Jingo - Terry Pratchett [87]
This wasn’t a nice beach. It was a wrecking coast. Ribcages of broken ships crumbled into the sand. Bones and driftwood and bleached white seaweed mounded along the high tide line. And beyond, the dunes of the real desert rose. Even down here sand stung the eyes and gritted the teeth.
“There’s sudden death on that beach,” said the first mate, looking over the rail and trying to blink his eyes clear.
“Yes,” said the captain. “He’s just got out of the boat.”
The figure on the beach pulled the other, recumbent figure out of the boat and dragged him out of reach of the waves. The mate raised his bow.
“I could kill him from here, master. Just say the word.”
“How sure are you? Because you’d better be really sure. First, if you miss him you’re dead and, second, if you hit him, you’re still dead. Look up there.”
On the high distant dunes, dark against the sand-filled sky, there were mounted figures. The mate dropped his bow.
“How did they know we were here?”
“Oh, they watch the sea,” said the captain. “D’regs like a good shipwreck as much as anyone else. More, in fact. A lot more.”
As they turned away from the rail, something leapt from the hull and entered the water with barely a splash.
Detritus tried to lurk in the shade, but there was not a lot of it about. The heat came off the high desert ahead of them like a blowtorch.
“I’m gonna get fick,” he muttered.
There was a shout from the lookout.
“He says someone’s climbing the dunes,” said Carrot. “Carrying someone else, he says.”
“Er…female?”
“Look, sir, I know Angua. She’s not the useless type. She doesn’t stand there and scream helplessly. She makes other people do that.”
“Well…if you’re sure…” Vimes turned to Jenkins. “Don’t bother to chase the ship, captain. Just keep heading for the shore.”
“I don’t work like that, mister. For one thing, that’s a damn difficult shore, the wind’s always against you, and there’s some very nasty currents. Many an incautious sailorman has left his bones to bleach on those sands. No, we’ll stand out a little way and you can lower the—well, if we had a boat any more, you could lower it…and we’ll drop the anchor, oh, no, tell a lie, it turned out to be too heavy, didn’t it—”
“You just keep straight on,” said Vimes.
“We’ll all be killed.”
“Think of it as the lesser of two evils.”
“What’s the other one?”
Vimes drew his sword.
“Me.”
The Boat squeaked through the mysterious depths of the ocean. Leonard spent a lot of time looking out of the tiny windows, particularly interested in pieces of seaweed which, to Sergeant Colon, looked like pieces of seaweed.
“Do you note the fine strands of Dropley’s Etoliated Bladderwrack?” said Leonard. “That’s the brown stuff. A marvelous growth which, of course, you will see as significant.”
“Could we just assume for the moment that I have neglected my seaweed studies in recent years?” said the Patrician.
“Really? Oh, the loss is entirely yours, I assure you. The point is, of course, that the Etoliated Bladderwrack is never usually found growing above thirty fathoms, and it’s only ten here.”
“Ah.” The Patrician flicked through a stack of Leonard’s drawings. “And the hieroglyphs—an alphabet of signs and colors. Colors as a language…what a fascinating idea…”
“An emotional intensifier,” said Leonard. “But of course we ourselves use something like it. Red for danger and so on. I never did succeed in translating it, though.”
“Colors as a language…” murmured Lord Vetinari.
Sergeant Colon cleared his throat. “I know something about seaweed, sir.”
“Yes, sergeant?”
“Yessir! If it’s wet, sir, it means it’s going to rain.”
“Well done, sergeant,” said Lord Vetinari, without turning his head. “I think it is quite possible that I will never forget you said that.”
Sergeant Colon beamed. He had Made A Contribution.
Nobby nudged him. “What’re we doing down here, sarge? I mean, what’s it all about? Poking around, looking at weird marks on the rocks, going in and out of caves…and the smell…well…”
“It’s not me,” said Sergeant Colon.
“Smells like…sulfur…”
Little bubbles streamed past