The Walrus and the Warwolf

by Hugh Cook

  The house was small, yet elegant. It had a small courtyard with a fountain set in the centre of a lily pond. Amidst the lilies swam carp. Some were pure gold, the ultimate in xanthochroism. Others were piebald, while some of the more motley specimens were blotched with as many as half a dozen different colours.

  Drake paused and watched the fish swim amidst the cool water. The sun was warm on his back. He was suddenly reminded of a day long, long ago at Ling, when he had sat in a canoe by the side of the Warwolf, watching fish in the limpid waters of Ling Bay. Life had been so simple then! And his hopes had been so high.

  He had expected, in those days of his innocence, to make a swift return to Stokos, and, within a couple of years, to make himself a priest or a prince, and acquire Zanya Kliedervaust as his pleasure woman. Instead . . .

  Well...

  At least he had Zanya.

  At least that part of his dream had come true.

  He gazed at the fish. It must be so comfortable being a fish. What perfect control. . .

  'You like fish?' said Plovey.

  'They're . . . they're all right,' said Drake.

  In truth, he felt he could have stood there staring at them all day. How long since he had been free to gaze on something beautiful? For as long as he could remember, he had been living in a nightmare . . .

  'Come inside,' said Plovey. 'Darlinda will be waiting for us.'

  'Who's Darlinda?' said Zanya.

  'Why, my darling wife, of course,' said Plovey.

  Inside the house, it was cool. Plovey showed Drake and Zanya the bedroom where they would sleep that night, then he introduced them to his darling wife Darlinda, a petite little thing with a subservient manner and a broken nose.

  'Darlinda,' said Plovey, 'get some water and wash the feet of our honoured guests.' This Darlinda did, silently.

  While his feet were being washed, Drake closed his eyes. An overwhelming wave of weariness swept over him. At last he had reached a place of comfort, safety and indulgence. At last the nightmare days were over.

  'Tired?' said Plovey. 'Perhaps the two of you would like to rest.'

  Drake and Zanya accepted this suggestion. They retired to the bedroom, but they did not give themselves to love, for both were emotionally exhausted. Instead, they cuddled into the safety of each other's arms, and went to sleep.

  Drake slept.

  Systole and diastole, his heart maintained his life while his mind wandered in the world of dreams. He dreamed of an orphan's cry, of a homeless woman weeping, of vagabond winds roaming a plain of dust and ruins, of nations hungering to starvation ... of a time a thousand generations hence, when all his world had passed out of memory. . .

  Drake woke.

  Tears were in his eyes.

  Zanya lay in his arms breathing softly, sweetly. Familiar smell of her breath. Strand of red hair trailing across her lips. Flickers of dream beneath her eyelids. He kissed her, gently, lightly, then closed his own eyes once again.

  And fell asleep to dream of eating, of turtle soup and dragon steaks, of basilisk pie and ribs of gryphon, of bananas and peaches, chicken and duck.

  So dreaming, Drake slept until Darlinda woke them with the news that the first course of the evening meal would shortly be served.

  That evening, a lutist played for their entertainment, and Plovey's darling wife served them the most marvellous meal. Wines free of sediment were brought to them in cut crystal, which even Drake knew to be fabulously expensive and wondrous rare.

  Drake and Zanya exchanged many glances, saluted each other quietly in wine, and touched feet beneath the table. Their sleep had revived them. Both knew they would be ready for all kinds of wickedness once the meal was done.

  Candles were lit as the evening darkened.

  Course after course was served, with many delicate things to tempt the palate. There were freshwater crayfish from Chenameg, and tender scrawls from the seacoast. There were interesting stews served in dainty bowls, and nuts to knapple on between courses.

  But the piece de resistance was a rich, hot curry full of bizarre and exciting tastes. To Drake, it felt like eating fire. He glutted himself on it.

  Then the dishes were cleared away by Plovey's indefatigable wife (who had not yet eaten herself), a flutist joined the lutist, and Plovey offered round cigars which contained an interesting mixture of opium, hashish and tobacco.

  'Friend Drake,' said Plovey, as they drew on the rich smoke, 'I was interested in your trial today. For you denied yourself to be Arabin lol Arabin.'

  'So I did,' said Drake.

  'Yet, under interrogation,' said Plovey, 'you insisted often that you'd ruled in Runcorn.'

  'Ah,' said Drake, 'but there was a simple reason for that. I knew this Arabin lol Arabin to be a freak of nature, fit to eat any poison. So I made a pretence at being him, that I might get myself fed poison.'

  'So that was your game,' said Plovey. 'To escape from torture through suicide.'

  'Precisely,' said Drake, with a sidelong glance at Zanya, who smiled in love and anticipation.

  'So you've no stomach for poison,' said Plovey.

  'Why,' said Drake, 'no more than any other mortal man.'

  'Then that is strange,' said Plovey, 'for a most special portion of curry was served to you this evening.' 'How so?' said Drake.

  'Dear darling boy,' said Plovey, 'the portion served to you had arsenic in it, and cyanide, and strychnine, and an extract of belladonna and fine-chopped portions of a dozen other poisonous plants besides.'

  Drake stared at Plovey.

  'You joke,' said Drake, 'for if what you said is true, then I'd be dead.'

  'No,' said Plovey. T spoke true enough.'

  And he clapped his hands, sharply, once. At that signal, guards entered to seize Drake. He fought. But it was useless: he was unarmed, and outnumbered eight to one. Zanya,-screaming with rage, started to batter the guards with a chair. Plovey grabbed her round the waist. She thumped him, knocked him insensible then threw him across the room.

  Upon which another four guards joined the fray.

  Many bruises later, both Drake and Zanya were dragged away, still struggling.

  Plovey zar Plovey was unconscious.

  Plovey's darling wife Darlinda seized her opportunity. She grabbed a pillow case, loaded it with all the gold, silver, jade and coinage she could lay her hands on, then quit the house. At dawn, she boarded a galley going downstream towards Androlmarphos: and she was never seen in Selzirk again.

  56

  The Swarms: diverse monstrous colony creatures dwelling in the terror-lands south of Drangsturm; are controlled by an entity known as the Skull of the Deep South; are prevented from invading the north of Argan by a watch maintained at Drangsturm by the Confederation of Wizards.

  The retrial of Drake Douay was curt. Gouda Muck could not give evidence against him, for Muck had fled Selzirk to escape a warrant which would have had him arrested as a public menace. However, Plovey of the Regency was there to testify against him.

  Drake was convicted of being a public menace, and was sentenced to life imprisonment in the House of Earthly Enlightenment, which stood next to the Zingrin warehouse in Jone.

  Zanya was put on trial for perjury, was convicted and was sentenced to slavery. Plovey of the Regency bought her as a concubine, then visited Drake especially for the pleasure of giving him the news.

  Drake wept.

  But weeping did him no good. So he tried curses, and prayers, and a couple of chants which he'd learnt which were supposed to be magic.

  All to no effect.

  Each day he woke in the same prison cell. It was an enormous stone-walled room which held ninety-seven men. Light (and wind, rain, moths, mosquitoes, flies,

  beetles and dust) came in through the myriad slit windows built into one wall. There were a dozen small holes in the centre of the floor for use as toilets. There were no chairs, no beds, no pallets.

  But at least Drake was left with the clothes on his back. And a
t least he had plenty of company.

  However . . .

  Very quickly he began to doubt the value of having company in such quantity. It meant, for a start, that there were bitter arguments over the daily dole of food and water.

  The water was brought from the Velvet River in casks which had once held fusel-oil. The food was a hunk of ironbread per man per day, plus a bowl each of a tepid, fuscous broth which occasionally contained some inscrutable fabaceous objects which, despite their shape, were certainly not beans. Sometimes this was supplemented by a bit of gristle or a bone with a few rat-pickings still adhering.

  For the first ten days, a larger man bullied Drake, stealing half of his food and a third of his water. After which Drake lost patience, and fought back. The gaolers removed the larger man's corpse without comment. Perhaps they failed to notice his broken neck, and thought he had simply succumbed to the river water as so many others did.

  After that, nobody picked on Drake.

  But there was no escaping from the constant arguments, from the banter of gamblers playing at sharps and knuckles, from the monotonous sing-song of very tame geniuses competing against each other in mental games of dragon chess, and from the whining complaints of old men with face-ache and arthritis. Some of the ancients, Drake found, had been stuck in this prison cell for as much as thirty years!

  He determined he would escape.

  Yes.

  And kill Plovey of the Regency, kill him slowly, with great care. And rescue Zanya. And escape with her to the Far South, to Drangsturm itself, and seek employment with wizards.

  First, Drake tried to bribe a gaoler with imaginary monies. Despite Drake's skill at deception, this ploy failed. Then he tried for liberty by offering his body to one particularly villainous-looking turnkey, a brute with a swollen, depraved face and a great big bloated kyte. But the man had got himself castrated years ago, when he was seeking a position as a eunuch in a palace at Voice, in the Rice Empire.

  So Drake feigned sickness, hoping to be sent to some place of recovery. But he was told he could die where he was as easily as any place elsewhere. So he feigned death - but when his body was thrown onto a bonfire in a prison courtyard, he came to life rather quickly. And was beaten thoroughly before being returned to his prison cell.

  Right.

  He would dig his way out. Where was the weakest point?

  The floor was of stone, the walls were of stone, but the ceiling was of wooden boards. Which sagged in one corner. That looked weak enough. So, one evening, Drake clambered up to the ceiling, using window slits for handholds and footholds. Once up there, he began to lever away one of the boards with a human thigh bone.

  As the board began to give, Drake heard an ominous humming sound. It reminded him of a Door. Good! He'd jump through a Door to anywhere, thank you, and no questions asked!

  He threw his strength against the thigh bone. And the board gave way. and fell with a crash. So did an incoherent mass of darkness, which promptly resolved itself into a swarm of bees.

  'Pox and bitches!' said Drake, from the floor to which he had fallen.

  Then said no more, for a bee stung his tongue.

  As the bees raged amongst the prisoners, they screamed for mercy. And, in their frenzy, tore away the door to their prison cell and mobbed outside. They were all rounded up at last in a high-walled courtyard, then cudgeled, then interrogated.

  And Drake was hauled in front of a judge, who pronounced him to be incorrigible.

  'You have proved,' said the judge, 'to be unworthy of the delights of the House of Earthly Enlightenment.'

  'Does this mean you're going to execute me?' said Drake.

  'No! You don't get off so lightly! Life with hard labour! Take him away!'

  Life with hard labour turned out to mean life as a galley-slave on the Velvet River. And a bitter life it was, as summer yielded to autumn and the bitter winds began to preach of the winter yet to come.

  Drake, to his dismay, found himself shackled to a rowing bench between two terrible bores. One was a dismal pedant who knew seventeen different languages and corrected Drake's grammar every time he opened his mouth.

  'You were talking in your sleep last night,' said the pedant one morning. 'You said, "Zanya I love thou." It should have been "Zanya I love thee." '

  'You're wrong,' said Drake. 'It should have been "Zanya I lust for you." '

  'It would be more elegant to say, "It is you I lust for." '

  And this could well go on for half a day, unless they were rowing at such a pace that they needed all their breath for their labour.

  The other bore was a gabeller who had embezzled a trifling amount of official money.

  'They convicted me of making off with an undeclared amount. I was sentenced to labour on the galleys until I'd paid it back. What did I need to pay? Why, an undeclared amount. What, five skilders, or five million? Why, none of those, they said, for none of those is an undeclared amount. So I held out an empty palm, declaring I was offering them an undeclared amount. Why, no, they said, that is not any kind of amount whatsoever. That is nothing! So here I stay forever!'

  Which made a nice enough story the first time around, but Drake, who heard it twice a day, pretty soon knew it by heart.

  The galley he was on rowed right regular between Selzirk and Androlmarphos. At Selzirk they were fed on horsemeat from a knackery in Jone; in 'Marphos they were fed with fish; in between cities, they were fed with bread and lentils. The meals were vast, as befitted their backbreaking labours: but the meals were also, of course, monotonous.

  But the rivertalk gave variety to their life, for talk went from galley to galley when ships were rafted up together on the river, or tied up at the docks, and few movements by land or sea were secret from the river.

  Thus Drake was one of the first to hear of disaster in the south.

  At first the rumours were wild, and scanty on detail, therefore little to be believed. But, as autumn chilled to winter, rumour firmed to fact. Drangsturm had been destroyed. The flame trench which had guarded the north against the terror-lands was no more. The Confederation of Wizards had destroyed itself in war. The monsters of the Swarms were marching north.

  And now Drake's galley was on the river by day and night, taking wealth and panic from Selzirk to 'Marphos, where wealth and panic took ship for foreign parts, quitting forever the shores of civilization.

  So the work was harder than ever. But the galley-slaves were glad now to be galley-slaves, for that meant, surely, that they would be working their way to freedom when their own craft finally took to the open waters as the menace of the Swarms got closer.

  Then came the day when a Neversh was sighted flying over the Velvet River.

  The next day, two were seen. The day after, a dozen.

  And then, come dawn on the next day, attacks on shipping began.

  The owner of Drake's galley made his decision at 'Marphos. He had his slaves cut free from their rowing benches and chased ashore at spearpoint. Then he sold places on those rowing benches to the high and mighty, taking his pay in pearls and diamonds. Then forth to sea set the galley, leaving the slaves on shore.

  So there was Drake, out of work. He still had a great big iron ring clamped around his left ankle, and from it dragged a great big length of rusty chain, at the end of which was another iron ring, still embedded in the chunk of rowing bench which had been cut away so that Drake could be set free.

  He counted himself lucky.

  If they'd really been in a hurry, they could have cut off his foot so they could pull his leg free from its ankle-ring.

  First off, he found a blacksmith's shop. There he took a file to his chains, and freed himself from all impedimenta. Then he went to the docks, confident that he could work a passage to foreign parts. He was a sailor, tested and true. Better still, he could lie, cheat, bluff and fight, if necessary. Or stow away.

  But the docks were bare, but for a carousing mob of slaves, soldiers, whores, thieves, beggars, appr
entices, lawyers' clerks, junior tax accountants and similar scum, indulging in an orgy of drinking, looting and wanton copulation.

  If Drake had been sixteen and senseless, he would have joined them. But he was twenty, a seasoned survivor who had lived through shipwreck, slaughter, torture, imprisonment and assorted disaster. More to the point, he had gone chest to chest with one of the Neversh when that monster had attacked Jon Arabin's fine ship, the Warwolf; he knew at first hand what most others had seen only at a distance, or not at all.

  'Debauchery can wait,' said Drake to Drake. And went looting.

  Unlike others, he did not make a heap of bolts of silk and crates of glasswear, marble statues and porcelain vases, women's underwear and ornamental snuffboxes, polished silver and golden candlesticks.

  No.

  He secured, instead, a length of bamboo, which nobody else thought worth fighting for. He found carrying bags to sling at each end of that pole, which he then carried across his shoulders. While others dreamed of gemstones, he lusted for a tinder box, a cooking pot, a waterskin, and a sheepskin rug in which he could roll himself at night.

  When he had these, he sought rice, flour, dried beans, dried meat, nuts and cheese. Then agoodpairof new boots. Five changes of socks. A rain cape. A knife. A sword-belt complete with scabbard and blade.

  He slung the sword-belt so the sword hung down his back. It would have to swim rivers with him, as would his clothes. Everything else, he rolled up, together with big chunks of cork, in pieces of canvas, and stuffed into the carrying bags, the mouths of which he then knotted tight with good rope.

  Now he was ready to ford the many branches of the river delta. Now he was ready for the cold, wet, muck and mud of winter on the Harvest Plains. Which way now? North, of course. To Selzirk. For that was where Zanya had been last.

  He lifted his burden to his shoulders. The bamboo pole bent alarmingly at both ends. The weight was crushing. But it would float, yes, wrapped up nicely with plenty of cork it would float all right.

  And he was strong, and young, and fit, and used to working a brutal day on the oars.