by Hugh Cook
Something must have gone terribly wrong. Clearly the ambassadors Tor sent to Selzirk had not been up to the job. Something had to be done, urgently, or the world would war to ruin for no purpose. Who could save the day? Why, Drake Douay, of course! He'd present himself to Tor's ambassadors, promptly. And offer to negotiate a deal with the rulers of Selzirk. For.a cut of the ambassadorial profits, of course.
'These ambassadors sent by Tor,' said Drake. 'Where do I find them? I have to speak to them. Urgently!'
'Too late,' said the sucker-fool. 'For the dogs have had their guts already.'
'Say what?' said Drake.
'They were hung, drawn and quartered yesterday,' said the sucker-fool, shoving his face hard up against Drake's. 'By order of our rulers, who'll have no truck with bandits. Which is why, I'm thinking, they'll pay a good price for you.'
So saying, the sucker-fool grabbed Drake by the collar.
Whereupon Drake slid his hand slick and swift between the sucker-fool's garments, grabbing him by the testicles. 'Wah!' said the fool, in alarm.
'Hush!' said Drake, squeezing slightly. 'Or I'll cripple you for life. Walk. Quiet like. Down that alleyway.'
Walking on tip-toe, the hapless fool obeyed. The alleyway opened onto a deserted mews. There Drake did his bit for international relations by teaching his Selzirk sucker-fool why he should respect King Tor and his hard-fisted minions.
After which Drake climbed onto the roof of a warehouse and sat there, brooding as he watched the ferrymen taking the soldiers across the broad reach of the river. So many soldiers! King Tor was done for. Drake was upset. Close, indeed, to crying. That morning, everything had looked so sweet. And now?
Man, this is rough.
What should he do? Three ambassadors had talked sweet for Tor, and had ended up getting torn to pieces for their troubles. Could Drake do better?
I'm smarter, surely. The fastest tongue this side of Chi'ash-lan, I reckon. If anyone could talk things right for Tor, it's me, surely. But the time for talk looks to have gone. Aye. But if I wanted to try?
If Drake chose to try talking things right for Tor, his first step would have to be to learn who the rulers of Selzirk were. But was it wise to ask questions?
Man, I can't question without risk. What happens if I'm named as Lord Dreldragon? Lord Dreldragon, beloved of Tor, heir to Stokos? Likely it'll be head-chopping time. Or I'll conceal my nobility, yet get killed anyway, as a common bandit.
It don't look too good, does it? Not now. But might look better if the army gets, a bloody nose. Aye. Army stuff, that's full of risk. Weather and such. Disease. Mutiny. Folks hot in temper don't talk too sweet. I reckon these - in Selzirk have got their blood up. Aye. Hot for the kill. But if their army gets pounded in Hok, they'll talk different then.
Thus Drake came to a decision.
If the army of Selzirk returned from Hok defeated, mauled by Tor or decimated by the standard hazards of campaigning, then Drake would make discreet inquiries, with a view to determining whether it was safe for him to proclaim his royal status. Till then, he would have to shift for himself as best he could, hiding both his nationality and his nobility.
It's right hard being a prince in exile. Aye. A prince, having to live in the gutters. That doesn't sound right. Bui I'll have to bear with it for the while, if I'm to be king on Stokos. So what do I need? Bed and board. Aye. Work and eats. And how to find that?
Well. Go where there's talk, that's the way to start. Aye. For certain. A lesson here, isn't it? I was too close to my misery, back in Kelebes. Should have gone into the town more often earlier. Might have heard rumour sooner. Might have got to Selzirk in time to talk away the war. Talk, that's the thing! To know what the talk is! Well.
Live and learn.
And now? Search talk!
So thinking, Drake scrambled down off the roof of his warehouse. If he'd found no shelter by nightfall he'd return there to sleep. Cold, yes, but sleeping at ground level might be rash in this big and evil city.
Searching for talk, Drake soon enough found himself a tavern. Alcohol, he knew, would do him no good - and no bad, either. Nevertheless, a tavern was the place to be. There, people would gladly keep him company and tell him - he was sure - the things he needed to survive.
The tavern he found was a cedar-built beer-barn filled with bodies mostly male, some for sale but most not, and with the wuthering uproar of a hundred upraised voices, and with the smells of sweat, porter, lager beer, arak, gin and zythum.
The denizens of this murky boozing hole, practical worshippers of the Demon to a man (whether they knew it or not), were mostly drunk, and were mostly talking Churl. Not the High Churl of the upper classes, or the City Churl of the commons, or any of the coarse country dialects known collectively as Field Churl, but a thieves' cant which named itself as Shurlspurl. Not one in a thousand upright citizens could have followed their conversations.
Drake elbowed his way between thief and fence, pimp and pad, and a dozen types of lout, loon, hoon and ruffian. He shoved past a cly-faker, scrattling away at a yuke while keeping conversation with a burly brute who might have been the city slave-brander or the public executioner.
'Shanema chovea,' said a man curtly, as Drake jostled past.
'Up yours!' said Drake.
And pressed on through the babbling gloom to the bar, where he slapped down a coin and said, in Galish: 'Wine.'
Wine was served to him. He breathed in its bouquet, which made him cough. He poked a finger into the liquid, feeling for sediment. There was no sediment to speak of, but for half a broken tooth, which Drake hoicked out of his mug and discarded to the dogs which were snouting about at floor-level.
'A good drop, doubtless,' he said.
And sipped at the wine, which was warm. A dog stuck its head into his lap, and looked at him with adoring eyes.
'In love with me, are you?' said Drake, scratching the dog behind the ears. 'Well, I'm pretty to look at, I know that proper. If I'm not fixed otherwise, you can sleep with me tonight.'
But, when Drake came up with no hound-pleasing tidbits, his dog went begging elsewhere.
'Bugger you, then!' said Drake.
'Speaks Galish, does it? said something approximating to a face.
'Aye,' said Drake staunchly. 'That it does.'
'And what might its business be? Pretty or ugly?' 'Ugly,' said Drake. 'Very ugly.' 'Blood on the blade, then?' 'Maybe,' he said.
'Are you pad, then? Or does it jugulate for hire, perhaps?'
'My business is to dare,' said Drake.
'Then where has it been daring, out in the big bold world with its iron and its ugly?'
'Aagh, after dragons and such,' said Drake. 'Aye, hunting basilisk at dusk and phoenix at dawn.'
'Sounds famous work. So are you famous? Should I know your name? Is it Git the Rape, by chance? Or Surly Cock-cutter?'
'My name is not for the unnamed,' said Drake.
'Why, as for me,' said the stranger, T be Fimp.'
'Then I be Fimp-friend,' said Drake. 'Happy?'
'Always happy, lover. Always.'
Nearing the end of the wine, Drake drank slowly, straining out the lees as best he could with his teeth. He was right - there was virtually no sediment. Only a few dozen soft black things looking like tealeaves. An excellent wine, then. Cheap at twice the price. A pity he couldn't get drunk on it.
'What does it need?' said Fimp. 'Is it looking for help, by chance? Someone to idle and oxter it, maybe? Does it need to make money?'
'It might make some through sale,' said Drake, wondering if Fimp's purse was fat or thin. 'But not sale of itself.'
'Has treasure, has it? From adventures, perhaps? Ah ... I vum you've treasure indeed, yes, riches fit to make the heart quop faster.'
'Something of the sort,' said Drake. 'But not with me. It's a Door, aye, to wealth of all description.'
'Oh yes!'
'Really. I've got a ... a sample of the wealth with me.' 'Show.'
'Buy
me a drink,' said Drake. 'Then I'll show.'
He assessed the stranger's purse as the fellow paid out for a shot of quetsch. That was strong stuff, but Fimp bought for himself a jug of oxymel, which Drake had seen in other places, and knew to be a drink as mild as water.
'What have we bought then, me pretty one?'
'Sight only,' said Drake. 'No touching.'
And he pulled out the magic talking amulet which he had won in a Wishing Tower in Ling after a battle with a ferocious Guardian Machine and an encounter with a deserted skeleton and an invisible door.
'What have you got there, me younker?' said Fimp, as Drake held up the magic medallion by its necklace-chain of smoothflowing black links.
'Something precious,' said Drake, speaking so soft that Fimp could hardly hear him for the background babble. 'Something rare.'
Fimp stared at the cool, glossy lozenge of silver-splashed black with greedy eyes.
'What's that silver on the black, youngling? Stars, is it? A golden sun on one side, yes, and - oh, this I must see!'
Drake snatched the amulet away as Fimp grabbed for it.
'Sight only!' he warned.
'Where did it come from, then?' said Fimp. 'A lady's throat, perhaps?'
T told you,' said Drake. 'It came from a land where I went by way of a Door. And there's more where that came from, through the very same Door.'
'Then thinks you to sell us a map, perhaps? Map to your Door so precious? For us to club good gold, then you to vanish? Mannikin, we're not so greedy, nay?'
'You're not greedy?' said Drake, not understanding.
'Oh, true, so very true,' said Fimp with a smirk. 'Never greedy enough to seek cheap wealth unending, or life eternal, or youth eternal either. Might sell such sometimes, true. I'm last to be selfish. So true! So true! Have sold a nation's worth of treasure cities in my time. But buy such? Never!'
Drake, seeing he would find no instant buyers for the secret of the Door of Penvash - he had thought, for a moment, he might be able to make a quick fortune out of it - told a tale closer to the truth:
'You want to know the truth of this? Man, it came from a Wishing Tower in the Deep South. Aye, and I had to fight with a Neversh to get it.'
Fimp laughed, showing pyrrhous stains on his teeth. And others, who had been listening close, laughed with him.
'So now it wants to sell us maps to a Wishing Tower!'
'I'd never,' said Drake, 'for the knowledge is far too worthy to sell.'
All laughed again, knowing that for a bare-faced lie. But the lie itself was not unwelcome, for these people appreciated the comedy of outrage.
'Come, me little pajock,' said Fimp. 'Let's see that trinket closer.'
'You want to buy?' said Drake.
'Perhaps,' said Fimp. 'Perhaps. We can talk of buying, yes, that does no harm, no harm in talk.'
'Then first,' said Drake, 'flatten the gold you'll be talking with.'
And he pointed to the counter of the bar, where he wanted to see Fimp's coinage laid out for inspection.
'Come, Fimp,' said Drake. 'Why hesitate? Am I not Fimp-friend? Let's see the gold, then bargain.'
'Ah now, me little younker,' said Fimp, 'You sees, I bargain - with this!'
And he drew red metal to the menace.
'So give it!' he said.
Drake, with every manifestation of reluctance, handed the amulet over. Eager as a bald-headed vulture greeding at a gaping belly-wound, the shivman seized it. And Drake smashed him. Struck first, fast and hard. Struck second, third and fourth. Struck again - and stunned, bruised and broke before taking his opponent in a choke.
'Speak to me nicely now,' said Drake, tightening the throttle. 'Speake to me nice, darling, yes, speak soft, my dear - or the blade speaks for me.'
Fimp, dizzy, dislocated in time, muttered something in Shurlspurl, which meant nothing to Drake.
'Is it life you want?' said Drake. 'Is it life? Gold has life, aye, bright as sun, hot as fire. I'll trade. Be quick! The blade hungers!'
Fimp had dropped the amulet onto the counter of the bar. A hand dared from the crowd of spectators, lunging for the magic medallion. Quick as a flash, Drake stabbed the hand, which escaped with a nick - and without the amulet.
'That's how quick you'll die,' said Drake to Fimp. All around, bright eyes watched for a killing. 'Soft,' said an oiled, luxurious voice. 'Soft, young Galish.'
And the voice smiled its way into a man, who laid down cold gold on the bar.
'Let him go,' said the man, a well-fed elderly fellow who wore blue and yellow furs though the place was warm.
Drake scooped up the gold, secured his amulet, then released Fimp. Who slumped to the floor and then, kicked by patrons who wanted to get back to their drinks, began to crawl into the further recesses of the darkness, where he had the misfortune to encounter two bad-tempered tavern dogs.
'What do you want?' said Drake to his gold-paying stranger.
'Ah,' said the man in the colourful furs, 'the question, young Galish, is what do you want. How much ambition do you have?'
'Who are you?' said Drake. 'And what?'
'I am Ol Tul,' said the stranger.
Drake took this for a regular name, ignorant of the fact that 'Ol Tul', in all varieties of Churl, meant simply 'The Man'.
'As for what I am,' said Ol Tul, 'why, I am he who needs. I need blades to stand gate. Good work it is, day work.'
'As muscle, then.'
'Nay, as steel. Or is it too pretty?'
'What do you run?' asked Drake.
'Do you mean to ask what I muckle? Pretty, I muckle women, and smoke. Both worth it. That's why the steel. To stand off the jealous.'
'Aye then,' said Drake. 'I'm in.'
He had no special desire to be bodyguard, frightener or enforcer, and guessed well enough that the job he was being offered involved a bit of all three. But he had to take what he could get. He was in a dangerous foreign city, alone, with no friends and no money. Moreover, he had to stay in Selzirk so he could take advantage of any radical change in the city's attitude to King Tor. Thus, in utterance, he accepted Ol Tul's offer.
'So you're in,' said Ol Tul, nodding to the barman. 'But if you're to stay in, I must know more about you.'
'What?' said Drake, as the barman put a couple of beers on the counter.
'Name, genesis and training,' said Ol Tul.
All difficult questions. It was dangerous to come from Stokos. To be a pirate? That might have its dangers, too. Drake remembered a fellow he had met in Estar, on the Salt Road south of Stokos. He had asked the man's name since the fellow looked remarkably alike the woodsman Blackwood, that charitable forest-dweller who had found, saved and sheltered both Drake and Zanya when they were lost in Estar's Looming Forest.
Shen Shen Drax, that was the man's name.
T,' said Drake, 'be Shen Shen Drax, leech-gatherer of Delve.'
'And where under the five skies be Delve?' said Ol Tul.
'Why,' said Drake, 'Delve is a small place in Estar, south of the ruling town of Lorford. South, indeed, of mountain Maf, where lives the dragon Zenphos, who I had the pleasure of meeting once.'
'A pretty tale that makes, I vum,' said Ol Tul, supping his beer.
'Yes,' said Drake, taking a drag on his own beer. 'So you know my genesis right enough. Born in Delve, by the Salt Road. Aye, and raised there. Name and genesis both. You have them.'
'But training?' said Ol Tul. 'This place called Estar, if I place it right, that's north of Chorst and Dybra. Little but grass and leeches there, if I hear right.'
'Grass and leeches!' said Drake, speaking up for Estar as indeed he must if he was to pass for a patriot. 'Nay, man, there's more by much. Dragon, aye - that I've spoken of. And sheep, with much killing for disputes over the same. And a castle huge at Lorford. Aye. Castle Vaunting. A place built by wizards in generations long forgotten.'
'Lorford?' said Ol Tul.
'The ruling town of Estar, as I've said,' said Drake. 'It stands on the b
anks of the Hollern River, which flows south from Lake Armansis. This Castle Vaunting, it rules the hill called Melross. Was there I had my training, aye.'
'How?' said Ol Tul.
'For I took service under Prince Comedo, the ruler of the place,' said Drake. 'This leech-gathering business, man, it's not the world's best living, as you'd guess for yourself. So, when I were a strong fourteen - which is going back a few years now - I took place with the prince.'
'As what?'
'As soldier, man.'
'Leech-gatherer to soldier,' said Ol Tul, with a smile which was not necessarily friendly.
'Aye,' said Drake, stoutly. 'And, as a soldier, I trained beneath the Rovac warriors who serve the prince.'
'Name them,' said Ol Tul.
'There are three. One is Oronoko, aye, who has skin of utter purple, as do some that's born in Rovac. Another is Atsimo Andranovory, a black-bearded brute who kills as soon as kisses. The third - that's Morgan Hearst. Aye. He's the best and hardest. A grey-haired killer. Grey eyes on him, too. He taught me man to man these last long years. Sword, aye. And hand to hand without weapons.'
'Then why left you Estar?' said Ol Tul.
'Man,' said Drake, 'have you not heard the news? It's madness there. Dragon run wild. Invading armies slaughtering across the countryside. Wizards wild in wrath, killing with fire and thunder. All trade at a halt on the Salt Road. Man, those who could, they ran - aye, and Morgan Hearst, he led us as we ran. But he died by the roadside, died face to face with a dragon. But me - I lived. But just.'
Ol Tul drained the last of his beer. 'Come with me,' said Ol Tul, 'and we'll put your story to the test.'
Drake followed with some trepidation, wondering what kind of examination he was going to face. A detailed grilling on the geography of Estar, perhaps? A language test by some stray native of the place whom Ol Tul happened by chance to know? The people of Estar had their own tongue, aye, Estral, that was the name of it - but Drake had learnt nary a word of the stuff. The good woodsman Blackwood, who had sheltered him in need, had spoken Galish with the best.
Fortunately, the test Ol Tul planned for Drake took place in a private combat pit. It was a tough test, and Drake got a rib broken while passing it - plus a five-stitch cut to add to his wound-list. But pass he did, with honours. Ol Tul brought many potential recruits to that combat pit, and nineteen out of twenty failed, and were dumped dead in the river.
