Conundrum

Chapter

“You’re mad!” Sir Grumdish howled. “You’ll get us all X killed.”

“Don’t worry,” Razmous repeated confidently. Those accustomed to traveling with kender learn a number of words and phrases that, when spoken by non-kender, are not indicative of anything especially alarming, but when voiced by the merry adventurous race usually portend some disaster or otherwise unpleasant event. “Oh, look!” “Wow! I wonder if…” “You must have dropped it!” and the much dreaded “Did I ever tell you about the time…” are some of the more common cues to either flee without looking back, or grab the kender before he gets himself chopped. Yet few words ever spoken by kender conjure up such fear as “Don’t worry.” Except perhaps “Oops!”

Which is why Sir Grumdish launched himself from his slightly higher position and grabbed Razmous by the topknot. Not very gently he jerked the kender back to the cover of the trees. Razmous emitted a squeal of pain, great tears starting in his eyes.

With a loud, “Ah-ha!” the monster lurched forward, its arms spread wide. A huge wave of water rose before it and washed up the forested bank. Before the six adventurers could move, water surged around their legs and swept them from their feet. It carried them a short distance up the hillside, then swept them back, dragging them down through the trees toward the lake, where the creature waited with glaring eyes and champing, slavering jaws.

The gnomes scrabbled desperately at the branches, clinging to any twig or root within their grasp. First Razmous, then Conundrum, managed to catch themselves before they were swept completely away. Ensign Gob, being the smallest and the lightest, was thrown farthest up the bank by the surging wave and fortunately left high and dry out of harm’s reach. Conundrum managed to grab Chief Portlost by the beard as he swept by, while Sir Gram-dish snatched a handful of the kender’s sopping-wet topknot and held on for dear life. But both gnomes lost their UANPs to the flood.

The unfortunate Ensign Wigpillow tried to hold on to his weapon, and as a result slipped away from the hands reaching out to catch him. As a last desperate act, he tried to fire his weapon at the chaos beast, only to have a powerful jet of water exit the rear of the UANP and propel him forward, down the last few feet of the bank. He slid and tumbled through the mud and leaves and vanished into the water at the monster’s knees.

With a cry of delight, the chaos beast reached down and snatched him up in one massive, black-clawed hand and lifted the hapless gnome to its huge toothy maw. His companions on the bank turned away or hid their faces in their hands. Razmous peeked. As he neared those gaping jaws, however, the shrieking Ensign Wigpillow struggled against the monster’s ironlike grip and pop! He squirted free like a watermelon seed.

Wigpillow scribed a long screaming arc across the desert sky. The monster craned its head round to watch in nothing less than slack-jawed surprise. Razmous simply said, “Wow!” and then had to be physically restrained to keep him from rushing down to the water and begging the monster to squirt him, too.

Ensign Wigpillow ended his flight with a thunderous splash a hundred or so yards upstream. The monster turned and surged off after him, a huge wake spreading out from its chest like the bow wave of a man-o-war under full sail.

“Come on!” Sir Grumdish roared as he pulled everyone to their feet. “Let’s get out of here!”

“But Wigpillow!” Conundrum cried.

“He’s creating a diversion, noble lad,” Chief Portlost said. “To give us time to escape back to the ship.”

Sir Grumdish had to push the others up the hill, shooting a quick glance over the ground in the faint hope that his UANP might not have been washed into the lake, but finding nothing.

“Hurry! Back to the ship!” he shouted, but no one needed his advice. Once again led by Razmous, they were already out of sight.

Despite his shorter legs, Ensign Gob was the first to reach the beach. Those observing from the Indestructible wondered at his haste. When it became apparent that he had no intention of stopping at the water’s edge, they began to wave and shout, “No!”

But the gully dwarf ignored them, charged straight into the water, and fell flat on his glass-helmeted face. He thrashed his arms in the shallow surf, trying to swim, and throwing more sand than water. His companions, arriving immediately behind him, dragged him by his helmet back to the beach. Conundrum pointed at the gully dwarfs duckfeet, lying there in the sand next to the others, but Gob seemed not to understand, and so they demonstrated by frantically getting into their own helmets, bladderpacks, and duckfeet.

Chief Portlost was the first into his gear. He grabbed the gully dwarf and forced him into the duckfeet, then pushed him toward the water. Finally getting the idea, Gob started off, slowly dragging his heavy shoes through the sand. The chief followed, a little more quickly, and was himself followed more quickly still by Razmous. Next came Sir Grumdish and Conundrum, grunting with the water barrel between them, now filled with fresh water.

Out on the Indestructible, Commodore Brigg observed this flurry of activity with growing curiosity. “The shore party seems in an awful hurry, wouldn’t you say?” he asked Snork, who had joined him on the bridge. A few crew members stood along the aft deck, pausing in their duties to watch. “And where is Pigwillow?”

“Wigpillow,” Snork said, glancing up from his navigational log. “Aye, that they are.”

Chief Portlost’s head vanished under the water. Razmous paused when the water was up to his neck and waved something in a frantic manner, but neither the commodore nor Snork could tell what he meant by it. Dragging the heavy barrel filled with fresh water, Conundrum and Sir Grumdish had barely entered the water, while the gully dwarf was still several dozen feet from the shore.

“I don’t see Pigwillow,” the commodore repeated.

“Wigpillow, sir,” Snork corrected again.

“Probably lollygagging,” the commodore snorted.

Snork fished a glass of farseeing from his navigator’s pouch, extended it to its six-foot length, and aimed it at the shore. “There’s something coming through the forest. Maybe it’s Ensign Wig… pi…” His voice trailed off, and his jaw dropped open.

“Well, is it him?” the commodore demanded. “Don’t stand there like you’ve seen a naked mer…” His voice trailed off as well, for neither one of them needed the navigator’s farseeing glass to see the gigantic monster hulling through the trees like a steam catapult broken loose from its moorings. With its clawed fists, the monster shattered into matchsticks huge thorn willows and towering palms, ripping them from the ground and tossing them aside like weeds. Sighting the gully dwarf still struggling toward the water, the fearsome creature loosed a thunderous bellow.

Chief Portlost and Razmous Pinchpocket were already safely underwater, their progress marked by two small surface eruptions of bubbles winding their way toward the boat, but Conundrum and Sir Grumdish were barely up to their knees. Ensign Gob clearly was doomed. The monster was bearing down upon him.

Commodore Brigg opened the hatch and shouted below, “All hands to battle stations! Bring the ship about!”

With bits of black frogsuit hanging in tatters from its champing tusks, the monster closed on its new quarry. As it ran, it scooped up a handful of sand in one massive paw and hurled it at the gully dwarf. The mass of wet sand was huge and struck Gob square in the back, knocking him out of his heavy shoes.

That was all the gully dwarf needed to set him free. In a flash, he was up, circling back away from the water and toward the forest. For a few moments, the beast paused in confusion, glancing first at the two gnomes struggling through waist deep water, then at the gully dwarf plunging into the forest. Quickly making up its mind, it leaped into the sea.

Glancing over his shoulder, Sir Grumdish yelled, “Forget the barrel, boy! Save yourself!” He plunged ahead, kicking out of his duckfeet and swimming with his arms.

Conundrum struggled through the surf, thrashing at the water with both arms. His heavy shoes made even walking a chore, and he was already weary. Fear lent him strength, but hardly enough to escape the monster.

The chaos beast paused in its charge as it reached the water barrel. Half suspecting some kind of trap, it approached the barrel warily, sniffing suspiciously and reaching out one massive hand to touch it. Finding it filled only with water and ballast stones, it snatched it up and hurled it at Conundrum, missing the gnome by inches.

The barrel exploding nearby startled him briefly, and that was all the monster needed to catch up. Desperately, Conundrum dove beneath the waves, but a gigantic hand clapped down over him. Terrible, rending black claws dug into the sand around his feet, then squeezed like strangling tentacles around his legs and lifted him out of the water. He struggled and twisted, trying to squirt free as Ensign Wigpillow had done, but it did him little good. The sand kept him firmly in the monster’s steely grip. Its jaws gaped wide, huge ivory tusks wreathed in gruesome tatters of gnomish flesh and frogsuit. Conundrum gagged as its stinking breath penetrated though his bladderpack and filled his glass helm with its reek. But this was nothing to the horror of being lifted ever closer to that slavering mouth and looking into those three monstrous eyeballs.

And then the creature paused, jaws agape, the gnome gripped in one fist. Its three bloodshot eyes swiveled around to focus on the Indestructible, now turned about, its bow pointing directly at the giant beast. The commodore crouched in the conning tower, sighting along the lubber’s line with one eye closed and head cocked toward the open hatch at his feet.

“Fire!” he shouted.

The ship lurched backward and to starboard, while from the portside bow a cloud of bubbles exploded. Out from the cloud shot a projectile of enormous proportions.

Just beneath the surface of the water it coursed, like a great long silver-nosed barracuda, a perfect triangular wave spreading to either side, a trail of tiny bubbles following in its wake. The UAEP crossed the coral lagoon in three slow elephantine heartbeats. The monster watched as if hypnotized, saw it skim over the reefs, clipping stony projections without altering course or slowing. The monster stared at it until it arrived to bury itself in its bloated belly.

It continued to stare for three more agonizing heartbeats as its black blood spread in the water around the enormous arrow that had skewered it like a pig. Ever did its grip tighten on Conundrum’s legs as it watched its life pour out into the sea. The little gnome bit his lips to stifle his own scream of crushed pain.

And then the monster staggered, screaming as though the doors of the Abyss itself had been opened. It convulsed, every muscle tightening like steel cords, including those of its hands. Conundrum felt every joint of his legs wrenching from its socket, every muscle fiber tearing, every tendon fraying like old rope, ready to snap, and then, like an arrow plucked by the archer, he was free. Free and sailing high in the air. He opened his eyes in relief, and then wished he hadn’t.

It was with something between horror and curiosity that he watched the Indestructible pass below him. Down below his feet, the whole bay spread like an illustrated map in a cartographer’s shop. He saw the chaos beast clutching at the giant arrow sprouting from its belly, then fall backward in the water. Elsewhere, the dark shadows of numerous sharks diverted from their course toward Sir Grumdish, still swimming with strong strokes toward the Indestructible, and honed in on the bleeding corpse of the beast. Conundrum also saw his other two remaining companions, two tiny figures peacefully walking along the bottom of the bay between mountainous reefs of coral. He saw the dozens of ships that had wrecked here, lying in various states of decay on the ocean floor.

In fact, one in particular caught his attention. It lay almost at the mouth of the harbor, and he was plummeting toward it.

Despite the tremendous squeezing he had received, he still wore one duckfoot. It was this leaden weight that kept him upright upon entry. Still, his splashdown drove every particle of air from his lungs, and seemed to drive his knees into his bowels. The impact nearly ripped his helmet off his head, and as it was, he cracked his nose against the interior of the helmet and blood streamed into his beard. The splash thundered in his ears, stunning him, and as he swiftly sank the bladderpack tried to slip from his shoulders. With his last particle of strength, he fought to keep hold of it, knowing that it meant his life. Dark spots swam in his vision, and for a moment he thought he was going to faint.

The spots grew larger, and it was then that he realized they were sharks, swimming toward his bubble trail down through the deep blue water. His downward progress slowed as he lost momentum. His one duckfoot was barely heavy enough to counteract the buoyancy of his bladder-pack. He was glad about one thing-his bloody nose wasn’t leaking into the water. Slowly now he sank toward the deck of the sunken ship while the sharks circled above.

Finally, with a soft bump he came to rest on the wooden deck. The ship, some sort of caravel, lay on its keel, its deck nearly level. The entire deck was littered with broken swords and cloven shields, and hundreds of spent arrows stood everywhere, eerily balanced on their steel points. The wave created by his landing, soft as it was, sent several dozen dancing away from him in all directions, gently skittering across the deck like frightened faeries of the deep. A few leaped the ship’s rail and vanished over the sides.

In addition to weapons, all sorts of other common items lay scattered in profusion, everything from a small silver hand mirror that might have belonged in some lady’s bedchamber, to a huge copper kettle used to boil water for the laundry. Part of the deck appeared to have been scored by fire, but of the ship’s former occupants and crew there was no sign.

In the center of the deck, a large dark opening into the cargo hold gaped wide, its heavy doors swung open to either side as if, as the ship sank, its crew or those who sunk it had tried to loot its cargo. It filled him with loathing just looking at this dark hole, for it made him think of those who might have been trapped below. Perhaps their bodies were still there, but Conundrum had no desire to see them. He turned away and looked up for some sign of the Indestructible.

: At last he found it, hardly visible at all in the distance, a dark shadow against the darker blue of the sea. Almost he thought he could discern a tiny shadow slowly rising toward it, and he imagined that this was Razmous or the chief being hauled aboard. He hoped that Sir Grumdish too had made it safely to the ship, despite the danger of the sharks.

This made him think of his own sharks, and looking up he confirmed that they were still there, slowly circling overhead like vultures in a stormy sky. Even if those onboard the Indestructible had noted where he splashed down, and even if they managed to lower him a rope, he doubted he would survive the ascent. He would be like a worm on a fishing line, an irresistible lure to all those hungry sharks as he rose slowly up toward the ship. They’d tear him to ribbons.

For a moment, he had a vision of a cleanly picked skeleton being pulled aboard the Indestructible, one skeletal hand grimly clinging to the rope.

Despite it all, Conundrum chuckled. This was no time to despair, he reminded himself. This was but another kind of puzzle to solve, one with higher stakes-much higher indeed. But a puzzle just the same.

Now that he had had time to take in his surroundings, Conundrum realized that the sunken ship lay on somewhat of a slope. The bow was clearly several feet higher than the stern. The closer he was to the surface, even by a few feet, he reasoned, the greater his chances of being rescued, and so he tried to make his way toward the bow of the sunken ship.

This was no easy task. Because of his unusual buoyancy, he was forced to adopt a hopping gait, not unlike the arrows when disturbed, gently bouncing along in a slow dream, his one lead shoe bump, bump, bumping with each protracted leap.

Perhaps it was this noise that awakened the creature sleeping in the ship’s hold. It had grown fat over the last few weeks feeding on those who had gone down with this ship that it now called home, and so it was sluggish and sleepy. It slithered slowly toward the open cargo doors, pulling itself along with its long black tentacles. First one, then another sucker-covered appendage writhed up out of the hold, grasping the doors to either side and heaving its huge bulk up to the light.

Of course, Conundrum was completely unaware of his imminent danger. The ladder up to the ship’s forecastle had been consumed in the fire; only the top three rungs remained, and these were far out of his reach. It occurred to him that he might use the copper kettle as a boost, and so he hop, hop, hopped toward it. If he could move the kettle over to the sterncastle’s damaged ladder, he might be able to reach the lowest rung.

He was just stooping to grab the handle of the upturned kettle when he heard a noise like a rusty nail being pulled out of a board. While clambering out of the cargo hold, the monster shoved open one of the doors.

Conundrum froze, his mouth gaping and eyes popping inside his helmet. His heart thundered in his chest, and his nose started to bleed again. His breast heaved in panic, he gulped the stale filtered air through lips suddenly dry as old parchment, a storm of bubbles erupted from his bladder-pack, and then he turned and saw the horror creeping from the ship’s hold. Lifting the side of the heavy copper cauldron, Conundrum crawled beneath it. It dropped down over him, shutting him in total darkness. His blood roared in his ears.

Unfortunately for the gnome, the giant octopus was used to prying clams from their shells. Before it took up eating sailors, it had dined many a time on oysters pulled from their rocky beds. Slowly, silently, it crawled across the deck of the ship. It sent one tentacle probing toward the cauldron, feeling under its edge for a grip so it could flip it over and reveal the juicy meat inside.

Conundrum screamed inside his fishbowl helmet when he saw a black tentacle lift the edge of the cauldron and writhe toward him. It was a high-pitched scream, a true blood-curdling yell, the scream of the rabbit in the wolfs jaws, the scream of the condemned mutineer as the point of a saber prods him off the end of the plank and into the shark-filled waters below. It nearly burst his eardrums. Conundrum jerked his foot out of his heavy iron shoe and used it as a weapon, smashing the intruding tentacle against the boards. The octopus jerked it back, leaving the tip of its tentacle stuck to the deck between Conundrum’s knees.

Slowly now, the entire cauldron began to rise as though lifted from above. Conundrum dropped the shoe, and suddenly buoyant, found himself pressed against its underside of the cauldron. To his wonder, he found that an air pocket had formed here, and with each exhalation of bubbles it grew larger and the cauldron rose higher. It was only a few inches off the deck as yet, hut continuing to rise.

Dimly sensing this, the giant octopus paused. The cauldron was now a foot above the deck, now two feet, now a yard, and steadily rising. The monster lunged forward, grasping at the empty deck with all eight of its tentacles, searching for the juicy meat that it knew was hiding there. Its suckers gripped the deck and tore loose the boards, searching for its victim, ignoring for the moment the cauldron rising above it as it would ignore the discarded shell of a hermit crab.

Conundrum watched this violence occurring mere feet from the end of his nose. His instinct was to hold his breath, but when he did that, the cauldron began to slow in its ascent. With each breath, a cloud of bubbles erupted from his bladderpack, and it was the growing pocket of air that these created inside the upturned kettle that caused it to rise. As Conundrum clung desperately to the inside of the kettle, he realized that his only hope was to panic, perhaps even hyperventilate. He set himself to the task of breathing as rapidly as he could, and slowly, but ever more quickly, he rose above the deck of the ship inside the overturned cauldron.

Higher and higher he climbed, until the entire length of the ship was visible below him. The giant octopus squeezed its massive bulk through the newly-torn hole in the deck. Still searching for the gnome, it vanished into the ship’s dark hold.

The light grew brighter by stages, the water less murky. Shafts and beams of sunlight lanced downward, dancing as the waves rippled overhead. A shark, long and steely gray, slid by beneath him, unaware, perhaps thinking him some weird new jellyfish.

Suddenly, his ascent stopped as though he had struck a wall. For one panicked moment, he thought something had caught him at last, and then he heard waves lapping against the outside of the cauldron. He had reached the surface.

One problem remained-how to get out. There were still the sharks to consider, and Indestructible was probably hundreds of yards away from him. It might even have sailed away, thinking him lost forever, another victim of remorseless Chance (ever the greatest enemy of the gnomish people). It might even be sailing past him now, completely unaware that their crewmate floated beneath that curious copper kettle. If so, his only hope was that the kender had survived and was on deck to beg the commodore to stop and investigate a strange buoy bobbing on the surface.

And then a new danger presented itself. The waves increased in size, and as they lapped against the kettle, it commenced rocking back and forth. If the waves grew any larger, the cauldron might tip over. Its bubble of air would then escape, and it would sink, leaving the gnome stranded on the surface, food for sharks. Conundrum pressed the palms of his hands against the inside of the kettle, trying to help keep its balance in the rising sea.

Just as he was getting comfortable with the ever-shifting balance, something clanged against the kettle, almost upending him. He yelled, for he knew that the kettle had collided with the Indestructible. He could hear the commodore shouting curses at the helm. The cauldron, with Conundrum inside it, bumped down the length of the ship. Conundrum tried to call for help, but his voice inside his helmet inside the cauldron was so muffled that he doubted anyone could hear him.

A pair of hooks suddenly splashed into the water beside him. They sank a moment, flashing in the water, and then jerked upward, snagging the lip of the cauldron and lifting it streaming from the sea.

“You’ve got her!” Commodore Brigg shouted to the boom hand. “Swing her aboard now!”

While one gnome cranked the winch that lifted the cauldron, another swung the boom round and deposited it upright on the aft deck, all done so quickly that there was still seawater sloshing inside it.

“Good show!” the commodore shouted, then turned to Razmous, who stood at his side, still wearing his frogsuit and wringing water from his topknot. “You were right. It’s a fine cauldron. Should come in handy.”

The kender nodded, shaking water from his ears.

Then Conundrum stood up inside the cauldron, spilling water onto the deck. Razmous gaped proudly, and the boom operator screamed once, high and sharp, then fainted, certain he had seen a ghost.