ARC: The Corpse-Rat King

by Lee Battersby

  “Now what?” he muttered.

  “Now we wait for the new King to make his appearance,” Bomthe replied, “and invite us to join the splendour of his inauguration feast.”

  “You make a magnificent liar.” Marius couldn’t take his eyes from the slowly rotating dog. The young cook caught his eye, snorted, and spat something thick into the flames.

  “I am a diplomat,” Bomthe said, following Marius’ gaze, “and a servant of the king. Such service has its occasional sacrifices.”

  In the moments before Marius could formulate a reply, the new King chose to make his entrance. To their credit, none of the sailors so much as smirked as the balding, pudgy monarch swept out of the largest hut, his crown of bark and nut casings sitting high on his round head, a cloak made from strips of what looked to Marius like a variety of old naval uniforms trailing behind his loin cloth-clad body. He paused to look over his shabby dominion, then stared with regal haughtiness at the assembled company. Bomthe stepped forward, removed his hat, and bowed low. He glared upwards at Marius, and with a sigh, Marius copied his action. There was a shuffle behind him as the sailors did likewise. The King waited until even Marius was beginning to feel an uncomfortable stretching sensation in the small of his back, then issued a command in a voice that resembled a small child experiencing explosive diarrhoea. Two natives armed with spears emerged from either side of the hut and tapped Bomthe on the shoulders. He straightened, and motioned his men to do the same. Two sailors from the rear of the cohort stepped forward, bearing between them a sea trunk that had seen better days. Better months, if truth be told, Marius thought as he gazed at it. The sailors laid it down before the King and opened the lid, stepping back quickly to their place closest to the point of escape. The monarch bent his portly frame down into the open trunk until he disappeared behind the open lid. Marius risked a glance at Bomthe.

  “An inauguration gift,” the captain muttered.

  The King straightened and raised his hands. Hanging from them were several rows of brightly coloured bead necklaces. Marius bit his upper lip.

  “From Manky Glenis in the Pudding Square markets more like,” he mumbled back. “I’d recognise her tat anywhere.”

  “It is never unwise to be prudent in one’s outlay,” Bomthe replied as the King raised his booty high above his head and called to his people in a joyous voice. “Besides, one must tailor one’s gifts to the expectations of the receiver. It would seem we have made the right estimation in this instance.” Before them, the King was busy rummaging through the trunk, dispensing penny rings and five-for-a-thruppence bead bracelets to the stream of islanders who had appeared from nowhere at his call. He looked over to Bomthe and nodded with expansive humour, a gesture the captain accepted with a small incline of the head. “It would seem we are now welcome in His Majesty’s realm.”

  “Oh, happy day.”

  “Don’t underestimate the value of our trade here, Mister Helles,” Bomthe said as he turned and dismissed the men, who quickly sought the shade of the nearby trees, and the company of the island girls who were keen to show off their new jewellery to the tanned sailors so admiring of their charms. “We do very well from our commercial endeavours here. The archipelago is a source of almost unending bleaching and heating elements.”

  Marius stared at him while understanding took long seconds to register. “Shit?” he finally asked. “You trade for shit?”

  “I believe the commercial term is guano,” Bomthe strode into the square and greeted the new ruler with a solid embrace and double-handshake. “And I have it on good authority that is it very high-grade shit indeed.” The king let him go and turned to crush Marius in a similar embrace. “This end of the island alone is a veritable gold mine of commercial-grade heating and bleaching material. I’m sure you can see why.”

  The King let go of Marius and stepped into the centre of the village. He clapped his hands several times in quick succession. Immediately, each of the islanders turned their attention to him. He shot off a quick-fire speech and they leaped to their feet and began busying themselves in diving into huts and pulling out items of furniture. Young girls ran behind the huts and returned with large fruits of various descriptions balanced upon their heads. Bomthe took Marius by the elbow and ushered him toward the table.

  “I believe we are invited to join the inauguration feast,” he said, “where it would be considered advisable to eat everything that is put before us and drink anything we are offered, do I make myself clear?”

  “Like good diplomats, eh?”

  “It does involve sacrifices.”

  They sat at the King’s right hand and the villagers and sailors intermingled around a series of planks laid on the sand before the table. Four natives emerged from behind the largest hut, carrying a long bark platter between them, upon which rested a mound of cooked meat. They laid it before the King, who piled his own plate high then indicated to Bomthe and Marius to do the same. They complied, and once they had finished, the rest of the village paraded past the table to take a meagre share for themselves. Once everyone was seated, the King clapped his hands, and the village fell to eating. Teenage girls passed amongst them, handing out small quantities of stunted and burned vegetables. Between mouthfuls, Marius glanced over at the sullen child still turning the spit.

  “What about that?” he asked Bomthe, indicating the turning meat. “I thought that was dinner.”

  Bomthe raised his eyebrows. “Hm. I’ll ask.” He leaned over to the king, and asked a quick question in the native tongue. The King replied, and looked over to Marius, laughing. Bomthe smiled in return. “That is for the children,” he said. “The late monarch’s favourite hunting dog, apparently. The natives hope the children will ingest its loyalty and cunning along with its flesh.”

  “Huh. Then what are we eating, his favourite horse?”

  Bomthe stared down at his plate and blinked several times before leaning back to the King to ask another question. Upon the reply he straightened, and stared out beyond the huts to the distant sea. He swallowed, then nodded to himself as if confirming some long-held inner thought. Marius noticed the action and stopped scooping the greasy meat into his mouth.

  “What?”

  “We are not eating the late monarch’s favourite horse,” Bomthe said carefully.

  “Well, no, I hardly expected…”

  “We are, in fact, eating the late monarch.”

  Marius felt what little blood remained in his face drain into his boots. “What?” he asked in a voice suddenly devoid of moisture.

  “The islanders believe that it will imbue them with his strength, his nobility, and his wisdom.”

  “You mean they’re…”

  Very deliberately, with the King’s gaze firmly upon him, Bomthe reached down and scooped up a handful of meat. He placed it in his mouth, chewed several times and swallowed.

  “Be a good fellow, Mister Helles,” he said, eyes fixed upon the horizon. “Eat your wisdom.”

  Marius stared at Bomthe, then at the King, the islanders, the sailors lounging around the village square laughing and stuffing their faces with handfuls of dripping meat. “But…”

  “Trade with this village is worth several times more than the lives of everyone on board my vessel. You and I included. We are guests at the most important occasion this archipelago has seen in more than thirty years. If we offer such a gross insult as to refuse to dine with the new King, what do you think would happen to that trade?” Bomthe scooped up another gobbet of meat and ate it, closing his eyes as he swallowed. “What do you think our lives would be worth then?”

  “You’d be surprised,” Marius muttered. He reached down, picked up a few strands of the stringy meat, and held it up in salute to the King, who was looking around Bomthe at Marius with a curious half-smile on his lips.

  “Ah well,” he said, smiling back, “let’s hope they serve you with chips, mate.”

  “If you like your tongue,” Bomthe said in the same equal tone he
’d been using since discovering the identity of their meal, “I’d suggest you keep it still.” He slid the last of his meat into his mouth and swallowed. “You’re on a very thin plank as it is, Mister Helles.”

  Whilst Marius was considering how wise it would be to push the conversation any further the King rose, cleared his throat for attention, and phlegmed up another speech. Children scurried to clear away the meal, much to the relief of Marius. The King sat down, elbowing Bomthe with a dirty chuckle and pointing to the door of the largest hut. The curtains across its entrance swished open, half a dozen naked girls ran out, and the dancing began.

  Being dead should have meant, as far as Marius had considered the matter, that blood ceased to flow throughout his body. Sure, Keth had shown him otherwise, but Keth was different, and besides, he hadn’t really had a handle on the state of his being then, and after all, that was Keth. And yet, as the girls before him gyrated and folded their nubile, sweating bodies into shapes he’d only ever seen formed by clowns making balloon animals for children in the marketplace, at least one part of his body exhibited proof that blood was flowing into it at a furious rate indeed. A dancer shimmied up to the table, bent back at an angle that intimated a loss of at least three vertebrae, breasts swinging from side to side like passengers on a running camel. The King whooped in a most unregal way and leaned forward to slap her on the stomach, indicating to Bomthe that he should do the same. Bomthe complied with nowhere near the reserved air he had displayed during the meal. The girl slid along the table and presented the swaying vista of her body to Marius. He swallowed, remembering the first time he had seen Keth. He had been alone, a stranger to the city, and the tavern window had shown the only light along the whole posh side of the docks. He’d squeezed himself into a booth with a pint of bottom scrumpy, and watched as the dancing girls moved through the crowd, sliding from one dropped farthing to the next, displaying themselves for those who would pay only to imagine, and marking out those who would pay more, later, to touch. Keth had swayed out of the crowd, back arched, hips swinging in long, slow circles, and leaned over the table towards him, long hair gently tickling the sides of his face, ends dipping into his flagon. And with no money, and no contacts, he’d gone out that night and found a game of penny ante, and the next night a game of three card poke, and the next joined in a plot to rumble a distributor of fake Tallian art treasures… and every night, every penny he earned, he brought back to the tavern, and waited with his solitary pint of dregs, waited for Keth to come swaying out of the crowd…

  “No!” He pushed himself back from the trestle, knocking his stool to the sand and standing, shivering, under the shocked gazes of Bomthe and the king. The dancer worked a shrug into her movements, a little dip of her shoulders that said “Whatever. Your loss, pal,” and slithered over to the first of the sailors laying on their mats. Bomthe raised his eyebrows.

  “A problem, Mister Helles?”

  “No. No, I…” Marius wiped a hand across his eyes.

  “Not your type, sir?” Marius heard the insinuation in Bomthe’s tone, saw the smile. “Shall I call Figgis?”

  “No, that’s not… to hell with you.” Marius swung way and stalked out of the circle of light, into the dark at the edge of the village. He stopped once he was around the corner of a hut and leaned his head against the rough dirt wall. Only then did he let out the breath he had been holding.

  “Gods damn it,” he breathed. “What the hell is wrong with me? Why am I even breathing?”

  He straightened himself, took several more. “Just get through this,” he muttered. “Just get through this and get back. Get it sorted.” He nodded his agreement to the small voice at the back of his mind that was whispering all the things he would do once he got through this and got back. Yes, make it all right. Yes, take her away. Yes, even that. Even settle down. He stepped back towards the feast, his composure restored, ready to make his apologies and see out the rest of the evening, then stopped just outside the row of torches stuck in the sand. Bomthe and the King were standing, deep in conversation with the girl whose dancing had sent Marius into his reverie. She nodded, and Bomthe passed her something which she quickly tucked into the waistband of the tiny grass skirt she was now wearing. The King waved his fingers and she left them, ducking between two torches a few feet from Marius. She turned when she saw him lurking in the shadows and smiled, coming towards him with one arm held out as if to take his hand.

  “I’m… I’m sorry,” Marius said, taking a step backwards. “It’s not that you’re not… desirable. It’s just that, well… I’m sort of…”

  She laughed, and lunged forward, quickly grabbing his hand and gripping it with a strength that belied her tiny frame. She smiled in a way that was far too lascivious to be mistaken, and let go his hand, patting him gently on his undying erection, then stepping past him, away from the raucous party.

  “But… I…” Marius glanced back into the light, saw Bomthe and the King staring at the shadows in which he stood, and pursed his lips. He felt his face crease in anger.

  “All right,” he said. “All right.” One more thing to make right when he got back. Just one more wouldn’t hurt.

  The girl laughed, and skipped away along one of the myriad sandy paths that criss-crossed the edges of the village, leading into the hinterlands of the archipelago. Marius watched her rounded buttocks as they bounced away from him, and a feral grin split his lips.

  “I will,” he said, and took up the chase.

  SIXTEEN

  The island sand was a curse, sent to torment Marius by a vengeful and sadistic God. It shifted underfoot with every step, twisting Marius’ passage so that every inch of forward movement was a victory won against the odds. By the time he reached the top of the hill it was as if he had chosen the longest route on purpose. The native girl waited with one hand on her hip, a smile that was part sex, part derision, clear in the dark. Marius cursed under his breath and redoubled his effort. The sand fought him with a million fingers, until he stumbled and landed face first at her feet. At any other time he’d be happy with that position, but for once, he took no pleasure in the view.

  “You’re doing this deliberately,” he said, and found confirmation in her laugh.

  She tossed her head, indicating a random pile of branches and leaves at the edge of the track, bunched against the base of a giant tree. Marius stared at it until, slowly, he began to make out some order amongst the detritus. If he assumed that gap to be a door, and those smaller gaps as windows…

  “Your hut?”

  She nodded , and moved towards it. This time, Marius did take a moment to admire the view, before climbing to his feet and tottering after her. A heat haze hovered around the hut, a living thing that Marius could see shimmering in the falling dark. Ignoring the burning in his calves, and refusing to question why he should even feel such a burning in the first place, he clenched his jaw, and stalked towards the opening that now yawned wide amongst the leaves, awaiting his entrance. The girl slid inside. Marius paused at the opening, letting the stink of sweat, foreign skin, and thick cooking odours assail him. When he was sure he could enter without gagging, he covered his mouth and nose with one gloved hand and stuck his head inside.

  “Are you in there?” he called, frowning at the uncertainty in his voice. Where else could she be? Marius decided he didn’t want to know the answer. A chuckle rose from the darkness, startling him. He had heard similar sounds before. Animals caught in traps, recognising their fate as he walked toward them out of the bush, preparing for one last fight before death.

  “Stay outside if the dark frightens you so,” a voice said in perfect Scorbish. “Otherwise, come in and stop wasting my night.”

  Marius scowled in a flash of embarrassment. He ducked his head, counted to three, and stepped inside before pausing, nerves alive to the thought of attack. Slowly, details emerged from the murk. Marius gasped, stumbling forward in astonishment.

  From the outside, the hovel was no larger t
han the types of shelter street children build from whatever refuse they can liberate from the back of fish stalls and printing houses in the bigger cities, and not quite as well constructed. Two adults of Marius’ size would have grown far more intimate than polite society would accept just by squeezing themselves into the same space, a prospect Marius had found appealing and repulsive in equal measure. Now that he was inside, Marius didn’t know whether to be disappointed or terrified that such an outcome was so unlikely – this was no dirt-covered hole dug out between roots. It was a room. A proper room. Not large, not by the standards of normal rooms, but still, it was considerably larger than the bundle of branches that formed its outer walls. And it had walls, real walls, wattle and daub structures that reached up to a thatched roof overhead.

  “How…?”

  Again the laugh sounded out. Marius took another step forward, then another, until he stood in the centre of the hut. Slowly he turned in a complete circle, taking in his surroundings.

  Captain Bomthe had complained, often enough that Marius could recite it verbatim as he lay on his cot listening to the man on the deck above, of the incessant thefts visited upon the Minerva by the natives. In the three days they had been at anchor, enough supplies were lost that they would barely be replaced by the gains made from their stopover. Proof of their losses crowded the space around Marius: countless items, small and large, worthless and valuable, piled one upon the other with no thought for order, fragility, or purpose. Marius completed his circle, cataloguing the contents with practiced, mathematical precision: urns; coats; bags of flour; boxes overflowing with beads, brooches, and rings; even three of the new arbalests being trialled by the King of Scorby’s personal guard; all lay heaped together like haphazard spoils of war, spreading out from the walls in an ankle-thick carpet. Whilst the new King paraded his gewgaws down upon the sand, a small fortune had bypassed his gaze on the way up to this hovel.