The Wondermark Gazette

Thigton swung me over his shoulders as he set to work prying boards from the inside of the ferry’s hull. Dextrous despite his diminutiveness, his powerful fingers sought out tiny cracks between planks and tore them apart like an ourang-outang at a crate of rum-soaked cantaloupes. I could feel the imp’s powerful muscles rippling across his back as he worked, shifting his feet as needed to keep me perfectly balanced across his shoulder-blades, never faltering for an instant. I wondered where the Yam-Runners had found this specimen — for he’d arrived unannounced in a trunk sent post-paid from their Isle, and had been a handy labour-mill without pause e’er since.

I was mid-way through the composition of a ballad lauding his hardiness, intending to croon encouragement as he worked, when a great, deep blow reverberated through the hull. Another explosion? Had the ship run aground? Thigton stumbled as the deck beneath us suddenly heaved and began to incline, lifting us and threatening to deposit us tumbling back towards the prisoners. We were being winched.

“They’re pulling us onto the island!” I cried. Thigton redoubled his efforts on the hull, wrenching a long, curved board free of its pitch with an ear-splitting crack. At this rate, we would escape the ship directly onto the beach of Prison-Isle, and likely into the waiting bayonets of the guards there-upon. As escapes go, ours would be only slightly more effective than the oft-recounted attempt of Bumbadier Snoodlander, a noted felon incarcerated in Australia for some years who managed to spoon-dig his way out of an under-ground coffin after successfully playing dead with the aid of some bum-smuggled Tasmanian snooze-grass — only to stow away in the dead of night on a scow-barge promptly destroyed by Crown cruisers for gunnery-practise. In Snoodlander’s defence, the scow had been flying the colours of a Pakistani pleasure-trawler (a bit of dark humour on the part of the sea-addled Navy men), but still, I was glad I wasn’t within angry-fist-shot at the moment Snoodlander snuck through a cabin-door labelled “free opium” only to find cask upon cask of combustible taint-oil with cannon-fire crossing his bow. So, Thigton and I were probably one-up on ol’ Bumbadier, but our situation still had the potential to spiral epically into the pooper. “Faster!” I shouted, to help.

Sea-water sprayed through cracks in the boards now, and I thought to wonder how far we were below the water-line. I glanced back at the five — no, four — no, three, now, wasn’t it? — prisoners-of-war, huddled in blurry masses across the hold. Would we all be swept up and drowned by the merciless ocean? “Are you sure this is going to work?” I asked Thigton. “Not that I don’t have faith in you, but –”

A pistol-shot silenced my doubts. Lantern-light bobbed through the hole in the hold’s ceiling where my boot-dust had blasted a void in the deck above, and even through eyes swimming with (strictly mannish) tears I could make out the cold glint of a fire-arm. “Don’t let them escape!” came Lara’s cry, and I wondered if she was the one manning the gun’s likely-pearl handle. Our reunion was getting off to a rockier start by the minute.

“This has all been simply a terrible misunderstanding!” I shouted back to Lara with as much force as my weakened form could muster. Another pistol-shot caroming off the hull by my ear-lobe shut me up in a hurry. This certainly would be a funny story to recount at our hundredth wedding-anniversary.

With a mighty heave, Thigton wrenched a final board free of its home, and the sea did the rest. Water blasted into the hold like pressurised seltzer-whisky bursting its barrels during the rather disastrous first (and what proved to be final) operating day of the Greater Beetlesburg Seltzer-Spirits & Dynamite-Testing Co. Ltd. The rushing ocean tore loose-hanging boards from their moors like heirloom tooth-picks from the slack jaws of trolley-jumping tramps, and we, like those tramps more often than not, were immediately flooded up to our appendices. My mouth filled with water before I could shout in alarm, which was probably for the best, as I didn’t want to seem like a ninny in front of the guys.

Thigton pulled me close in a side-snuggler’s-carry, grasping the shattered edges of the hull with his other hand. Despite the powerful current filling the hold like half-penny moon-shine down the gullet of a disgraced beekeeping-gear-magnate’s penniless heir, we were soon free of the ferry entirely in a way that the heir would never be free of his family’s soiled heritage. Submerged for several choking seconds, we finally split the surface and gasped at the cold air of Freedom, sweeter than any abandoned ware-house of honey-strainers could ever possibly be.

But danger’s fangs still gleamed in the late-evening sun — for Prison-Isle itself loomed before us, tall and fore-boding as it’d seemed from the ship, but a good sight closer and a full eighty percent craggier in all the worst places. Waves pounded against jagged black rocks that dreadful giants could have used for bone-mashing dentures, and the current carried us lurchingly towards them, despite my vociferous protestations. It was as if the sea wasn’t even listening.

To make matters worse, Thigton released me and dove away. When I did not feel his reassuring touch for several cold seconds I began to feel abandoned, stranded pitifully in an unforgiving world — I suddenly became terrified of the prospect of otters, and of the water splashing chillily about my ears and mouth with completely un-known quantities of otter-offal diluted within. Each taste of salt was like otter-sweat on my tongue. The saltiness soon sparked a fierce and intolerable pain in my mangled, torn-open feet — were an entire preserve of jelly-fish to unload fully their gross-sacs of venom all over my various extremities, I think that would be a pleasant holiday compared to this stinging salt-pain, and it would be delightful besides to watch the jelly-fish bob dejectedly away, failures.

I let out a scream to curdle the milk of any lactating creature in the whole of the Empire. Left to myself in the water, it seemed that treacherous fire-ants of pain were running sprint-trials through my veins, and when my face emerged, spluttering, from some crashing wave or other, my eyes composed elegies in honour of the new meaning of the word “owwie.” So complete was my misery that I did not even notice the shouting voices of soldiers in an approaching row-boat until they were hauling me aboard with rough, inconsiderate man-handling, and I slumped into the bottom of their craft a resident of a horrible Other-Zone beyond imagining, awash with self-pity of the totally-justified type. I didn’t like pain. Rich guys were not supposed to have to deal with things like this! We were supposed to be able to pay people to feel our pain for us!

“Easy now, let’s get him handled easy,” someone said, and with a wet thump, another shivering body joined mine in the bottom of the row-boat. A splash of freezing shock heralded another, and then more; soon the boat was creaking with an over-load of flesh, and shouting voices instructed each other to row for the shore. One hundred years later — or perhaps ten seconds; who could tell — the craft beached, and scratchy hands were soon finding crannies to drag me out by.

In some moment before the sad orange sun sent daggers of pain shooting into my eyes, I glimpsed the ferry-boat, half-sunken, winch-rope hooked to its bow, hauled partly ashore like a prize of the world’s most disappointed fly-fisherman. From this distance I could not make out a hole torn in the hull, but the sky around the ship hung gray with smoke and it was clear that the craft had sustained grave injury. A handful of black-garbed soldiers were scrambling to bring a ladder to bear against the vessel’s hull; I thought — but could not be certain — I even saw the agitated figure of Lara (or perhaps Viktor) on the boat’s highest deck.

And that was all the light my tortured eyes could stand. I collapsed in a heap on the shore, and would have sank into oblivion had not a cry gone up from a near-by soldier. “It’s the Crown’s Regent!” he yelped. “Look! Look at the uniform!”

A gravelly and considerably more spite-laced voice joined the first. “That ain’t Richey,” it spat. “The Field-Admiral’s an older bloke, looks worn-down, a bit roundy, with a buggery-scar on his fore-head. What’s this is a brigand’s stolen the Regent’s uniform, the sly git. It’s disrespect like this makes it so hard to do war-fare properly.” Next I heard the sharp snap of a rifle’s bolt. “Let’s fix this up tidy — stand back, mates, else it’s laundry-day come early, eh?”

“No! Wait!” I struggled to sit up, but a thousand bolts of pain stopped me; I fought to open my eyes, but the world was still far too stabbingly bright. My throat would have to do the work. “I am the Crown’s Regent. Richey’s dead! Assassinated– and I’m sent in his place!”

A gasp erupted from the collected crowd. How many soldiers stood over me now I had no idea, but it was probably at least half a grip. The scrape of boots on gravel preceded a snort from the gruff one.

“Nice story,” came the response. “First I’ve heard that detail — but a chap last week claimed to be Napoleon. The underlying deceit’s ultimately unconvincing.” Even with eyes tightly shut, I sensed a shadow fall over my face — the rifle, perhaps, or something equally-deadly: a boulder, brick, or, at this rate, a simple lack of attention to my severe wounds, apparently given corporeal form in the shape of wise-cracking prison-guards.

“It’s true,” I croaked. “I was confirmed by the Council last week. Memoranda are due to you within the month; you know how slowly that paper-work travels. But surely you’ve heard about Richey — shot through the head at a ridiculous award-ceremony in London. His wife was right there! Poor thing had to watch the act unfold!”

Tsking from the assembled. “That’s a shame, for a man’s wife to see that with eyes that cain’t never wind it back,” muttered the sour one. “And the culprit? Apprehended, lynched without trial, corpse pulped by the indignant masses, I pray?”

“Nay, at large,” I coughed. “Terribly so. I caught wind of the plot with enough time to race to the theatre — but could not prevent the tragedy, and the villain escaped.”

“Such a sorrowful waste of human life,” the gruff one sighed. “The one man who could have brought peace to this horrid place and squalled these belligerent savages. Why–couldn’t–you–leave–him–alone!” he cried — the later words punctuated with a gut-wrenching series of grunts.

I wedged my eyes open enough to watch a portly man wearing the emblem of Sergeant-at-Arms deliver a final, meaty kick to the ribs of a figure lying on the sand. One of the prisoners from the ferry, I guessed — a sallow sack of rags and bone, yielding not so much as a quaver once that body flopped to rest from the blow. Beyond that figure were two others, one sitting and cradling the head of the other, though the one upright looked no more able than the one prone.

As I watched, Sergeant Portly checked the rifle in his hand and approached the pair. “This is for Richey,” he growled, and in the instant before the seated man’s head burst open like a blood-flower, his sunken eyes met my own, and I knew he was the one I had spoken with in the hold.

The first shot’s echoes had not yet died away before a second shot put all doubt to rest regarding the other, prone prisoner’s chances of recovery.

His task completed, Portly turned back to me, working his rifle’s bolt with such metallic malice that I feared once more for my own safety. “In the name of the Crown,” he shrugged. “Right?”

Next: Master Tactician

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