (out of the mists would be a more apt description), Morgan discovered that Argo had set off without her, and was already exploring the dock – despite his adamancy that they were walking idly into a trap. Trotting off in pursuit, Morgan caught hold of his elbow and stopped him.

“Be careful,” she hissed. “Don’t go gallivanting off like that. You never know what might happen.”

Argo sighed.

“You sound just like my mother.” Shaking his arm free, he strode a little closer to a tiny coracle moored close to them. It was nudging the water-logged wood of the deck gently. “I think we should check every boat or ship or whatever around here, just in case. If Peg really is here, he’s bound to be aboard one.”

Morgan smirked derisively.

“All right, then. You search the bow and stern, and I’ll scour the cabin and galley. We’ll have to search thoroughly – there are so many places for him to hide.”

Argo scowled at her, backing away from the tiny boat. To cover up his embarrassment, he scanned the port with a shadowed eye and pointed in a professional manner to the boat nearest them. He made sure it was big enough to search before speaking.

“I was talking about ships. Let’s start with that one.”

Argo ambled off in a casual manner, trying not to appear in a hurry. Morgan trailed along behind him, waving cheerily at curious passer-bys. Reaching the boat, they found a scruffy boy leaning nonchalantly against the bow, flipping knucklebones. He barely glanced upward as they approached him; he was more concerned about where the bones were landing.

Argo cleared his throat. There was no answer, so, without wasting another important cough, he spoke.

“Are you the cabin boy of this ship?”

The boy did not look up.

“Aye.” He executed a complicated manoeuvre with his fingers carelessly, and all five bones landed neatly on top of his scrawny knuckles.

“We would like to go aboard.”

The boy still did not look up, but shrugged his shoulders and tossed the bones in the air, snatching them all deftly out of space.

The two children took that as a rather dismissive gesture, and so proceeded to board the ship.

Their search was fruitless; two drunken sailors who were supposedly on guard duty and a green-eyed cat were the lone rewards of their hunt.

Upon disembarking, the two found the boy in the same position, still fiddling with his knucklebones. He gave them a slight nod as they departed.

The next ship they tried was larger and better kept, but it was completely unguarded. Morgan and Argo split and searched every corner of the big vessel, without results. Somewhat disheartened, the children scanned the dock for any other unguarded or suspicious-looking crafts. Finding none, Argo began to suggest that they give up and go home – when he halted in his tracks. Following his gaze, Morgan spied what he had seen. It was a mast – hardly visible in the bright afternoon sun, but still there. No sails were visible; no flag either, but Morgan was quite sure that it was a ship. It seemed to be moored just around the thin spit of land that might someday in the distant past have been a headland – this was called Northayde, and where it began was where the town of Northbridge ended. Its northernmost side was the south end of Skeylondé, and the northern border of Halzar.

Morgan wondered with some suspicion why a ship should be moored so close to the port of Northbridge, yet right on the border of another country. It was almost as though it were trying hard not to be seen. Glancing sideways at her companion, she nudged his arm.

“We could be on to something.”

Argo nodded.

“I think you’re right. Let’s check it out.”

The end of the dock was not so very far from the first slopes of Northayde, so the two had no trouble whatsoever in reaching them. Northayde’s southern side was bare and brown, meaning they could not screen themselves from unfriendly eyes, but as Argo said, there was nothing they could do about that.

Once they had scaled the gentle slopes and reached a rather pitiful excuse for a summit, they were relieved that the people of Skeylondé were less concerned with the tree-felling industry; thick bush provided a concealing screen from prying eyes. The children descended gratefully into the shady cover of the trees, trying to lighten their footfalls. Morgan wondered vaguely why this was necessary, and then decided that she wouldn’t bother trying to figure it out, concentrating on more important things – for example, trying not to crash headlong into Argo as she made an ungainly scramble down the somewhat steeper slopes of the northern side of Northayde.

It was not long before they could distinguish human voices mixed with the sounds of the bush. Morgan strained her ears until they were almost wrenching themselves from the sides of her head, but still she could not make out what they were saying. They were coarse male voices and there were many of them, but aside from that Morgan could not define anything particular.

Soon the two were close enough to hear the voices clearly, though not nearly clearly enough – it was a raucous din and there was not much to be clearly distinguished, even if one were standing amongst the perpetrators. Morgan halted her friend with a gesture, and with the agility of a squirrel, scaled a nearby tree trunk, peering cautiously over its topmost leaves.

Morgan had expected to see a crowd milling down by the shore, or at least a group of men. Instead, she saw two solid-looking sentries slouching resignedly against a tree, now and again peering moodily over their shoulders. They were not speaking. The din seemed to come from the ship itself – a large, square-rigged galleon with its sails furled. Life was not visible on deck – an illusion that belied the obvious bedlam going on below deck.

Morgan pulled her head under the cover of leaves and began descending from the flimsy branch she was clinging to. She had seen enough.

Beckoning Argo over to her, she muttered softly, “Two sailors on guard duty, just beside the ship. Big four-sailed thingamajig. No flag.”

Argo looked quizzically at his small friend.

“Four-sailed thingamajig?”

“If you want to see it, you scurvy dimwit, you’d best bend your back and get down his hill.”

“Aye, Cap’n.”

“Shut up.”

As the two neared the tree-line, Morgan heard one of the sentries strike up a conversation with his fellow.

“Yah, I hate this place. Too quiet. There ain’t nuffink to do, an’ what’s more, we be the ones the Cap’n decides to biff out here. In the sun an’ all.”

“Shut yer trap. If yore heard that’s the end of yew, and that’s that. Doncha remember wot he did to the last one wot got up his nose?”

“Idjit, I weren’t there. Yore Cap’n picked me up on’y a coupla weeks ago. Wot ‘appened?”

“Ye don’t want to know wot he did.”

“Go on, be a sport. I wanna know. Wot did the Captain do?”

“There ain’t no way I’m telling ye, mate. Same end’ll come ta me, if I do. Captain’s orders. No speakin’ of it.”

“Yah, ole flabby-guts. Where’s yore nerve?”

“Don’t yew ‘flabby-guts’ me, yew ole ‘alf-baked landlubber. I’m on’y doing wot I have to, to keep me skin in one piece.”

Morgan swung around to face her friend. He looked almost as nonplussed as she felt. How on Earth were they supposed to sneak passed without being spotted?

Suddenly Argo made a gesture with his hand. He brought a clenched fist down hard onto his palm, and then looked questioningly at Morgan. He had to make the gesture twice more before she realised what he was trying to convey.

She glanced doubtfully through the trees ahead of her, where she could just distinguish the figures of the two sentries. Now that the time had come, she had not the faintest clue of how they should go about getting aboard. The suggestion of fighting the sentries did not seem entirely sensible, but after challenging herself to find a better way, Morgan conceded. She nodded at Argo, who began to move forward.

Morgan was by his side in a nanosecond, and had stopped him in his tracks. Shaking her head slightly, she leaned close and whispered in his ear.

“We thould thneak,” she lisped, knowing that the letter ‘s’ is the easiest sound to discern in silence. “Thneak up behind them. Knock their headth together. You take the left one, I’ll take the right. When the time ith right, lithen for me thaying, ‘now’.”

Argo nodded. He cursed silently as the blanket of dead leaves beneath his feet crunched slightly under his weight. He thanked the heavens for the raised voices of their two targets.

“…yew try that, me bold beauty, and ye’ll find yerself hanging from the yardarm wif a cutlass in the place of an eye. We’ll see ‘ow saucy y’are then, eh, mate?”

“Twice as saucy, ye cocky ole barrel-belly, cos ye’ll be ‘anging there aside me, aye that ye will, wif two cutlasses in place of yer nose, savvy?”

“Aye, I savvy, mate. I savvy that yore a – ’’ However, his friend never got to find out just what he was, for at that moment the two of them toppled over sideways with matching expressions of shock and puzzlement on their ugly features.

Morgan strode out from behind the tree first, heading straight for the big galleon. Argo followed her hesitantly, bending over their two felled victims.

“I think we’ve killed them.”

“No, we haven’t. It would have been a pity if we had. Now they’ll live to hang from the yardarm, when their Captain finds out they’ve deserted their post. I think relieving them of an eye or two, or even a nose, would be an improvement to those ugly mugs.” Argo hid a smirk, and tagged along after his peculiar friend.

“So, how are we planning to get aboard?”

“That’s why we’re over here, idiot. Checking everything out.” For the first time, the word ‘idiot’ was not said with derision.

“Well, we need to hurry up and think, or else we might as well scuttle her and be done with it.”

Morgan shook her head.

“These things need time to think over,” she murmured in an undertone. “If we rush headlong into things we’ll find ourselves in an even worse fix than those poor numbskulls.” She jerked her chin over her shoulder at the two senseless guards, and then began fingering the ship’s hull carefully. Argo left her to it.

After a while Morgan gave a pleased grunt. Argo waited for her to relay her findings. When she did not, he prompted her gently.

“Well?”

“We scale the side,” she said simply.

“What?”

“Look. These little grooves – look! – These little grooves are used when the crewmembers have to board quickly. See; they’re sort of like finger-holes.” Morgan ran her hand down the wood, over the little holes, and looked enquiringly at Argo, waiting for his verdict.

“So, do we climb or not?”

Argo shrugged.

“It’s worth a try. What other options do we have?” Without any further ado, he grasped two of the tricky handholds tightly, the veins on his spidery hands standing out as he hefted himself from the ground.

Once he was steady, the going was fairly easy, and Morgan followed as soon as there was space. Argo halted at the rim, peering cautiously onto the deck.

Morgan nudged him none-too-gently from below.

“Hurry up,” she hissed. “I’m hanging on for dear life here. What do you see?”

“I think the coast is clear,” he muttered, “though I can’t be sure. The cabin doesn’t have any windows I can see through, so I may be wrong.” He quickly caught hold of Morgan’s wrist as her fingers slipped, hauling her up beside him. The two scrambled over the railing and found themselves standing upon the swaying deck of the galleon.

Much to Morgan’s dismay, Argo’s land legs immediately failed him; he wobbled slightly and then crumpled onto the deck, creating a dull thud. Morgan winced at the sound, and prayed that the men below were making enough noise to distract themselves.

Helping her gangly-legged friend upright, Morgan pressed a finger to her lips. Still clutching Argo’s elbow firmly, she proceeded over the wooden boards, wishing they would not creak so loudly.

“Where to now?” Argo was still trying to control his legs; they seemed to have gained a life of their own. “We can’t go – whoa – we can’t go down there. They’d skewer us.” He clung desperately to Morgan’s arm as his unruly legs made another bid for freedom.

Morgan steadied herself against the railing, sighing perhaps a little louder than was wise.

“Here,” she grunted. “Hold on to the railing. It’s more reliable than me.” She shoved him against the low wall and crept on ahead.

Argo was tired. The bright afternoon sun was making him sweat, and his legs had gone completely beyond his sphere of control. Breathing deeply, he leaned against the low, wooden wall and peered blurrily through his eyelashes at Morgan, who was sneaking on ahead as lithely as any cat.

He was sick of this pointless enterprise. He wished the two of them could just leave Pegasus to do what he would, and go back to Charaid Town, where, beside the point, his master the baker would be waiting for him.

THUD. Argo did not know what struck him. He blacked out immediately, and slumped silently over the railing.

Morgan heard the thud. She whirled around, her heart pounding madly against her ribs. She caught a movement out of the corner of her eye, but did not wait to see what it was. In a heartbeat, she had scurried the length of the deck and was underneath the hold hatch, latching it behind her.

Now that she was under the deck, where, seemingly, all the crew were, Morgan took extra care in ensuring she made no noise save the intake of breath. It was only after she had found herself a secure shelter behind a stack of barrels that she realised Argo was missing. She almost groaned aloud. Her back had been turned for about thirty seconds. Thirty seconds! And Argo had managed to get himself thumped on the back of the head and captured, as Morgan assumed he had.

She was ready to go back for him, danger or no, when a man walked past. Sheltering behind the barrels, she watched him. He was a tall man, and at the same time managed to be thick and sinewy. He was carrying something long and limp – Morgan did not have to be a certified genius to tell what it was.

The man flung Argo roughly to land upon the small platform formed by Morgan’s barrel fort. As the man approached, Morgan ducked her head further still, trying not to breathe too loudly. In her current state of panic, this was hard, and she could tell the man sensed something.

Half-expecting to hear him start sniffing for her scent, Morgan flattened her body entirely against the barrels and shivered with trepidation. However, the man did not start sniffing. After peering for a moment into the gloom, he shrugged his hefty shoulders and examined his newly-felled victim. Morgan heard a faint sort of rasping, grunting sound which she assumed to be some sort of coughing fit; later she realised it was laughter.

A rustling sound could be heard as Argo was rolled roughly onto his back. The man was silent as he inspected him. “Out cold,” he grunted in a satisfied kind of way.

Morgan felt like telling him how obvious that fact was, but restrained herself. Instead she listened for more words. Luckily, the man was rather fond of conversing with himself.

“Ah, naow, look at ‘im. Poor li’l mummy’s boy, got ‘imself into a spot of trouble wif poirates. Serves ye roight, mate, t’be honest. Shouldn’t take yore dainty li’l girlfriend ta places loike these.”

Morgan fumed silently at being addressed as his dainty little girlfriend, and bit hard on her tongue, listening intently. However, before Argo’s hulking captor had time to embark upon another subject concerning ‘poor li’l mummy’s boy’, there was disturbance from somewhere nearby; Morgan heard a crash as a door flew open, and the tramp of heavy boots.

“Ahoy there, Flick! A bit of a row goin’ on in there; much quieter out here, eh?” There was a pause as the newcomer spied Argo, splayed awkwardly atop a couple of barrels.

“An’ what’s this ye got here, mate? We ain’t s’posed to take no prisoners yet, where’ve ye been?” Another pause. “Ah, this one’s a young un. Poor blighter. D’ya think he’d make a good oar-slave?”

“Aye, he would,” replied the first man dryly, “ just as soon as we get some oars.”

“Ah, quit yore lamentin’. He could be a cabin boy, or a galley assistant, just as well. Couldn’t ye, boy?” he aimed a high kick at the limp body of Argo, missing by several metres.

His companion thought it was hilariously droll.

“No good talkin’ ta that un, mate,” he roared, tears squeezing from the corners of his eyes. “I fink he’s a li’l bit indiff’rent at the moment!”

Morgan took the pair’s momentary mirth as an opportunity to sneak away unheeded. She slipped lithely out from the cover of the barrels and crept down the narrow corridor. As she rounded the corner, she listened once more to the unruly pair’s conversation.

“Ha ha! ‘Indiff’rent’, dat’s a good un!”

Morgan shook her head.