The Walrus and the Warwolf coaaod-4

by Hugh Cook

  In the fracas, Drake went chest to chest with Bucks Cat and sustained three broken ribs, a mild concussion, a black eye and a seven-stitch gash to his left forearm. But he thought it worth it, for he was now well and truly one of the crew.

  And, indeed, Drake got a crewman's share of the voyage profits, which Arabin had withheld till then so his men would not booze away the money in Narba. By now, Drake knew that the strange coinage of the Greater Teeth was actually the common currency of Narba, the only port which would trade with them. He also learned that the more sober-minded pirates banked there, and the lucky few who survived to the age of arthritis retired there to drink away their dotage in comparative comfort.

  The Warwolf would not put to sea again for some time, not least because Jon Arabin would be busy with his harem, which he was having shipped from Gufling. Jon Arabin was ascetic yet devout, and his own religion – the Creed of Anthus – enjoined each man 'to plant a tree for each you cut down, and father a man for each you kill'.

  Jon Arabin, having done a lot of killing in his time, was always kept busy when he was at home. Unfortunately, his frantic exertions tended to lower his sperm count below the level at which impregnation was likely. Fortunately for the ease of his conscience, other men helped him out behind his back, and he was now three killings in credit.

  Just because they were not at sea did not mean there was no work to do. Jon Arabin was true to his vow to have the Warwolf overhauled. So there was sanding, sawing, hammering and whitewashing, and there was a drydock to be pumped out, and then there was singeing and scraping to clean the hull. The garden of weed Drake had first noticed at Ling was torn from the hull in wet reeking clumps, or burnt off along with goose neck barnacles and other rubbish.

  And then, since Jon Arabin had decided to experiment with mailletage (that is, covering the timber with nails) there was a blistering amount of hammering to be done.

  Crewmen from the Walrus dropped by on a jegular basis to jeer at the sailors doing this slave work. Jon Arabin had gone into debt after he lost his ship on the shores of Lorp, and was taken prisoner by the most vicious people to be found in all of Argan. He had spent three miserable seasons eating sheep's guts and pigs' eyes before the laborious efforts of some trusted retainers had delivered his ransom. He was now finally out of hock, but still could not afford to buy new ship-working slaves.

  Finally, after a crewman from the Walrus was found floating face-down in the Inner Sleeve with fifty-seven nails hammered into his head, the teasing stopped.

  While all this work was going on, the encysted snake buried deep within Drake's gut quietly allowed its flesh to dissolve. A mob of eggs hatched in the wreckage of its body, and myriad worms began to infiltrate Drake's bloodstream. They embedded themselves in the walls of his duodenum, set up residence in the portal vein, squatted in his liver and crept up to his brain; they housed themselves in his stomach; they invaded his lymphatic system and burrowed into his bones. And multiplied.Drake became feverish.

  For five days he endured high temperatures, rigors and blistering thirst. Arabin's own women took care of him. They soothed him, sang to him, sponged his forehead and fed him crab soup, fish roe, sea slugs, pulped sea anemones and other invalid food.And then the fever broke.And Drake felt fine.

  He felt better than he had ever felt before in his life – and this was scarcely surprising. For the snake which had eaten its way into his flesh in Ling dated its ancestry back through the millenia to a tailored organism especially designed to complement the other defences of the Plague Sanctuary. The worms which had metastasized throughout his body were fulfilling the designs of an ancient science, normalizing his body functions, enhancing the action of his immune system, detoxifying poisons and killing off disease organisms.

  The worms were rapidly finishing off an obscure low-grade viral infection distantly related to glandular fever, the start of a tubercular infection, two exotic venereal diseases which had not yet had time to debilitate their victim, a troublesome amoeba which had recently begun to cause him some intermittent diarrhoea, and a couple of wild and wonderful infections (native to the Greater Teeth) unknown to any standard classification.

  So, while Drake had always been comparatively healthy, he now felt really good. So good, in fact, that he had to celebrate his recovery with a drink or three.

  He did so – but even after his fifth mug, he felt scarcely more than a tingle.'What're you selling me?' he demanded. 'Water?'

  'You young pups,' said his barman, shaking his head. 'You don't know your limits. But I'll help you find yours.'

  And he mixed Drake a Skull Splitter, a popular cocktail consisting of equal measures of vinegar, methylated spirit, absinthe, vodka and apricot wine.'Drink this!' said the barman.

  'Ah!' said Drake, as the poison went burning down his throat. 'That tastes better.'

  A warm glow filled his stomach. He waited for a sense of langorous well-being to cosy his soul, for the harsh outlines of the world to soften and the burden of gravity to be at least partially nullified. But nothing so pleasant happened.

  Instead, after a few moments, the warm glow was gone, and he was back where he started.

  'Look, man,' said Drake, 'I don't know what fancy kind of coloured water that was, but I'm buggered if I'm paying for it.'

  'It's strong enough for most folks,' said the barman, aggrieved. 'Why, three of those and Slagger Mulps was legless.'

  'Sure, but I'm not a wimp like the Walrus. I'm a drinking man, the real article. So pour me something stronger. If you know how!'

  'Aye,' said the barman, sensing a challenge here to his professional reputation. T can pour stronger, if that's what you want. But I won't be responsible for the consequences, mind.'

  'I'm ready,' said Drake, fiercely. 'Hold back on nothing!'

  Upon which the barman opened his bottom locker and pulled out strange vials, tubes, tubs, boxes, casks, jars and bottles, and mixed the most brain-blowing cocktail imaginable. Hemlock went into it, and paint, and tar, lamp-black, weedkiller and plutonium, the ink of a cuttlefish and the gall of a basilisk, a smidgin of belladonna and the blood of a (reputed) virgin, some powdered cannabis leaf and half a gram of heroin, some white of egg and some fermented fish, ground glass, tobacco ash, chopped-up leopard's whiskers, fine-ground horn of unicorn and two tomatoes, some mandrake, ginseng, tannin and quinine, chopped shark's liver seven days old, some high-grade lacquer and sulphuric acid, with lashings of honey to make the whole brew palatable.

  In honour of the occasion, the barman unearthed a very old and ancient tankard made of glass – the only one of its kind on all the Greater Teeth. He poured the cocktail into it, slowly. The thick black liquid sat there, bubbling softly. The barman sprinkled some cinnamon on top and ceremoniously set the offering down in front of Drake.

  'Get this dog-defecating fornicator inside you,' said the barman, with unwonted enthusiasm. 'That'll put hairs on your chest!'

  Drake picked up the tankard with both hands, looked at it steadily, then sipped it with unaccustomed caution. Then:'What the hell,' he said.

  And drank the rest down as a thirsty man would drink weak ale.

  The barman watched expectantly, waiting for him to drop dead, or melt, or explode. Instead, Drake swayed a little. All colour left his face. He coughed once or twice, rather harshly, then spat out a little blood. Then, fairly rapidly, the colour returned to his face, his stance steadied, and he wiped his mouth and said regretfully:

  'Well, it's a good drop, to be sure. Almost as good as a blow on the head. But the effect wears off powerful fast. Make me another one.'

  But the barman shook his head.

  'Boy,' he said, 'if that won't kill you, nothing will. One shot of that, and you should stay drunk till your grandchildren celebrate seventy. It ain't natural to drink that down and still stay speaking, far less standing. Boy, take it from me, and I'm an expert. Someone's worked the Black Arts on you, young man. They've taken away the gift of liquor – and all of liquor's fr
iends.'

  This was the opinion of a true professional, a specialist in chemical debauchery. As the words sank in, Drake shuddered. Someone had cursed him! Someone had doomed him to a life of perpetual sobriety!

  He found it hard to think of a worse fate, but, after some reflection, imagined one – and hurried off to find a pirate whore to make sure it wasn't so.

  14

  Name: Sully Datelier Yot. Birthplace: Stokos.

  Occupation: disciple of Gouda Muck, worshipper of the Flame, apostle of Goudanism.

  Status: once Muck's apprentice, but now an Instrument for the Practice of the Revealed Disciplines of the Flame.

  Description: lank pale stripling barnacled with warts.

  Present location: the slave holes of Knock.

  It was standard pirate practice to feed competitors drinks while gambling. Drake, doomed to be sober, kept his suffering as secret as he could, and enriched himself.

  Choosing games like backgammon and dice chess, where there is a strong element of skill, Drake would gamble, drink, play drunk, raise the stakes, make a drunk's blunders, raise the stakes again – then use a sober man's wit, as if by accident, to find the tactics to sweep the table.

  And the things he won! Pearls, diamonds, snuff, gold, jade, silver, a wad of coca leaf, and one-night stands with the wives of twenty different men.

  Yet profit is not all, and scarcely compensated Drake for lost pleasures. For now, when raucous drunkards sang and shouted, it was no longer the warm hubbub of friendship which he heard, but the braying stupidity of morons and madmen. Sober, he no longer laughed to see a helpless

  dipsomaniac resorting to tortured spastic contortions to get a mug to his lips. He no longer fell about with rejoicing laughter when one man vomited over another: instead he was bored. And remote. And cold.

  He found himself living his life as though he had just come back from a funeral.

  He saw now that the cosy togetherness of drinking sessions was an illusion created by the alcohol. Each drinker was in fact drowning in a separate pool of booze. But Drake, who could no longer drown himself, envied them.

  When he was not gambling, Drake would usually quaff an ale or two in company to quench his thirst, then have half a dozen more out of sheer good manners, plus a couple on top of that just to keep up his reputation. The beer made him piss more frequently, and that was it.

  Soon, most pirates began to latch on to the fact that young Drake had a harder head than he pretended. But they did not stop gambling with him. No: ego compelled them to sit at table with him, downing the drinks and raising the stakes, to see who would slide under the table first. Drake once or twice consented to lose, and disappear beneath the table.

  'See?' said the pirates, each to each. 'He's got his limits just like any other.'And returned, in force, to test him again the next day.

  On occasion, evil men spiked Drake's drinks with drugs and poisons. Sometimes he felt slightly dizzy, and once, having swallowed enough cyanide to kill a horse, he became positively breathless for thrice three dozen heartbeats. But always the worms within his body brought their complicated chemistry into play, and the ancient genius of the genetic engineering of a lost and forgotten civilization preserved his flesh from yet another toxic onslaught.

  Drake could no longer fuddle his wits with alcohol, or die from poison, or vanish into the world of drug-dream hallucinations. And the disease which could kill him had yet to be built. Sex still had its consolations, but these, of course, were momentary. The beauty of drunkenness is that it can last a lifetime – which, in the case of the Orfus' pirates, it often did.

  Drake won much money but few friends. Lonely, he bought companionship in the form of a dog, which he named King Tor.

  The dog is the favourite beast of the Demon, being undiscriminating in its appetites, and dirty, and loud, and ugly, and the habitat of vermin, and not very bright. Drake loved dogs. He bought King Tor a spiked collar, sharpening the spikes until they glittered. He decided to train this new companion to kill rats and fight alongside him when the Warwolf's heroes rumbled with the men of the Walrus.

  As a sober man gambling with drunks, Drake was now so prosperous he was getting into money-lending and agiotage. Stokos was, without doubt, the best place in the world to live – but the Teeth were the place to get rich.

  Drake began nurturing dreams of enhancing his earnings by setting up his own branch of the temple of Hagon. Surely worship of the bloodlord Hagon was precisely the right religion for the Greater Teeth. Yes, and he should practise being a priest right here and now, since he fully intended to buy into the priesthood on his return to Stokos. That was only natural, seeing as how he was so devout.

  With establishing a temple in mind, Drake attended the Slaving Day Sales in the middle of winter, intending to buy the first of his women. But there was nothing worth having, if one did not like fat – and Drake didn't. What he did find was a familiar face, Sully Datelier Yot, in chains.

  'Why, Sully Yot!' said Drake cheerfully. 'What brings you to the fair islands Teeth Major? A little far from the forge, aren't you?'

  Yot made no reply, but sat there snivelling. Something – fear, perhaps, or maybe a virus, or possibly just the cold of the midwinter island air – had set his nose to running.

  'Why so quiet?' asked Drake. 'Cat got your tongue? If not, I've got a dog that's eager to have it.'

  And Drake stroked Yot's cheek softly. Yot pulled away. But he didn't go far, since he was roped to a floor-shackle.

  'Darling!' said Drake. 'Why so cold? When we last met, at 'Marphos, you were so eager to embrace me. Yes. You had a knife in your hand at the time, unless I misremember.'

  He remembered perfectly. When he had fled from Stokos, Yot had pursued him to Androlmarphos, and had made a determined effort to kill him.'Do you want to buy him?' asked a voice.

  Drake turned. His interlocutor proved to be Simp Fiche, one of the crewmen from the Walrus.

  'Are you selling this . . . this thing?' asked Drake idly, not really caring too much one way or the other.'I bought it myself just today,' said Fiche.'What for?' asked Drake. 'It's not good for much.'

  T bought it to torture to death,' said Simp Fiche, giving an honest answer; he was bored, and needed some cheap and harmless occupation to while away the rest of the day.

  'Why, that shows good judgment,' said Drake genially. 'I'd like to torture him myself. Would you sell me a piece of the action?'

  'No,' said Fiche, who was an inveterate gambler. 'But I'll wager with him if you like. Dice-chess, the best of three games. My meat against. . . shall we say a pearl or three?'

  'Bloody oath no!' said Drake. 'I don't risk jewels to buy scum. Your meat versus my left boot – which I'll fill with liquor if you win.'

  'How about meat versus dog?' said Fiche, who had seen King Tor and liked the look of him.

  'No!' said Drake sharply. 'My final offer – I'll wager with both boots, the left full of ale, the right full of mead.'

  'Done,' said Simp Fiche, seeing these were the best odds he was going to get offered.And they sat down to gamble.

  Now the game of chess is, of course, very old and very solemn, its intricacies sufficient to tax the highest of intellects. But when the dice get rolling, freeing each player to make (sometimes) as many as a dozen moves at once, then most of its niceties vanish. The stately clash of armies degenerates into something more like a free-for-all brawl, a gutter fight with flails, whips and hatchets.

  Drake and Simp Fiche played ferociously. They rolled the dice and scrambled their pieces over the board, whooped with delight or cried out with anguish, punched themselves in the head as punishment for gross stupidity, jabbed gloating fingers at each other's misfortune, and overall comported themselves more like cheap drunks in a casino than solemn chess players.

  Men gathered to watch as the titans did battle. Their warriors hacked and slaughtered. Their Neversh clashed in the skies, bringing death and disaster. Battering rams converged to crumble castles
. Wizards raged, and, raging, fell. In less time than it takes ordinary chess players to make their first three moves, these dice-chess players had swept nearly everything from the board but the hellbanes – which are, as every player knows, beyond capture.And Simp Fiche had won the first game.

  Drake drew the second but won the third – so the best of three left them even.

  'Flip a coin, then,' said Simp Fiche, who was all played out and a little bit weary.'Fine,' said Drake.

  And took from his pocket one of the coins he had gained through agiotage: a bronze bisque from the Rice Empire, with the disc of the sun gracing its face and the crescent of the moon riding its reverse.'Sun or moon?' asked Drake.

  'Moon,' said Simp Fiche, who had a touch of vampire in his ancestry, and had never liked the sun. Drake tossed the coin to Yot.'Flip it for us, boy,' said Drake. Then, as Yot sat limp and snivelling: 'Flip it! Or we'll gouge your eyes out here and now!'

  With the greatest reluctance, Yot's fingers crabbed their way to the coin. He took it into his shivering hand and gave it a little flip. It fell with the sun uppermost.

  'Fair enough,' said Simp Fiche gravely, and got to his feet and wandered off as the spectators began to disperse.

  Fiche had already decided that any stray cat he could catch would probably give him as much sport as Yot would have done.'Let's go home, darling,' said Drake.

  And releasing Yot from the floor shackle, led him away by the rope round his neck. A few pirates made jokes about mutilations. A strong smell of dung began to permeate the air; the pirates laughed outrageously.Shortly, Drake showed Yot into his cave.

  'Sit down there,' said Drake, 'while I sharpen some torturing knives.'

  Yot sat meekly, without attempting to jump him. Drake was disappointed. He wanted a desperate fight, yes, and the pleasure of wrecking Yot in combat before killing him. But Yot had no more spirit than a dead fish.

  Whistling tunelessly, Drake began to sharpen his favourite knives.