SHORT STORY: Games Without Frontiers by Reino Tarihmen

If you know anything about us at all, you'll know that we love our pirates! To celebrate International Talk Like A Pirate Day, we are very happy to share this wonderfully fun story from Reino Tarihmen that appeared in the one and only original Harvey Duckman Pirate special...

Originally published in Harvey Duckman Presents... Volume 11, September 202o

© Reino Tarihmen 2020

I know it’s going to be bad the moment James says, “There be wanted posters nailed to the wall…”

Louis slams his fist onto the table, sending the candle flames dancing, wax spattering. “Arrrgh, and let me guess,” he pronounces theatrically in a deep and throaty voice, reaching for a tortilla chip, “our names, our faces. Dammit, Jim. Have we not ventured down this ropey path before?”

I scoop up my dice and roll. Practice roll. You have to warm up the dice, everyone knows that.

James leans forward. “Two of The Sea Hag’s crew stand at the bar. Dusty long coats, well worn flintlocks tucked into their belts. They start to turn…”

Daniel reaches for the bottle of rum with a hearty laugh. “I throw two knives. Head shot. Between the eyes.” He dramatically enacts the throw with one hand and throws his dice with the other, giving a satisfied and drawn out, “Yeeeessss.”

He says it with such aplomb I have to look twice, squinting.

“Danny,” I mutter, not wanting to spoil his night, “you’ve rolled a three and a two.”

“Haha,” he says, again with aplomb, splashing rum into all our tankards and spilling half onto the table.

I wipe my hand against my leg. My dice are not playing tonight. No mojo. I try again and sub them for another set. Always dangerous to risk mid campaign. More than ever when the moon is full, there’s a storm brewing and the DM is in a mood for mischief.

I watch through one half closed eye as Louis takes the lead. He is our skipper, after all.

“The bartender…?”

James nods slowly. “Aye?”

“Flash ’im a gold sovereign,” Louis says, knowingly, head dipping, eyes narrow, knowing to play this differently from the last time we’d found ourselves thrown into a bar fight.

There’s a moment where it could go either way.

I hold my dice in my hand. Warming them.

“The knives…” James says, with a pause that lasts eons, “…slam into the wall. No one notices.” He looks around dramatically. “And the bartender offers The Hag’s men free rum… on the house.” Another pause, then an ominous, “What d’ya do?”

I want to go and see if the sausages are cooked, but instead I reach for my rum… grand-old-spiced-to-hell-aged rum. If I leave the bottle alone here with these ingrates, it’ll be empty by the time I get back.

“We walk out,” I say, downing half the rum in my tankard and savouring the burn, the heat, the spices.

“An old man stops yer at the door.”

Hell and damnation. Whenever an old man stops you anywhere, you just know there’s going to be trouble.

“He looks leprous.” James is enjoying himself. “His skin be flaking away from his withered face, dirty bandages swathe ’is hands…”

I must have groaned out loud because James glowers at me.

“He knows ye…” James is pointing at me.

Of course he knows me.

“I push past him and get out of there,” I say, throwing back the rest of the rum and slamming the pewter tankard on the table, deliberately pushing it forward to invite a refill.

“He stops ye,” James says again, “at yon door.”

“He stops me?” I look at Louis. Come on then, skipper, back me up.

“What’s the girl doing?” Louis says.

What girl? Did I miss something?

“She’s flirtin’ with a guy at the bar,” James says, irritated. “What d’ya do, Harry?”

“I push past him and get out of there,” I say again, dry, knowing what’s coming. Jim can be an arse at times.

“He stops ye and tells ye to cross his palm with gold.” James leans forward. “Tells ye, Harry, to cross his palm with gold. What do yer do?”

I’m sure I can smell the sausages burning. “I shove a gold sovereign at the old man and push past him to leave.”

James smiles. Smirks. Isn’t much difference between the two.

“He gives ye a map…”

“The alley is dark… ye can hear the waves lapping against the jetty.”

Of course we can. All we can hear is the bloody sea, the damned bloody sea.

“What d’ya do?”

What do we do…?

I reach for the bottle of rum. Priorities, me hearties…

“We need to get back to the ship,” Dan says.

“Yes, of course we need to get our arses back to the bloody ship, Danny, with The Sea Hag in port, but chances of that…?”

“As ye turns around, ye sees a figure at the end of the alley.”

Louis isn’t skipper for no reason. “And t’other end?” he says.

“Another figure.” Jim is really enjoying this. “Each has a black rag tied around their arm… muskets in hand.”

Black rag? That’s Black Bart’s crew.

And muskets take time to reload…

“This map we have…” I say, reaching forward and giving the candle a nudge. There’s something hypnotic about a candle flame. Wax spills down its sides in little rivulets. “…must be valuable then.”

“Worth fighting for,” Louis says, with a glint in his eye.

My dice are warm in my clenched fist.

Why not?

“Roll for initiative.”

Those fateful words of impending doom. Or glory. But usually doom.

A flash of lightning sears through the shuttered windows as the dice clatter, bouncing across the scarred wooden table. This table has seen some action, believe me.

Danny starts to count, muttering in some arcane language only he knows, his incantation of protection, the one he rolls out every time there’s a storm on game night.

He gets to five before a rumble of thunder rolls overhead. Five. That’s not far.

“Reactions,” James demands.

We peer at the marked cubes of bone as they spin and tumble and finally stop, taking in the numbers, adding up, adding in bonuses, and checking stained parchment sheets to see that we have everything accounted for to give us advantage, fair gained or otherwise, against these armed thugs.

Mine’s not bad. “Twenty three.” I sit back, satisfied, raking up the dice to warm them for my first action. The alley is too narrow for a Fireball but a Spear of Agony should suffice. For one of them at least.

I dip a sausage into the bowl of hot pepper salsa, dripping some onto my character sheet, and take a bite. Surprisingly it’s not that burnt.

“Thirty nine,” Louis announces.

Danny exclaims. As always. “How in the devil’s timbers do you get thirty nine? Thirty nine?”

Louis gestures towards his character sheet. As always. “Hopper’s Ring of Agility, ancient born birthrite, +5 Cutlass of Destiny, Stimpy’s Boots of…” He has to peer at the scrawled ink. “…Unlimited Surprise, oh and that amulet we picked up last week from the shanty town we raided. I did ask if you wanted the amulet, Daniel.”

Danny looks even more disgruntled. “It was cursed.”

“It is cursed,” Louis pronounces, proud of it. “My arse burns every time I go for a shit.”

Louis and his curses… the more curses the merrier is his motto. It’s what he lives by as skipper.

James bangs on the table just as there’s another flash of lightning. “What’s your reaction, Danny?”

“Eleven.” He’s leaning over trying to read our sheets and see if we’re lying. We probably are. But who wants an initiative of eleven?

James looks at us, one then the next, a smile spreading across his face. “Louis, you’re first… What d’ya do?”

This talking about what we want to do always cracks me up. Even just saying that phrase, no matter how dramatic the DM makes it… “Roll for initiative…” It’s an automatic sit back and chat about how fast we’re going to be, not actually being fast, not actually jumping in and reacting to the situation just thrust upon us, no, it’s sitting back, rolling a few dice and chatting about who is going to be the fastest. If only real life were like that…

“I draw my double-bladed magic Cutlass of Destiny.”

“No.” James laughs. “No way, Louis. It’s not double-bladed.”

“It is double-bladed… for an extra point of damage.”

We all know the look that crosses Louis’ face.

James does too but either chooses to ignore it or is in a particularly masochistic mood this stormy night. He reaches for the rule book. Fool.

“It’s double-bladed for an extra point of damage,” Louis says again, determined, and rolls.

I swear his dice are loaded but he’d have my head if I said anything so I keep quiet.

“Natural twenty,” he declares with so much triumphant self-satisfaction it makes Danny’s aplomb look like timid insecurity.

He hasn’t even said who he’s attacking yet. I don’t think we’re even within melee range.

“That’s…” He rolls more dice, a lot more dice. “Thirty two damage…” Another dice. Die. Who cares? One that he touches with reverence to his forehead before he flicks it into the air… It lands, rolls and settles on a 20. “To the head.”

Damn sure that dice is loaded as well.

The rest of the fight doesn’t go as we might have hoped. This is always the moment we miss Jolly and his bag of healing twigs. As I’m sitting on the floor with a bleeding hole in my gut and Danny is nursing a stump of an arm that is spurting red, we raise the customary tankard of rum and toast the old bastard.

“We need ourselves a new healer,” Louis says, a solemn note entering his voice.

“One who’s not going to let himself get skewered in the heart by Agnes McGovern next time we meet.”

“Danny…”

“What?” He’s staring, disheartened, at his character sheet, a scrawl of red drawn through the stats for his right arm. “Good thing I’m left-handed,” he mutters.

“By Davy Jones’ Locker, yer not.”

“I am. Look, says so here.”

James snatches the sheet of tattered, pork grease and rum-stained parchment and holds it to the candle, peering closer. “Grrrrr, Danny, ye’ve just written that.”

The corner of the paper hovers dangerously close to the flame.

We all sit, staring at it, transfixed, as it catches fire.

Danny snatches at it, with a, “Hey. What? I’m still alive here.” He manages to snuff out the flame but not take his precious character sheet from James’ grasp.

“Ye might be alive,” James growls, “but yer not left-handed.”

“I might be.”

This could go one of two ways.

James throws the sheet back at him. “Fine, I’ll give ye a chance.” A sly tone has crept into his voice. “Do the handed thing. D4 and D12. Now.”

I know what’s coming. Louis knows what’s coming. Danny’s been playing with us long enough, he should know what’s coming. But I get the strangest of feelings that he doesn’t.

He snatches up the two dice.

And rolls…

“Haha. A 4 and a 4. Ambidextrous. Eat that!” He waves his one good arm in triumph.

Behind his screen, James begins furiously rolling dice.

We hear them bounce on the wooden surface.

I swear, he’s not even looking at them.

I really do know what’s coming.

Danny seems oblivious, happily recording his newfound ability on his character sheet.

James looks up.

There’s a flash of lightning and a crash of thunder, right overhead.

“A cannonball takes out yer left arm. Fifteen damage. Ignores armour. Five points carry through to yer chest.”

“What cannon?” Danny’s voice is rather high pitched.

“The cannon Black Bart’s crew just rolled up t’end of the alley.”

The look on Danny’s face is priceless. Deflated doesn’t cover it.

He picks up his sheet and holds it to the flickering flame of the freshly-relit candle.

A faint scratching of faded ink at the bottom of my character sheet catches my eye.

“Wait.”

Danny looks up with hope.

James looks at me over his DM screen with that narrowing of hooded eyes that gives away the fact that he knows fine well what I’ve just remembered.

“I have a scroll.”

Everyone looks up.

I expect lightning but there’s just a vague fluttering of the candlelight.

“Ye have a scroll…?” James repeats it as if he’s just found a turd in his hammock and he strongly suspects he recognises it as one of mine.

And there it is… Snafu the Small’s fabled scroll of ‘If I Could Turn Back Time…’ The ultimate escape. I’ve been keeping it safe for a long time. A long, long time.

James is not going to concede defeat so easily. His eyes narrow further. “I thought ye used that when ye were being grappled by the Kraken at the Cliffs of Depravity.”

“No.” I shake my head. He’s not getting away with that. “No, that was Danny and Snafu the Small’s Scroll of ‘I Should Be So Lucky…’.”

Danny nods. “Absolutely was.”

James glowers and starts rifling through reams of old notes.

I raise my eyes and glance at Danny. “We don’t know what else it does…” I say, throwing in a hint of caution because, if I’m entirely honest, I can’t really remember what it does. I just vaguely recall thinking I should save it for a special occasion.

And also because… well, considering what happened the last time we used a scroll we’d ‘obtained’ from Snafu the Small…

James is now rummaging frantically through reams and reams of old notes. Ha, that means he can’t remember what it does either.

“Just cast the damned spell, Harry,” Danny says.

Sometimes Louis can be more of an ass than James. He holds up a hand. “I don’t know. We might need it…”

“Louis,” I say, “Danny has no arms. You’ve got one broken leg, the other one is in the alley over there and Black Bart’s three-headed pet dog has just run off with several of my vital organs trailing like a string of sausages from its slobbering maw. I think it’s time to use ‘The’ scroll.”

James regards me with a look that suggests he wants to throw me overboard. “How many magic points do ye have left?”

“Enough.”

There is another booming roar of thunder, lightning flashes, the candle flames dance, outside a bell rings.

“There be wanted posters nailed to the wall…”

Back in the bar. Result. Come on, Snafu, do your worst.

“Ye all have full hit points. Full magic points. There be two of The Sea Hag’s crew standing at the bar…”

What? Nothing? Come on, Snafu, it’s never going to be that simple.

A smirk of a satisfied smile creeps across James’ face. “Suddenly yer all…”

He’s cut off as the door bursts open.

One Eyed Jake is beside himself, shouting, “Cap’n, ship off the starb’d bow.”

Louis stands. “And…?”

“A fat, merchantman, Cap’n, low in the water, moving slow.”

A whole week stalking the trade routes. This is what we’ve been waiting for.

Louis laughs. “Game over, me ’earties.” He swigs the last of his rum, grabs his cutlass, slams his tricorn hat onto his head, and heads up to the main deck, shouting as he goes. “Run out the guns, beat to arms, run up the Skull ’n Crossbones, boys. Let’s show Black Bart who the real pirates are.”

We’re close on his heels, strapping on our own blades and checking the powder in our flintlocks as we charge after him.