Chapter 13 The Gold Thief of Lake Dumast #3
Bronwen caught up to him at some point, asking the same question Gueldefore had.
But this time he didn’t want her help for another reason.
She persisted; so, he led her to the cabin where Beni and the kids were.
The three goats were on his bed, letting out various bleats.
Beni looked horribly seasick. Vomit was everywhere.
“What now?” she asked, turning to face him.
His response was shutting the door on her. He shoved a chair that was currently sliding his way beneath the knob to keep her locked inside. She was already pounding on the door and cursing him.
“You’re hexed, remember!” he argued back.
“Let me out now, Bernard!”
“No. I need my goats safe, so I need you to watch them.” He paused. “But not very well. Just…neglectfully watch my goats. Don’t try to be efficient at it, either. So, like, play a game of solitaire with them in the background or something.”
She thumped the door again, groaning in defeated annoyance.
He found Gueldefore’s cabin a few more paces in, thanks to one of his blue cloaks still hanging on a nail. On the bed was Morfran’s crossbow and bolts.
“Hello, sweet beauty.” He kissed it, then turned around, pushing through the halls until he was back on deck, but not before a quick trip to the ship’s kitchen pantry.
The squid was still rifling through the lower windows, but the Fierce Feline wasn’t that large of a ship, and it was nearly finished devouring Elena’s untaxed gold. Any second now, it’d scrape out the rest of the treasure room, lick its beak, and come searching for him.
“Brim!” he screamed at the burly man, who was still glued to the railing like an aggressive barnacle. “I need you and your men!”
To his credit, the big man didn’t hesitate.
He pushed away from the pillar and began making his way down the stairs to where Morfran stood on the main dock, calling out to his men who were also clinging to various bits of the ship.
Above them, Morfran could hear Gueldefore’s curses—one in particular that told Morfran to do something anatomically impossible to himself.
Morfran snickered as all the men gathered around him.
“On my signal, I need you to toss me into the squid’s beak,” he said.
Theodore blinked. “Say what, now?”
Brim swatted him. “We’ll do it.”
Morfran nodded, turning when he felt rather than saw a massive shape moving towards them. The squid had indeed finished plundering the gold, and now it was crawling up the ship using its strong tentacles. The whirlpool was spinning them faster. They were running out of time.
He raised the crossbow, poising the cross guard just so. “C’mon, you ugly sack of calamari. Come a little higher.”
The squid clambered up, up, up until its eye was rising above Morfran. It narrowed right on him, and though it had no eyebrow Morfran could see, it gave him the angry eye.
Rather than shoot it with the crossbow, he instead turned and shot the bolt at the crow’s nest post to draw its attention up there.
“You forgot some gold!” he shouted in explanation.
When it spotted Gueldefore and his head full of golden curls, it licked its beak and raised a tentacle to grab him. The knight had finally stopped cussing to gape in horror at the beast.
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re using the squid to get rid of the man.” Brim cast him a suspicious look.
Morfran shrugged. “ ’Tis but collateral damage.”
“We need him in the fight against Morfran,” Brim replied.
Despite the situation, Morfran heard the harsh warning in the man’s voice. To make things worse, Brim brought up a finger and crossed an imaginary knife mark across his neck as a warning. A reminder that Beni and the kids would suffer if he harmed anyone.
Morfran huffed. Stupid do-gooders just had to act so honorable.
“Get ready to toss me, then.” He sighed, moving up against the railing as the beast seized Gueldefore with a wiry tentacle, wrapped him in a squiddy hug, and brought the knight towards its expanding beak.
“Get ready!” Morfran shouted.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Owain muttered, grabbing Morfran’s foot.
Brim grabbed Morfran’s arm and, upon contact, twisted his face in disgust. “Good goats, man. What are you covered in? You stink.”
Morfran just clenched his teeth before he could wuss out. “Launch me!”
Brim’s men, he’d learned earlier, did in fact hurl massive logs for fun. Morfran wasn’t a log, but he also wasn’t as heavy as one, and when they threw him forward at the squid’s open beak, he flew.
He flew right past the nearby tentacle squeezing Gueldefore, who was a deep shade of red from either fury or lack of breath, and plummeted straight into the squid’s gullet.
It was very tight. Uncomfortably slick and unsurprisingly dark.
Morfran had sucked in a breath before he’d been hurled through the air, and as he waited inside the squid’s esophagus he hoped he hadn’t made the stupid mistake of trying to stop the beast rather than jumping overboard when he had the chance to leave these peasants to die.
Luckily, he didn’t wait long. His presence got an instant reaction. When Ravana had created a weakness for the Giant Flying Quid-Stealing Squid, she’d given it one very few would ever guess: a deadly allergy to wasabi.
Morfran had coated himself in it in the kitchen pantry before he’d come back up, and already he knew the spicy compound was getting to the squid.
Judging from its grunting and rapid breathing, he could tell it was getting ready to hack him back up.
He only hoped it’d sneeze before its airways swelled up and it died.
Morfran’s air was dwindling. His lungs were starting to ache. His head was feeling pinched. Please just sneeze. A great big sneeze—
It sneezed. He rocketed out of its mouth so fast his world was a blur of color and then solid pain as he hit something sturdy. He coughed, spitting out squid phlegm and lake water and runny wasabi, which was stinging his eyes.
Someone was at his side, shouting his fake name.
But the world was still spinning. He managed to blink away the pain just in time to see that they were plunging towards the bottom of the whirlpool now, and that the squid was writhing atop the ship beside him, in its last throes of life as the wasabi allergy clotted off its airways.
He felt oddly sorry for that. He didn’t like killing animals without purpose, much less one that’d been bred as part of Ravana’s passing, sick interest.
He rolled onto his back as the whirlpool continued to flush them around, as the squid slipped from the ship and vanished into the water. Well, he’d tried. Compared to all the other awful ways he’d killed people, drowning wasn’t all that bad. And at least it’d be fast for Beni and the kids.
He closed his eyes.
And sneezed.