Tigerheart by Peter David

say you, Captain?”
    “Aye!” said The Boy, who had not heard a word of the discussion and had to be filled in later as to the specifics of the plan he had just endorsed.
    The
Skull n’ Bones
set out. The wind puffed against her sails; and with The Boy’s firm hand on the tiller, the ship cruised briskly around the coast of the Anyplace. The Boy watched the shoreline move past him, and was vaguely aware that he had once cavorted and frolicked upon those shores. But those days were long past, as if belonging to another person who shared his name but had gone on to other, greater things.
    Soon they drew within range of the cliffside to which Caveat had alluded. The Bully Boy had been completely correct. There, high at the top of the cliff, was the peaceful Picca camp. Pulling out his telescope, The Boy gazed upward and was even able to see Princess Picca in the midst of her people, engaged in a ritual dance that he recognized as asking for a successful harvest. Well, what a crop he had to share with them, eh? A crop of cannonballs, sure as shooting.
    “Roll out the carronades! All of them!” The Boy said, and the Bully Boys and pirates worked together swiftly as a team, dedicated to the single goal of wreaking a glorious day’s havoc. As per The Boy’s orders, four fearsome eighteen-pound guns were positioned, poised to be armed, readied, and to perform dazzling feats of destruction. The Barbarys braced them in position.
    Everything was ready. The Boy sailed through the air, landing on the mainmast, grinning in a most fiendish manner that didn’t seem anything remotely like play. “Ready!” he said. “Aim!”
    “Captain!” said Simon the Dancer, the most eagle-eyed among them. “Floating toward us from the direction of the cliffside, coming ’round the island from the far side…it’s a raft!”
    “A raft?” said The Boy. Instantly the Indians, if not forgotten, were at least a distant second in his priority as this new curiosity presented itself. “Heading
toward
us? Not
away
from us?”
    “Madness,” growled the Terrible Turk. “Have they no idea who they’re dealing with?”
    The crooked lady looked in the direction of the small vessel that was indeed moving on a straight intercept course with the fearsome pirate vessel. “The nerve of them! We’ll have their guts for garters, we will.”
    “We?” The Boy said, looking with a faint aspect of danger at the old lady.
    She turned to him, smiled, and said silkily, “You will, my dearest. Only you.”
    The Boy could, of course, have flown out to the raft to see what was what or to harry the people upon it as he had the Indians. This time, however, it struck his fancy to remain on his ship and play the part of pirate captain to the hilt. He bounded to the foredeck, calling for a megaphone. Roomer tossed one to him. The Boy caught it deftly, brought it to his mouth, and said, “Ahoy the raft! Who goes there?”
    A voice floated back to him, apparently without aid of a megaphone; but it was firm and strident and The Boy was stunned to hear it.
    “Boy!” came the voice of Gwenny. “Is that you?”
    The Boy blinked in surprise, than rallied himself and said, “No! I am Captain Boy, the deadliest pirate ever to menace the Spanish Main! I am he who the Sea Cook feared! I am—”
    “Boy, this is nonsense!” Gwenny said. “The Anyplace is abuzz with your actions! We made this raft to come fetch you home and away from this—this terrible environment you’ve put yourself in.”
    “Ignore her,” said the crooked old lady. “She is simply angry that you have found a more entertaining game to play than being husband to her and father to a brood of brats.”
    “Away with you,” The Boy said to Gwenny, “before I give you a taste of the round shot! Avast,
arrrh
!” he growled to add piratical authenticity.
    As the raft drifted closer, he could see that Gwenny was not alone. Irregular and Porthos were with her. He was pleased to see, even from this