The Walrus and the Warwolf

by Hugh Cook

  Long he struggled with the numbers. But, no matter how he checked the working, or scratched his bald black head, or pulled on his nose, the death-debt was still too heavy. He reworked his sums in the binary arithmetic of Yestron, but they came out the same. Unless Arabin got in

  a lot more breeding before his death, he was doomed. And death, on a venture like this, could strike at any moment.

  He almost despaired. Then remembered that Slagger Mulps was, after all, technically joint captain of the Warwolf. And, since Menator had sent them north to start with, that eager imperialist must also take a share of the command responsibility. So Arabin divided the death-debt by three. Then he factored in two of the four children who were about to be born into his family as he was leaving Knock (a 50 per cent survival rate leaving a margin of safety to account for stillbirths).

  He looked long and hard at the new result. His death-debt balanced out precisely against his birthlist.

  Jon Arabin permitted himself the luxury of a smile. But only a small smile. Unfortunately, his manipulations were not strictly orthodox. His creative accounting would not necessarily get past the fifty-seven eyes of the Supreme Auditor. But, with luck, he might meet a fellow follower of the Creed of Anthus, some peaceful-living fornicator who would happily sell part of his birth-surplus for cash.

  Arabin yawned, stretched - then sat up smartly. Yes! That was the solution! To make converts! Drake, for instance. An ideal recruit: young, strong, virile, healthy, and not too keen on killing or getting himself killed. Jon Arabin could convert him (maybe adopting him, too, at the same time, to strengthen their relationship) then set him up on a place like Gufling with a harem on his own. And bribe him to live there quietly, breeding spiritual credits Arabin could buy to set against his death-debt.

  Arabin was so excited he almost called for Drake on the spot. But it was late; he should sleep, so he would be fighting fit if any emergency arose that night. Reluctantly, he turned in.

  Come morning, he had no time to talk religion with Drake, for the ship's problems were worsening rapidly. There was nothing complicated about it: she was simply taking in more water than was being pumping out. She was sinking. And exhausted men with their hands already raw from pumping all night could scarcely be goaded to greater efforts.

  Jon Arabin tried every trick he knew. Divers -including Drake - were sent into the sea to try to locate leaks. Emerging from the waters blue with cold, they claimed their mission fruitless. Other men worked below decks, trying to pinpoint the places where water was pouring in; as some of the worst leaks were already submerged, this was of little use.

  Ropes held by men on either side of the ship were dropped over the dragon figurehead at the bow, worked down the length of the ship, then used to haul oakum-enriched sails so they lay taut against the hull below the waterline. This attempt at fothering the leaks brought little success.

  'But the ropes are there!' roared Jon Arabin. 'And I'll use them to keel-haul the first man who drops from exhaustion!.'

  But, when Simp Fiche collapsed, Arabin failed to live up to his word: for religious reasons, he could not chance another killing. And when Bucks Cat gave up, Arabin knew everyone aboard must be close to their limits.

  He reduced sail, trying to lessen the strain on the ship - but he had to keep her moving, for they had been swept desperately close to the shipbreaking cliffs of the far north-west of Argan.

  'Lighten the ship!' ordered Arabin.

  Overboard went the harbour chain from Hexagon. Of all aboard, only Drake knew enough about metalwork to properly mourn its loss. Men dived in the filth far below decks to recover ballast blocks, which were passed from hand to hand then chucked over. While these and other things were being ditched, casks, spars and planks were lashed together to make rafts. Every boat on deck had been smashed by sea serpents.

  'Mulps,' said Arabin, spying the Walrus. 'I've tried every move I know. What have I forgotten?'

  'Your father's name, if your mother ever knew it to tell you, which I doubt.'

  'Ah, bash-da-zerkV said Arabin.

  'The same to you!' said the Walrus.

  Arabin did not bother to argue further. He strode on down the canting deck to the treasure hold, where men waist-deep in dirty water were handing the sea to men above, a bucket at a time.

  'Men,' shouted Arabin. 'We're losing to the flood. Any suggestions?'

  Those below, who resembled nothing so much as the living dead, looked up at him in something close to hopelessness.

  'Drake,' said Arabin, seeing the Stokos steelworker down there. 'Drake, my son, what say you?'

  'That I dare not advise the Warwolf, lest he take insult and kill me for his pride.'

  'Aagh!' said Arabin, spitting at Drake but missing. 'Enough of your nonsense! If you've got a thought in your head, let's hear it!'

  'Hear this!' said Drake. 'These buckets are bugger-all use. We'd, be better off drinking the stuff. Get some pumps, man, that's what I say.'

  'We can't, they're needed elsewhere. It's no use skinning our kneecaps to cover our elbows.'

  'Then,' said Drake, 'pump out just this velching muckle of a gork-sprigging hold and waterproof the god-rutting whore-mother.'

  'We've done our best with the leaks,' said Arabin. 'We can do no better.'

  'Then shift the pumps,' said Drake. 'Pump it out, lay down barrels, nail them down then shift the pumps back elsewhere.'

  'Bravo!' cried Arabin.

  And had pumps shifted, then used to rip the water out of the treasure hold. Men laid down a layer of barrels, stretched planks across to hold them down, and nailed the planks to the sides of the hold. That gave them one layer of air - but they had by then run out of barrels. They wrapped sails around assorted rubbish - kitchen firewood, bits of bamboo, old wineskins inflated by those with the strongest lungs, straw from the crew's bunk-mattresses - and secured these makeshift flotation bags with additional timbers.

  Then shifted the pumps. . Perhaps this did no practical good. Perhaps, like Arabin's practice of using men for sails in extremis (or his anchor drill, his navigation or a thousand other technical details), it would have roused the ribaldry of a better sailor. But it did wonders for the morale of the crew. It gave them hope, united them for coherent action, renewed their vigour and sent them back to work with a will. Even a partially recovered Simp Fiche was seen to do some honest labour.

  Arabin worked variations on the theme. A forward compartment was pumped dry, then tar was scavenged together, heated, and used to paint the place in an effort to keep out water. That exhausted their tar supply. Another compartment was pumped dry, the fo'c'sle broken up for timber, and an extra layer of planking nailed over the floorboards.

  Arabin would have painted the ship with shit and spit if there'd been one chance in fifty thousand that such would do any good.

  He talked bravely to his men, telling them how the ship would scrape round to the North Strait, make for Tameran's coast, find a quiet careenage then repair. No fool suggested their crippled ship should instead claw back down the long leagues to D'Waith - for the variable winds were all from directions south of west, and had been ever since the sea serpents attacked.

  By dayfall, the Warwolf was still afloat. But Arabin knew he no longer commanded a ship but a waterlogged wreck.

  'Keep your eyes skinned, boys,' said Jon Arabin, when dawn came. 'There used to be a floating island in these parts.'

  'Aye, Falatavith, no doubt,' jeered Slagger Mulps. 'We've heard that fairy tale before.'

  'True,' said Arabin, 'and I've seen the place, for I've sailed this way before.'

  'What? Up to the Eternal Ice, I suppose!'

  'That I did. Some forty years ago it was, when I were a lad and you were a red-raw abortion scrawling your hands over your pig-mother's twenty-seven tits. I sailed the Hauma Sea, man, with Scurvy Brew and old Trim Bugger-man. There were real pirates back then - and real sailors they were, too, not like the new generation. Why, I remember—' •

 
'Cut this old man's crap-talk,' said Mulps. 'You've yet too many teeth in your head to talk doddering. Tell what you saw!'

  'All kinds of things,' said Arabin. 'The Hauma Sea. The shores of ice. A port called Stranagor and the river, ah, the Yolantarath. Aye, and the whores of Sho-na-sing, and five different kinds of pox. Yes, man, I remember -all that, and me own legs black with scurvy.'

  'But the island, man, the island!'

  'You don't believe in it,' said Warwolf to Walrus. 'So why ask after it?'

  'Point ahead!' cried the lookout, giving the traditional pirate call to indicate something seen but not yet identified.

  'But, mark me,' said Jon Arabin, 'belief or no belief, maybe that's the island now.'

  Upon which the ship shook as an undersea rock raped her - Jon Arabin had known them too close to the coast for comfort, but had been unable to do anything about it - and shortly she was sinking in earnest.

  So all the barrels and wood which had gone into the holds was ripped out again, and fashioned into rafts. Whale Mike made one all for himself. Nobody argued with the logic of that.

  Finally, the Warwolf, with a little whimper, went murmuring under the water.

  'We sing song!' yelled Whale Mike. 'Happy song, eh?'

  But, today, everyone was too exhausted to take up a song.

  27

  Falatavith: most northerly of the five Floating Islands of the Central Ocean's sea-legends; described variously as 'thorny wilds hunted by ores, giants, trolls and worse', a 'nest of dragons', a 'bony rock with greedy caves where ghouls and ghosts go mucking about with clubs and hatchets', and, more optimistically (by a man made rich by selling maps of the place), as 'a golden palace littered with perfumed damsels with silver skins and eyes of diamond'.

  On rafts rigged with rags of sails, the survivors from the Warwolf's wreck struggled north towards what they very much hoped was an island. With long bamboos they fended themselves off from wave-lashed teeth of rock threatening to terminate their passage prematurely. To their right, waves thrashed the battlement-cliffs of Penvash, the north-west peninsular of Argan.

  As the day wore on, the 'point ahead' revealed itself as an island indeed, sunlight flashing from its metallic heights, waves foaming on the rocks beneath it.

  Near dusk, they hauled their rafts onto those rocks, and stared up at the bright-polished underside of the island. Reaching down until it almost touched the rocks was a sheer semi-circular chute of metal, about as wide as a piece of Green Island kelp is long (i.e. about seven quarvits - or, to put it another way, nine Standard War Paces). It looked, to those who had any feeling for metal-work (which was Drake alone) like one half of a gigantic piece of bamboo split lengthwise then cast in steel.

  'That must be the way up,' said Jon Arabin.

  'Must be?' said Slagger Mulps. 'You mean you don't know? I thought you said you'd been here.'

  T said I'd seen the place,' said the Warwolf. 'But that was from ship-deck three leagues distant, in weather nigh rough enough to curdle a crocodile's milk. We didn't think for no landing then, being all too young to die. But look - there's an arsehole of sorts to the place.'

  And Arabin pointed upwards to a bright-lit circular hole at the top of the chute. It was roughly twenty-seven strings across (i.e. large enough for a horse to fall through).

  'Right, boys,' said Slagger Mulps, setting his back to the chute. 'Let's be throwing someone up there. Then we'll sling up a rope.'

  Other pirates willingly threw their backs against the chute, and their fellows began to climb up them. With a high whine, thousands of razor-sharp metal blades started to push out from the steel, which had till then looked seamless. In a great big hurry the pirates collapsed away from the chute.

  Drake watched in dismay. He was cold; he was wet; he was hungry. He wanted, above all else, to get out of the blade-sharp evening wind.

  'Bugger!' said the Walrus, who had been slightly cut by one of the blades.

  'Not yet, darling,' said Jon Arabin. 'Work before pleasure! Let's try throwing a rope up anyway.'

  The sharp blades were already retreating.

  The island's arsehole was close - only twice man-height above them - and stone-weighted ropes went up easily. And found nothing to cling to. Loading them with grapples and fishhooks brought no improvement. They rattled on bare metal and came straight back down again.

  'Back to back,' said Drake, to nobody in particular.

  'Good thinking,' said Ish Ulpin.

  So Drake huddled back to back with the gladiator. Bucks Cat and Ika Thole joined their huddle.

  'Don't give up!' said Arabin. 'We get above or we die!'

  'We die, then,' said Mulps.

  And added his carcass to the body-heap.

  Arabin stared upwards. Thinking. The day was starting to fail. The horizons were fading into gloom. The brightest thing in the world around was the surf-snap spume of the seething waves. By comparison, the island's door shone like a white sun rising.

  'Drake,' said Arabin. 'Come here.'

  'Why me?' said Drake, knowing this had to be bad news. 'And what for?'

  'You because you've got no beer belly,' said Arabin. 'You're near enough to lightest. Come. I'll show you what for.'

  'I'm not moving,' said Drake, in open rebellion. 'I'm just starting to get warm.'

  Jon Arabin, glancing round, saw a large wave mounting from the sea.

  'You'll shift soon enough,' he said.

  'Doubt it,' said Drake.

  Then the wave shattered around them, scattering the body-heap. Arabin grabbed his prey.

  'All right!' said Drake. 'No need to break my arm. What do you want? You want me to get up there? Why not wait for Whale Mike? It'll be much easier when he gets here.'

  Whale Mike's raft was slowly approaching their rocks.

  'We won't always have Mike around to help us,' said Arabin. 'We should learn to cope without him.'

  And Arabin had a rope passed through holes made in the final joint of their longest piece of bamboo. He had this set fair and square beneath the hole, supported by six husky pirates.

  'Climb!' said Arabin.

  'It doesn't reach to the top,' objected Drake.

  The more he looked at the cold, alien light shining out of the island's arsehole, the less he liked it. The place frightened him.. The cold shock of that last wave seemed to have washed away the very last of his courage.

  'Climb high,' said Arabin, 'then we'll hoist you.'

  Reluctantly, Drake started to climb. Promptly, blades began to keen their way out of the entire length of the chute. He dropped down hastily.

  'Can't,'he said.

  He felt close to tears. Why was it always him that got to do the hard work?

  An exceptionally large wave - it may have been the 42,632nd, which tradition claims is always the largest in those waters - crashed over the rocks, drenched them with spray and swept around their feet. Men grabbed at a raft in danger of being carried away by the bitter sea. They might need it yet.

  Open rafts by night on the stormy ocean? That would likely kill half of them by dawn. There had to be a better way. Jon Arabin set his hand to the metal of the chute and watched how soon the blades came out.

  'There may just be time enough,' he muttered, then withdrew his hand; after a pause, the blades withdrew also.

  'Drake,' said Arabin. 'You're going up there if I have to boot you up.'

  'Boot away, then,' said Drake bitterly. 'For I sure can't fly.'

  'Drake,' said Arabin, clapping a hand to his shoulder, 'you can do it. There's a way. Listen . . .'

  Drake listened, and shortly found himself holding tight to one end of a bare bamboo pole. Half a dozen pirates - the hoisting party - held the other end.

  'I've seen this done in Tameran itself,' said Arabin.

  'Aye,' said Drake. 'They do say travel's the best way to learn fancy ways to get killed, don't they?'

  'Enough of your cheek, man,' said Arabin. 'Hold on tight and . . . charge!'

&nbs
p; With a scream, the hoisting party charged. Drake sprinted, clutching the front end of the pole. He hit the chute at a run. The hoisting party kept coming. Riding the strength of six, Drake ran straight up the sheer side of the chute. He had just time enough to notice a slight tackiness under his boots as he took the last couple of steps - that was the points of the blades starting to nose out into the air. Then he was inside.

  The pirates raised a war-whoop.

  'What do you see?' yelled Arabin.

  'You see nice woman?' shouted Whale Mike, dragging his raft onto the rocks. 'Nice woman with soft arse?'

  'Yes,' said Mulps, 'and is she still a virgin?'

  'No,' said Drake, fear entirely replaced by the exhilaration of triumph. 'But healthy enough for all that.'

  'Come on, man,' yelled Arabin. 'What do you see?'

  'Oh . . . diamonds . . . pearls the size of eggs . . . baby dragons . . . three roast dinners and fifty skins of Ebrell Island firewater ... a fledgling phoenix and a—'

  'Drake!'

  'Ah! There's a cause-and-effect panel here.' 'A what?' shouted Arabin.

  'How about something to tie a rope to?' said Mulps. The next moment, the chute evolved a ladder on its sheer surface.

  'What did you do, Drake?'

  'Ah,' said Drake, peering down at them. 'A ladder!'

  'Well, it's either that or it's a milch cow with two left-handed horns and a bad case of pig bloat,' said Arabin. 'What we want to know is whether it's safe.'

  'Sorry,' said Drake. 'I'm expert on milch cows and pig bloat, but I wouldn't like to venture an opinion on ladders.'

  At which Ish Ulpin, who had had more than enough of this nonsense, came swarming up the ladder, closely followed by Ika Thole, Rolf Thelemite, Jon Arabin, Jon Disaster, Slagger Mulps, Bucks Cat, Whale Mike and Tiki Slooze, with most of the rest of the crew close behind them.