The Walrus and the Warwolf

by Hugh Cook

  This was optimistic. The odds were, in truth, closer to fifty to one. Though more than half of those in the castle were women and children, Drake was right in guessing that the pirates would get nowhere by force.

  'Comeon,' said Drake, 'let'sgo forward.'

  'All of us?' said Yot.

  'Yes,' said Drake, 'in caseasudden opportunity presents itself. We have to be ready to snatch our beloved captain if they give us the chance.'

  At the back of his mind was the thought that, if the locals started throwing things, more targets would minimize the chances of Drake getting personally battered.

  Beforethey could start their advance, Chicks, acoward at heart, faked an epileptic fit. Afterwards, he lay still, pretending, no matter how hard they kicked him, to be unconscious.

  'I'll wake him up,' said Jon Disaster grimly.

  And kicked Chicks so hard in the head that the man was knocked truly unconscious.

  'Grafbegrik,' muttered Drake, and led the way forward, leaving Chicks in a heap on the sand.

  'Maybe I should stay behind and look after him,' said Simp Fiche.

  'Were you born with a cock or weren't you?' said Ish Ulpin.

  Simp Fiche made no reply, but kept pace wit h the others as they advanced. Several fish-heads were flung in their direction, but these fell short.

  'Piss poor thowing,' said Jez Glane.

  'Here's far enough,' said Drake, halting thirty paces in front of the gate.

  He challenged the castle, using Bucks Cat as an amplifier.

  'Hoy,' muttered Drake, his throat still scratchy from last night's boozing.

  And Bucks Cat shouted, in a voice that made Drake's head feel as if it was splitting from stem to stern: 'Hoy! You farts up there!'

  ' Don't embellish,' muttered Drake.' Just the plain words will do.'

  'Don't embellish!' roared Bucks Cat. Then paused, and asked of Drake: 'What does embellish mean?'

  'It's another word for tattoo,' said Drake.

  'Oh,' said Bucks Cat. Then roared out: 'Don't tattoo the Warwolf, unless you want your head shoved up your arse until you suffocate!'

  Drake groaned and sat down, covering his face with his hands.

  'Is something wrong?' asked Bucks Cat. 'Don't you feel well?'

  'I had a hard night,' said Drake, allowing himself to be helped to his feet again. 'I think ... I think I'll go into the castle to talk with them direct. Face to face, aye, that's the stuff.'

  'I'll go with you,' said Rolf Thelemite instantly.

  'Ah. . .Rolf, man. . .I,ah. . . I think we may have to do a night attack.' Thus spoke Drake. He scratched through his memories of soldier-talk on Burntos, then continued: 'I want you to reconnoitre the rear approaches. Make a sketch map so we can show the others, back at the ship.'

  'A sketch map,' said Thelemite. 'Anyone got any writing materials?'

  Strangely, none of the pirates had about them quill, ink or parchment. Or, for that matter, a tuning fork or a cookery book,achestnutoracolander,orachunkofthemoonofthe month before.

  'I've got some tobacco,' volunteered Jez Glane.

  'Thanks,' said Drake, heavily.

  Fortunately, Simp Fiche had a small money-bag made out of human skin. While Bucks Cat held Jez Glane in an armlock, and Ish Ulpin went through his pockets looking for the tobacco, Simp Fiche unpicked the seams of his money-bag.

  'What were you planning to do with these?' said Ish Ulpin, pulling from Jez Glane's pockets a full half-dozen high-class condoms, each made from the caecum of a lamb.

  'Screw your mother backwards,' said Jez Glane. Ish Ulpin cuffed him.

  'Belay that!' said Drake, in a voice so loud it hurt his own head.

  His throat felt as if it had been torn open by the shout. But it got results, as Bucks Cat released Jez Glane. Ish Ulpin, perhaps momentarily ashamed of his uncomradely behaviour, even turned over to Glane a tenth of the tobacco just stolen from him.

  Then, as Ish Ulpin began to glove his fingers one by one with the condoms taken from Glane, Rolf Thelemite took the unpicked bag of human skin from Simp Fiche.

  'I'll get the map done on this,' said Thelemite, bravely, as a Rovac warrior should. 'I'll find a thorn, draw my blood, then map out our war with that.'

  'Good, good,' said Drake. 'Yot - you come with me.'

  'Why me?' said Yot plaintively. T thought you were going alone.'

  'There should be a representative present from the Walrus men,' said Drake, 'to see that no underhand deals get done.'

  'I've not been with the Walrus for months,' protested Yot, fearful of danger.

  'You're one of ours at heart,' said Trudy Haze.

  'Aye,' growled Ish Ulpin, 'go with Drake. Otherwise he might sell us all as slaves in exchange for Arabin. You go, Sully. Keep him honest.'

  So Yot went.

  Drake wanted his fellow Stokos-islander along in case the kidnappers would take him as part of the ransom - as eating meat, perhaps. Despite what Ish Ulpin had said, Drake doubted there would be much trouble if he traded Yot to the locals.

  The pair scrambled over the rubbish in the gateway and down into the central courtyard, where they were ringed by jeering children. Drake thought about grabbing one and threatening to cut its throat unless Arabin was released. He dismissed the thought almost immediately, unable to convince himself that anyone could seriously value anything as intrinsically worthless as a child.

  The children were dispersed by a small negotiating party of middle-aged fishermen.

  'So you want Baron Farouk back, do you?' said one.

  'He's not Baron Farouk,' said Drake bluntly. 'He's Jon Arabin, pirate of the Greaters. Release him immediately, or Lord Menator of the Teeth will north to Brennan with a fleet, then kill off every fish-raping sodomist's son on Carawell, which means the lot of you.'

  The fishermen laughed.

  'I'm serious!' said Drake.

  He intended to shout, but what came from his suffering throat was more of a squawk. The fishermen cackled more.

  'Him? A pirate? Would you be a pirate too, perhaps?'

  T am,' said Drake, trying, with a complete lack of success, to sound as savage as he felt. 'A blooded blade of the free marauders.' . They laughed the more.

  'And how,' said one of them, eventually, wiping the tears from his eyes, 'how does a sprig of a boy like you hold his own amongst men?'

  'Because I'm hard as iron and as bitter as steel,' said Drake promptly, which set them off again.

  Unfortunately, the locals had a faulty conception of pirating. Sheltered on their sand-bank islands, hearing only second-hand rumours richly embroidered, they firmly believed that the initiation rites of the Orfus pirates involved cutting off one's nose and the top joint of one's left little finger.

  Moreover, Carawell was one of those places where boys stay boys a long time, for the fathers control inheritance rights to the wealth - which on Carawell was land and

  fishing boats - and the boys must be meek, respectful, humble and in need of advice, or get disinherited.

  So Drake looked, to the fishermen, absurdly young to be sent to negotiate, and an obvious liar into the bargain. They took much the same view of youth as did the Partnership Banks: adulthood only began at age twenty-five, if then.

  'Sprigling,' said one of the fishermen. 'We knowwhyit's you they've sent to do talk with us. It's because Baron Farouk's your father.'

  'He's no such thing,' said Drake. 'He's my captain true, and there's an end to it.'

  'Young one, you've trapped yourself twice. Last night he called you his son, with half us there in witness.'

  Drake hazily remembered Jon Arabin doing something of the sort, about the time that Drake was contemplating drinking a bowl of firewater.

  'That's a term of honour,' said Drake. 'He calls me that because he loves me, since the time I saved his ship from a Neversh.'

  'From a Neversh!' spluttered one of the fishermen.

  And their mirth was virtually unquenchable.

  The Lesser Teeth
were isolated, true, but they played chess here as men did everywhere, and knew that a Neversh is not just the most delicate piece on the chessboard - those six wings the first thing to break off when children get hold of the pieces, and never mind about the eight feet - but a real live world-destroying monster of the terror-lands beyond Drangsturm.

  No way could a boy like this kill a legend-haunter like that!

  'Face truth,' said one of the fishermen. 'Your father's here, and here stays until we get five scarfs of diamonds, a gillet of gold, some ninety ropes of arachnid silk, and fifty thousand steel fish hooks.'

  'Nobody insults steel by making it into fish hooks!' said Drake.

  He was scandalized at the very thought - and, these days, it took a lot to scandalize him.

  'Nobody does?' said one of the fishermen. 'Then, sorry, but your father dies.'

  'And you die with him!' said Drake. 'For am I not a priest of the Flame? Look - is that vodka? It is!'

  And he wrestled a skin of the stuff away from the man holding it. He, with a man's contempt for a boy, tried to wrest it back - and found out what blacksmith's muscles are made of.

  'Watch!' said Drake.

  And drank as if thirsting to death.

  Then wiped his mouth and looked around.

  'Could any man amongst you do as much?' he said. 'No! And why can I? Because I am of the Flame! The Flame is with me! Yield up my father! Or I will call the wrath of the Flame upon you! Thus!'

  And Drake swigged more vodka to ease his throat, then began jigging up and down on the spot, still clutching the skin of hard liquor, and chanting:

  Flame of Flames, I summon ye! Flame of Flames, I call! By the Sacred Names I call ye, Yah-ray hoo-ray, yah-ray hoo-ray! Yah-ray yah-ray! Hoo-ray hoo-ray! Dharma dharma, hoo-ray hoo-ray!

  At which point Sully Datelier Yot, appalled by this open blasphemy (his faith had weakened, true, yet he did not Disbelieve) shouted:

  'No! No! Stop! Stop! Or the Flame will kill you!'

  'Yea, verily verily,' roared Drake, working Yot's protest into his act. 'Bring down the Flame!'

  And he raised his arms to the heavens.

  Far off in the distance, a cockerel cried:

  'Co co rico! Co co rico!'

  There was a crash of thunder. The sky went green. Blue lightning writhed across the heavens in patterns like those a thread of water makes as it scrawls down a crooked stick. Then the clouds were gashed open by a Flame. It descended slowly, a monstrous whirling column of angry purple and crackling red. Down from the heights it came, until its base stood before Drake and its heights in the heavens.

  'Fall down!' said Drake sternly, wondering what on earth had been mixed with that vodka. 'Fall down and worship the Flame! Repent your sins or die!'

  Most of the fishermen were already grovelling in the dust.

  'The Flame!' whimpered Yot, in religious ecstasy. 'It is true! I did believe, really! Always!'

  And he embraced his god. And, touching the whirling column of fire, was knocked back as if kicked by an elephant. He stretched his length senseless on the ground.

  'Enough!' shouted Drake. And then, hoarsely: 'You are Believed.'

  Slowly, the column of fire whirled into nothing. The lightning ceased tormenting the sky, which lost its seasick tinge and became, once more, a blue so crisp it looked worth biting. In the distance, dogs were barking.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then a woman began a wailing scream. It proved infectious, and soon all the locals in Bildungsgrift were fleeing, screaming as they went. The rubbish in the gate was scattered aside by the fury of their flight.

  'Well,' said Drake, looking around the warm, sunny courtyard, where nobody was left but himself and Yot (who was still unconscious). 'Well, that was. . .'

  But he was not sure what it had been.

  'That was something,' he finished, lamely.

  'What was something?' asked Jon Arabin, striding out of a tower-base door.

  'Didn't you see it then?' said Drake.

  'See what? I heard some thunder - was there a squall?'

  'Never mind,' said Drake. Tt'sover.'

  'What happened to Sully Yot?' said Arabin, sighting Yot's unconscious form.

  'Man,' said Drake, 'he got so frightened by all these locals here that he plain flew into the air, aye, flapping his arms like madness. He were ten times his own height off the ground when he slipped and fell. But the sight so amazed the locals that they turned and fled.'

  'Oh yes!' said Arabin, with a grin. 'Tell me another one!'

  Drake, who needed no further invitation, promptly did.

  'Enough of your nonsense,' said Ish Ulpin, entering the courtyard in time to hear the end of Drake's second joke. 'The peasants are running, so let us be hunting.'

  'Nay,' said Arabin. 'Whatever's scared the locals, they may recover their wits in a moment. Let's be getting back to the ship while the getting's good.'

  Bucks Cat supported Ish Ulpin's stance, but the pair of them were outnumbered. So back to the ship they all got, carrying Sully Yot and friend Chicks between them. Which made their journey mighty long, even though Yot recovered his senses after scarcely half a league.

  23

  D'Waith: extremely small community with large-scale pretensions (this walled village claiming to be a city state); commands most easterly harbour of Ravlish Lands, some 100 leagues north of Lesser Teeth, 50 leagues west of Argan and 70 leagues (as the fish-bat flies) south of Island Drum.

  The pirates ravaged Brennan in a half-hearted way. Stone buildings thwarted arson; the haunted metal in the forge (which they did not dare enter) disturbed them; the thought of their damaged ship lying at anchor in a hostile harbour disturbed them more. In the end, they burnt every boat in reach and left it at that.

  A few hardy souls (such as Bucks Cat and Ish Ulpin) wanted to go on a search-and-destroy mission into the hinterland, seeking candidates for skinning alive, but most thought (rightly) that this would be rank foolishness.

  'Those so arrant in their anger can stay behind to hunt lonesome,' said Jon Arabin. 'The rest of us are going.'

  And go they did. The Sky Dancer slipped to sea that evening, ghosting all night on the moth-wing airs of a preternaturally smooth-browed sea, the loudest sound aboard being that of the pumps still working to keep them afloat. Jon Arabin planned to put in to D'Waith, in the north, to make repairs he had originally thought to encompass at Brennan.

  That night, Drake worried over what he had seen at Bildungsgrift. The next morning, he questioned Yot about it.

  'You tell me what happened,' said Yot. T don't remember anything. Except - yes, there was some lightning. And I got hit by it, or so my burns would suppose. Look!'

  Yot had nasty burns on his hands.

  'And the same on my feet,' he said.

  'Go see Jon Arabin,' said Drake. 'He'll doctor you.'

  And Drake himself went looking for Rolf Thelemite, who insisted on showing him a nicely drawn sketch map of the backside of Bildungsgrift, with places marked for siege ladders, and a diversionary assault, and fall-back positions in case of a sally from within.

  'That's very, very professional,' said Drake. 'You must show it to Menator back home, for he'll need it doubtless when we take the Lessers in earnest, which we must, them being anchored so close to us. Now tell, man - what saw you yesterday? In the way of strangeness, I mean. Just before the enemy ran.'

  Rolf Thelemite frowned.

  'A ... a colour in the sky,' he said. 'Though I don't remember what. A squall, but no rain that I remember. And a windspout, aye, a bit irregular in colour, but wind all the same.'

  'Windspout?!' said Drake, who had never heard of any such thing.

  'Aye, and I've seen them in desert before, only sand. They rain fish sometimes, but that's at sea, or the near-land. Yes. Big, sometimes. Suck up horses and houses. Why, there was one I remember in a battle once - won us clean through to victory when we was close to defeat.'

  'But yesterday's ... I mean ... it was s
trange, wasn't it?'

  'Oh, there's many things strange, by land and sea,' said Rolf Thelemite. 'Windspouts, aye, and rainbows round the midnight moon. The green flash at sunset, aye, most will tell you it's myth, but I've seen it, man, I've seen it. And fire which walks through swamps without burning, and balls of fire which sit on masts in a storm - and that does burn, man, I've seen the strongest shaken by it.'

  'But this was stranger than those other things, surely,' said Drake. 'The sky changing colour, for a start. You've never seen that before!'

  'Oh yes I have,' said Rolf Thelemite. 'When I was in the far north of Tameran - and not many Rovac have gone campaigning there, believe me, for all that we're said to battle in every war that's going - why, up there in winter I saw the sky, aye, and the sky was as many colours as a corpse five days after it's been kicked to death, the colours not still but moving. Aye—'

  And Thelemite was off again. Drake left as soon as he decently could (or, to be pedantically exact, just a finger-length of time before then - but Thelemite was so deep in his tale of headless bodies and lopped-off limbs that he didn't notice his shipmate's departure) and sought out other witnesses, such as Jez Glane.

  'It were lightning,' said Glane: 'Lightning stretched out a bit, that's all.'

  'Stretched!' said Drake.

  'I thought you pulled yourself often enough to know about stretching,' said Glane.

  T should have let Ish Ulpin knock you senseless back at that castle place,' said Drake.

  And went looking for Bucks Cat.

  'The earth farted,' said Bucks Cat. 'That's all.'

  Drake did no better with the others, all of whom knew little and cared less.

  Unable to get a proper explanation of the manifestation he had witnessed at Bildungsgrift, Drake was left to trouble out the Higher Problems of theology on his own. He was trying very hard, but not entirely successfully, to persuade himself that he had not really had a run-in with the Flame.

  Drake's introspective spiritual wrestling, while perhaps a good mental discipline in its own right, was entirely unproductive of truth. It won him no wisdom. Indeed, his correct course of action would have been to run up and down the ship shouting: