40
Eventually, they made it down to the docks and onto the final ship where the Captain waited.
He was a broad, brutal man about fifteen feet tall. His wide face was crisscrossed with scars. A patch covered one eye. His hat was stained and old, but his coat looked new. The brass buttons glinted in the sunlight.
In his right hand he held a cutlass almost as big as Selma’s sword. In his left, a cannon. Beside him was a stack of shot and a few barrels of gunpowder. He leered as they climbed aboard.
“What’s this? Who let you puny bilge rats aboard my ship?”
“Can I keep his leg?” Selma asked.
“I got dibs on his eye patch,” Tania countered.
“Sounds good to me. Milo, you want anything?”
“I just want to leave this dungeon,” he said drily.
“You heard the man,” Tania said, giving Selma a light shove towards the Captain. “Off ya go, toots.”
“Toots?”
“Ditz?”
“Alright, I prefer toots.”
“There ya go, then.”
Selma went in swinging. Her sword met the Captain’s cutlass with a loud clang that reverberated like a bell. The sound shuddered through the ship.
“What’s this?” he cried. “A sneak attack? Assassins! Assassins on the ship! All wake and defend me!”
“Too late, buster,” Tania leered. “We already did for your crew.”
“Did for me crew?” He took a shocked step back, parrying Selma’s continued attacks. “Avast, ye scurvy dog! Avast, I say!”
“Avast this,” Selma growled, bringing her sword down in a heavy overhead swing. He chose not to block and instead threw himself to one side. The sword crashed into the deck, exploding the wood into splinters and leaving a wide hole.
“Don’t sink us yet!” Tania shouted at her. “Kill him first!”
“Kill me? I’ll have ye know, I ain’t no landlubber! I won’t go down without me ship! Here! Take this!”
He swung his arm and a wide arc of ice blew out in all directions.
Shards whistled past Milo’s head as he threw himself to the ground. Selma just whirled her sword and the icy projectiles shattered in front of her.
Then she squinted at the Captain. “That’s it?”
“I was going easy on ya, on account of ya being a lady,” he sneered. Then he lifted the cannon. “But I’ll pull me finger out now and take yer down a peg or two! Look out, swabbers! Hahaha!”
The loud boom sent out a shockwave as a blast of fire spewed a half-dozen cannonballs from the cannon. They screamed through the air before exploding in front of Selma’s face.
Shrapnel blew in all directions, cutting easily through the deck.
Milo stared in horror as one sharp splinter drove through the wood right in front of him, missing his face only by a hair. A little more and he’d be dead.
Gulping, he rolled back onto his feet. “Tania, give her a hand!”
“I don’t need it,” Selma growled back at him. Her golemskin was black where pieces of shrapnel had cut into her body. But she didn’t seem to be damaged internally.
“I’ll help ya anyway,” Tania said, shooting a flurry of poison darts into the Captain’s coat.
“Argh! I’ve been poisoned! Ya wicked wench!”
“Yeah yeah,” Tania called back. “Shiver ya timbers, ya salty old coot.”
“No quarter it is, then!” He dropped down and started scooping out gunpowder and shoving it down the barrel of his cannon.
“No ya don’t!” Selma shot up close, driving her sword at his face.
But her sword clanged against a sudden ice wall which thrust out of the deck in front of him and caught the sword with a dull crack.
“Stupid ice walls,” the golem grouched.
The Captain chortled as he loaded his cannon with shot. “Just ye wait! I’ll be keelhauling yer shortly!”
Selma kicked the ice wall and grinned as a crack worked its way up the middle. Another kick made it split.
A third made the whole structure explode back into the Captain’s face as he rolled away on a string of foul naval curses. “I’ll get ye for that!”
He brought his cannon up.
Boom!
This time, Selma ducked too. The cannonballs punched over her head and exploded with a series of loud cracks that sent shrapnel screaming back over the deck.
Milo was lucky again. Although a piece nicked his leg, it wasn’t deep.
“You alright, Milo?” Tania called, seeing a flash of red spatter to the deck.
“Fine,” he called back. He glanced around for a place to settle down. Where he could set up his rifle.
But the place was clean.
He winced and squatted.
Lifted the rifle. Aimed at the Captain.
“Oh no, ye don’t!” He lumbered towards Milo.
Selma crashed into him with a loud snarl. “Who said you could leave?”
Forced into fencing for his life, the Captain grimaced.
Their swords were a blur. The Captain had some skill with the weapon. He was also capable of covering his blade in ice. When Selma’s clanked into it, the ice spread up her arms.
A normal human would have been screaming as frostbite chewed into their skin. But a golem didn’t care.
Her skin could take heat and cold at intense temperatures beyond what the Captain could bring.
Milo knew it.
He’d even tested it.
The holes which had been black on Selma’s skin had even already healed. He didn’t understand the golem technology, but the skin seemed resistant to cuts of any kind. It would knit itself back together swiftly.
It would take some devastating damage to actually do her harm.
Maybe if the Captain swung hard enough, he could cut off a limb. That would be difficult to explain when they left the dungeon, Milo thought.
Suddenly, the Captain lunged.
His cutlass speared into Selma’s chest. Slightly left of center.
“Got ya, ya scurvy wench!”
“Hey!” Selma cried, looking down. “That’s my boob!”
She brought her own sword up in a savage arc which tore up through his belly and exited with a messy spray out through his shoulder.
He let out a long shriek which turned into a wail as he staggered back. Miraculously he was still in one piece. The blade hadn’t gone deep enough to cut him in two. But he was losing blood by the bucket.
“No…” He coughed blood. Then he glanced at the gunpowder. “I’ll take yer with me!”
He staggered for the gunpowder.
And Milo pulled the trigger.
His rifle was only a standard issue. He’d had to speak to Mistress Vizzingbelle to get it issued to him. It wasn’t as strong as the one he was working on.
But it was powerful enough to put a hole through the side of the Captain’s head. In his weakened condition, the round blew a hole right through his skull.
The Captain dropped.
The match he’d been trying to strike rolled across the deck to rest against the barrel of gunpowder. Unlit, it was harmless.
Still, Tania picked it up and tossed it out into the sea.
“Tch,” she said. “You nearly got us all killed, sister.”
“Sorry.” Selma’s shoulders hunched. “Thanks, Milo.”
“It’s alright,” he said, stepping up beside her. He gave her an awkward pat on the shoulder. “You did great.”
“I did?”
“Sure.” He squatted down and carefully picked up the Captain’s dungeon stone and dropped it into his pack. Then he looked up at the door just beside the gunpowder barrel. “Is that his quarters?”
Tania grinned and stomped over to it.
She gave the handle a try and scowled. “Locked.”
Digging through the Captain’s coat, Milo found the key and tossed it to her. With a giggle, she unlocked the door and they all piled inside.
There wasn’t much.
A desk. A chair.
A set of books on a shelf.
Normal naval devices such as a compass and sextant.
But more importantly, a large chest which seemed to glow with the promise of loot.
“Hey,” Tania nudged Selma and grinned. “This place is like you.”
“Huh?”
“Got a lot of booty.”
Selma smirked back at her and nodded, twisting her bottom so Milo could see. “Is it true, Milo? Am I your treasure?”
“You both are, okay?” He looked from Selma’s happy face to Tania’s scowl. “Now, stop it and open the chest. Let’s see what we got.”
Lots of dungeon stones.
That was the first thing they noticed.
“Woah,” Tania breathed. “We’re rich!”
“So many stones,” Selma gulped. “Can we carry it all?”
“Of course we can! Right, Milo?”
“We can try,” he said. “Is there anything else?”
Tania dug around. There was a lot of junk. Brass candleholders and things like that. Also, for some reason, an apple.
She tossed him the apple.
He took a bite.
“Not bad,” he said. Then he tossed it to Selma, who was looking like a puppy begging for snacks.
She bit into it. “So yum! Tania, you gotta try this.”
“Save me some,” she said. She pulled out a small locket. “Hey, this is cute.”
“You can have it,” Selma said.
“Look! It opens!” Tania opened it with a happy laugh. “Hey, I can keep a picture in here! Milo, can I get a picture of us? I wanna keep it forever!”
“It can?” Selma squealed. She tried to snatch the locket, but Tania was too quick. “Hey, I want one, too!”
“Then dig around, sister. Find your own.”
“I will!”
Milo watched the two golems. His mind had moved on from the small fight with the Captain. He was now focused on what to do next.
Part of his brain was thinking about the rifle he was halfway through assembling.
Another part was thinking about the behavior of the two golems. And the question of emotions. What were emotions? Sometimes he thought they had more than he did.
They were so realistic that he found it difficult to think of them as golems most of the time. He had to consciously remind himself they were constructs.
Why were they like this?
“Hey, Milo?”
“Hmm?” He looked up at Tania, who was biting into the apple. Her tongue flicked out to lick the sweet juice. “Wanna see my coochie?”
He rolled his eyes.
Dwarves, he decided, really were just perverts.