by Heide Goody
“But why?” I cried. “Why?”
It’s a right laugh,” said Knubbig amiably. “Sometimes it goes on all evening before death comes.”
We stopped at the pole and they dumped me on the ground.
I cast about for an escape route.
“Don’t do this,” I said.
“But we want to,” said Knubbig.
“I have a letter of safe passage from the king in Yarwich who demands that all subjects offer no hindrance to —”
The paper in my hand was first ripped away and then ripped up.
“I could offer my dental services for free! Half price at least! You, sir, look like you’d appreciate a set of dentures.”
Some of the more eager villagers were already pulling at my clothes to get to my belly and my guts. I never realised how attached to my guts I was until that moment.
“Killing me will make a terrible mess,” I said lamely.
“We’re used to mess,” said Knubbig. “See what Strangol does to our village day in and day out.” He waved an arm at the ruined village around them. “We bear it with great fortitude and take any spot of relief from the misery we can get. Killing you will make us happy.”
“But will it?” I asked deeply.
“Oh, yes,” said Knubbig, “We’ve not been able to do ‘better out than in’ for ages.”
I shuddered as grubby little digits pulled open my robes and exposed my stomach. Snöflinga came in with his fish hook.
“Wait!” I squealed. “I am well-versed in the ways of Strangol. I could help rid you of Strangol forever!”
“Could you?” said Knubbig.
“Yes,” I said, this of course being a complete lie. I had never heard of Strangol before. I didn’t know if it was a man or a beast or a tribe of marauding grimlocks.
Knubbig laughed. “Defeat Strangol? Strangol has made fools of us for years. It brings sickness and destroys our livelihoods.” There were grumbles of agreement from the tribe. “Our wives and foodstores never last long because of the scourge that is Strangol.”
“And I could put an end to that,” I suggested. The point of Snöflinga’s hook rested against my delicate bellyflesh.
“Only a salt-witch could magic away the hell of Strangol,” he said.
“And do you gut salt-witches?” I asked.
“No.”
“Then in that case, I am —”
“We burn them alive and scatter their ashes into the sea.”
“I am not a salt-witch,” I continued with barely a stumble, “but I do possess the power to defeat Strangol.”
Knubbig scoffed. The others scoffed too. There was a lot of general scoffing.
“To think that an unbearded man could stop Strangol is absurd!”
“I have a beard.”
“Barely any sort of beard.”
“I can help you all!” I told the crowd. “Strangol can be defeated. I am your only chance. In fact, you may never get another opportunity like this. Are you prepared to pass that by? Are you?”
There was a palpable sense of frustration. Snöflinga, eager to get busy with the disembowelling, scowled at the group’s hesitation.
“He can’t control Strangol. No-one can!”
The shaman, Bredskär, threw up her hands, nearly falling out of the grip of her helpers. “We will let the sea maidens decide!”
There was a surge of mumbling, sounding surprised and not a little outraged. I wondered whether guests were not normally permitted to see the sea maidens. Perhaps they were beautiful. I smiled. I have some considerable experience at charming beautiful maidens. I wrote a small treatise on it once.
They grunted and tried to lift me again.
“Stop that!” I snapped. “I am capable of walking.”
They looked a little sullen and disappointed, but off we set towards the shore.
Bredskär, supported on both sides, led the way to a rocky promontory. One of her helpers nudged her awake. She took a moment to register her surroundings. She turned and saw me, which I think jogged her memory. She cleared her throat and then started to make a horrific noise. I have heard it said that some mountain dwellers practise a form of primitive ululation in order to be heard across a valley, but this was so piercing and discordant that I felt sure it was part of my punishment for stealing the dragon shell. Rather than covering their ears, the other members of the tribe joined in. The air was filled with the sound of grown men and women making a noise like a pack of wolves with a severe digestive complaint. This carried on to the point at which I was ready to go back to the original plan and perhaps offer to nail my own guts to the post when silence fell. Bredskär raised her arms to the sea.
“Behold! The maidens approach!”
I looked. A fat and hairy seal heaved out of the waves and plopped onto a rock a few feet in front of us. One of the villagers threw it a fish head which it caught expertly and gulped down. Moments later there were another three seals on the rock.
“Sea maidens, huh?” I said.
“The divine handmaidens of Storfeten,” said Knubbig.
By the Eastern Sea, sailors tell tales of mermaids and I have always fancied that those tales are nothing more than drunken sailors seeing distant seals, perhaps with strands of seaweed draped artfully over their heads. Beer and loneliness will make a man see any number of things that aren’t there. But, I have to say, a sailor would have to drink a hell of a lot of beer to think these blubbery sacks were anything other than the ugly cows of the deep.
“Salt-witch or not witch the sea maidens will say which,” said Bredskär.
I watched Bredskär listening carefully to the honking of the seals (who were surely expressing a desire for more fish heads) and I realised that my life depended on these seals. One old corpulent sow looked at me and made a low blarting noise. Bredskär gasped and nodded, her hands together in reverence.
“The maidens have spoken,” she said.
“Yes?” I said.
“We must accommodate our guest and listen to his advice.”
The shaman looked exhausted by all the excitement and her head sagged forward. The journey back was accompanied by the sound of her snoring, with the occasional loud fart.
“Tell me more about Strangol,” I said.
“But you said you knew everything,” said Snöflinga suspiciously.
“I do,” I said emphatically. “But I need to know what you know. To build a castle on the swamp of your ignorance, I need to know how deep that swamp is.”
“That’s profound,” said Knubbig. “Is that ancient wisdom?”
“No, it’s my wisdom, which is better because it’s fresh and hasn’t had time to go stale. Tell me, when does Strangol attack?”
The men of the tribe looked at each other and then at me.
“Depends?” ventured one and the others nodded readily.
“Yeah, it depends,” they said.
“Night, usually,” said Knubbig.
“Good,” I said. “That’s something. And where does the attack come from? What direction?”
The clueless men stared at each other again and then at me.
“It can hit you from any direction,” said Snöflinga.
“And no direction at all,” added another.
They were idiots. I had allowed myself to be captured by idiots with pointy sticks.
“Does that help?” asked Knubbig.
“It does,” I said. “The swamp is deep. I’m amazed you’ve survived against Strangol for so long.”
With minds as dull as these, I was surprised they hadn’t all swallowed their own tongues or accidentally drowned themselves already.
I organised them into work groups at once.
“Snöflinga, you’re in charge of the ditch digging team. Knubbig, you’ll be leading the construction crew. Let’s walk the perimeter.”
The group followed me as I paced out the route for the semi-circular defensive ditch that they’d need to defend themselves from any hostile invader. The
digging team set to work while I discussed some designs with Knubbig and a couple of the brighter looking men.
“You’ll make a wall inside the ditch to guard the perimeter,” I explained. “Timber will be best for that, but if we can’t find enough, you can use the mud bricks you’ve employed for your buildings. What I’m going to show you now is the design for a weapon that you can use against Strangol.”
“A weapon?” they gasped as one.
“Yes. This knowledge is prized and you must take great care never to reveal what you know outside of this tribe. Also, you need to take care that the weapon itself does not fall into the hands of your enemy. Understand?”
They all nodded, their eyes wide.
I showed them, with the aid of some diagrams scratched in the dirt and a small demonstration with a bendy twig, how a military assault catapult might be constructed from timber, using a counterweight made from a sealskin sack filled with stones. It turned out that Knubbig had an engineer’s eye and he made several suggestions for materials to use (mostly seal-based) and improvements to the design. They got to work while I took on the time-honoured role of supervisor, strolling from team to team and shouting out instructions. The clouds had cleared in the late afternoon and my mood was optimistic. The ditch-digging team finished more quickly than I had envisaged, so I put them to work on the defensive wall, and by evening of that day the camp was transformed. There was a ditch around the entire circuit, with drawbridges for daytime convenience. In pride of place, next to the hall, was their newly constructed catapult siege engine. It was ready for a test firing in the morning, we would simply wheel it down to the rocks, fill the launch cup and pull out the pin that held the counterweight into position.
As I sat and watched the last dying rays of the sun, Knubbig walked over.
“You are watching the sea maidens,” he said.
“Yes,” I lied. I was, in truth, preparing what few spells I had that might be used in pitched battle. If Strangol did attack the village tonight, Newport Pagnell wasn’t going to rely on moronic seal-worshippers for protection.
“Tonight, they swim to the land of Storfeten to speak with the gods.”
He waved a hand at the evening stars that were just coming out.
“See here? This is Gurkört, the elder.”
I looked at the vague splatter of stars he was indication. I nodded in a way that I hope conveyed politeness, but a lack of interest in further demonstrations.
“Look!” he said. “That one is Snitta, the dreamer, and next to her is Mumsig the perverse.”
“And all the gods are… seals?”
“Seals are made in their image, as close to divine perfection as is possible. There. That one is Ljuvlig the Desirable.”
As I followed Knubbig’s arm across the sky, I realised that it was pretty handy to have seals as your gods. Any random cluster of stars could be called upon to represent a seal, being as shapeless an animal as it’s possible to imagine.
We walked to Bredskär’s hall. There was to be a feast in honour of all that we’d achieved. In the foetid, tumbledown slum, I took my place at the head of the table, next to Bredskär. She snoozed in her chair. I think she might have been tied into an upright position.
“The sea maidens are everything to us,” said Knubbig, sitting down. “They give us food, drink and everything that we need.”
He poured liquid into a tankard and passed it to me.
I looked at it.
“Everything?”
“Everything.”
I took a swig and gagged. It was like rancid fish guts mixed with sour milk. “What is this, um, stuff?”
“It’s fiskö. Potent, eh? Stronger than your foreign beer,” sneered Knubbig. “It is a great delicacy that we enjoy on special occasions, like the going down of the sun.”
“I can’t drink this.”
Knubbig looked at me sadly. “To refuse fiskö is to dishonour the Storfeten. We would hate to kill you after the help you have given us, but it would be necessary. Drink up. It gets much better after the first five cups.”
I faked a big swig. I would find a way to tip it away later.
“So, how do you make fiskö?” I asked.
He sniggered at my foolishness. “First we must collect the milk.”
“Seal milk?”
“What else?”
“And seals are happy to let you do this?” I asked.
“It’s all part of the intimate relationship we have with the sea maidens.”
“Oh?”
“Every boy must milk his first seal to reach manhood,” said Knubbig.
“And by milk his first seal, you mean...?” I had to ask.
“I mean milk the seal,” said Knubbig, rolling his eyes. “Then he may lie with her, of course.”
“Of course.”
I was rescued from this avenue of conversation by a swelling of voices. The tankards swung and slopped their foul contents as the tribe started to sing. Bredskär woke up at this point and led the singing. It was a song that featured many obscure words from the local dialect, but as far as I could make out it was the tale of the coming of Storfeten, the seal goddess who watched over the village. At the end of every verse (and there were many) the entire group drained their tankard to the bottom. There was just enough time as someone took up the next verse to pass the jugs around the tables and top up all of the tankards. I still hadn’t drunk any of the fiskö. I had surreptitiously topped up Bredskär’s tankard from mine when she slept, I had poured some onto the floor down the side of the table, and I had even filled my boots. I felt was going to regret tainting my boots in such a way, but I was running out of places to put it. I looked around me and realised that it no longer mattered how careful I was to dispose of the stuff. As fast as they could top up their tankards and pour it down their necks, they were also spilling it on every surrounding surface as they sang, cackled with laughter and leaned over to hug each other in drunken camaraderie. The place was awash with fiskö. It ran across the tables and puddled on the floor. If I hadn’t already filled my boots it would undoubtedly be filling them up anyway. The room stank like a fishmonger’s cast offs.
I glanced across at Bredskär who I realised had been drunk all day long. I found it miraculous that she was able to function in any way, given the evident power of the drink. She grinned at me (oh, look at those gums, I thought, I could have fashioned her a lovely set of false gnashers) held her tankard aloft and then passed once more into unconsciousness, her head sagging on her chest. I decided that I might follow her sterling example, so I discreetly moved back from the table and went to find myself a quiet corner. And by ‘quiet corner’, I meant somewhere that didn’t reek of the bad end of a seal where I might be safe for a few minutes, if and when the mysterious Strangol attacked.
I wedged myself between two rocks near the defensive trench down by the shore and wrapped my cloak around me. I managed to get an hour or two’s sleep before I was woken by the unmistakeable sounds of a violent incursion. There was shouting coming from all around me, and the grunting and smashing of an unseen enemy.
“Strangol.”
I hesitated. I had agreed to help these morons, but I had no intention of joining any fighting. I have always relied on my wits for survival, along with my modest spellcasting abilities. When it comes to confrontation, my skills have always leaned towards hiding and running away. These are good skills and I have known many a fine warrior who could have survived if he’d taken advantage of them. I got up to have a look. It was deepest night but I could see what was happening. This was partly because the moon was bright. And partly because the main hall was on fire.
I kept a careful eye out for Strangol. I still wasn’t certain whether it was a monstrous beast or a multitude of grimlocks. Detail had been sparse.
Knubbig ran past, his face contorted with horror. I grabbed his arm.
“What is it?”
“Strangol!” he howled.
“Shush now,” I pleaded.
“Calm yourself. Is the danger gone? Can we organise a chain of people to throw water on the fire?”
“You don’t know what you’re dealing with!” he yelled drunkenly and ran off. To my astonishment, he ran to the fire, pulled off a burning plank and waved it above his head with a blood-curding roar. Then he came over and touched the flaming timber to the hut behind me. The flames licked up the outside and into the thatch. He cackled with momentary glee, but then a tribesman appeared and struck him over the back of the head with an empty barrel, sending him sprawling into the dirt.
“I was to have that hut!” he yelled. “You knew I wanted it!”
“I know!” shouted Knubbig, getting shakily to his feet. “I did this for you! So it didn’t fall into enemy hands!”
“You fool!” howled the other.
“Enemy hands!” burbled Knubbig.
“I should have been the one to set fire to it! How can you be so selfish?”
They sprang at each other and battered wildly. Arms and legs were flying everywhere, as their fighting abilities were compromised by their extreme drunkenness. But why were they fighting when Strangol was upon them?
I ran towards the flaming meeting hall. In the light of the inferno, I could see carnage and destruction all around. Men and women struggled as silhouettes against the flames. But the only thing they seemed to be struggling with was each other or themselves. There was no sign of Strangol or the Strangol or the Strangols, whatever they were.
I pulled Snöflinga off a poor man he was attempting to throttle with his own beard.
“Stop it, man! Are you bewitched?”
“Are you trying to steal my kittens?” warbled Snöflinga.
“That doesn’t even make sense!” I shouted.
“You don’t make sense!” he slurred. “What are you? A man or a… or a…” His line of thought, which he was clearly struggling with anyway, seemed to have wandered away completely. “A man or a different man? Hmmm? Eh?”
The man was sozzled. It occurred to me that I had the advantage over every person in the camp, simply by being sober and co-ordinated. I climbed up onto the base of the catapult we had built and held up my hands.