by Hugh Cook
'Because of who he is,' said Zanya, meaning no harm. 'He's the High God of All Gods.'
This was too much to bear. Drake had come to the woman who was the focus of all his desire – only to find Gouda Muck had come before him, in spirit if not in flesh.
With a scream of rage, Drake tore the scroll away from Zanya, and jumped on her.
She slapped a hand to his face and dug fingers into his eyes. Hard. He jerked his head back. Instantly her fingers slid to his throat and dug in. Viciously. Then she hooked an elbow into the side of his head. His world reeled. Agonizing pain exploded between his legs as she thumped him in the testicles.
Drake collapsed to the floor, a helpless heap of writhing misery. Zanya, who was indeed a well-built woman, picked him up and threw him outside.'Don't come back!' she said. 'Or I'll batter you dead!'
Drake crawled away into the darkness, groaned. But, after a while, the pain became manageable. He decided he had better go back and apologize, yes. Otherwise Zanya would be permanently soured against him. Manfully, Drake got to his feet. Someone was knocking at Zanya's door. Who? The door opened; a gleam of lamplight showed Prince Oronoko standing in the doorway.
If Drake's throat had not been so sore, he would have screamed his outrage. Instead, he stood silent as Oronoko entered. The door closed. Drake heard Zanya speak, then laugh. Well! So much for that! Drake's prospects for making his woman were – for tonight, at least – reduced to zero.
Drake was a long time getting back to the forge, since every step he took hurt him. Would the door be barred against him? It was not. Since Muck had discovered he was actually the High God of All Gods, he had lost all fear of mortal men. Everyone was asleep when Drake slipped inside, as quiet as could be.
Drake did not sleep that night. He brooded in the little attic where he was quartered, and while he brooded he drank from the crock of hard liquor he kept in his chest for emergencies.He felt humiliated.
Rape was supposed to be easy, the perfect demonstration of a man's easy mastery over a woman. But Drake had failed. Everything he tried had gone sour. His whole life was a disaster. He was ready to kill himself.
But why should he? Why should he give Gouda Muck that satisfaction? No. He shouldn't kill himself. He should do something which would really piss Muck off in a big way. But what? Burn down the forge? No good – it was insured. Let's see. Another drink, yes, that was the story. First drink, then thought. Drink was good. It eased the pain in his balls and the pain in his eyes.
Towards dawn, sore, drunk, hurt and as reckless as ever, Drake crept downstairs and stole Muck's mastersword, the prize bit of steelwork which Muck had created years before to win admission to the swordsmiths' guild.
Sunrise found Drake on the docks of Cam, determined to sell that very same sword.
At that early hour, there was little life stirring. Drake, nothing daunted, went and knocked up Theyla Slonage, a merchant from Narba who had a certain reputation. Slonage, bleary and unbeautiful in the morning light, reluctantly invited Drake into his back room.
'What have you got for me?' asked Slonage. 'And don't say yourself! You've spoilt your boyish beauty with those blacksmith's muscles. Look at your hands – Demon's grief, they're twice as tough a sharkskin. And you've been fighting. Have you looked at yourself? You've got two hideous-ugly black eyes.'
Drake, in answer, revealed the sheathed sword which had been hidden down his trouser leg. Slonage, without bothering to look at it, offered a thousandth of its value. Drake unsheathed the blade, slowly, fingerlength by fin-gerlength. Its naked beauty glimmered in the gloom. Drake, looking at it, felt almost sober.
Slonage sneered, but doubled his offer. However, Drake, who knew the price of steel, was hardly going to sell the masterwork for 0.2 per cent of its value.
Drake eased open a shutter to let in the cool light of morning. Raising the blade to the light, he blew upon its surface. As his breath condensed upon the steel they both saw the patterns of the forging momentarily snake across the surface of the metal.
Theyla Slonage raised his offering to a hundredth of the sword's value. Drake replied by asking double, and they settled, at length, for a fiftieth.
Drake was not paid off in the shangles and jives minted by King Tor, but in Bankers' Money, the coinage issued everywhere by the Partnership Banks. He got five zeals – small rings of nine-carat gold, stamped on both inside and outside with banker's marks. He got a dozen bronze flothens, circular coins with threading holes in the middle. And he got, as well, a scattering of spings which he did not even bother to count.
There were nine Partnership Banks, each issuing the same identical coinage. And these banks – immensely rich, enormously powerful and intensely secretive – were:t the Orsay Bank of Stokos;t the Morgrim Bank of Chi 'ash-Ian;j the Safrak Bank of the Safrak Islands;t the Monastic Treasury of Inner Adeer, located hard up against the Ashun Mountains in Voice, the retirement city of the rulers of the Rice Empire;t the Flesh Trader's Financial Association of Galsh Ebrek;t the Bondsman's Guild of Obooloo, capital city of Aldarch the Third, the Mutilator of Yestron;t the Bralsh, of Dalar ken Halvar;T the Singing Dove Pensions Trust of Tang;t and the Taniwha Guarantee Corporation of Quilth.
How those far-flung organizations managed to coordinate their activities was one of the larger mysteries of the universe. However, most people – indeed, even most kings, princes, priests and emperors – were unaware that Bankers' Money was accepted in many far-flung places which were largely ignorant even of each other's existence.
The only person ever to ponder this conundrum seriously was the wizard Phyphor; that notable master of the Order of Arl was brooding about it yet again even as Drake emerged into the steadily strengthening sunlight of the dockside morning.
Drake, who was starting to feel a little anxious, settled his nerves with an early-morning beer. His new-found wealth made it hard for him to find the bottom of the beer mug, and it was mid-morning before he emerged again into the hot, raucous bustle of the docks.
He strolled along, hands dug deep in his pockets. He kicked a piece of shining sea-coal. Once. The sudden movement hurt his bruised, swollen testicles. He idled from stall to stall, scarcely listening to the babble of languages assaulting his ears as hoarse-voiced shills screamed the virtues of products as diverse as querns and keflo shell.
Then he saw a couple of big men prowling through the crowds. They wore long robes and carried iron-shod staves. Elsewhere, they might have been mistaken for wizards, but Drake recognized them on sight. They were two of the temple's enforcers. He knew they knew him well. He walked the other way, toward a man who was hawking passages to Androlmarphos.
'. . . 'Marphos today . . . noon sailing . . . 'Marphos today . . . one zeal for the beer-price passage . . .'
Drake made a drunken decision which he would never have made sober, and paid out for a passage to the foreign port, leaving at noon that same day.
6
Name: Dreldragon Drakedon Douay.
Alias: Drake (meaning, in the Ligin of Stokos, 'pumpkin').
Occupation: swordsmith's apprentice. Status: criminal on the run.
Description: a nuggety fair-haired beardless lad with hard hands and a blacksmith's muscles; he is shorter than fashion prefers, but not exactly stunted.
Prospects: if he survives to see his eighteenth birthday, he may be allowed to marry King Tor's daughter – which would bring him, in time, the throne of Stokos.
There was no nonsense about passengers on the good ship Flying Fish. They were battened down below decks for the passage to Androlmarphos, a run of about two hundred leagues as the aasvogel flies, but rather more as the ship tacks. The Flying Fish, which held several unofficial records for ultra-slow passages, generally made the voyage in six days.
Drake, being battened down below, was unable to hang over the stern rail waxing maudlin as the cliffs of Stokos receded into the distance. He hung over the side of his bunk instead, miserably seasick, and vomited into the pitching gloom. Fortunately, he w
as on the lowest bunk, with nobody below him. Unfortunately, there were three men in the tiers above, each as sick as he was . . .
By the time Drake had vomited up everything in his stomach, the anaesthetic effects of alcohol were beginning to wear off, and both his body and psyche were suffering. He tried to console himself by eating and drinking, but continued seasickness made both these enterprises counterproductive.
Bad weather stretched the voyage out. Once, the ship was almost wrecked on the shores of Hok, a mountainous coastal province of the Harvest Plains, lying due north of Stokos. Finally, nine full days after leaving Cam, the Flying Fish reached her destination.
It was a pale, unsteady youth who finally staggered down the gangplank to the dockside at Androlmarphos, the great trading city commanding the delta of the Velvet River. This was the first time Drake had set foot on the continent of Argan, fabled land of ruined cities, fallen empires, monsters, magic, sages, wizards and worse. He expected immediate amazements – but was swiftly disillusioned.
The bustling docks were much the same in 'Marphos as in Stokos. The ships looked no different; many, indeed, hehad seen before at Cam. And, while the place was a polyglot babble of foreign languages, the dominant argot was the Galish Trading Tongue, which he knew well enough already.
Since Androlmarphos recognized Bankers' Money, Drake had no need to find a money-changer. Anywhere inland, he would have been lesslucky:butin' Marphos a full half-dozen currencies mingled promiscuously. He could even have spent the jives and shangles minted by his own King Tor, had he had any to his name.
Drake bought a fish sandwich and, eating it slowly, watched men lose money to a quick-talking rogue who hid a peanut under one of three little cups, shuffled these, then asked his victims to guess its hiding place. Drake was too canny to risk cold cash on a sucker's game like that, but nevertheless found the sight heartening – it suggested the Demon was worshipped here in Androlmarphos, if not in name then at least in deed.He went to search for a bar.
Seventeen days later, when the last of his money was almost gone, someone tapped him on the shoulder and spoke his name. Turning, he saw it was Yot.
'Why, Sully Datelier Yot!' said Drake. 'What brings you here? Come to enjoy yourself, perhaps?''No,' said Yot, drawing a knife. 'I've come to-'
But Drake, waiting to hear no more, threw half a mug of beer into the boy's face, then grabbed his knifehand. Their struggle precipitated a general bar brawl – it was that kind of drinking establishment, the only kind which would have tolerated Drake's seventeen-day binge. In the end, the Watch broke up the fight.
Yot escaped, but Drake was caught and hauled before a judge. He heard, as others have in his predicament, many fulsome phrases about the need for personal responsibility and the shortcomings of the younger generation. Then heard his sentence:'Ship out or else.''Or else what?' asked Drake incautiously.
'Or else we'll chop off both your feet and sell them to raise funds for charity!' roared the judge, who, having tried three dozen identical cases that day, was losing his sense of proportion.
'I've got no money,' said Drake, who had been stripped of the last of his funds by the Watch.
'Then we'll help you earn some,' said the judge with a pleasant smile, which suggested that something particularly nasty was coming. He had till then been speaking in Galish, but lapsed momentarily into Legal Churl. There was a pause before the translation came:' Twenty days hard.''Hard?' said Drake, in bewilderment.It sounded thoroughly obscene to him.'Hard labour, fool!'
Drake then spent twenty days chained to the oar of a galley, rowing up and down the long sweaty river-leagues inland from Androlmarphos. The work was tough, the rations poor, and the view monotonous. His galley once went upstream as far as Selzirk itself, but docked in the magnificent capital of the Harvest Plains by night, and was gone again before dawn. That irked Drake as much as anything else.
At least those twenty days gave him plenty of time to plan for his future. He would go back to Stokos. Yes. He would throw himself on the mercy of King Tor. Or would he? No: he would come not with a plea but with a sword. He would offer himself to Tor as an executioner. A Suppressor of Unorthodox Religions.
Once Drake's eloquence had persuaded Tor of the danger posed by Gouda Muck's cult, surely the king would be only too glad to have a vigorous young man like Drake in charge of the suppression of Muck's outlandish heresies.Yes.
And once he had an official position, a fancy title, a sizeable income and a rainbow-coloured uniform designed to show off his muscles, he'd make another assault on Zanya Kliedervaust. But he would refine his tactics first. He might even try some of the things the wizard Miphon had suggested. Would he pledge his love with poetry? No, never – he'd feel ridiculous. But he might take her flowers. Well, one flower, anyway. And maybe he shouldn't be so direct about demanding her body. Maybe he should give her some time to get used to him. How long? Three days? No, two should do it. . .
After twenty days on the galley, Drake expected liberty. But got no such thing. Instead, he was battened down in the hold of the Gol-sa-danjerk, a foreign ship which gave him less air, less space and less light than the Flying Fish, and kept him on shorter commons besides. Where he was bound, he knew not; the other exiles imprisoned with him knew as little as he.
'With luck,' said Drake, 'we're being deported to Stokos.'
In fact, they had all been sold into slavery, and were being carried north-west toward a slaving port in the Ravlish Lands.
At last, after what seemed an age – but was really only seven half-days and a fingerlength – an unfamiliar voice of command ordered them up on deck. They scrambled up through a recently unbattened hatch to find their ship still at sea. Another vessel was connected to the Gol-sa-danjerk by grappling hooks. Copious quantities of blood on the deck suggested that the connection had not been entirely welcomed. Indeed, Drake observed that most of the crew had become corpses. Strangers dressed in sealskins were busy stripping those corpses.'Pirates,' said Drake to himself.This was a guess, but it was accurate.
'Which of you jerks can sail?' roared a pirate, in something approximating to Galish.All except Drake proclaimed themselves to be sailors.
'You,' said a pirate, pointing at him. 'You know the sea, or don't you?'
T know something better,' said Drake, with a metalworkers' conceit which marked him as a true son of Stokos. T know steel. Hammering, shaping, forging and sharpening. I'm a master craftsman, don't you know.'
Gouda Muck would have laughed bitterly to have heard that joke – though Drake did know some of the basics.
'You're a landlubber, then,' said a pirate, and knocked him to the deck.
Drake swiftly realized his mistake. The other prisoners swore themselves to be pirates, and were accepted into the fraternity of the sea-robbers. Drake, on the other hand, was looked on as near to useless.
A prize crew was left on the Gol-sa-danjerk, but Drake was dragged on board the pirate ship. Its sails, he saw, were black. It seemed strangely familiar. He was half-persuaded that this was the very same barque which he had seen anchored in the harbour of Cam the morning after his sixteenth birthday.'What ship be this?' he said.'The Walrus, friend,' said a voice.That voice sounded familiar. Indeed, it came from the mouth of Bucks Cat – one of the jeering boatmen who had forced Drake into the sea to drown a horizon away from Stokos. Even though that was more than half a year ago, the horrors of the occasion were, to say the least, vivid in Drake's memory.'You!' said Drake.'And me,' said another man.
A lean, pale man. Ish Ulpin!
'Come along, darling,' said Ish Ulpin. 'We're going to introduce you to the captain. He might like a nice young boy like you.'
So Drake was led along the deck of the Walrus. And an evil barque she was, too, a stinking tub of reeks and rats, with decks near as dirty as her bilges. Drake, however, had no time for detailed inspection, for he was shortly confronted with her captain, one Slagger Mulps. This man was knicknamed'the Walrus' – hence the name of his ship.
A weird sight he was.
Slagger Mulps was very tall and very thin, and had a very long very sharp nose. But what first impressed was his beard and his hair, both of which were green.
'On your knees!' said Ish Ulpin, 'for you stand in the presence of our great captain, Slagger Mulps, the Walrus himself.'
Drake held his ground. Ish Ulpin drove hard, bony thumbs into pressure points in Drake's shoulders, forcing him down to his knees.'Who are you?' said Slagger Mulps.
His eyes, like his hair, were green – like those of the wizard Miphon. His arms were long, dangling right down to his knees. He had, Drake saw, two thumbs and three fingers on each hand.
'If you want me to talk,' said Drake, 'first find a human being for me to talk to.'Drake Douay had made a big mistake. He had said the worst of all possible things. For the Walrus was acutely conscious of his strangeness.
He had led the worst of childhoods imaginable – teased, bullied and rejected on account of his green hair and his multiple thumbs. The experience had marked him for life.
The Walrus stared at Drake, envying his perfect conformity (height apart) to the human norm.
T,' said the Walrus, 'am human. What's more, I'm likely the man who will kill you.'
'Lucky you don't have a mirror,' said Drake, 'or you'd likely kill yourself.'
The Walrus, who had seen himself mirrored in glass, metal and water often enough, was overcome with fury. Raising his voice, he shouted:'Who wants to play with this thing before I kill it?'T do,' said a rough, gruff voice.
And forward stepped a barrel-chested hairy brute in bloodstained sealskins, his coarse-featured face surrounded by shaggy black hair and a great big black beard. It was Andranovory.The Walrus immediately regretted having spoken.
Andranovory was the worst of his men – a drunken, murderous, argumentative bully, an untrustworthy sadist hated by at least half the crew. In the past, he had treated prisoners in ways which gave Mulps nightmares.
'There are others more worthy,' said the Walrus. T give the pleasure of playing with this – with this thing to Ish Ulpin.'
