He spit out the last word. I could almost see his disdain dripping from his tongue.
I didn’t know how to explain to him that for all that I still looked young, I had been feeling old. The years had passed, so many of them, and they were starting to wear on me. After a while it wasn’t fun to always feel like you had to have fun.
And as I thought this, I felt a little twinge in my legs, like the muscles and bones were stretching.
“Well? Do we have a bargain?” Peter asked.
“I won’t leave Charlie alone all the time just to play with you,” I said. “If this is some kind of trick so you can set Nip on him again . . .”
“No harm will come to your little duckling,” Peter said. I checked both hands to make sure they weren’t crossed behind his back.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll play more, and you don’t get any new boys from the Other Place.”
Peter held out his hand and we shook on it.
“Now,” he said, and his eyes gleamed. “How about we bother the crocodiles?”
• • •
The day before the Battle, Nip went off in the woods early in the morning and didn’t come back until well after dusk. He returned sweaty and scratched from his exertions, but overall he looked much healthier than he had been. His broken cheekbone appeared to be mending, though an ugly ridge had formed where the two pieces joined together.
He was gone so long that day that I wondered if he had gotten lost, or perhaps just decided to keep going straight across the island and join the pirates. It would be better for him if he didn’t fight me, though he didn’t seem to realize that.
The pirates, surprisingly, had returned to the island a few days before. Peter and I had been out scouting in the mountains (just the two of us, as Peter wanted) and had seen their ship anchored in their usual cove.
We’d crept down for a closer look and found that the previous first mate was now wearing the Captain’s coat, and that he’d managed to replace the men he’d lost to Peter and me and the Many-Eyed. They set up a new camp while Peter and I watched from a cliff just above the beach.
“The new pirates look a good deal younger and healthier than the others,” I said.
“That means they’ll fight better,” Peter said. “We should have a raid, and welcome them to the island.”
I chose my next words carefully, not wanting to irritate Peter. He’d been in a better mood since our bargain, mostly because he seemed to think he had me on a string that he could tug anytime he liked.
“Maybe we should wait on a raid until after Battle,” I said. “After all, I could get hurt in a raid, and then the fight wouldn’t be fair.”
“You wouldn’t get hurt, Jamie,” Peter scoffed. “When have you ever gotten hurt in a raid?”
I had, plenty of times. There was a long scar on my right thigh where one of the first mates had managed to slice open the skin and muscle there. That was probably the worst I’d ever gotten.
A boy had lived with us at that time called Rob, and he said he’d once been a servant to a doctor. He told me the doctor sewed flaps of skin together so they would heal, so I tried that with some deer gut I stretched into thin strings. It seemed to work all right, except that the place where the skin and muscle joined was swollen and tender for a long time after, and cutting the deer gut out after the wound healed was more miserable than sewing it together in the first place.
Under my left ribs there was a hard knot of skin where another mate had almost got me, except that I danced away at the last moment before he managed to plunge the knife all the way in. There were assorted other small marks and scars, many of them faded white, but they existed. Peter had just forgotten, the way that Peter did forget about anything that wasn’t right in front of him at the moment.
“Still,” I said, not liking to remind Peter that he was wrong. “I could get injured. And if I was, you’d have to put off Battle until I was better.”
“Why?” Peter asked.
“Because you put it off until Nip was better, so you’d have to do the same for me. It’s only fair.”
“Oh,” Peter said, his mouth twisting to one side the way it did when he was thinking hard. He wanted the raid, was excited about the return of the pirates.
At the same time, I sensed that the ongoing tension of Nip’s presence in the camp was beginning to wear even on Peter. Nip never spoke to anyone except to insult them, and he certainly did not come along for games or adventures. He was secretive and angry, and that did not make for Peter’s idea of fun. Delaying Battle, even for a few more days, was not appealing to him. Peter wanted the trouble with Nip to be resolved.
“I suppose we could wait until after Battle,” Peter said slowly. “But not too long after. I don’t want these new pirates getting ideas. The island belongs to me.”
Not to us, I noticed. Not to all the boys, or even to Peter and me. Just to him. It was Peter’s island.
But I didn’t let this irritate me. Peter was doing what I wanted. There would be no raid until after Battle.
• • •
On the morning of Battle we all woke early. It was a half-day walk to the Battle place and Peter wanted to reach it before midday. It wasn’t so far as the crow flies, but it was nestled right in the mountains to the southeast and there was a good deal of climbing to do to get there.
This meant that Peter was cock-crowing us awake before the moon had set. All the boys except for Nip and Sal and Charlie (who were the only new boys left after the terrible day with the cannonball) had been to the Battle place before, and so were familiar with Peter’s routine. We rolled out of sleep and collected our things while Peter scampered around shouting for us to hurry.
I’d carefully prepared all my weapons the night before and packed them—except my dagger, which always went on my waist—in a kind of sling-bag I’d made from deerskin.
Ever since the day Battle had been announced I’d quietly picked up useful rocks that I saw here and there—smooth round ones that would fit inside my slingshot. Those stones were in my bag, along with my freshly strung shot.
I had also found a couple of larger rocks, ones that would just fit inside my hand, with spiky bits on them. They were worth carrying the extra weight. If I got Nip’s skull with one of them he’d go down in an instant and then I’d just have to finish him off.
After Del died I’d taken his pirate sword, though I didn’t prefer swords, generally. I was good with them, and would take a sword from whatever pirate I fought and use the sword against him, but I mostly found swords unwieldy. The dagger suited me better—I liked to be quick, to dart in and out again, to kill before my enemy knew I was even there.
Swords weren’t permitted in Battle, nor daggers either, because Peter liked Battle to be about the boys who were the best fighters—not who was able to steal the best weapons from the pirates. Still, I put Del’s sword inside my sling-bag, because I had a hunch that Nip might cheat.
I’d been teaching Sal and Charlie swordplay with it, anyhow. The necessity of keeping Peter company meant that I hadn’t taught them as much as I’d have liked, but I’d feel better if they had the sword with them while I battled Nip.
There was a voice whispering to me that Peter was being too nice, too good, that he hadn’t forgotten the way Charlie and Sal took me away from him. Going after them while I was distracted by Battle was a distinct possibility.
Nip was cross, as usual, when Peter woke him. This might have had something to do with Peter treading on Nip’s hand instead of shaking his shoulder. The other boy woke with an angry shout, and spent several minutes swearing words I’d never heard before while he packed. I’ve listened to pirates too, and still I hadn’t heard some of those words.