by Max Anthony
Skulks knew which way they were headed and his initial thoughts suggested that it was time to show a clean pair of heels to the Blackened Crumpet. He quickly realised that the sight of hundreds of severed human limbs escaping from the ship and running into the main streets of Hardened would reflect badly on the Office of Covert Operations, so he resolved to do his best to mitigate. Before he could act, a man spoke with the voice of a rough-and-ready individual.
“Who are you and what’ve you been doing in the hold?” this man demanded of Skulks.
Skulks stood up, squeezing his tunic near his armpit to crush the spider-fish which was doing its best to wriggle him to death. “Sir, we must make haste. My name is Polli Farthing from the Hardened city zoo. Two of our Rhultian mountain lions have escaped into your hold!”
The man wasn’t buying it. “Don’t be daft,” he said. “There’re no mountain lions on this ship. What’d they be doing coming onto a ship for?”
“I am not lying!” lied Skulks. “Rhultian mountain lions are drawn to the sea and they crept aboard this vessel last night, hoping to make the voyage to home. The zoo will be mortified if we don’t capture them!” There was no zoo in Hardened. In fact, there was no zoo within a thousand-mile radius, but Skulks hoped that the crewman was ignorant of this. Sometimes Skulks’ mouth spouted something it liked the sound of and left his brain to pick up the pieces.
There was a scream from below decks, followed by another, louder, scream. The crewman’s expression changed from surly and aggressive to alarmed.
“You’re from the zoo, you get down there and do something about it!” he insisted, suddenly keen for Skulks to take the lead in the matter.
“We need to cast off immediately!” said Skulks. “We can’t let the beasts escape to shore!”
The crewman was already halfway across to the gangplank. “If you think I’m staying aboard with a bunch of lions, you’ve got another thing coming!” the man shouted as he disappeared off the ship. Just as Skulks was preparing for action, he saw the man’s head pop back into view.
“If one of them’s got a hold of you, stick a finger up its bum. It’s the only way to make them let go!”
Skulks had little time to wonder where this oft-repeated rumour had originated while he sprinted to the front of the ship. One of the mooring ropes was fastened to the deck here, vanishing through a hole in the gunwale and tied off on the dockside below. Although it was only rope, it was very strong and thick rope, so it took Skulks a precious few seconds to saw through it with his dagger-sword. After what seemed like an age the rope parted, with tension pulling it from the ship. It dropped in heavy coils onto the dockside below, killing an incautious seagull which had been pecking contentedly at a pool of action-packed vomit left by Ginger Tink, the Downriver Docks’ resident drunk.
Unmindful of the final indignant squawk from below, Skulks made his way to the gangplank itself, hoping to pull it free and drop it into the Ten Dams River. He’d been joined on deck by fifteen or twenty of the crew at this stage, who had spilled out with an inordinate amount of haste when they’d seen a wave of spider-limbs heading in their direction. There were more screams now, as well as the sounds of chopping and hacking as a few of the braver crew members tried to cut their way to freedom.
As the crew scrambled onto and over the deck, several became aware that Skulks was trying to tip the gangplank over the side.
“Oi! Get away from that, you fool!” shouted one.
“What are you doing, man?” shouted another.
They were too late. Even as they called their dismay, Skulks cut free the ropes that held the plank in place and pushed it away from the ship, where it fell with a clatter to the dockside below, squashing an incautious rat which had been sniffing at the body of a recently-killed seagull.
“Get over the side!” Skulks commanded loudly, finding himself concerned at the fate of these men. “Into the water and quickly!”
Several of the men hesitated, one of them evidently being the captain. It didn’t take long before their feet were moving rapidly towards the side of the ship, with the appearance of countless spider-limbs on the deck making it apparent how much danger they faced. The captain’s feet also moved rapidly, though his body did not, for Skulks had a tight hold of the man’s arm.
“Where’s Zera Graves?” Skulks enquired to ask.
The captain wasted precious moments by suggesting that Skulks should kindly desist clutching at his arm and spoke of his desire to indulge in a bracing dip in the cold waters of the Ten Dams River, especially in consideration of the parlous situation in which he found himself.
“Gerroff me arm, gerroffit,” were the words that spilled from the captain’s mouth, showing that he was not a man who wished to go down with his ship, nor to be horrendously slaughtered thereon.
“Where’s Zera Graves?” repeated Skulks calmly.
“She’s in the biggest cabin, right at the back of the ship,” the captain said. His panic subsided at the sight of Skulks’ calm face. Skulks let go of the man’s arm and the captain followed his crew over the side. The screams from below had stopped, in evidence of the likelihood that any remaining crew of the Blackened Crumpet had been terminally strangled or kicked by the relentless and unfeeling spider-swarm.
The crew was gone, but a Wielder remained, standing upon the deck as if he had every right to be there. With a determination to show him the error of his ways, arms and legs, propelled by hairy spider legs sped in the direction of this gentleman, who was making little effort to flee. Surrounded, it appeared as though Skulks’ days were numbered. Just as the first spider-leg scuttled in to kick him somewhere painful, Skulks vanished and the over-eager spider-leg instead kicked a spider-torso.
Had these disgusting creations been capable of rational thought and been capable of seeing their prey rather than sensing it, they might have noticed that the rigging ropes above where Skulks had been previously standing, were now bowed as if under the duress of an additional weight that had not been there just a second before. Further, these disgusting creations might have also noted how the bowing of the rope moved quickly away from them, heading towards the main mast.
Although these re-animated body parts were lacking finesse in the sensory department, they appeared to be sufficiently capable when it came to displaying anger towards their fellows. The spider-torso which had recently and it might have thought, unjustly, been kicked in the stomach, rounded on its compatriots. It was too stupid to know exactly what had happened and in the absence of a spider-court to pass judgement upon the guilty, it decided to take matters into its own hands. Finding it lacked hands, the torso charged and spun, using its greater mass to scatter several legs and arms. Spider-fish ran off in fear, but the spider-arms and spider-legs took exception to being treated in this fashion. Blindly they swung kicks and punches, attempting to pummel whatever was close. Soon, the whole deck was a brouhaha of tragedy, with the sadness of death reduced to a scrum of whirling and scrambling spider-limbs. For the moment, none of them tried to escape the confines of the ship, which was fortunate as the Blackened Crumpet was still firmly moored at the dockside by a second thick rope and an anchor.
Twelve
In the dockmaster’s office, Ferty Slipper looked out of the window with a slice of egg and bacon flan in one hand. Captain Honey paced nearby, fretting.
“Tan’s been gone a long time, don’t you think?” she asked, hoping to find agreement in order to justify taking some sort of action.
Clerk Slipper didn’t respond immediately and when Captain Honey paused in her pacing, she saw that Slipper had put his half-eaten flan down on the windowsill in order that he could clean his spectacles. He was cleaning them most vigorously. Like many people who wear spectacles, Ferty Slipper had a habit of removing them every so often, when he would give the lenses a cursory wipe to remove an imagined speck or fingerprint. Now he scrubbed them, as if someone who had just been eating a sausage roll had unsympathetically picked the spectacles
up with fat-smeared fingers and left the lenses opaque.
He put the spectacles back onto his nose and peered out of the window again, wearing a troubled expression. Captain Honey joined him, already aware that a troubled expression meant that Tan Skulks had probably been up to something. As they watched, the deck of the Blackened Crumpet appeared to writhe. They were too far away to make out the exact details, but something was definitely amiss. Slipper heard the office door slam and when he looked, Captain Honey was gone. When he turned his attention back to the window, Honey was already halfway across the dockside towards the ship.
“What could be going on there?” wondered Slipper out loud as he picked up his flan again.
On board the Blackened Crumpet, Skulks had reached the mainmast. It was fortunate for him that these spider-creatures were so stupid, else he’d have never been able to enact his disappearance in the manner that he had done. Had it been thirty crewmen hunting his blood, Skulks could have vanished, but would have had only a few seconds in which to get to safety. With the spider-limbs he found it quite easy to force their attention elsewhere, though the effort would still make him vastly hungry later.
As Skulks shimmied down the mast, the limbs continued to biff, kick and punch away at each other and the deck was soon covered in detached spider legs, some of which twitched away without reason. Putting his revulsion to one side, Skulks crept along the deck doing his best to avoid disturbing the riot he had partial responsibility for starting. Before he could get to the hatch leading below, the fighting ended abruptly. As if nothing had happened, all of the several hundred spider-creatures stopped attacking each other and instead began scuttling calmly around in the same way that Skulks had observed recently in the house of Zera Graves. Many of them had lost at least one spider leg and these ones either limped or pulled themselves in slow circles. Even the spider-fish scampered about at random amongst the legs of their much larger fellows.
“When I catch this Graves woman I am going to be very contemptuous of her well-being,” Skulks told himself, for his recent experiences had been unusual and thoroughly unpleasant.
Navigating the ship proved to be something of an arduous task, as it was rife with obstacles. It wasn’t so much that the spider creatures were difficult to avoid, but there were many of them. Their random and sporadic bursts of movement seemed tailor-made to irritate a nearby thief who was hoping to make rapid progress. Having dropped down a hatch (landing on two spider-fish as he did so), Skulks made his way gradually towards the back of the ship where the captain had advised Zera Graves to be cabined. Skulks was aware that Graves couldn’t have failed to notice the commotion on board, so he was doubly cautious in case she had set a trap.
The journey was short, but slow. Although the Blackened Crumpet was of an average size, it was laden with a greater than average number of monstrosities. It appeared that the majority of re-animated limbs were on deck, but that still left many to patrol the narrow confines beneath it. Mostly, Skulks was able to leap over the creatures in his way, but on more than one occasion they were so densely packed that he had to find a completely different route in order to continue in the desired direction. At one stage, all routes were blocked and Skulks had to scoop three spider-hands and a spider-leg quickly out of a porthole in order that he could pass. They were truly stupid and all it had taken to distract them was a single Sliver thrown into the gloom of the corridor, whereupon Skulks had been able to flip them out into the sea, regretting the loss of his coin which had rolled down between two planks.
After what seemed like an age, though was in truth only a few minutes, Skulks found himself at a single door. From the mental map he had made of the ship, he knew that this door partitioned a large area at the back of the ship. He listened carefully for sounds of activity. Even with all of the click-clack scuttling noises from the spider-creatures nearby, Skulks could hear something loud and distinct from within: snoring.
“Odd,” he said to himself. “Could Zera Graves have slept through all of that racket?” The snoring was very loud. “I pity her husband,” Skulks’ monologue continued, “for her snoring is louder than the trumpeting of an alarmed war elephant.”
It didn’t immediately occur to Skulks that a lady known to cavort with repugnant spider-creatures and frightful mounds of severed human limbs probably had priorities other than a husband and that besides, the presence of such things in the marital home was not likely to be conducive to a healthy long-term relationship.
Did you just pinch my bum, Zera dear, or was it Timmy the spider-hand? He’s a cheeky little monkey, isn’t he? And so adorable.
The door to Zera Graves’ cabin had no magical traps, but it was locked. It was the sort of lock that one could open with a random item of cutlery, should one not be in possession of the appropriate key. Merchant ships were not well-known for their high levels of on-board security. So, the cabin door drifted slowly open, just as if it had been pushed off its latch by a slightly larger swell from the river upon which the boat was floating.
Skulks stood back from the open door, well-hidden by the multitude of shadows here in the depths of the Blackened Crumpet. Nothing of an unpleasant nature came surging through the door, drooling and snarling as it looked for a Wielder to eat. Not unless one counted loud snoring as being something of an unpleasant nature.
You snored again last night, dear. I had to sleep in Timmy’s bed and you know how he tosses and turns.
Sidling through the gap between door and frame, Skulks looked around cautiously. He was in a large and well-appointed cabin. In great contrast to the rough hammocks he’d passed on his way to this end of the ship, the cabin had a large and comfortable bed. There was also a table, chairs, a dresser and a storage chest. Other than that, it was empty, though another door beckoned invitingly from its frame on the opposite side of the room. The snoring was louder here.
We really need to do something about Timmy and Tango. They chased the postman again today and Tango kicked mother in the leg.
Once more, Skulks took the time to listen, though he was positively bursting to look in the storage chest for valuables. The only sound was the snoring, which had now become all-encompassing.
“Whatever could it be?” Skulks asked himself, still half-convinced that it might be Zera Graves in a stupor after an evening of over-indulgence sniffing the fumes of the Bu’Jo Pale Ale. Whatever it was, Skulks associated the sounds of snoring with safety - sleeping victims rarely tried to stick a knife into him as he was burgling their house.
I think we need some time apart, dear. It’s not you, it’s me. You know I love Timmy, Tango and Tipper, but they’re a bit of a handful now and my friends at work are starting to talk.
As Skulks reached for the door, new sounds reached his ears, drifting down from the deck above. There were sounds of shouting as well as a dull whumping, reminiscent of an axe blade striking a tree trunk. Without giving the matter further thought, Skulks pushed the door open and looked inside. Zera Graves was not here, nor any spider-creatures waiting to drop from above or spring at his throat. There, tied atop a large wooden table was a figure whom Skulks had not seen in many years.
Thirteen
It had often been said that Jake the Headcracker was a stupid, bald barbarian. Over the years, this was said with diminishing frequency, because Jake the Headcracker was not a patient man when it came to insults, particularly those directed at himself. The last person to call Jake a stupid, bald barbarian within his hearing had been thrown so far off the Flampan coastline that it had taken this foolish man twenty minutes to swim ashore, thanking his lucky stars that his parents had insisted he learn how to do the breaststroke when he was but a lad.
In fact, Jake was not at all stupid. Sometimes it took his brain a few moments to assimilate information if there was a lot of it incoming, but it eventually got there. In a heated conversation, he would appear to lag behind his quicker-witted colleagues as he struggled to get his words out. People occasionally mistook this for st
upidity.
He was definitely not a barbarian. Jake liked civilization and the benefits it brought to the common man. Although he was comfortable out in the wild, he preferred a nice, warm bed under the cover of a permanent roof to a rolled-out blanket on frozen scrubland.
So, if death were ever to visit Jake the Headcracker, the epithets on his gravestone could be reduced from these three to just one: He Was Bald. Not that he minded being bald. Bald men didn’t have to bother washing or cutting their hair. They didn’t need to concern themselves about the latest in hair fashion, nor did they wake up to find the hair one side of their head sticking out ludicrously and persisting with this behaviour even after being patted down with a quantity of water. All-in-all, Jake was quite content with his baldness.
What he would not have been content with was finding himself unconscious, tied to a table on the back of a ship with all of his limbs sheared off, which was where he was now, though he was too unconscious to know much about it.
“Jabin’oh Rah Fe’Mrat!” cried Skulks, giving voice to his friend’s real name. “What have they done to you?”
Jake was in a sorry state indeed. A series of heavy ropes criss-crossed his body, securing him to a low wooden table. Both of his arms had been cut off and both of his legs, though all four limbs were in various states of regrowth. The rough stitching used to seal up his wounds had already been forced out through the skin by his body’s healing processes, with the thick, black thread hanging from half-formed arms and legs. A metal chute was suspended over Jake’s mouth and as Skulks watched, it dispensed a thick, brown glop into the snoring mouth below. This snoring mouth and the surrounding face were splattered with glop, in evidence of earlier deliveries missing their target. Had he been awake, the ropes would have presented little impediment to Jake’s escape. In the pitiful state to which he had been reduced, he was incapable of any action whatsoever, beyond snoring and snuffling.
