Cooled somewhat in her anger, Bem began slowly. “Picture, if you will, a young beast skinning sharks out on the beach right in front of her home. Her parents and friends—Sharkict folk, all of them—are unloading a good harvest of sharks from the boats. Ole Waller and Spug Mismer—the biggest and strongest beasts in the village—are hauling the sharks up on the beach where a lot of us young beasts are skinning them, cutting up the meat, and hanging it up to dry in the sun. Beller Waller is out in her kayak checking the shark pens to make sure all the gates are latched properly. Then she screams—‘RUMMERS! RUMMER RAIDERS!’—sighting many Rummer boats coming swiftly into the bay. Rummers don’t sail in easy, drop anchor, and come ashore a few at a time. They row their galley ships fast as the wind right up onto the beach and jump out all at once to attack. They kill only those who resist, so most of the Sharkicts stand and watch when a Rummer raid occurs. In a short time, the raiders have taken all the shark meat they want, taken whatever hostages they want to replace dead or escaped galley slaves, and then they depart. If any hostage struggles or others try to prevent their being taken, they are soon clubbed senseless and their homes are burned. I was taken in such a raid by Sabre Tusk and my family’s home was burned.”
“What do the Rummers do with all the fresh shark meat?” Katteo Jor’Dane asked.
“They trade some of it with the Wrackshees in exchange for new galley slaves,” Bem replied. “But most of it they sell in Port Newolf and other such places where the Dragon Bosses buy it to feed to their monitors. Sharkicts used to raise only enough sharks to feed themselves and sell a little dried shark meat to the few sailing ships that came by once in a while. But that changed when the Rummer raids began—the Rummers won’t take anything but fresh shark meat. So the Sharkicts started raising more and more sharks. When the Rummer raiders come, they fill their ships with fresh shark meat and—if the local folk are lucky, there’s enough left to sustain them after the Rummers leave. If not,” she said with the fierce look, “it’s a long hungry season.”
As these last words were spoken, Bem suddenly pulled her sword and once again sent the blade whistling past BorMane’s head. A long swatch of hair again dropped to the deck, this time on the other side of his head.
“There, Old Salt—having tidied up your haircut and reminded all that I will forever hate Sabre Tusk and hope to destroy him—I have nothing more to say.” The red Wolf picked up the swatch of BorMane’s hair from the deck and, just as BorMane had done earlier, laid it across her open paw as she held it out to the Coyote. “As you have offered, I also offer an oath-token. No more will I trouble you about Sabre Tusk. We are one crew now and Daring Dream and our good Captain will need us to be united.”
Smiling broadly, BorMane placed his paw over the oath-token offered by Bem. “Yah, mate, it’s not bein’ an easy voyage any ways it comin’. It’ll be all o’ us as sails through it all, or none o’ us will bein’ back.”
So saying, BorMane and Bem Madsoor joined the rest of the crew as work began to repair the Daring Dream. Fourteen days later, Captain Gumberpott steered the fully repaired ship out of Narrows End Bay, set his bearings for southwest of the setting sun, and sailed off into the Voi-Nil.
Having fresh provisions, clean water to drink, and favoring winds made good spirits abundant on the ship. Heading south to join the Whale freighters, each day, Daring Dream plowed deeper and deeper into the Voi-Nil. Each night, the ship’s council gathered around Red Whale’s table and discussed the coming prospects for the voyage. Except for BorMane and Bem Madsoor, no one in the ship’s council had ever before sailed the seas they were now crossing, and each night BorMane and Bem were called upon to tell more of what they knew. Images of an entirely new world emerged from the accounts they gave.
“So, as I take it from what you say...,” Red Whale observed one night during a council, “...the Voi-Nil is far from empty. Our charts may be blank but there’s beasts and more beasts sailin’ and frettin’ and blusterin’ in every direction.”
“Aye, Captain,” Bem replied as she stood leaning on the table and gazing over the chart rolled out before the council. “You need to think of the Voi-Nil as being different clans of beasts scattered across the seas—so isolated that they’re almost worlds unto themselves. Isolated, but not alone. Apart, but connected by the sea.”
Crossports Slizzer
Five days later, the weather was flawless when Crossports Slizzer, the Whale freighter port, came into view. A feeling of almost childish excitement raced among the crew—the first landfall well beyond the reach of Captain Gumberpott’s charts! Crossports Slizzer had a snug harbor holding perhaps twenty ships, some lying at anchor off shore, and others tied up along the wharf. Boldy-painted houses of the better sort faced the harbor—their sharply-pointed, red tile roofs reaching skyward, surrounded by wide verandas with lush gardens. A squalid labyrinth of back lanes, overflowing with jumbled shacks and grimy shops, spilled up the hillsides beyond the harbor. Palm trees waved their feathery fronds gently in the breeze.
A strong stone fortress perched on the rocky prominence that towered over the entrance to the harbor. Vultures circled lazily high overhead, their wide wings catching the brilliant sun and sending dark shadows sliding across the deck, as Daring Dream tied up at the wharf.
Eyeing the vultures circling above, BorMane commented, “Corsairs cruising, Capt’n—that fort up there is their base. They knows what’s what with every ship in these parts—seein’ everything, tellin’ what they want, plunderin’ the ones they choose.”