Sebastian Darke: Prince of Pirates (26 page)

For a moment they carried on laughing and drinking. Then somebody noticed who had arrived and an abrupt silence fell over the crowd. It took a little while for Bones and Sully to take heed and then they too turned their gaze towards the Kid. Bones's surprise was so complete, he sprayed a fountain of ale out of his mouth. Sully just stood there, staring at the Kid in utter dismay.

It was Bones who found his voice first.

'K-Kid . . .' he said. 'Thank . . . thank goodness you're safe . . .'

'Oh, worried about me, were you?' said the Kid, grinning wildly.

'What . . . what are you doing here?' whispered Sully. 'We . . . we was afeared you was drownded or something.'

The Kid smiled at them. 'Oh no, I'm fine, thanks. But the
Black Hand
's gone, sunk in battle.'

'Sunk, you say?' Bones affected a look of complete amazement. 'Oh, that's terrible news, ain't it, Sully?'

'Yes,' whispered Sully. 'That's terrible.'

'It gets worse,' said the Kid. 'I've had to take on other work. I'm working here at the Salty Dog . . . as a waiter.'

'A waiter?' murmured Sully.

'Yes.' He indicated the two steaming bowls in his hands. 'I brought the fish pies you ordered.'

'But,' said Bones, 'we didn't ord—'

That was as far as he got. A scalding bowl of slop hit him full in the face; a moment later the other one crashed into Sully's ugly features. The men screamed and reeled back, clawing at their faces, and in that same instant the Kid nimbly grabbed the hilt of a sword from the scabbard of a bystander and slid it out. Sebastian just had time to register a sense of disappointment – he'd been looking forward to tasting that pie – and then he too was drawing his sword and he sensed, rather than heard, that Cornelius had done likewise.

There was a terrible silence at the bar. Bones and Sully stared at the Kid, their eyes malevolent in their half-scalded faces.

'You cheeky little pup,' snarled Bones, reaching for his sword. 'I'll run you through for that!'

'You can try,' the Kid told him. 'But unlike my dad, I've had a bit of warning about your cowardly ways. Now, this is just between the three of us. What say we go outside and settle this man to man?'

There was another short silence while Bones and Sully considered this. They looked at each other for a moment. Then they burst out laughing.

'You are joking, of course!' sneered Bones. He gestured to his cronies and they all began to unsheathe their swords, until the dark interior seemed to glitter with a whole forest of razor-sharp blades. Then: 'Get them!' roared Bones.

Sebastian didn't have time to think after that. A big bearded man came lunging straight at him, swinging a blade that seemed to be the size and weight of a small tree trunk, and when Sebastian raised his own blade to intercept the blow, the impact nearly drove him to his knees. He lashed back and managed to slice the plume off the top of the bearded man's hat. But sword blades were lashing at him from every direction and there was simply no room to move. It quickly became evident that they couldn't hope to hold out very long against such an onslaught in these cramped conditions.

'Cornelius!' Sebastian hissed over the clanking of blades. 'There's too many of them!'

'Oh, you noticed that too, did you?' Cornelius lunged forward and drove the point of his blade through somebody's thigh; but then had to leap back as a storm of blades came hacking down at him in retaliation. 'We can still take them!'

'But we must get back to the ship and warn Jenna!'

Cornelius scowled. 'You go! I'll hold them here.'

'No! This isn't the time for heroics. We have to return to the ship!'

'OK, then
I'll
hold them!' yelled the Kid.

'Nobody is going to hold anybody!' yelled Sebastian, hacking desperately at the circle of blades that were jabbing relentlessly at him. 'We're simply going to tell Jenna what's happened!'

'I suppose you're right,' admitted Cornelius reluctantly. 'But I want it on record: running away was not
my
idea!'

Sebastian, Cornelius and the Kid began to retreat towards the door, fighting as they went. Sebastian's shoulders thudded against wood, and he pushed backwards and stepped out into the street, with Cornelius and the Kid right behind him. They immediately slammed the door on the advancing horde and put their backs against it.

'Where's my pie?' asked an indignant voice. Max was standing there, regarding them suspiciously.

'Never mind the pie!' cried Sebastian. 'We're in a spot of bother.'

Even as he spoke, the door began to move as the angry crowd within exerted their combined weight on it.

'What have you been up to in there?' said Max, rolling his eyes. 'Honestly, you've only been out of my sight for a short while.'

'Forget that,' hissed Sebastian, gritting his teeth as he struggled to hold the door shut. 'Max, old friend, we need a bit of time to make an escape. I don't suppose . . .'

Max sighed. 'Oh, right, so it's "old friend" now, is it? Funny how you only ever say that when you're in trouble.'

'Max,
please
! We don't have time for this.'

'I suppose I'll help,' he said. 'But I still say you could have grabbed a bit of pie for me.'

'I'll make it up to you,' Sebastian assured him. 'If it's any consolation, we didn't get any either.'

'Very well.' Max shrugged his massive shoulders and stepped closer to the door, where the three friends were rapidly losing their struggle. 'Right,' he said. 'I'm going to count to three . . . and when I do, I want you to step quickly aside, all right?'

'Whatever,' hissed Cornelius through gritted teeth.

'All right then.' Max lowered his huge horned head and pawed the ground with one hoof. 'Ready? One . . . two . . .
three!
' he roared; and Sebastian and the others jumped smartly to either side of him. Max threw himself at the door with all the speed and power of a gigantic battering ram. At first it looked as though he had left it too late. The door was swinging open and the crowd within were spilling through like shaken-up ale spurting from a bottle. But then Max's head connected with the door, making a sound like a thunderclap and driving it shut again. The door was wrenched straight off its hinges, slamming backwards into the crowd of pirates pressed up against it. Propelled by Max's lumbering body, the door and the people behind it were thrust back into the tavern and there was a great crash from within.

The others didn't wait to see what had happened. They turned on their heels and began to run back in the direction of the harbour. After a few moments Sebastian glanced over his shoulder and saw a rather dazed-looking Max trotting away from the inn, pursued by a few battered pirates. But they were urging other people in the street to come and help them, and several seemed to be responding.

'This way!' yelled the Kid, and he turned left into a narrow opening. 'Short cut!' Sebastian plunged after him and found himself racing along a narrow cobbled alley crisscrossed by countless washing lines, heavy with pegged-out clothes. While Cornelius and the Kid simply ran underneath them, Sebastian was obliged to keep ducking down under the washing.

'Master, wait for me,' bellowed a voice behind, and glancing back again, Sebastian saw what, in different circumstances, might have been a comical sight. Max was galloping after them, his horns snagging every line of washing that he encountered, snapping the twine and heaping the damp clothing onto his head. After a few such collisions he was virtually running blind, his head encased in what looked like a great multi-coloured turban.

Some way behind Max came a yelling mob of sword-waving pirates, and as they gave chase, they seemed to be gathering more and more members to their cause. Sebastian shouted to Max to keep going, and at that same instant he burst out of the alleyway and was shocked to find that the ground dropped away in a steep flight of stone steps. He missed the first of them, tripped and fell headlong, narrowly missing Cornelius and the Kid. Sebastian went sprawling past them, the sharp-edged stones grazing his knees and elbows. He lost his sword, which clattered away from him, but somehow managed to halt his fall. He lay for a while, dazed and breathless.

'For goodness' sake, get up and stop messing about,' said Cornelius as he went running past. 'This is serious.'

'I know that,' snapped Sebastian. 'I just didn't realize that—'

He broke off as he saw Max's huge body come lumbering out of the mouth of the alley, his head now so thoroughly encased in washing that he had no hope of finding his footing. He leaped out into empty space, and for a long time it seemed as though his impetus had given him wings. He soared for quite some distance, his legs pedalling madly as they sought to gain purchase on something substantial. Then his hooves came down onto the slippery edge of a step, his knees buckled, and he was flipped head over heels onto his back.

For a moment he seemed to stop right where he was. But then he began to slide. He came whizzing down the steps like a huge, shaggy toboggan, and Sebastian, transfixed by the sight of him, was unable to scramble out of the way. Max's haunches struck him in the legs, knocking him clean off his feet. He came crashing down, face-first, onto Max's chest, and clung in desperation to the buffalope's front legs. Once again he overtook Cornelius and the Kid, who stared in amazement as he and Max went rocketing past them. Looking back, Sebastian saw that the crowd was now spilling out from the alley and descending the steps in hot pursuit.

'Where am I?' grunted Max's muffled voice, speaking through layers of washing.

Sebastian was about to say, 'On some steps,' when, quite suddenly, Max's progress came to an abrupt halt and Sebastian was flung backwards through the air to some unknown landing place. He steeled himself for a terrible impact but felt only the shock of cold water against his back. His first thought was that he must be in the harbour, but thrashing around, he found that the water only came up to his knees and that he was in the middle of some kind of circular fountain. Standing all around the rim were some surprised-looking women, who had been doing their washing and were now soaked to the skin.

Max's back end had connected with the stone rim of the fountain, but luckily his ample layers of fat had prevented him from doing himself any real injury. He scrambled to his feet, thrashing his head madly, and Sebastian helped him to divest himself of the last of the washing. The buffalope stared around in astonishment, trying to work out how he had got here. Sebastian looked back towards the steps and saw Cornelius and the Kid descending the last of them. Behind them, the angry mob had swelled to a great crowd, all yelling and gesticulating and looking very nasty indeed.

'Where did all that lot come from?' asked Max.

'Never mind,' gasped Sebastian, scrambling over the low parapet of the fountain, hampered by the fact that the women, having recovered from their surprise, were now pelting him with handfuls of washing.