by Hugh Cook
Two horses drowned; a crew member was kicked in the head and died; Togura's mount, the first time he exercised it, stumbled and dropped dead under him, possibly of old age. The dead horses were all recovered, cooked and eaten; the dead crewman was stuffed into a barrel of brine, to be taken back to his family.
Togura, horseless, helped gather mud snails from the marshes; boiled up, they made a hearty dish to supplement increasingly meagre rations. He looked out to sea, often, longing for the wind to change; as he was a landsman, he did not trouble himself over what would happen if the wind started blowing onshore and the anchor started to drag.
Finally, graced with favourable winds, they sailed on south. The headman had a bad stroke, and died a day later; they tossed his body overboard, and watched the seagulls mob it as it floated inshore with the tide. Togura felt desolated by this death; he had come to feel that he could trust the headman, and did not know how he would fare in that worthy's absence.
The next day, they made landfall at a rivermouth city. With the help of boats and ropes, their ship was muscled into a harbour protected by a mole. The harbour was crowded with ships, and every ship was crammed with men.
A bureaucrat arrived in long robes, accompanied by an interpreter who spoke Savage. They were given a harbourside sail loft to sleep in, through they had to park their horses in the street. Both men and horses got fed and watered, after a fashion.
Togura never got to explore this new city, for, soon after arrival, he feel sick. Perhaps the riverwater was to blame; in any case, he was soon down with dysentry. A bureaucrat came and inspected him, and he was shifted out of the sail loft and into a hospital – the hospital being a ship in which dozens of people in a similar condition lay in the darkness between decks. Body handlers came round daily, to see which of the filthy, stinking bodies had become corpses overnight; other workers served up soup and water at noon each day.
Togura fully expected to die, and was soon past caring. He was marinated in filth, embraced by the stench of filth, jostled by the moaning, groaning darkness. Rats scampered across him, occasionally testing his powers of resistance with their teeth. Lice, fleas and bedbugs bit him. Cockroaches set up houses beneath his shadows.
This, he was certain, was his end.
Nevertheless, though he was sick, suffering, humiliated by his predicament – no chance to get from here to the topdeck jakes, and no such thing as a chamber pot to hand – he retained enough cunning to protect his prospects as best he could. He put his triple-harp, his most valuable possession, in a small pouch, which he hid beneath his clothes, knotted round his waist on a piece of rope; everything else, including the last of his garlic, stayed in a saddle bag which he used to pillow his head.
The saddle bag got stolen while he was sleeping, and he once woke and kicked away a villain who was trying to remove his boots, but the triple-harp stayed with him.
Chapter 34
Heat oppressed him.
Footsteps click-clocked back and forth, treading on timbers overhead. He did not know whether sunlit air lay above him, or whether there were more layers of death and suffering between him and the daylight. He did not know, but it would not be true to say that he did not care, for today he felt stronger – strong enough, in fact, to be appalled by his physical weakness and his degraded condition.
A couple of body handlers clomped by, dragging a corpse which they had shuffled into a canvas removal bag. When they were gone, there were the usual moans and groans, but apart from that it was strangely quiet. It was daylight, certainly; a little blade of sunlight had prised apart the timbers not far away, giving Togura a proof of the sun. Usually, by day, the harbour was loud with shouts, swearing, battle drills and the constant clamour of woodwork and repairs. Today, nothing. Except, somewhere, a gull crying claw-claw-claw.
Togura tried to sit up. He impressed himself by accomplishing this feat. He impressed himself less by promptly fainting. When he roused himself again, it was soup time. He drank greedily from a serving bowl; it was good.
He rested, then nerved himself to attempt a heroic project: namely, making his way to the upper deck. He found himself too weak for the task; exhausted, he slept. He woke to find the darkness alive with activity. Men, some screaming in pain, were being carried down to join him. A chop-surgeon wearing a blood-bespattered leather apron prowled up and down with a lantern, looking for mutilated limbs he could hack off. He eyed Togura hopefully, then, disappointed, moved on.
Very shortly, he found a suitable victim. Togura, with a little bit of hell now visible by lantern light, watched. And soon saw enough to make him faint dead away.
When he recovered himself, he was being dragged along in darkness. Something heavy and dark shrouded him. He screamed and punched at the darkenss with his fists. The dragging stopped. Daylight opened at his eyes; a face peered in. Two men conferred, then, without ceremony, tipped him out of their canvas removal bag. He lay on the open deck of the ship, blinking at the sunlight. A sailor grabbed him by the armpits, hauled him into the shade of a tarpaulin which sheltered twenty wounded men, and left him there.
From where he was lying, Togura could see cremation fires burning on the quayside; he suspected he was lucky not to have been incinerated.
"Do you speak Galish?" he said to his nearest neighbor.
But the man was zombie-silent, his eyes staring into the distance. Togura could get no response from him.
"What about you?" he said to the next-nearest man.
"Shrrr-shrrr," said the man, his breath muttering in and out between stubbly yellow teeth.
"Sure," said Togura, heartlessly. "And what's your name and all? Hey?"
"Shrrr… " said the man.
And said no more, for he was dead. Togura was disconcerted by this unexpected development, and felt a little bit guilty at his heartlessness.
A man came round with soup and water; Togura took his second soup share of the day. He eyed the dead man. A chest wound had ruined his jerkin, but his trews looked stout enough. But Togura was not bold enough to strip him by daylight, and soon corpse men dragged him away.
Togura was now feeling well enough to be disgusted by his own mired, filthy body and his dungbath reeking rags, which were softly seething with vermin. He swore that he would get the next setof clothes which were going. But, each time the opportunity arose, his courage failed him. When evening fell, he was still in the same rags.
He woke in the darkness to find distant sounds of battle carrying through the still night air; there was fire inland, to the east. He was cold.
He slept again, waking before dawn because of the cold. The rising sun found him stripping a corpse for its clothes; nobody raised an eyebrow. Later in the day, he managed to draw up a bucket full of harbour water which was marginally less disgusting than he was; he washed himself, after a fashion.
There was a lot of coming and going and gossiping. He heard many people talking in Galish, but was too sick and shy to dare their disfavour and ask his basic questions; their gossip, apart from their commonplace complaints, was unintelligible because he did not know the context. Then, late in the afternoon, as he was tottering about the deck, exercising his shadow, he came upon a man he thought he knew. It was Draven, flushed, sweating and feverish.
"Draven!" cried Togura, in amazement.
The pirate, who had been dozing, opened his eyes and surveyed Togura. At first, Togura thought he was too sick to speak, but speak he did, and his voice sounded strong enough.
"Who would you be, young man? No – don't tell me. Yes! Forester! Or should I say, Togura Poulaan? Isn't that how you introduced yourself in Lorford?"
"I did," said Togura.
"You gave me quite a shock, turning up like that. I'm sorry I couldn't have stopped for a word – it would've been more than my life was worth."
"Why?" said Togura, remembering his desperate efforts to make contact with Draven at Lorford.
"Because," said Draven.
That was all the explan
ation he was ready to give; Togura suspected that if he pushed for more, he would only get an elaborate series of lies, so he let the matter drop. He was so glad to see a familiar face and hear a familiar voice that he didn't chastise Draven for the disgraceful episode on the Warwolf, when Draven had helped throw Togura to the sea serpents.
"So," said Draven, "you're the man with the price on his head."
"Yes," said Togura, claiming this identity with something close to joy, even though it might expose him to danger. "That's me. Togura Poulaan, also known as Barak the Battleman, a veteran of many wars and battles."
"Including, now, the battle of Androlmarphos. We're lucky to be still alive, wouldn't you say?"
"Androlmarphos?" said Togura, blankly.
"Yes, yes, Androlmarphos."
"Where's that?"
"Where's that? What's wrong with you? Did you just fall out of the sky? What do you mean, where's that? Androlmarphos is here. Around us. Under us. To the left of us, the right of us. It's where we are. We – tattoo this on your skin, in case you forget – we are now, and have been for some days, in Androlmarphos. The main port of the Harvest Plains, in case you didn't know. This thing we're sitting on is called a ship. That – "
"All right, all right," said Togura. "I get the picture. Don't be so hard on me. I've had a very difficult time."
"So have I," said Draven. "Right now, I'm dying of fever."
"You have my sympathies," said Togura, without any sympathy; Draven looked too sick to fight or ride, but the vigour of his conversation proved him to be a very long way from death.
"Apart from the fever," said Draven, stung by Togura's obvious lack of concern, "I've been to Gendormargensis and back. I've been tortured. I've been killed."
"For sure," said togura. "For sure. May I stretch out my bones right here? I feel faint."
"Stretch away," said Draven. "Stretch away."
Both of them were in fact rather ill, and both had over-excited themselves with too much talking. Draven roused later in the evening, to listn to gossip about someone called Menator, who had been parlaying with the enemy, and had been murdered.
"This is very bad news," said Draven.
"Why?" asked Togura. "Was this Menator a friend of yours?"
"No, my enemy," said Draven. "I swore to kill him and eat his liver. The first part of my vow is now impossible, and the second, in this heat, is probably already over-ripe."
"What have you got against him?"
"I'll tell you," said Draven.
And he did, in detail. But Togura found pirate politics too complex to follow, and fell asleep in the middle of the explanation.
The next day, just after soup, Draven resumed the tale of his trip to Gendormargensis and back.
"Gendormargensis is in Tameran," said Draven. "It's so far north that it's cold all year, so they make buildings out of ice. They freeze the heads of their enemies in blocks of the stuff. Wherever you walk in the streets, there's dead eyes staring at you."
"If the buildings are made of ice then what happens when they light a fire?"
"They don't have proper fires, not in Gendormargensis," said Draven. "What they have is the heads of dead dragons. They shove their food between the jaws, and it cooks. They have live dragons, too. Hundreds of them. Armies of them. It was outside the dragon stables that they killed me."
"They killed you?!"
"Killed me dead. Then hacked me apart. Split me from stem to stern. Chopped me into dogmeat."
"You look healthy enough to me."
"Ay. I was resurrected. A dralkosh it was which did the deed."
"A dralkosh?"
"A woman of evil," said Draven, with a shudder. "Her name was Ampadara. Yes, that was the name. She was the chief torturer for the Lord Emperor of Tameran, the man they call Khmar. She had me cut to pieces, starting with my testicles."
Togura at first had his doubts, but Draven backed up his tale with so much detail that it surely had to be true. Draven was eloquent about the terrors of the Collosnon Empire which dominated the continent of Tameran.
"The women have the rule of it," said Draven. "That's the worst part. The rule of women is a fearful evil."
He told of the streets of Gendormargensis, which were paved with layers of ice-covered skulls; of the Yolantarath River, which ran red with the blood of human sacrifices; of the Lord Emperor Khmar, a huge giant of a man with three arms, who went about naked, butchering babies and eating their livers raw; of the evil Ampadara, mistress of the knife, an ugly hag with a voice as vicious as a whip.
"She laughed as she cut me," said Draven. "A foul laughter, like a bird of prey gone rabid."
He told, in agonising detail, of his death and resurrection.
"It was that Ampadara who raised me from the dead," said Draven. "She meant to make me her slave. But I escaped. When all's said and done, a man's a match for any woman – though in this case it was a near thing."
"But what were you doing in Lorford?" said Togura.
"Oh," said Draven. "That's another story."
"It's one I wouldn't mind hearing," said Togura, who felt much stronger today, and was not going to be put off as easily as he had been the day before. "You owe me an explanation. You owe me quite a lot, for throwing me off the Warwolf."
"Throwing you off?" said Draven, astonished. "I did no such thing! You jumped!"
"I did not!" said Togura, indignantly.
"But yes – I was there. I remember. You were fooling around at the stern, watching the women get slaughtered. I told you to watch your footing. You remember – come now, don't tell me no. I even grabbed hold when the sea lurched you over. But you slid from my grasp, no helping it."
"That's not true!"
"Well… perhaps I misremember a detail or two. But the main sighting's there. I wasn't to blame."
"You threw me over!"
"That's a lie. I distinctly remember the weapons muqaddam had you in his grips. Throwing you or saving you, I'm not to know, but he had you. Didn't he?"
"Well, yes, but – "
"There you are then," said Draven triumphantly. "You say I threw you over and now you admit I didn't. Memory's a funny thing, young man. I tell you that. Don't trust yourself too far."
Togura was about to protest further, but at that moment something strange was heard from the east. He could not see what it was; ships at anchor and harbourside buildings allowed him no vistas inland. There was a heavy grinding, growling sound, like ice breaking up, perhaps. He heard much shouting and screaming in the city, then an incoherent roaring, loud as breaking surf, or louder.
"What is it?" said Togura.
"We're under attack," said Draven, with fear in his voice. "We're under attack."
Chapter 35
They heard a huge, discordant roaring, the crash of buildings being demolished, the rending of timbers, screams and alarums.
"What's happening now?" said Togura.
"If you're so honey-sniffing curious," said Draven, "go and see for yourself."
Togura wasn't tempted.
Somewhere in the city, a fire started; smoke billowed upwards. Men, disorganised, running in panic, stumbling, falling, pushing each other, came hustling out of the streets and onto the quayside. They began swarming onto the ships. On Togura's ship, nobody was giving orders; the captain was not in evidence.
"Well," said Draven. "So much for all that octopus-talk" – he meant hype – "about conquering the world. We've lost."
"Lost what?"
"The battle. The war."
"Which war?"
"The one we're fighting in, little loon," said Draven. "Hell's blood! Where's the captain?"
"What do you want him for?"
"So I can bugger his boots with a jack-knife! Wat the hell do you think I want him for? So we can get the ship the hell out of here, that's what for."
"I think," said Togura, "you'd better take charge yourself."
"This isn't my ship," said Draven. Then, looking around at the
scrummage on deck: "On the other hand – maybe you've got a point."
And Draven started roaring out orders.
"Avast there, salts and gobblers!" screamed Draven. "Listen for your lives! Brazen the spazjits! Lubber the lee! Untrice the hawsers!" Nobody paid any attention. "Come on, you rat-scum whore-rapists! Drop the scurfs in the brine! Get the plugs run-hauled!"
It was useless.
"Draven," said Togura, urgently. "Grab that man there. The big one, with the dragon tattoo. Talk him into your crew."
"Oh knot off," said Draven, pushing him away. Then, to the milling mob: "Plug up your gobs, you mouse-cocked chicken-shaggers! Hear out my orders!"
While Draven screamed himelf hoarse to no avail, Togura spoke to the dragon-tattoo man with an eloquence inspired by fear of death. Triumphant, he led his recruit back to Draven.
"Captain Draven," said the man, giving a clenched-fist salute. "I'm Ratbite Jakes, at your service."
"Good man!" said Draven, slapping him on the shoulder. Then, seeing Togura's strategy, and seeing now that it would work, he adopted it as his own. "Jakes," he said, pointing. "Grab that fellow over there! The one with the red hair! We need him!"
On the quayside, a battle royal was raging. No enemy was yet in sight, but men were fighting each other to get aboard the ships. Something in the city was roaring – it sounded like a huge animal. There was a cacophony of wreckage and rupture. It sounded as if all hell was marching toward them.
Draven, having gathered up half a dozen big, husky, capable-looking men, spoke to them swiftly, giving his orders. Then they dispersed, shouting their orders, press-ganging men as they went. Togura, Jakes and Draven, a three-man hunting pack, began to recruit a second echelon of group leaders.
Soon, Togura was getting control.
Half a dozen rowing boats were pirated from the harbourside. They began to lug the ship toward the harbour mouth. Togura, still sick and dizzy, got booted upstairs, and found himself in the rigging, floundering amidst the canvas.