by Hugh Cook
And Wu:
‘My brother speaks for me as well.’
‘Good,’ said Stavenger. ‘Then you will all four of you sit together as a token of mutual trust and alliance. The three brothers Norn and Alfric Danbrog. Come, let us retire now to the banqueting hall.’
That they did, and soon a most uncomfortable Alfric Danbrog was seated at table with the three brothers Norn. Pig was seated to Alfric’s left and Ciranoush to his right, with Wu a further place to the right. A four person Trough of Friendship was brought forth and set in front of them, that they might all eat from the same dish in token of the truceship to which their king had bound them. A select portion of a gigantic river worm (a worm which was all of a horselength from nose to tail) was placed in that dish, and vegetables mounded on top of it.
A great heat rose from the river worm; and heat likewise flushed forth from the brothers Norn; and further heat assailed Alfric from the hall itself, a hall heated by a full half-dozen blazing fireplaces. It is scarcely surprising that he found himself sweating, and that his neighbours were similarly afflicted.
Certain formalities then took place; then the Wormlord took out his false teeth and wrapped them in a silken handkerchief, and all knew they were free to eat, which they did.
As the banquet got underway, Alfric did his best to ignore the brothers Norn. Easy enough to do, since Justina Thrug was seated opposite, and she was enough to take anyone’s mind off his neighbours. She was a phenomenon.
Justina Thrug was a meaty woman with the most abstraklous history of debauchery. On this occasion, she was rigged out in flame-coloured taffeta most unfitting as wear for one who was a daughter of Lonstantine Thrug. In a further offence against custom, she had brought her pet owl to banquet. The name of the creature was Aquitaine Varazchavardan, a fact which Alfric Danbrog could not help but learn, since Justina often addressed the feathered beast by this name.
(The owl, for its part, said precious little in return.)
It was said that Justina Thrug was truly her father’s daughter, and that nothing could abash her dauntless courage; but Alfric found such rumour hard to credit when he was confronted by this overloud and overweight female, a woman hardly overyoung.
Alfric was glad when the traditional banquet-time storytelling began, for it drowned out the Thrug. The tales that were told were all the usual, traditional stuff. Heroes venturing against those monsters which inhabit the wastelands. The glut of slaughter from the great battles of land and sea. The glory of the poets of the past who won deathless fame by fabling the heroes of such tales. The sacrifices made by those who, eager for fame, paid scant heed to the safety of the house of flesh. The plight of an outcast doomed by the betrayal of his king.
On and on went the storytelling, some in prose and some in verse, but all noble, heroic, inspired by visions of grandeur.
Listening, the Yudonic Knights indulged themselves in heroic ecstasies. They were no longer the inhabitants of a muddy little city in a minor province of the Izdimir Empire; they were not the denizens of an insignificant land half-engulfed by swamp; they were not the members of a bullyboy class dedicated to exploiting the labours of a subdued and sullen peasantry. Rather, they were lordly heroes in a land built for the accommodation of such men; their houses were palaces; their bad-tempered wives were compliant maidens who delighted in braiding broidered silk and looming fleeces for the comfort of their men; their estate was great, and their destiny to be greater yet.
At last, the Wormlord himself got to his feet, and (still without his teeth) began his tale of how he had marched against Her son, had met that monster, and had defeated him.
‘My making was not by way of words moth-eaten. Rather it was through deeds that I became the man you see before you.’
Thus began the Wormlord. And by like boast he continued, until at last his tale was done.
Other boasts followed. Recitals of ancestral sovereignties; of lordly deeds which had set the world aflame with admiration; of the splendour of gold and the open-handed kings who had oft won fame by their dispensing of the same; of savage foes who had marched against the kings, only to be broken and defeated and backdriven by the might of the righteous.
And, for a while, Alfric was buoyed up by this stuff. But after a while it all got too much, and he wished he could leave. But he could not. This was his banquet, put on especially for his honour. If he left before it was finished, he would be insulting his king and his fellows.
In the end, Alfric dared himself away from the table long enough to take a piss — this itself a breach of custom, but he was past caring — only to find another flatulent hero-belcher in action when he returned.
On went the night, full of the wind of words. Of ring-prowed ships; of men in bearskin gloves manning such ships, the masts and sails of the same sheeted with ice; of swords adorned with coiled gold; of steeds with plaited manes, brave beasts which outran the wind; fell monsters encountered and defeated on a murky moor; horns heartening heroes as men graced with deathless courage met their end in contest with onswarming hordes of heartless reptiles; war-arrows embedded in corpses strewn upon steep rocky screens, discarded at the foot of precipitous crags, lying derelict in waters bloody and disturbed.
Of this sang the song-singers; and they sang also of the undisturbed valour of men who died without complaint though they were pierced to the vitals by deadly-barbed boar-spears; and of the outlandish grief which doomed the hero Hroblar to an uncouth death when his hand-meshed battle-corslet animated itself and ate through his flesh to the bone.
Also they sang — there was no stopping it, though Alfric would have been content to see all of creation come to an end rather than endure any more of this stuff — of the weapon-smiths of old and the weapons of their making.
Ah, the weapons!
Iron agleam in moonlight. Deathblades tempered in the blood of warfare. Ripple-patterned damascene slicing through the flesh of alien creatures ravenous for blood. The fighting fangs of heroes. Twist-patterned steel which had dared the hearts of heroes. Swords which lopped hands, which chopped feet, which shortened legs at the knees, which gouged out hearts and vivisected horses, which dissected the aorta and tasted the filth of the lower bowel.
Of such the poets sang, much to the delight of this company of heroes.
Of swords they sang, and of armour.
Buckler’s proof against a basilisk’s breath. Meshed mail. Gaunt helms topped with boars and dragons.
And the journeying, the endless trekking and marching and climbing endured by the thousands of heroes of legend, all of it to be described a footstep at a time, complete with descriptions of the texture of the mud through which they walked, and the very length of the leeches which there battened upon their flesh.
Earth was their way. Mud was their way. Wind was their way. Fire was their way. Ice was their way. Toes and hamstrings. Shins and shoulders. Corpses stretched lifeless. Lordless men manning the bulwark battlements. Heroes doomed to perish from the fiercest of griefs, dying encumbered by battle-hamess, fighting in death in honour of their battle-vows, vaunting their boasts with the blood of their lungs on their lips.
Then at last the boast-telling was over, and serious drinking began. Alfric drank himself, in defiance of his custom. Heard but parts of the tabletalk, that talk rapidly mounting to uproar. Loud, over-loud, striving above all other voices, was that of Justina Thrug, asking a question.
‘What,’ asked Justina, ‘is a virgin?’
Someone volunteered an explanation.
‘Oh!’ said she. ‘Now I remember!’
Then she looked across at Alfric and said:
‘Well, sweet wag, are you happy eating with your friends at that great big blood-brother plate?’
‘Happy enough,’ said Alfric.
Though in fact he was most unhappy at being reminded of the existence of his meal companions. He had (somehow) almost managed to forget about them entirely. Remembering their existence was unpleasant, for they were disg
usting. Ciranoush, just to his right, repeatedly regurgitated his food, chewed the mouthfuls then swallowed again. As for Pig, why, Pig had drenched his food with a most revolting sauce, which was supplemented by a steady drip-drop of sweat which oozed from the bulky face of that entity. Right now, Pig was eating a chicken’s arse, teasing away the delicate flesh, and, into the bargain, eating the yellow knobs of well-cooked yellow chickenshit.
‘More beer, young sir?’ said a waiter.
‘Please,’ said Alfric.
Then realized the waiter was no waiter, no, it was Nappy, Nappy was there, at his elbow, his side, and Alfric was near-paralysed with terror, for he had no help, no chance, no hope, he was doomed, he was done, he was dead, there was no getting away.
But nothing happened.
Nothing happened to Alfric.
Nappy filled Alfric’s mug from a big jug. Then put down the jug. Then Pig Norn was groping at Pig Norn’s throat, clutching and clawing, writhing and striving, but it was no good, no good at all. The garotte was of wire, thin wire deep-biting hard, and Nappy was hauling on the wooden toggles which were tightening the wire.
In desperation, Pig Norn began to thrash about in his chair, trying to overbalance it. But the chair was heavy, solid oak was its weight, and Nappy was strategically positioned, behind Pig and immune to Pig’s fistings and Sailings. And Pig’s feet were starting to drum, to drum, to drumbeat their death, and Pig’s eyes were bulging, swelling, swollen, horror-glazed, hands spasming And And the legs spasming also, the drumbeat a death-rattle, a nothing, with bowels and bladder giving way in the aftermath, and stench rising to an absolute silence, all and everyone transfixed, horrified, all but for one old man singing tum-ti-tum-ti until someone hit him on the head with something hard and he collapsed unconscious.
Nappy loosened the garotte.
Alfric looked (he could not help himself). The line, hard line of the wire, deep-bitten, a red line, red, inflamed, blood oozing actual red where the wire had cut the skin, strength sufficient and you could take off a man’s head, or could you? No, probably not, cutting through the actual spinal column would be too much, and anyway there’s much meat there, a lot of meat, meat stronger than you might expect, stronger Alfric looked away.
The Wormlord was swilling some water round his mouth.
The Wormlord spat into his empty soup bowl.
The Wormlord unwrapped his false teeth and inserted those oratorial aids into his mouth. He had not used them earlier when boasting of the exploits of his youth, but this was a more serious matter.
‘Ciranoush Norn,’ said Tromso Stavenger. ‘It is to you I speak. Wu Norn. It is to you I speak also. Earlier I reserved the right to make an example of a molester of ambassadors. Now I have made such an example. Let this be recorded. We do not permit ambassadors to be molested within our domain. We hope the point is made. Permanently.’
Ciranoush Norn replied:
‘It is.’
His voice was not steady. Even so, Alfric did not doubt the courage of the valorous Ciranoush. The present circumstances would have unsteadied anyone.
‘Good,’ said the Wormlord. ‘Let the banquet resume.’
Diffidently, talk began again. Waiters descended upon the corpse of Pig Norn, rolled it up in a spare tablecloth and dragged it away. The soiled chair was removed and a fresh one substituted; and Nappy seated himself in the fresh chair, and began to banquet himself.
Nappy picked up the chicken’s arse which Pig Norn had been eating. Nappy finished it off with every sign of enjoyment, and washed it down with ale from Pig’s half-empty mug. Nappy wiped his greasy fingers on the tablecloth and beamed in delight.
‘Well,’ said Nappy, ‘this has been an eventful evening, hasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said Alfric unsteadily, trying to remain polite.
And, to Alfric’s mounting horror, Nappy insisted on making further Smalltalk. And still the banquet continued, with Alfric a prisoner of the proceedings since those proceedings were in his honour.
At last, knightly carcasses began to slide beneath the table, the victims of an overconsumption of liquor. As uproar ended and talk lulled away, various untunchilamons came forth from the banquet hall fireplaces to plunder the remnants of the feast. Nappy persuaded one to perch on his finger, and showed it to Alfric.
‘It — it’s beautiful,’ said Alfric awkwardly.
True enough. The tiny dragon shone, glittered and forthblazed like a living gem.
‘It likes me,’ said Nappy simply.
Smiling, smiling.
He was so happy.
He was such a happy fellow.
‘Yes,’ said Alfric, trying to coax sincerity into his voice. ‘I’m sure it does like you.’
‘Most people do, you know,’ said Nappy, ‘once they get to know me.’
‘I’m sure they do,’ said Alfric. ‘And I’m glad I’m getting to know you now.’
This may not seem much of a speech, but it cost Alfric immense effort. He was glad when Nappy was diverted by the spectacle of half a dozen dragons lapping at dregs of spilt ale with their tiny tongues. Soon there were a great many drunken dragons blundering about the banquet table or tracing erratic flightpaths through the air. One maniacal monster started feuding with a candleflame, a sight which Nappy found so droll that he laughed until he cried.
The surviving Norn brothers, Ciranoush Zaxilian and Muscleman Wu, did not laugh.
Nor did they cry.
But Alfric could imagine what they were thinking.
CHAPTER NINE
The next night, Alfric Danbrog rode forth on his second quest. His task was to dare go to the Spiderweb Castle which was guarded by the swamp giant, and there recover the silver sword known as Sulamith’s Grief. Abuneheid was naught but cloud; no glimpse of the welkin wanderer was possible. But Alfric sensed that the moon was above; and sensed too that the moon was swelling, girthing, giving itself to acresce.
He rode alone, but did not consider himself lonely. Nor was he unhappy. For the moment, he welcomed the solitude which gave him the liberty to explore the solipsistic universe of his own thoughts.
The night through which he rode was empty of all human life except his own, which did not displease him. He remembered the absurdity with which the sea dragon Qa had conjured: the spectre of a thousand million people in Yestron. It was impossible, of course. And yet…
What if some nightmare should make it true?
Imagine.
Imagine the people ranked in their tens of millions, their hundreds of millions. Their clattering laughter littering the streets. Their sewage flowing in rivers. Their hair, the growth of it filling warehouses between dusk and dawn. The sheet-sheath growth of their fingernails, a mere fraction of a night’s extension being sufficient to pave a mansion. Sebum and semen, a hundred barrels of each produced each night. The moon’s bloody flux, a stenchtide ravaging through the streets, a periodic disaster itself sufficient to drive the sensitive insane. The very beaches of the Winter Sea bricabraced with goatskin condoms and unwanted abortions, evidence and aftermath of lust.
A thousand million people.
No wolf-haunt wilderness any more, only roads and houses, houses and roads, neighbours forever at squabble over each other’s pigs and chickens, farms pocket-handkerchiefed by the everdivision of inheritance, one man’s water fouled by his neighbour’s leakage, and no act or decision free from scrutiny and interference, the very fact of inevitable observation being a most telling form of such interference.
Nightmaring thus, Alfric shuddered.
It was true that Alfric had his uses for the world of human voices, of beerbreath taverns and vaginal beds, of eyefriendly faces and laughing teeth, of saliva nipples and corrugated ears. Yet, even so, he often resented the existence of other people; and, though he knew Galsh Ebrek to be a small city, and knew Wen Endex to be a land virtually unpopulated, he often felt crushed to a state of claustrophobia by the everpressure of other flesh and other psyches; and, in imagination, co
njured with worlds in which he would be the sole inhabitant, graced by the gift of many years of unimpeded meditation and optional exploration.
In many ways, life in the Bank was ideally suited to Alfric’s temperament. Money is a set of abstractions, and he much preferred abstractions to people; he enjoyed scheming with the unreal, the essentially metaphysical, to create power; and it sometimes seemed to him miraculous that such abstract delights could prove so remunerative in practical terms.
True, Alfric’s job involved a certain amount of human (and inhuman) contact, for as a Banker Third Class he was both diplomat and negotiator.
But a banker need not necessarily treat humans (or inhumans) as if they have any authentic existence in their own right. Rather, they can for the most part be treated as abstractions. As production units, consumption units, statistics to be manipulated by the Equations of Leverage.
And when Alfric negotiated with anyone on behalf of the Bank, he never (or, at least, very rarely) became involved with that person on an emotional level. Thus, though he had made several visits to the Qinjoks, and had dealt effectively with King Dimple-Dumpling on such visits, he was not to any extent personally embroiled in the king’s affairs.
An ideal state of affairs!
But…
If Alfric were to become Wormlord, charged with the governance of Wen Endex and the welfare of all the people of the nation, then things would change. He would inevitably be inextricably tangled in the mesh-work of loyalties and responsibilities which characterizes kingship.
There are empires in which the emperor is a living god and his people are as living trash in his presence. Nevertheless, the reality of the existence of such human garbage is not denied. There are slave states in which the slaves are seen as animals, and are treated as such; or, in some cases, worse treated. Even so, the slaves are real, inescapably real, unavoidably real, the psychic pressure of their existence amply demonstrated by the very complexity of the polite code of manners which makes their sufferings unmentionable.
But…