You Can Lead a Horse to Water…
A Pirates of the Caribbean/King Arthur Crossover
The Sequel to The Gildatore
31st October, 1722
The Atlantic Ocean, English Territory
"Crowd on more sail!" Commodore Norrington shouted, almost drowned out by the roaring of the wind and the crashing of the waves and the ripping of the sails on the foremast of their ship, The Knight Errant, as the hurricane raged around them.
"Are you mad?!" Lieutenant Gillette screamed at him, holding desperately onto the railings on the quarterdeck to stop himself from sliding away. "The sails are too heavy as it is! If we put any more on the masts, it'll be them that tear away!"
"Is that insubordination?" Norrington thundered at him, from where he had chained his feet to the deck in front of the ship's wheel in order to keep from sliding downwards as the ship was tipped nearly vertical with each gargantuan wave.
"For God's sakes, Commodore! Sparrow will have had to drop anchor as well! Not even he could sail through a hurricane! We won't lose any ground on them!"
Norrington shook his head. "But we need to gain ground on them. The Black Pearl is the fastest ship in the Caribbean!"
"For the sake of your crew, Commodore, please! We'll all die if we don't stop and baton down the hatches!"
Norrington shook his head again. "Onwards! We must catch Sparrow!"
The ship's mizzenmast tore off the deck of the ship with a terrible groaning noise and plummeted into the water below on a particularly enthusiastic wave. Water poured into the hold of the ship through the hole and, when it washed out again, it carried most of the crew with it. Gillette screamed and clung to the railing for dear life, but Norrington ignored it, his eyes fixed on a higher purpose.
He would catch Sparrow and get his life back if it was the last thing he ever did.
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1st February, 468 AD
Britannia (No longer a part of the Roman Empire)
Stonehenge
Arthur, Cynric and Lancelot sat next to each other in the middle of a circle of determined bachelors and various females, an island of stillness in the bustle and the disgustingly commonplace antics of the rest of the knights. Jessamine, Guinevere and the rest of their girls were off cooking for the post-nuptial midday celebrations – or at least, Jessamine was watching everyone else cook. She had never fit into a single female stereotype that Lancelot could think of, except perhaps the one that said that women were temperamental.
On the horizon, stormclouds roiled and thunder muttered distantly.
Arthur grinned at Lancelot. "Do you regret it?"
Lancelot shook his head and shrugged. "I don't think it will make that much difference, really. She drinks almost as much as I do, so I'm one up on you two there."
Arthur sighed. Guinevere and Ytria had had a big talk a while ago and decided that they should try and stop their husbands from drinking. This has prompted much name-calling, mockery and general mickey-taking from the knights and, to the girls' disgust, Gilioneron, but they had both, by some miracle, managed to stay away from alcohol for a whole five days. This was longer than Arthur had gone without drinking since he was sixteen, mostly because this had been when he had met the knights.
The girls started walking back towards them holding a few big plates of food and trays of drinks.
Gawain turned to look over his shoulder at the approaching Egreyne and held up his tankard. "More wine!"
Galahad grinned at him. "Or milk, for Arthur and Cynric,"
The knights guffawed loudly in a drunken manner and Arthur looked at Cynric. "I never remember being that rowdy when I was drunk,"
"That's because you never remember anything after you've been drinking, Arthur," Bors said, and belched loudly. "You got no stomach for it."
Tristan nodded. "It's a Roman thing. They can't stand anything stronger than their weak, diluted wine."
Bors nodded happily. "Give a group of men a wineskin full of koumiss, and you soon discover who the Sarmatians are, eh? Oh, and Scythians, too, of course."
Cynric laughed. "That's because no one except the Sarmatians and Scythians will even drink koumiss, Bors. It is possibly the most disgusting drink in the world."
Gawain blinked at him and then laughed as well. "You think we like the way it tastes?"
Dagonet shook his head. ""You'd have to be mad,"
"Yeah," Lancelot said, taking the tankard of wine Jess handed him. "We only drink koumiss so the wine tastes better."
"I always wondered," Jess said, perching on Lancelot's knees, "whose blood it actually is that's in it."
Galahad looked puzzled. "Well, it's ours, of course,"
She raised her eyebrows. "Of course,"
'So, whose blood have you drunk, Jessamine?" Lancelot asked her, grinning.
She swallowed, and then looked as if she wished she hadn't. "Possibly… Galahad and Tristan's,"
He laughed and handed her the wine, which she took a large mouthful of.
"The best thing about koumiss is that you can basically make it on a battlefield," Tristan said, quite seriously, and Cimmeria glared at him.
"Please. I think we've definitely exhausted the conversation possibilities of this topic."
"What were you talking about?" Guinevere asked, turning up with another tray of food.
Ytria shook her head. "You wouldn't want to know, believe me."
"Ah," Guinevere said, nodding, "koumiss."
She turned to the dainty, dark-haired Wode girl standing behind her. "All right, Nemetona. We'll just send for more when we need it."
Nemetona nodded and set the tray she was carrying in front of Dagonet.
Although she had become a good friend of theirs since Jess's return to the fifth century, Nemetona was in many ways even more of a mute than Tristan. When she did speak, it was quietly, and every contribution she made was serious and thought provoking. Sometimes it made things confusing, going from the silent, attentive Nemetona to the rowdy, near incomprehensibly drunk Bors, but so far they were managing to cope all right.
"Has anyone seen Gilioneron?" Jess asked, looking over Lancelot's shoulder to see if she could spot him among the wedding guests.
"He's probably off getting some poor Wode girl into trouble somewhere," Lancelot said indifferently.
Guinevere sighed. "Nemetona, could you please go and see if anyone is missing?"
Nemetona nodded and walked away through the crowd.
"Does she ever talk?" Gawain asked, shaking his head at her.
"You don't care that Tristan and Dagonet hardly talk," Cimmeria pointed out.
"Yeah, but that's different," Galahad said, affronted. "They're warriors. They're not meant to talk. Women practically have to, to even qualify as women."
"And no one listens to a word of it," Tristan said idly, seemingly oblivious to Cimmeria's hurt glare.
Eunyphore sighed, and then stood up and walked away. After a moment, Cimmeria followed her.
"Not the most tactful of discussions to have started, Galahad," Cynric said, shaking his head.
Lancelot snorted derisively. "Not that anyone's ever accused him of being intelligent – or, for that matter, tactful – especially when he's drunk."
"What?" Galahad asked, confused. "What did I say?"
Jess looked at him. "How can you… my God, I can't believe this. One day when I've got the time – and the patience – I'll have to tell you all about the Equal Rights Amendment."
"The what?" Dagonet asked, curiously.
She sighed. "It's a very long story. And today's my wedding day and my birthday, so I'm certainly not going to do it now."
Gilioneron appeared behind Dagonet, with his arm around a young Wode girl's shoulders. "I think we'd better move this party indoors, kids. Looks like it's going to storm soon."
Lancelot looked up at the sky. "That's probably a good idea,"
Arthur nodded. "I'll go and round everyone up."
Guinevere sighed. "I suppose someone needs to get the food inside as well,"
Everyone went off to help with various jobs, leaving Jess and Lancelot to walk across to the longhouse that had been set up just north of Stonehenge in the months since she had been back in England. It had started out being built mostly to Wode specifications, with a thatched roof and mud-reinforced walls, but Cynric and Ytria had taken a look at it and now it was a luxurious Saxon house with stone walls three feet thick and two levels.
"They were kidding about it being human blood in the koumiss, weren't they?" she asked him, somewhat apprehensively.
He laughed and nodded. "Yes. It's animal blood. What Tristan meant, when he said the battlefield thing, was that where there are dead men there are always dead horses as well. You cook the meat because there's nothing else to eat, and you put the blood in the koumiss. It's definitely not human blood."
She sighed in relief. "Thank God. You know I wouldn't have let you drink it ever again if it had been human blood."
He nodded again. "Yeah, I know,"
As they walked, Lancelot reached down and took her hand. "You're eighteen today?" he asked her.
She nodded. "And now I can legally drink1 and smoke. And vote."
He looked confused for a moment. "Oh, you mean in your old world."
She laughed and nodded again. "Sorry. And, I just thought I should let you know, I don't exactly share Guinevere and Ytria's views about drinking."
He sighed in relief. "Oh, thank the Gods,"
She shrugged. "Arthur seems to be coping pretty well,"
He snorted. "That's because he's a Roman. Drink is practically a part of our religion. Well, koumiss is, anyway, and you can definitely get drunk on that."
She nodded. "I know. I am a priestess of your religion, you remember."
He laughed. "I always forget that. I can't keep you in both the 'from another world' bracket and the 'one of Gilioneron's finest' one. I mean, you fit into them both, and you can do them individually, but I can't put the two together."
She nodded again. "It is a bit strange, when you think about it."
They walked for a while longer and then he took a deep breath and looked at the ground. "Listen, I was thinking of maybe moving out of our quarters in the fortress. You know, have a whole place of our own, now that we're married. In case one room isn't going to be big enough, er… if you catch my meaning."
She smiled at him. "Do I detect a man who's getting broody, Lancelot?"
He coughed, embarrassed. "Well, I mean, it's going to happen sometime, isn't it? And besides, I hate that stupid room. All I can think about when I'm there is all those years I spent in the Roman army."
She nodded. "I think it's a good idea, too. So long as we don't farm anything."
He laughed. "How do you feel about breeding horses?"
She thought about it. "Horses is fine, but I can't stand sheep or cows. And I would not know where to start with crops."
He shrugged. "I can get some people to help me with that."
She stood silently for a while and threw her arms around his neck, squealing in delight. "This is great! And I bet we can even get Arthur to give us one of the abandoned Roman villas! Those are amazing!"
"Oh, Gods," he said, in horror, after looking over her shoulder at the approaching group of snickering knights, and then started to drag her into the house.
"They have heated floors, Lancelot. Heated floors! Do you know how good that would be in winter?"
He glared at Galahad and Bors, who were laughing at him, but secretly he was just as excited as she was.
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Captain Jack Sparrow sat at his navigating desk and hoped really hard that he was charting the correct course back to Tortuga. For all he knew, they could be heading towards where the chest of Davey Jones was buried, or where you could find the key, or… somewhere else. He really, desperately hoped it wasn't the last one again; there had been that really embarrassing incident where they thought they were going to the Isla de Muerta and he had only just managed to steer clear of Port Royal.
It would be fine if only Tia Dalma had actually given them directions, instead of just telling them that their ship knew where it was going. And it had, sailing due south and southeast for a while, before they reached the area where Davey Jones' newest recruits were found. But he had no sense of timing, because he couldn't stay awake all the time (and drink has a tendency to make the time go by faster than it actually does), so he didn't know how far they were from anything. They were sailing blind, and Jack hated that.
He felt a momentary pang of regret and sympathy for Will, who he had left on the Flying Dutchman. If only bloody Jones had let him take the boy with him, things would have been so much easier. As it was, they were already in trouble, a big part of Jack's genius plan that he was regretting ever concocting being the finding of the chest of Davey Jones – and they had no reliable way of doing so. He did think, though, that it would benefit Will in a small way; at least he would get to meet his father.
And at least now they had the full run of the ocean without having to dread the attack of the Kraken. That was the only thing Jack could think of that they had in their favour, because the chances of being able to obtain 99 souls in Tortuga seemed unlikely.
Out on the deck he could tell that Gibbs would be trying to convince what remained of their crew that everything was going to be fine. Ragetti, Pintel, Cotton, little Marty and Leech, all fine men – but they hardly added up to ninety-nine souls, even if Jack had been willing to trade them in. He wasn't even sure if they had five souls between them, although if you added the parrot you could probably bring Cotton's count up to a full one, and maybe you could argue that Marty's soul was just a little smaller than normal.
He thought about Ragetti and Pintel and made a mental note to ask any applicants if they had ever been cursed at any time in their lives before accepting them. He also made a note to try and bargain on the parrot being one individual soul, and wished they hadn't left the damn monkey with Tia Dalma. In their situation, Jack would have cheerfully bargained to keep the woodworm in the bilges, in case they could be of any help.
His life would have been so much easier, he thought, sighing, if he had never met Elizabeth. He'd have talked his way around those damn navymen and then he could have been blissfully on his way with a new ship, a crew for which he would have obtained in Tortuga, he'd have sweet-talked Anamaria, and then everything would have been fine.
Instead, he'd been put in prison twice, roped into confronting Barbossa (admittedly getting the Pearl back, but still), marooned on the same godforsaken island as before, nearly hung, trapped inside the Isla de Muerta as it sunk, chased around the Atlantic by bloody Norrington through that stupid hurricane, made into a chief who needed eating by the Pelegostos, and been put on the Kraken's most-wanted list.
And he didn't know it yet, but his life was about to get even more complicated. It was soon going to involve Curiosity, a gildatore, a farm girl, the King of the Britons and the ancient Greek God of the sun.
1 In Australia, that is.