"I want answers, Teach, and if ya knows what be good for ya, they'll be coming quick and easy."
I'd never seen Mel in a true, towering rage before, and it was a sight to behold. It wasn't so much the raised voice, which I'd heard, or the angry scowl, which I'd seen. There was something else, an almost tangible aura he seemed to project around himself which carried the weight of his emotion. Once or twice I'd even thought I saw the night air shimmer. Perhaps it did; there are all kinds of stories about the way great warriors' skills can be almost like magic, and Mel was undeniably a great warrior.
That kind of anger is supposed to be a terrifying thing, especially to someone like myself who was so new to any kind of violence, but it didn't bother me in the least, probably because I was feeling it right along with Mel, as was every crew member still standing. The horror of the walking skeletons and the ghost captain, the sorrow at seeing friends and allies killed, they had all congealed together, as if being vented through the only possible outlet. Our spirits wanted something, anything, to fight back against, and Teach was it. Six of the fifteen pirates were dead, several wounded, and Morgan...
I didn't know what had happened to Morgan. Van Dierken's clutch at his throat had done something, certainly, but I had no idea what. The dapper pirate lay comatose, fever-wracked with a sheen of sweat glistening in the Blue Star's light. None of our attempts to bring him around had been able to bring any response, not even with antidotes or holy water. Judging from Van Dierken's threats about dawn, a simple death would probably seem a mercy.
Mel grabbed the front of Teach's ragged shirt and lifted the bent old man off the ground. To an outsider, I supposed it would like the rankest bullying, the huge pirate manhandling the withered, pathetic figure, but I knew differently. An evil mind did not demand a strong body, and Teach had the most evil mind of all those on the island who were still alive.
"Give over, ya back-biting spawn o' sea slime phlegm!"
Mel shook the old cutthroat with enough force to make Teach's teeth rattle if he'd had any that matched up.
"Ahrrr! I told yer true right enough," Teach coughed out. "Th' island do be here, don't it? That do be Van Dierken's ghost and none other. This do be his treasure store, like I'd told yer."
"Ya seem ta have left some parts out," Mel roared, giving him another shake.
"Mebbe so, but not o' that story. Seeing what I didn't tell yer was that when we came aboard with Van Dierken, we signed his articles in our own blood."
"A contract signed in blood? That's like something out of a bad Lytonese opera!" I mocked.
"Not entirely," Ace explained. "Articles are the ship's rules governing conduct on board, division of plunder, compensation if you get a leg cut off, and that kind of thing. Most of us prefer to sign in ink, though, and save the blood for when people start breaking the articles."
I was relieved that I hadn't been completely wrong.
"I thought it'd be rank superstition meself, but he owns me soul now, he does, an' he'll not let it go if I don't do as he commands."
"He owns yer soul?"
"An' how'd yer be feelin' if yer did hear the voice of a dead man in yer heart, and yer not even havin' a jigger or two o' rum in yer belly ter blame it on? I tried ter convince meself it were jest th' black dog on me back, but it kept comin' again an' again 'til I couldn't resist it no more. He said I'd signed on ter be his, an' that by runnin' I'd broken faith with th' company. He knew everything I'd done, ahrrr, as if he'd been there watchin' as I did it! Iffin' I didn't do as he said, I'd be his ter command after me death."
"And this be what he ordered?"
"I was ter bring a ship an' crew ter Dead Man's Isle, but it weren't so easy as all that. I had a mind ter be savin' me own skin, so's I couldn't ask just any buccaneer, as I told yer. Likewise, I couldn't tell me tale ter the law or ter a merchant like th' little missy there, on account o' they got friends an' relations as would be curious when th' first ship went missin', or so's I figgered. Cap'n Van Dierken weren't too clear as ter th' particulars o' what he wanted, but it didn't take an education ter sees as he didn't mean them any good. I tried a couple o' times before, but yer the first ones as did believe me."
"Lucky us," remarked Ace.
"Ya stinking coward!" bellowed Mel. "Ya'd send a whole crew o' sailors into the hands o' this fiend, just ta save yer own hide?"
"It'd be me soul I'd been worryin' over, not me life alone, Cap'n, and ter puts it bluntly, I'd be preferrin' ter take a chance on Althena forgivin' me if I did do as Bloodheart said than on Bloodheart forgivin' me if I didn't. T'ain't pretty, but there it be."
"Just out of curiosity," Ace said offhandedly, "while you were showing all this newfound trust in Althena's mercy, did you ever consider visiting your local shrine and seeing if the Goddess could do something about freeing your soul from Van Dierken's curse?"
"Eh?"
"Somehow, I didn't think so."
"And I think," said Jack, "that if this bastard's fate is to spend his afterlife as Van Dierken's slave, then we should speed him on his way." He raised his cutlass, the fresh nicks in its edge from chopping through bone sending back glints of light and making the weapon look all the more menacing.
"Aye, the backbitin' swine deserves it," Patch agreed, the crusted blood on his cheek a badge of where his opinions came from.
"But what about Morgan?" I put in.
I don't know why I'd spoken up. It's not as if I had any record of success in these pirate conclaves. There was a part of me, besides, that was as bloodthirsty as Jack Hook. Seeing Teach put to a painful death out of revenge would be a positive step against the fear, a brazenly defiant act saying, See? We can do something against the evil that killed our friends!
Maybe that was it. Maybe some other part of me saw then what is so easy to see now, that killing Teach would do absolutely nothing against the evil in question, that quite apart from perfectly reasonable resentment of one who'd betrayed us, our anger at Teach was truly driven by how ineffectual we'd been against the ghostly Van Dierken... how scared we were of him.
"If Van Dierken was telling the truth, then we only have until dawn to save Morgan--and not just from death, but something considerably worse. Teach is the only lead we have here!"
"She's got a point there," Ace mused, "but it's still making a rather large assumption."
"Namely, that Bloodheart can be believed. I can't think that he means ta do the pretty with us when we follow his orders," Mel confirmed.
"So, you're just going to leave Morgan to become... what? A ghost, trapped here like Van Dierken?" I shuddered at the idea.
Mel gave me a long, thoughtful look.
"Ya really think so?"
He glanced from me to Teach, then back to where Morgan lay in the sand, then gave a deep sigh. He dumped the old pirate back onto the beach.
"All right, Teach, here's how it's going to be." He jabbed a big finger at the man for emphasis. "Yer going ta lead us ta Van Dierken like he said. Only, at the first sign o' a trap, I'll cut ya down like the dirty shark-bait ya are, and ya kin find out fer yerself if Bloodheart has yer soul in his fist or not. Ya get me?"
Teach gulped, his Adam's-apple bobbing nervously, almost as fast as his head was.
"Good."
Mel turned back to the rest of us.
"Ya know what's ta happen. We'll be going after Bloodheart and all his bony brigands. Regardless o' what he told us, if he put a curse on Morgan, then I'm figuring it'll be gone only when Van Dierken himself is, once and fer all. I'll not be ordering ya ta come with me, not fer this, but I'll be glad o' any o' ya what's got the courage ta try their luck against the old man with the scythe."
"So, you're going off after a skeleton crew, tireless hordes of undead against whom half our weapons don't even work," Ace outlined the situation, "and who are led by a ghost captain against whom none of our weapons seem to work. We don't have a magician, not even a hedge-wizard, we don't have a priest to call down Althena's justice on Van Dierken, and we don't even have a magic sword or two that might be able to slay the dead."
"Aye."
"On the other hand, while you did seem able to hurt the ghost with your bare hand, just touching it hurt you considerably more than you did him."
"Aye," Mel said again, flexing his left hand. Striking Van Dierken had blasted and burned his hand as if he'd thrust it into fire; the flesh had been charred and blackened, sometimes even to the point that the finger bones had been exposed. Thankfully, multiple healing nuts had cured the damage but for a few spots where the skin was still red and raw.
"And meanwhile, it's entirely possible that Bloodheart did whatever he did to Morgan solely for the purpose of inspiring us to do precisely what you're proposing to do?"
"Aye," said Mel for the third time.
"Just checking. I'm in."
"Yer a crazy man, ya know that?"
"No, no, that's Jack's job. I'm just following my captain. Besides, if it were me laying there instead of Morgan, I'd want him to do what he could for me, to at least try."
Mel shook his head in surprise or disbelief.
"You'd better count me in too," pitched in Jack. "After all, like Ace said, being the crazy one is my job, and I don't want to be accused of dereliction of duty."
"Althena protect us all. Did Jack Hook truly just crack a joke, and at his own expense, no less?"
"No, you're probably just hallucinating from all the shocks you've had since we got here."
"Yes, that's more likely."
Patch clucked his tongue.
"Ahrrr, Cap'n, I'd better throw in me lot with yers, too. Yer going ter need a real pirate at'cher back, not these two an' their fancy talkin' ways."
It kept on going like that, as the other four survivors, Anne and three men named Lowe, Condent, and Hornigold, spoke up and affirmed their desire to risk life and limb walking into a trap set by an apparently unkillable ghost. I supposed that when nearly every outpost of civilization wants to hang you, you develop a certain facility for "gallows humor."
(Apparently, it's contagious.)
"Har!" Mel bellowed when the last man was done. "Ya makes me proud ta be yer captain, and I'll wager that's something Bloodheart Van Dierken couldn't say on his best day."
"Well, it isn't like he had much to work with," Ace noted with a glance at Teach, "but thanks anyway."
"Now, lass," Mel said to me, "as ya be the only one ta stay here, I'm counting on ya ta--"
I raised both my hands in a "Stop!" gesture.
"Hold it! You're not going to be leaving me behind by myself!"
"Yer not a fighter, Miss de Alkirk, and so's ya should stay here, safe. Besides, this way ya can look after Morgan."
I shook my head violently.
"Morgan doesn't need any special looking after. Either you'll succeed and he'll be fine, or... well, you don't need me here, by any rate. Like you said, I'm not a fighter and I'm not a magician, so I couldn't protect him even if some normal, living predator came down from the woods or up from the sea."
"That's so... but as for ya staying safe, that's another story."
"Safe? What makes you think that I'd be safe here? Six people just died here, even if you're probably right that Van Dierken is waiting for you to go to him."
Quit being such a coward, Amelie! I told myself. Just say what you mean!
I took a deep breath.
"Besides, Mel, the safest thing I could find for myself on this island... is wherever you are."
It was hard to tell in the darkness, but I could have sworn that the notorious Hell Mel blushed bright pink.