The Wordsmiths and the Warguild aod-2

by Hugh Cook

  The ship was slow, slow, slow to move.

  "Hell's grief!" said a man, in shocked disbelief.

  "What?" said Togura, trying to steady himself in the rigging and tie knots at the same time.

  "Look!"

  Togura looked.

  A rock was smashing its way out through the harbourside buildings. Roaring, it charged. Men ran, screaming. The rock crunched into them, corpsing them, pulping their bodies to strawberry jam. Togura, stunned, sickened, appalled, almost fainted and fell.

  "Steady yourself!" said his comrade, grabbing him with a most welcome supporting hand.

  The rock smashed its way to the quayside and charged their ship. It crashed into the gat between the ship and the sea, plunged down to the water, screamed, and was drowned down under. Draven, on the deck below Togura, shouted at the oarsmen to haul harder.

  Togura closed his eyes.

  He shuddered.

  Togura had once had a clash with a walking rock in Looming Forest, north of Lorford, but had later dismised the whole incident as a hallucination. But it seemed walking rocks were real! Hell's grief, indeed!

  "Work on," said his comrade, shaking him.

  "Yes," said Togura. "Yes."

  The rowing boats lugged them clear of the harbour mouth. The wash of an outgoing river helped push them west, into the Central Ocean. As men did battle on the quayside with invading rocks and soldiers, other ships cleared the harbour.

  Draven's ship picked up its rowing-boat men and began to sail with all canvas set. Five ships got free from the harbour. Togura clambered down to the deck, sweating, exhausted, his arms and legs quivering. His recent illness had left him weak as a butter-doll.

  "Hello, Forester," said a friendly voice.

  Togura turned, and found himself looking at a fair-haired young pirate with a raw straw beard.

  "Who are you?" said Togura, sure he had never set eyes on the fellow before in his life.

  "Come now! You remember me!"

  "From where?" said Togura.

  "From the time we were married, lover. No, jokes aside – I'm your old shipmate Drake. What's with the cuttlefish head?"

  "Cuttlefish?" said Togura, bewildered. "What kind of fish is that?"

  "No kind of fish at all," said the pirate Drake.

  It was, in fact, a type of cephalopod, and "cuttlefish head" was, in pirate argot, a term for amnesia.

  Togura found his legs folding up under him. He folded up after them. Shadows danced in front of his eyes like demented mosquitoes.

  "If you don't remember me," said Drake, sitting down beside him, "I suppose it's the beard that's to blame. I didn't have it last time we met. Aboard the Warwolf, remember? Jon Arabin's ship. We lost you in the Penvash Channel, near the island of Drum."

  "Oh," said Togura.

  "Not very talkative, are we?" said Drake. "Got a hangover, have we? Better pull ourselves together, I think. We might have fighting soon."

  "How so?"

  "Look back to the harbour, man."

  Togura looked, and saw another ship setting out to sea.

  "So some more of us have got away," he said.

  "That's not ours!" said Drake. "That's enemy!"

  "How can you tell?"

  "The sails, man, the sails! That gap-tooted raggage was never set by pirates! There's landsmen aboard that ship. In pursuit of us, my friend. Lusting for our eyeballs. Hearty for our gizzards. They'll cuttle us down and under, unless we're careful."

  "Yes, well," said Togura. "Tell us when it's fighting time. I'm going to sleep."

  He snoozed for a while. When he woke, eight enemy ships were in pursuit.

  "Eight against five," said Togura.

  "As odds go," said Drake, "it's not exactly picnic time. But never fear – I think we're hauling away on them. Griefs, they're still having trouble getting their canvas up!"

  "Tell me if anything changes," said Togura.

  And closed his eyes.

  The sun was warm, the motion of the ship was easy, and he was very, very tired. He drifted off to sleep again, and was soon dreaming confused dreams in which blue-green sea serpents tangled their way through piles of chicken feathers which were swarming with baby turtles. In his dream, he found his way into a woman's thighs, and was just about to apologise when she clouted him on the head.

  He woke.

  "What?" he cried, dazed by a mix of sleep and sunlight.

  The ship lurched.

  Something smashed into the vessel with a blow which was felt from keel to masthead.

  "Sea serpents!" screamed Togura.

  "No, whales!" shouted someone, looking overboard.

  And whales they were. Big ones. Sperm whales, each more than twenty paces long. Water-surging cetacean wrath, charging the ship and battering it.

  "Let's find ourselves a swim," said Drake.

  "A swim?"

  "Something to float us," said Drake.

  The ship, struck again, staggered, listed. It was holed. It was sinking. Togura was knocked to the ground as men brawled for possession of a choice "swim," a well-founded barrel. He lost sight of Drake.

  The deck canted. The seas surged up. Togura staggered upright. Water boiled around him. He struck out, trying to swim, lest the descending rigging snag him and drown him under. Clearing the ship, he floundered round, turning in the water. He caught a glimpse of fully-rigged masts and canvas plunging under.

  The water was cold and turbulent. The waves smashed down the screams of drowning men. The blue sky billowed above. Everywhere, pirates were going under. With a shock, Togura realised that hardly any of them could swim.

  Then, with a greater shock, he realised that another ship was sinking. And a third was in trouble. Big trouble. As he watched, it suddenly turned turtle and plunged down out of sight, quick as gasping.

  Another ship was riding through the waves toward him, closing the distance steadily. It looked as if it would ride him down. He saw men busy at its deckrail. Boarding nets were being lowered. Big, slow and stately, the ship ploughed through the seas toward him. he could make out its figurehead: a grene-haired girl with three breasts and five nipples.

  Closer still it came, till he could see the name of the ship painted on its bow. He could see it, but he could not read it; it was scripted in arcane foreign ideograms he had never seen before in his life. Looking up, he saw the canvas being furled: the ship was losing headway.

  "Swim, boy!" shouted someone.

  It was Draven, floundering toward the ship.

  "Come on, Forester!" yelled another voice. "Don't just float around wallowing! You're not in the bath, you know!"

  That was Drake.

  Togura struck out for the ship. As it yawed, he saw the black tar of its undersides. It plunged down again, rolling toward him. He grabbed the though hemp of the boarding net.

  "Climb, you lazy whoreson dog!" shouted Draven, already half way to the deckrail.

  But Togura could not. He clung there, shivering, exhausted. Someone climbed down to him. It was Drake. Who grabbed his hair.

  "Up," said Drake, yanking.

  He was merciless.

  Togura managed to claw his way up a bit. Drake helped him. Bit by bit they scavenged their way up, while the rolling seas tried to batter them to death against the ship's indigo topsides.

  They gained the deck, and Togura promptly fainted.

  When he recovered, Drake told him the news. The enemy, for reasons unknown, had turned back for Androlmarphos. And the whales had gone.

  They were, for the moment, safe.

  Chapter 36

  Togura lay dreaming wild, chaotic dreams. Waves went stumbling-tumbling through his memories, stirring up unfragmented images which bit, raged, swore, hummed, pulsed, sweated, stank, sang, sundered and bifurcated.

  Ants clambered out of his navel.

  He was giving birth.

  While the ants swam through his fluids, feeding on his milk, Slerma ate Zona. The moon burnt blue. Guta pulled a hatched f
rom his head then wrestled with a sea serpent, his sex striving.

  "Shunk your cho," said Day Suet, running her eager little golls over Togura's body as he savoured the curves of her bum.

  Her woollen chemise tore open and a wave rolled out of it, swamping him down to green anemone depths where turtles spun out lofty poetry in the accents of sea dragons. He swam downwards, breaking his way through mounds of salt beef, fighting through to the sun.

  "Zaan," said the sun.

  Its light washed over him, scoured away his skin, hollowed his bones, dragged his brain out through his nostrils then washed his guts in rosepetal water. He fell through a hollow tower, pursued by the music of a kloo, a kyrmbol and a skavamareen.

  "Unlike yours," said someone, "my floors are not knee-deep in pigshit."

  "Who said that?" said Togura.

  And was so curious to discover the truth that he chased his question over the edge of Dead Man's Drop and fell screaming to the pinnacles below. They shattered his body, killing him.

  The shock woke him.

  Waking from his dreams, Togura blinked at the sun. He was lying on the deck of the ship; it was so crowded with refugee pirates that there was no hope whatosever of finding accomodation below.

  "Zaan," said Togura, looking at the sun, then looked away, blinking at purple after-images.

  Togura remembered that the Wordsmiths had given him the rank of wordmaster. He thought his chances of getting back to Sung were now remarkably good, yet it seemed that, having failed to find the index, he would be returning empty-handed. Perhaps he could at least bring back another language.

  Yes. He could see what he should do. Invent a language, claim that it was spoken on one of the smaller islands of the Greater Teeth, and gain kudos for making a valuable contribution to the Wordsmiths' quest to discover or invent the Universal Language. He would call his invented language Pirate Pure. Togura thought he could assemble Pirate Pure easily enough, using Orfus pirate argot, bits and pieces of Savage as spoken on the Lezconcarnau Plains, and his own made-up words.

  "Zaan," in Pirate Pure, could be a name for the sun.

  The scheme was dishonest, but it was, really, no more daft than any of the other mad projects the Wordsmiths were engaged upon. As far as Togura could remember, one wordmaster, noting that all men swear, had been attempting to create a Universal Language made entirely from insults and obscenities, from the "rat-rapist" of Estar to the "lawyer's clerk" of Ashmolean bandits. Another had claimed that the Universal Language was the language of love, and, on the strength of that theory, had left to do practical research in foreign brothels.

  Togura had also heard of a scholar who, thinking the Universal Language might in fact be the Eparget of the northern horse tribes of Tameran, had gone to the Collosnon Empire to research it. Perhaps his grasp of foreign etiquette had been faulty, for he had returned as a jar of pickled pieces. (More accurately, part of him had returned – even bulked out with some spare dogmeat, he had made a pretty slim coffin-corpse.)

  In Togura's considered opinion, the Wordsmiths were a bunchy of ignorant nerks. But they did have the odex. Which gave them a source of income. And, if he could cut himself a slice of the income… well, that would at least solve the purely practical problem of scraping a living for himself.

  "Hi, Forester," said Drake, bragging along the deck with a little swagger; his face had taken a knuckling, so he had obviously been in a fight, but, from the look of him, it would appear he had won.

  "What've you been fighting over?"

  "A woman," said Drake. "A most beautiful bitch with red hair thick in her armpits. Her name's Ju-jai."

  "Where is she?" said Togura, looking around.

  "Not so eager," said Drake, laughing. "She's on the Greater Teeth. A scrumpy little bit, though. Hot meat, well worth kettling. How's yourself today? Feeling better?"

  "Much," said Togura.

  Drake sat himself down, and they began to talk. Drake boasted of the way he had first deflowered the virginal Ju-jai, some three years ago; Togura, for his part, narrated the intimate details of his sexual exploits with admiring women like Day Suet and the slim and elegant Zona.

  "Have you children, then?" said Drake.

  "Oh, a few bastards here and there," said Togura. "That's why I had to leave Sung. Jealous husbands, raging fathers, murderous boyfriends…"

  "Aye," said Drake. "I know the score."

  At that moment, they were interrupted by a wounded man who had been slowly making the rounds of the deck, talking to each and every pirate. The man had his arm in a sling, a little dead blood staining the sling-cloth. He had black hair and a square-cut black beard; his clothes, now battle-stained, had once been elegant. His demeanour was proud, haughty, arrogant – yet his voice was friendly enough.

  "How are you, boys?"

  "Hearty, sir," said Drake.

  "Except," said Togura, "we've been a precious long time away from women."

  The stranger laughed.

  "Youth," he said, "is a wonderful thing. Now listen, boys – there'll be a ration of hardtack and water at sunset. Not much – but we'll be on short commons till we reach Runcorn."

  "Runcorn?" said Togura. "Where's that?"

  "It's a city on the coast to the north," said the stranger. "Where do you come from, boy?"

  "Sung," said Togura.

  "Ah. One of our bowmen. I thought we lost you all in the fighting."

  "I'm hard to kill," said Togura manfully.

  "Good," said the stranger, with a touch of amusement in his voice. "That's what I like to see."

  "Excuse me," said Togura, "but when do we reach Runcorn?"

  "That," said the stranger, again amused, "depends on the wind. But it'll be some time within our lifetimes, that I guarantee. Any other quetions?"

  "No, sir," said Drake, speaking for both of them before Togura could ask any of the hundreds of supplementary questions boiling in his head.

  The stranger nodded and moved on down the deck to a little group of gambling pirates, who laid down their cards to attend to him.

  "He's a happy fellow," said Togura.

  "Man, that's his style," said Drake. "Since we lost, he's probably bleeding to death inside. But he wouldn't let us see that, no way."

  "Who is he then?"

  "Elkor Alish, of course."

  "Who?" said Togura.

  "Have you just fallen out of an egg or something?" said Drake. "Who do you think he is?"

  "Well, a sea captain, I suppose," said Togura.

  "What?" said Drake. "Like Jon Arabin?"

  "Who's Jon Arabin?"

  "Man, your head's got as many holes as a pirate's wet-dream! You'll be forgetting your own name next!"

  Togura, who sometimes found it hard to keep track of his aliases, could hardly disagree. He shrugged off the criticism and tried again for an answer:

  "Well then, who is this Elkor Alish?"

  "You really don't know? Okay then, Elkor Alish used to be the ruler of Chi'ash-lan. He made himself famous by working a law so every woman had to serve out a year in the public brothels from when she was blooded."

  "Blooded?" said Togura.

  "You know," said Drake. "From when her months began."

  "Oh," said Togura.

  He was puzzled, as he hadn't a clue what Drake was talking about. Blooded? Months? It meant nothing to him. But he didn't want to appear more ignorant than he had already, so didn't question further.

  "Anyway," said Drake. "For a while he got really rich."

  At this point, Drake's story – which was, incidentally, pure invention – was interrupted as Draven came strolling along. He was rattling some dice in his fist.

  "I can hear your dice talking," said Drake. "And I can already hear them telling lies. Don't roll with him, friend Forester, for he'll have you rolling for your spleen unless you're careful."

  "Sure," said Togura. "I know how far I can trust him. He threw me overboard once."

  "I did no such thing!" protest
ed Draven. "That's slander! We settled it out already, remember? You misremembered."

  "Our friend Forester is a bit shaky in the head," said Drake. "He'll butterfinger his own name unless he's careful."

  "Yes, but," said Togura, "I was thrown overboard. To the sea serpents! You remember, Drake. You were there. Draven chucked me over, isn't that so?"

  "Why, no," said Drake, blandly. "You were such a brave little sword-cock you insisted on challenging the sea serpents, hand to hand. You were that keen on jumping we couldn't restrain you."

  "That's a lie!" said Togura.

  "Such heat and fury," said Draven, laughing. "Stoke you up on a cold day, and we'd be warm in no time."

  "You don't know what you put me through," said Togura bitterly. "You don't know what I suffered."

  "We all suffer," said Draven. "Why, I've done my share of suffering myself. Like when the torture-rats bit off my nose in Gendormargensis."

  "Your lower nose, I suppose," said Drake. "For your snout's still as big and ugly as ever."

  "No, no," said Draven. "It's not my snorter I'm talking about, it's my sniffer. Let me tell you…"

  And he was off again, launched on one of his tales of the terrors of Tameran and the evils of the dralkosh Yen Olass Ampadara, she of the blood-red teeth, the man-demolishing stare, the stone-shattering laughter.

  At sunset, hardtack and water were handed out, with the ration-handlers putting a daub of red pain on the left hand of every man (or the left cheek of amputees) so none could claim rations twice. The next day, it was some indigo paint on the right hand, and the day after that it was some black on the forehead.

  Elkor Alish proclaimed stern laws against gambling for food and water, and enforced them by making everyone eat and drink under the eyes of hand-picked manhandlers. The first two people caught infringing the regulations were thrown overboard and left to drown, after which there was no further disobedience.

  By a combination of fair dealing, ruthless discipline and punctilious organisation, Elkor Alish eventually brought his ships safely to Runcorn with its multitudinous refugees in reasonably good shape.

  Togura, who had waited eagerly for his first sight of this new city, found, to his disappointment, that he had been here before. Runcorn was the place where he and the Lezconcarnau villagers had first taken ship for Androlmarphos. A deserted, depopulated place with no women to speak of – and certainly no whores, as far as he could see.