needlelike spears. It might even have worked except for
the one joker in the sloop’s deck. With his longbow,
Mudge gleefully picked off first the falcon and then wounded
one of the ravens.
This forced the attackers to close with their quarry, and
their agility couldn’t compensate for their relatively small
size. One of Roseroar’s spinning swords sliced the wounded
raven in half. Then another of Mudge’s arrows pierced the
hawk’s thin armor. When he saw that he couldn’t hope to
win either at long range or in close, Corroboc ordered a
retreat.
“Have a care for your gullets, scum!” the parrot shouted
at them as he danced angrily in the air just out of arrow
range. “I swear your fate be sealed! The oceans, nay, the
whole world be not big enough to hide you from me.
Wherever you run to old Corroboc will find you, and when
he do, you’ll wish you’d never been borned!”
“Blow it out your arse, mate!” Mudge followed this
with a long string of insulting comments on the captain’s
dubious ancestry. Roseroar listened with distaste.
“Such uncouthness! Ah do declah, it makes me queasy
all ovah. Ah do so long fo the refined conversation of
civilized company.”
The otter overheard and cast a dignified eye back at her.
“Cor! I’ll ‘ave you know, me elephantine kitten, that me
language is as fucking refined as anyone’s!”
“Yes,” she agreed sweetly. “Ah surely don’t know how
ah could have thought otherwise.”
Jon-Tom stepped between them. “What are you two
THE DAY or THE DISSONANCE
137
arguing about this time? We won, and we’re safely on