Skulls and Shackles: Wormwood Mutiny
Chapter 1: Drinks on Me
A cool night breeze, stiff with the salt of the sea, pushed the rotted, paint-chipped sign depicting a muscular maid benchpressing an entire galleon. Ana Perya winced at the rusted squeak of its hinges. She stopped to one side of the door to the Formidably Maid, waiting, but the air was full of breezes that night. The sign kept swinging, kept squeaking. For her trouble, a rowdy pair of a red-headed woman and a blond youth shoved Ana back and against the coquina wall in their apparent race to the door.
An involuntary yelp leaped from Ana's mouth as one moon blue hand smacked the sharp, cockleshell wall to steady herself. Her almond-shaped eyes, pure white and pupil-less, widened and watered. The samsaran glanced down at the filth-capped, piss-stained cobblestones at the foot of the wall. It could've been worse.
Ana straightened up with a shaky sigh, drew her cloak closer around her moon blue face, and entered the Formidably Maid herself. Clouds of tobacco, raucous speech, and jaunty music assaulted her senses, but she made sure to step out of the way of the door-fortunate. The door swung open into the space she had just occupied to let through a hooded man clanking softly as he walked.
While she waited for her eyes to adjust to the tavern's dim, lantern lighting, she scanned the tables for her contact. She'd met the man after arriving in Port Peril mere hours ago. The peek of a parchment scroll tucked into the inner lining of a long coat drew her gaze. Even sitting, the slender, sun-browned man in the coat seemed to sprawl in all directions. Her eyes must have scrutinized him too heavily because he turned over his shoulder. He grinned at her with a mouth full of golden teeth over a black, braided beard. Scourge. That was his name.
Ana swallowed uneasily, but the map in his coat wouldn't simply fall into her waiting hands. She raised her cloak safely off the sticky floor under her sturdy boots and skirted her way around to Scourge's table where two large tankards foamed at the mouth. The man's pitch black eyes roved up and down the curves that even her practical exploring gear failed to hide. "You came."
Her cheeks darkened with a purple blush. She sat opposite him, both hands gripping either side of the seat of her chair. "You said you had a map to ruins of Ghol-Gan."
Scourge laughed amiably enough, but the corners of his grin seemed to sneer. "That's not how it's done in the Shackles, Lady Blue. See? I don't even know your name." He pushed one pungent tankard to her across the rough wood of the table and miraculously didn't spill any of it.
Ana attempted a smile of thanks and pried her hands off her chair. She lowered the hood of her cloak, her thick black hair swishing free over her shoulders. A blunt, precise fringe of bangs remained hanging above her pupiless eyes. She wrapped both hands around the tankard. The wood alone was heavy enough to knock a man cold-if it came to that-but the strong draught brought tears to her eyes and burned the whole way down. "Mmm," she squeaked, fighting down a coughing fit. "Thank you, Mr. Scourge. I apologize for my rudeness. My name's Ana Perya."
One of his black brows quirked upward at the squeak and stayed for the introduction. "First time out of the convent?"
She grimaced and blushed simultaneously. Many samsarans were devout worshippers, and she herself meditated on the teachings of Iro-Shu, but that was a little much. She took a longer sip from the tankard. "First time out of the college." She let her eyes drift around the room to prevent them from straying so desperately to the map in his coat.
She couldn't miss the red-headed woman. Tian in appearance, the olive-skinned woman stood on a tabletop and made exaggerated gestures at the cheering crowd who'd come to listen to her. The blond, sun-browned youth was one of them, one arm thrown over the shoulder of the half-orc woman with a prominent, jagged scar across her neck. The other arm lifted a foaming tankard to his mouth. Ana couldn't tell how much he'd actually managed to drink and how much doused the front of his light, vest and airy linens.
Secondhand embarrassment drove her gaze back to the depths of her own tankard. This was not her scene. "I...don't know how to do this. What do I do?"
Scourge fixed her with that not-so-nice grin. He pushed the second tankard across to her. "Relax. Drink some more."
Against her better judgment, she did.
Ana's head pounded as though struck over and over by hammer. The acidic taste of sick and vomit lingered in her dry mouth and throat. Her cheek pressed flat against hard and sticky wood. The whole room swayed under her, creaking, creaking, creaking unceasing.
She grumbled hoarsely and turned onto her back, pinning both arms under her. Her eyes snapped open. She strained and grunted, but unyielding rope bound her arms to her sides and her wrists behind her back. Chain clanked and restricted her feet as they kicked kicked-metal shackles weighted her boots.
Ana panted, her breath short and overheated. A cold sweat broke over her helpless body. She almost screamed out. Almost. She didn't recognized this dark, damp, and filthy wooden room, but she'd grown accustomed to this rocking and inured to the incessant creaking during the long sea voyage to Port Peril.
Instead of screaming, she turned onto her side to see more of the room than its ceiling. She was not alone. The red-headed woman, the blond youth, and a man with a shock of prematurely grayed hair, all similarly bound and shackled, had been tossed haphazardly in here with her. The blond youth snored softly, blissfully oblivious, on the floor beside her. The red-headed woman and the grayed man had been left shoulder-to-shoulder in a corner. The two began to stir, black and tawny eyes flickering open respectively. "Where-"
Several pairs of heavy footfalls sounded in the hall. They stopped outside the door. Metal clinked. The door's lock clunked. Ana shut her eyes against the harsh, spearing light of a hand-held lantern. A whip cracked. A deep male voice grunted low in pain. Staccato laughter punched hope-sucking holes into the damp air. "Get 'em topside."
Rough, calloused hands grabbed Ana by the rope and shoulder and hauled her up to her shackled feet. The hard butt of a sap prodded her in the back. Half-blinded, she staggered forward only for her knees to give out under her. She thudded to the wooden floorboards, face stinging from the fall. The hard, heavy sap came down on her back. She cried out at the sudden shock of pain. Down came the sap, heavier. Her eyes, nearly adjusted to the light, filled with hot, obscuring tears. Someone yanked her back to her feet. The sap prodded. Head down, the black wings of her hair curtaining her face, she shuffled cautiously but unerringly forward.
The sailors, the pirates, took the four prisoners through damp creaking halls up to the main deck of the ship. A stiff, salted breeze blew the black wings of Ana's hair up and away from her face. She dared to raise her head under the early morning light. The ship, at least as large as the passenger vessel that took her from Tian Xia to Golarion, had already sailed into open waters with no land in sight.
Eclectically garbed pirates clustered at the ship's mainmast. She followed the turn of their heads to a higher deck where two figures stood. One was a broad, muscular Garundi man with a shaven head, a thick beard bound with gold rings, and an eye patch. The other was a younger, olive-skinned Tian man with a long black ponytail and carrying a nine-tailed whip with a well-worn handle.
The first stared right back. Ana's pupiless, almond-shaped eyes widened and she dropped her head, now pounding with both her fear-heightened pulse and a hangover.
"Glad you could join us." The older man's low voice boomed over the whole of the main deck. "Scourge, loose them."
A whip cracked just beside Ana's boots and more vulnerable legs. She jumped, chains clanking. A familiar voice rang out from the back, laughing. "You heard the captain."
A mildly sunburnt, auburn-haired woman wearing a feather in her tricorn hat, broke away from the group at the mainmast toward the prisoners. A ring of keys went sailing overhead. She caught them in one hand and went immediately to work unlocking the shackles.
"Thank-" Ana's hoarse thanks ended in a yelp as a strong hand yanked her backward and against a slender torso.
Scourge, the blackguard, leaned over her shoulder, his braided beard scratching the thin skin of her ear, her cheek, and her neck. She refused to look at him and let him see the fear in her eyes, but she could feel his sneering grin in the hot breath prickling her skin. His hand wrapped around her other side brandishing a dagger. He slit the ropes binding her arms to her sides in a single stroke.
Ana sagged forward at the sudden release. But she was not free. He caught her by the rope around her wrists. By the single finger snagging the bindings, he tugged and forced her to step back into him. His laugh carried straight from his chest into her back and shoulders as he snicked the dagger through the ropes.
Immediately, Ana sidestepped away from Scourge toward the three other prisoners. The gray haired man, strikingly pale in the daylight, shifted to place himself between her and Scourge. Her cheeks darkened purple realizing that the man and likely everyone else had seen Scourge shamefully toying with her. She grimaced and concentrated on shaking feeling back into her pin-prickling wrists.
The captain, meanwhile, continued his address:
"Better. Welcome to the Wormwood. My thanks for 'volunteering' to join my crew. I am Captain Barnabas Harrigan. Not that you will ever need to address me. I have only one rule—-do not speak to me. I tell you what to do and you do it.
"Now. Even with you new recruits, we are still short-handed, so there will be no killing. If any of you are caught even whispering murder in your sleep, consider yourself keelhauled."
He turned to the man with the nine-tailed whip beside him and casually slapped his shoulder with a staggering strength. "Mr. Plugg-you have your landlubbers. Turn them into Wormwood pirates. The rest of you-back to work."
The crew jumped into action at the captain's command, rushing off to their posts. Scourge brushed Ana's arm as he passed. She shuddered. But in her heart, she vowed that if she ever found a way to kill him without hurting her chances of survival, he would be as good as dead.