‘Kala said we need to retrieve the captain’s medallion,’ he said. ‘So the chances are that if we find the captain’s skeleton, we’ll find the medallion.’
‘So what part of the ship will we find the cap’n in?’
Lex thought for a moment and then said, ‘It depends what sort of man he was. If he was a brave man, he would have been in his rightful place on the bridge when the ship went down. If he was a coward he’d have been hiding in his quarters-’
‘And if he was a greedy man, he would’ve been hiding in the galley!’ Jesse cut in.
Lex glared at him. ‘Don’t be absurd! No man, no matter how greedy, is going to rush down to the galley whilst the ship is sinking to stuff his face one last time. Besides, we just came from there.’
Jesse grinned. ‘I was only kidding.’
‘Well don’t! There’s no time for that!’ It was important to Lex to win the Game but it probably didn’t matter much either way to Jesse. Lex realised then for the first time that he probably should have offered the cowboy some sort of incentive earlier. ‘For every round we win, I’ll pay you fifty pieces of m-gold.’
Jesse crossed his arms over his chest. ‘Make it a hundred.’
Lex scowled at him. It was on the tip of his tongue to remind the cowboy that if it weren’t for Lex’s timely intervention, Jesse would still be rotting in prison, or else on his way back to the hangman’s noose that was waiting for him in the Wild West. But he didn’t have any more time to waste so he just snapped, ‘Fine!’
They could argue about it once the round was over. And Lex could always go back on his word later if it suited him. His offer of a reward seemed to have the desired effect, though, for now Jesse replaced the knife in his belt, rubbed his hands together gleefully and said, ‘So are we going for cowardly or courageous?’
‘Courageous,’ Lex replied. ‘They don’t tend to give medallions to cowards. We need to find the bridge.’
So they set off down the corridor, moving slowly, trying not to make any noise and tiptoeing carefully around the octopuses on the floor. Most of them were clinging to the walls but there were a few on the ceiling as well. Here, too, hung several paintings all showing the same octopus. There even seemed to be a large mosaic of one beneath the seaweed on the floor. Lex couldn’t help thinking the sea monster a strange choice of decor for the ship. He would have preferred beautiful mermaids, himself, or at the very least a few sleek, silver, friendly dolphins.
Lex was relieved to discover that Jesse seemed to be right? as long as they made no sudden, threatening movements, the octopuses seemed content to leave them be. Unfortunately it all went wrong when they reached the end of the corridor and opened the door, because a lot of water rushed out. It seemed that not all of the ship’s rooms were dry, after all. It poured out at them, knocking both Lex and Jesse off their feet and carrying them back a little way down the corridor. As sudden, threatening movements went, this seemed to be quite effective at frightening the octopuses who had been knocked into or swept off the walls. They latched on to Jesse and Lex anywhere they could get a grip.
Lex had one wrapped around his right ankle, one on his left arm, one slithering about trying to get a purchase on his chest and one dangling from his right wrist. They were all making that same awful high-pitched noise and it occurred to Lex? through his veil of horror? to wonder whether the little monsters might be poisonous. Surely Lady Luck would never put him in such a position, would she? But of course she would! This was a Game? death and danger were the point!
Suddenly, Lex felt angry. Falling gloriously to your death from a great height, or being dashingly killed by a ferocious, fire-breathing dragon, or getting heroically ripped apart by a band of werewolves was one thing. Getting squeezed and sucked to death by a bunch of horrible little octopuses was something else entirely. As Jesse seemed to be pretty thoroughly occupied with attempting to remove his own octopuses, Lex was going to have to save himself this time. He managed to get up, despite almost falling over again when there were more slippery octopuses getting in the way beneath his feet. The one that had been sliding around on his chest fell off but the two on his arms remained where they were and the one on his ankle actually started dragging itself up his leg!
Lex thought quickly. Unfortunately his knowledge of sea creatures was limited, to say the least. His grandfather had certainly never come across these octopuses? there was no mention of them in any of Alistair Trent’s chronicles. But Lex had read other chronicles, too. He was, in fact, always reading, whenever he got the chance. You could learn a lot from a book. And you could never be too well prepared for a Game. Not when a relevant piece of knowledge could make all the difference between life and death. This was the reason Lex had had an entire library installed on the enchanter’s ship before he’d left. It was also the reason he was currently carrying a book in his bag called The Mysteries of the Deep. He’d packed it as soon as he’d found out where the first round was to take place. It was quite a hefty thing and a great weight, causing the bag to dig painfully into his shoulders. Of course, there was no guarantee that the octopuses would be in there? one book couldn’t contain information about every sea monster, after all. But Lex was a lucky person and so he was sure that, if he could just get the book out, there would be some information in there that would enable him to deal with them.
Unfortunately, he needed to get into his bag first but, when he reached an arm around to try to swing it off his back, his hand came into contact only with more oily octopuses. There must have been four or five of them latched on to his bag. Jesse was doing even worse than Lex, for he seemed to have lost his knife and there were now a grand total of seven octopuses clinging to him.
‘You gotta weapon in that bag?’ Jesse asked, starting to look quite panic-stricken.
The water rushing in seemed to have set all the octopuses off, for now even the ones that weren’t actually on Jesse and Lex were making their way towards them, all making that horrible high-pitched whining sound.
‘No,’ Lex replied. ‘I’m trying to get to a book.’
‘A book?’ the cowboy said, staring at Lex aghast.
‘Yeah.’ Lex finally managed to swing the bag off his back, three of the octopuses flying off in the process to land on the floor at his feet with wet-sounding slaps.
‘What good will that possibly do? Is it big enough to squash ’em with?’
‘No, I’m going to read about them.’
‘ Read about them?’ Jesse repeated, staring at Lex like he was mad.
Lex ignored him and opened the book to the contents page. There was a whole section there about octopuses but the problem was that Lex didn’t know what they were called and, without a name, he couldn’t look them up. He was just about to start flipping through the relevant section, looking at the pictures, when a name caught his eye and he knew it had to be the right one: The Squealing Blue-Ringed Octopii of Scurlyshoo. Even the name made him shudder.
He flipped the book open to the right page and straight away there was a photo staring up at him of one of the horrible blue-ringed octopuses. There was a large amount of text on the double-page spread but two equally unpleasant sentences leapt out at Lex instantly: The Squealing Blue-Ringed Octopii is one of the most toxic sea creatures known to man. And: The Squealing Blue-Ringed Octopii carries enough venom to kill twenty-six adult humans within minutes.
When there are four or five of the little suckers clinging to you, whining frantically, that sort of thing is really not what you want to be reading. And to think that Lex had had one on his head! Why, if Jesse hadn’t stabbed it right when he did…
There was nothing to be gained by panicking, so Lex kept his head and desperately ran his eyes down the page looking for anything that would help. He skimmed past, one of the most venomous animals in the world, and no known antidote, as the octopuses clung tightly on to him all the while, about to bite at any second. Then, finally, he found what he was looking for. An innocuous little sentence at the bottom of the page stated that the Squealing Blue-Ringed Octopii? being closely related to land-slugs? had a low tolerance to salt. Thus they spent some of their time in the water and some of the time out of it, on beaches, coves or? Lex supposed? sunken ships that were full of air pockets.