CHAPTER 15: THE THREE-MILE RIDGE AND THE BIG RED FLAG

The sand under the camels' feet was getting cold again, but nobody was paying attention to that now because the sky ahead looked like it was on fire. It wasn't the regular sun kind of red. It was a dark, greasy orange color that came from hundreds of small wood fires burning along the top of the stone ridge.

Kohza was riding right in front next to Luffy, his long iron spear bouncing against his leather stirrup with a sharp clink-clink sound every time his animal took a big step. He kept looking at the sky, his teeth biting into his lower lip until a tiny drop of red showed on the skin.

"They're cooking the last of the dried donkey meat," Kohza said, his voice dropping into that low, flat tone that made him sound like his uncle Toza back at the well. "If they're burning the wagon boxes for firewood, it means they plan to march before the morning fog comes off the salt flats. Toto doesn't like to wait once the flags are tied."

"I want some donkey meat," Luffy said, his stomach making a loud, empty squawk sound that was loud enough to make his camel twitch its long ears. He was sitting cross-legged on the saddle horn now, his straw hat tied around his neck with a piece of old green fish string so it wouldn't blow away in the southern breeze. "Hey, Kohza! Is the meat salty? The bean cakes from this morning made my tongue feel like an old boot."

"It's not salty, Luffy," Vivi said from the middle camel. She was holding Chopper against her ribs with one hand to keep him from sliding off the smooth leather flap. Her blue hair was completely covered by her desert hood now, but you could see her eyes, big and dark in the shadow of the white cloth. "It's mostly just tough. You have to chew it thirty times before it goes down your throat."

"I can chew forty times!" Luffy yelled, his arms stretching out until his hands grabbed the ears of Kohza's camel, pulling himself forward by three feet until he was dangling over the animal's neck. "Hey! Look at the big wagons! They have the little wheels!"

They came over the lower gravel slope about twenty minutes later.

The rebel camp didn't look like an army camp at all. It looked like a big town that had been picked up by the wind and dropped into a stone ditch. There were about forty big wooden freight wagons lined up in a long circle, their iron axles resting on piles of red rock because the wheels had been taken off to make shields. Between the wagons, hundreds of young men in blue and gray desert shirts were sitting around the small fires, sharpening old iron saws and navy bayonets on flat river stones.

Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.

The sound of the metal on the stones was everywhere, sharp and regular, like a million big crickets sitting in the dark gravel.

In the very center of the circle, stuck deep into a big pile of dry mud sacks, was a massive red flag. It was easily twenty feet long, made of heavy wool cloth that had the old royal crest painted on the middle, but someone had crossed out the king's crown with a big smear of black grease. An old man with a very big gray beard and an old iron helmet that was too small for his head was sitting under the flag pole, grease lines on his forehead.

"That's Toto," Vivi whispered, her hand tightening on the saddle strap.

"He looks like a big turnip," Zoro said, his hand resting on the hilt of his black sword. He hadn't unbuckled his blades since they left Vuba, and his green trousers were completely stiff from the dried clay of the river channel. He looked around the camp, his eyes tracking the three young men who were currently carrying a heavy box of iron spikes toward the front wagon. "They don't have many guns, Nami. I see mostly garden tools and those old navy spears."

"They don't need guns if they have thirty wagons of black powder," Nami said, her voice sharp and anxious as she pulled her wooden staff out of her side loop. She looked down at Leo. "Leo, go with Vivi. If those boys see a pirate flag on Luffy's back, they might start throwing those iron spikes before we can open the letter box."

Leo slid down from the gray hump, his boots hitting the hard clay with a dry thud. His left ankle felt a bit stiff from the long ride, so he leaned against the camel's side for a second, his fingers catching the metal teeth of his lower boot strap. He gave it a hard tug until it lined up with the brass ridge. Click. Click. Click. Three short, functional sounds in the dark camp air. It felt steady again.

"Kaelen, stay with the animals," Leo said, looking at the dark ridge where the red fires were starting to die down. "If the wind shifts to the east, the camels are going to start smelling the powder smoke and they'll try to run back to the oasis."

Kaelen nodded, though he looked a bit distracted, his eyes fixed on a small group of rebel boys who were currently loading old iron horse shoes into a short brass mortar near the central flag. "I... yeah. I'll hold the ropes. But Nami, the map says the navy post is only two miles past that big stone tower. If Toto starts the march now, they're going to hit the brass guns before the sun is even all the way up."

"We're stopping them now," Nami said, her teeth digging into her lip as she followed Vivi through the gap between two big freight wagons.

"Hey! It's Kohza!" one of the young men by the fire shouted, dropping his sharpening stone into the gravel with a loud clatter. He stood up, his hand going to the old navy bayonet at his belt. "He's back from the well town! Hey! Who are those people with the big hats?!"

In three seconds, thirty men were on their feet, their iron spears and garden tools pointing straight at Luffy's red shirt. They didn't look angry yet, just very tired and suspicious, their eyes white and round in the yellow firelight.

"Stand down, boys!" Kohza shouted, lifting his iron spear over his head so the fires shined on the flat blade. "These aren't the company bounty hunters! This is the Princess Vivi! She came from the coast with the true word from the palace!"

The old man under the red flag, Toto, stood up from his mud sacks. His knees made a loud pop sound that you could hear even over the crickets, and his iron helmet slipped sideways until it was covering his left ear. He wiped his greasy beard with his big flat hand and walked toward them, his leather sandals dragging through the gravel with a heavy, sucking sound.

"Vivi?" the old man asked, his voice deep and wet like he had a mouthful of river water. He stopped five feet away, his big gray eyebrows wrinkling up until they looked like two pieces of dry moss. "The little princess? What is she doing with these sea tramps? Kohza, did you let the pirates into the supply circle? The boss said the straw hats were working for the company now!"

"The boss is a liar, Uncle Toto!" Vivi said, running forward and catching his big wrinkled sleeve with both hands. She didn't look like a princess now; her face was completely covered in gray dust from the trail, and her voice was cracking from the cold night air. "Crocodile is the one who took the water! He's the one who had the big machine at the western well! My father never signed the powder tax! It was all Mr. 3 and the green coats!"

Toto didn't look at the letter box Nami was holding out. He looked past Vivi at Luffy, who had found an old iron kettle near the fire and was currently trying to see if there were any dried beans stuck to the bottom. "The letter doesn't put water back in the wells, child. The boys from the lower valley haven't seen a drop of rain since the big clock tower stopped moving three years ago. The corn is dead. The donkeys are dead. We're marching to the palace because there's still a big well in the king's garden. If we have to die on the navy's spikes, we might as well do it with some water in our mouths."

"You can't drink the king's well!" Luffy shouted, dropping the iron kettle back into the gravel with a loud CLANG. He walked up next to Vivi, his red vest completely open to the cold wind, his soot-covered face looking very fierce in the yellow light. "The king is an old guy! He's nice! He gave Vivi that big white duck! If you take his well, he's gonna get the flat middle like me!"

"Who is this rubber nose?" Toto grumbled, his big hand going to the hilt of his old navy sword. "He talks too much for a pirate. Kohza, get him away from the powder wagons before I have the boys tie him to the flag pole."

"He's right, Uncle," Kohza said, his voice quiet as he laid his spear flat against the side of the nearest wagon. "The army at the coast isn't the King's navy. It's the Baroque Works bounty hunters. They have forty big brass guns waiting at the three-mile gate. If the boys run in there with just spears and old saws, they're going to turn into meat in five minutes."

A loud murmur went through the circle of young men by the fires. Some of them looked down at their iron tools, their fingers loosening on the wood handles, but a big man with a white cloth tied around his neck stepped forward from the back wagon. He had a massive iron sledgehammer over his shoulder.

"We have the thirty wagons of black powder, Kohza!" the big man shouted, his face red from the fire grease. "If the brass guns start shooting, we'll just light the long strings! We'll blow the gate right into the sea! We're not going back to the dry mud!"

"The powder is wet!" Usopp’s voice screamed from the top of the ridge.

Everyone turned around to look at the gravel slope. Usopp was running down the hill so fast his long nose was bouncing up and down, his arms waving in the air like two old tree branches. He was carrying a small wooden bucket of gray river water that he must have stolen from Sanji's kitchen box before they left the cove.

"I checked the back wagons!" Usopp panted, skidding into the circle and dropping his bucket right at Toto's feet. Splish. "The green coats didn't give you real black powder! It's just old river clay mixed with charcoal dust! It smells like powder because they put the sulfur on the top strings, but if you put a match to the middle, it just goes fizz and turns into gray mush! It won't blow up a bird house!"

The big man with the sledgehammer went completely still, his mouth opening so wide his tobacco pipe fell right out of his teeth. "Liar! The supervisor gave us those boxes himself! He had the royal seal on the wood!"

"Usopp doesn't lie about powder!" Usopp yelled, his long nose twitching with indignation as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small handful of gray clods he had dug out of the third wagon box. He threw them straight into the nearest fire.

Everyone watched the fire.

Fizzzzzzz.

The gray clods didn't explode. They didn't even make a big flash. They just melted down into a thick, smelly puddle of black mud that smelled exactly like old river grass and rotten clams, putting out two of the big pine logs with a loud, wet choke.

The whole camp went totally quiet. The only sound left was the crickets on the ridge and the soft click-click of Zoro’s sword hilts as he shifted his feet in the gravel.

The young men by the fires looked at the black mud puddle, then at their iron spears, then at each other. Their faces didn't look yellow anymore in the light; they looked gray, like the dried clay under their boots.

"They fooled us," the big man with the hammer whispered, his tool sliding off his shoulder and hitting the red stones with a dull thud. "The company... they wanted us to run into the brass guns with just mud in our wagons."

Toto sat back down on his mud sacks under the big red flag, his iron helmet falling off his head completely this time and rolling into the ditch. He looked very old now, his big gray beard drooping down onto his leather vest. "Then it's over. Without the powder, we can't break the gate. We're just... we're just going to sit here until the wells dry up completely."

Vivi knelt down next to him, her white desert cloth falling away from her blue hair as she took his old wrinkled hands. "It's not over, Uncle Toto. We're going to Rainbase. Luffy says he's going to hit the big sand guy, and once Crocodile is down, the rain will come back from the coast. My father has the royal water wagons ready at the river mouth. You just need to hold the flag here until the morning."

"Rainbase is forty miles away, Princess," Kohza said, looking at the camels that were still tied to the stone ledge near Kaelen. "The road is full of the sand spiders and the green-coat patrols. Even if the straw hats are strong, they can't walk forty miles through the full glare without any water."

"We have the water!" Luffy yelled, running over to the first camel and pulling a big leather bag off the saddle horn. He brought it over and dumped it right into Toto's lap. The bag was heavy and round, full of the blue spring water they had stolen from Miller's cave that morning. "Mmm! Drink it, old turnip! It's cold! It makes your middle feel like a big fish!"

Toto looked at the leather bag, his old gray fingers touching the wet seams. He pulled the wooden plug out and took a small sip. His eyes went wide, his beard twitching as the clear spring water hit his throat. "This is... this is the Erumalu water. The sweet well. I haven't tasted this since I was a boy."

He looked up at Luffy, his old eyes clear now under his thick gray brows. "You're a weird brat, rubber nose. But if you're going to hit the sand guy, you better take the big camel Matsu. He doesn't like the company men anyway; one of the green coats hit him with an oar last winter."

"I like Matsu!" Luffy shouted, running back to the animal and jumping straight onto its neck again. "He spits good! Come on, Zoro! Nami! Let's go to the rain city! I want to find the big sand guy before dinner!"

They left the rebel camp around two in the morning, leaving the young men to burn the rest of their fake powder boxes to keep the fires going until dawn. Kohza stayed with Toto to hold the big red flag so the boys from the lower valley wouldn't try to march toward the brass guns in the dark.

The road to Rainbase went straight through the black rock plateau. It was a narrow, dangerous trail, with forty-foot drops on both sides that went down into dark stone clefts where you could hear the wind making a low, whistling sound like an old flute.

Leo rode behind Nami on the grey camel, his eyes tracking the dark horizon where a pale white line was starting to show that the morning was coming. The air was still freezing, but his green coat felt warm enough now that he had Chopper tucked inside his left sleeve. The little reindeer was fast asleep, his blue nose poking out just enough to get the fresh air, his small hoofs making a tiny tap-tap against Leo's shirt button every time the camel took a long step.

"Leo," Nami said after they had been riding in silence for about an hour. She was holding the map roll against her ribs to keep it from shaking in the wind. "How much gold do you think Crocodile has in that rain city? If he's been running the whole country's water business for three years, he must have a million boxes of bills in his palace."

"He doesn't care about the gold, Nami," Leo said, his left boot pressing against the leather stirrup iron until the buckle made that old familiar noise.....click, click, click.....three short, dry ticks in the dark valley. "He wants the big ship. The old one that's buried under the capital sand. The one that can shoot the iron balls across the whole ocean with one spark."

"A ship?" Nami’s eyes turned into little gold symbols for a second, then went flat again as she looked at her compass, which was still spinning around like a dead bug. "A ship that big would cost a billion berries to fuel. It's impractical. He's better off with the water tax."

"He's a jerk," Zoro said from his camel. He was riding with his eyes closed now, his three swords balanced perfectly across his knees so they wouldn't click against the saddle horn. "I don't care about his ship or his gold. I just want to see if his big iron hook can block a real sword strike. The old man at the well said his skin turns to sand if you hit him too fast."

"It doesn't turn to sand if you use the water," Sanji said, running next to them on Karoo. The giant duck was looking a bit sleepy now, his yellow beak drooping down toward the gravel, but Sanji kept him moving with a small piece of dried fish tail he was holding out in front of his nose. "Luffy drank the whole pool back at the cave. If he spits on his fists, he can hit the sand guy fine."

"I'm not spitting on my fists!" Luffy yelled from the front, his head turning around to look at them with a big angry grin. "That's gross, Sanji! I'll just hit him regular! I'll hit him so hard his trousers will fall into the river!"

"Just don't break your arms, rubber head," Nami sighed, shaking her head as she tucked the map back into her pouch.

The sun came up over the black rock plateau at six o'clock. It wasn't the dusty yellow glare from the river mouth; it was a bright, clean pink that made the red stone walls look like giant pieces of coral under the sea. In the distance, past the final stone ridge, they could see a giant green tower sticking out of the flat sand. It was twice as high as the Merry’s mast, with a big gold dome on top that shined like a fresh berry coin in the morning light.

That was Rainbase, the city of the casino and the big wax gardens. The heart of the Baroque Works company was waiting just past the sand hill, and the big sand guy was sitting inside his gold room, waiting for the forms to be stamped.