by Hugh Cook
'I need a drink,' said Drake, after the first kata.
'Booze is the last thing you need,' said the instructor.
'I didn't meant liquor, I mean water.'
'Why would you be needing that? Because you've got the dry horrors, I suppose. And whose fault is that? You young kids! You shouldn't be allowed to drink.'
'Liquor is holy,' said Drake. 'The High Priest says so.'
'Steel is also holy.'
'Who said that?' demanded Drake.
'I did!' said the instructor.
And kick-started his recalcitrant student.
Drake felt as if he was breathing a mixture of thorns and ashes. As the sun lifted itself above the wall of the sword field, his head began to throb. Yot - lanky, wart-faced, a vapid smile on his lips - was just dancing through the motions, holding his sword lightly, loosely, as if its hilt were a little girl's hand. How come Yot had all that height, when he had no decent use for it? Round and round they went, their shadows scuffling in the dust. And suddenly Drake could stand it no longer, and, with an almighty sweep, brought the flat of his blade crashing into the flat of Dragon's Tooth, knocking that sword right out of Yot's hand.
'Gaaa!' screamed Drake.
Hacking at his disarmed enemy.
He tried to halt his blade as it reached Yot's skin. But, despite all Drake's skill, Yot got a cut on the side of his neck. It was tiny - no more than a boy would get from scratching away a pimple. But Yot touched it, then, seeing blood on his fingers, fainted clean away. Yot had never liked the sight of blood - especially his own.
'Dogs, pox and buggeration!' said the instructor. 'Get out of my sight!'
'As you wish,' said Drake.
And strode toward the exit, weapon in hand.
'Hey!' said the instructor. 'Come back! You've left something behind!'
'What, Yot? He'll come on his own two feet once he gets his wits back.'
'No, ninny. This!'
And the instructor held up for Drake's inspection a strange little bit of hooked iron which he had fished out of the dust.
'What's that?' said Drake.
'It's a letter, you illiterate son of an octopus. The letter Acowae, in fact.'
'Well where did that come from?'
'Out of your sword, moron. Look!'
And, looking, Drake saw an indentation in the flat of his sword which precisely matched the shape of the bit of iron which the instructor alleged was the letter Acdwae.
'Look closely,' said the instructor. 'There's other iron letters in the steel. See? They spell out a word. A foreign word, yes, in one of the languages of Provincial Ender-geneer. I won't tax your brain by making you learn it. But I'll tell you what it means. It means "think before using"!'
And, having warned Drake that he would be taking the matter up with Gouda Muck, the instructor bid him good day.
Back at the forge, Muck was furious.
'Well, I wasn't to know,' said Drake. 'I didn't even know there were iron-bits there to start with.'
'I told you to Investigate!' said Muck. 'Haven't you learnt anything?'
'As much as I've been taught,' said Drake.
Muck stared at him, speechless, face saying:
Once Muck had recovered his voice, he used it to baste his apprentice nicely, then gave him a lecture on iron inlay.
'It sounds right fancy stuff,' said Drake. 'But how come we never do it here?'
'Because the best steel needs no adornment,' said Muck. 'Watch close. I'll show you how to replace this missing iron letter. We'll start from scratch.'
And Muck showed Drake how to make a new letter by twisting bits of iron wire together. Then, with the blade white-hot, the cold iron was hammered into place.
'Now,' said Muck. 'We take the blade to welding heat and do just a little extra hammering to make sure the iron inlay stays there for a lifetime. What's welding heat, boy?'
'Don't know,' said Drake.
'It's about a thousand degrees on the Saglag Scale, where zero is the temperature at which shlug freezes, and fifty is the temperature at which that thixotropic fluid known as dikle suddenly trembles into fluid. What does thixotropic mean, boy?'
'It means the heat at which dips jiffle,' said Drake.
Which was obscene, and uncalled for, and untrue to boot, and earned him a slap around the ears, that stung.
But it was a mere flea-bite compared to the beating he got the next day, after Gouda Muck had heard from the sword field instructor (whose truths conflicted somewhat with the tale Drake had brought back to the forge), from a man who sold watermelons, and from the Protector of the Royal Trees.
After the beating, Drake, somewhat tearful, confronted Muck.
'All you do is kick me and hit me,' said Drake.
'Well, what else can I do?' said Muck. 'You won't listen, you won't learn, you won't do as you're told.'
'You could teach me how to make swords,' said Drake. 'That's what I'm here for. I've been here four years, and what have you taught me? Levil Norkin is only fifteen, and he made his first sword a year ago.'
'Then maybe he'll finish up as a swordsmith,' said Gouda Muck.
'You mean I won't?' said Drake in dismay.
'You don't get to be a swordsmith by spending your apprenticeship boozing, fighting, wenching and gambling,' said Muck. 'Have you never thought of that?'
Drake made no reply.
'Well?'said Muck.
'I never got much encouragement,' said Drake. 'It's your life, not mine,' said Muck. 'You're not a child! Your life is what you make it.' 'Do I—'
'Do you still have a chance? You may have. A slim chance, mind! But a chance, all the same. It really depends what you want out of life. Do you want to be a swordsmith? Or do you want to go back and live as your parents do?'
Drake thought of his parents and the life they lived, cutting coal out of the cliffs, gathering seaweed, fishing off the Wrecking Rocks. No, that was not what he wanted. Not at all.
'I. . . I love steel,'said Drake, in a slow and sober voice. 'There's . . . there's a special light about steel. It shines. I like—'
'Spare me the poetry!' said Muck. 'I'll tell you what. If you promise to work hard, really hard, I' 11 let you start your first sword tomorrow.'
'Really?'said Drake.
'When did I ever speak in jest?' said Muck. 'Done!' said Drake. 'It's a bargain!'
'Right,' said Muck. 'Now hustle off, or you'll be late for your theory class.'
As Drake sped away to his theory class, he exulted. So he was going to start on the real stuff at last! After all these years of sweeping, shovelling, pumping the bellows, grinding, sharpening and patching. He was going to be a real swordsmith, and make his own blade.
Wow!
'Great stuff!' said Drake. 'Great stuff!'
And then, in two more years he would be a swordsmith himself, with apprentices of his own to beat about the ears.
Or so he thought.
In practice, it did not prove that easy.
For, half-way through his theory class, guards burst into the classroom.
'Dreldragon Drakedon Douay,' said their leader. 'Where are you?'
'Here,' said Drake.
'You're under arrest.'
'Arrest?' said Drake. 'Whatever for?'
'Don't ask questions. Come with us!'
And Drake was marched through the streets of Cam to the Iron Palace, where he was thrown into a cell, and told he would stand trial before King Tor in the morning.
'What have I done wrong?' wailed Drake.
'Boy, don't ask me,' said his gaoler. 'But unless you've been very, very good of late, you can expect to get your head chopped off tomorrow. The king's lately been in the worst of tempers imaginable.'
Which was bad news indeed. For King Tor was an ogre - and the temper of an ogre is never the sweetest of things at the best of times.
2
Name: Parry Iklemass Tinklebeth Terrorjaw Tor. (NB: by law, none may address the king by any of his three first names, on pain of deat
h.)
Birthplace: Cam.
Occupation: king.
Status: absolute ruler of Stokos.
Description: an ogre twice man-height; width almost equal to height; elephant-style ears; tusks jutting downwards from upper jaw; age 54; hair black; eyes blue; six fingers on each hand; grey skin patterned like that of a crocodile.
Residence: the Iron Palace of Cam.
When night came, Drake hunched up in a corner of his cell and tried to get to sleep. It was almost impossible. The darkness echoed with the crash of great doors, the tramp of iron-shod boots, the garbled intercourse of coarse voices, occasional screams and the racket of hyena-flavoured laughter.
Sitting in darkness, breathing an ineffable jail-stench in which the reek of blocked drains predominated, Drake imagined he heard rats moving in his cell on razor-clawed feet. He thought he heard them sharpening their teeth against the cold tombstone-sized slabs of the floor. At last he fell asleep and dreamed - briefly - of the sword he would make with the help of Gouda Muck.
He woke to find things crawling over his face. He beat at them, knocking them into the dark. Spiders? Cockroaches? Something went whirling round his cell with a staccato clitter-clatter of wings.
'Grief,' muttered Drake.
And found himself unable to regain the realms of sleep. When morning came, the gaoler served breakfast, which was a jug of water and a bowl of fish chowder. 'What happens now?' said Drake. 'Now? Why, your trial starts shortly.' 'Good,' said Drake.
He was glad, for a prompt trial meant he would soon be out of here. Excellent! He was in a hurry to return to Hardhammer Forge. He wanted to get down to work, yes, to start on his first sword. Surely King Tor would let him go. What had he done wrong? Nothing serious..
Drake thought Tor might even give him some compensation for false arrest and wrongful imprisonment.
Yes.
'Rise and shine,' said the gaoler, interrupting Drake's calculations of probable compensation. 'We're going to the Iron Hall.'
Shortly Drake was shown into the Iron Hall of the Iron Palace. He had never been in a building so large, or so full of noise and people. Once there, sitting on a hard wooden bench, watching King Tor administer justice, Drake swiftly began to change his mind about his prospects.
The ruler of Stokos seemed to take law and life very seriously indeed.
Again and again Tor cried:
'Off with his head!'
It seemed to be the king's favourite punishment.
Pleas for mercy did no good. Neither did grovelling. One particularly abject petitioner crawled to the throne and started licking the king's clawed feet. The snivelling fool was promptly kicked to death for his cowardice.
'Be bold,' muttered Drake to Drake.
'What did you say?' demanded a guard.
'I said, funny how there's so much iron in this place,' said Drake.
'Oh,' said the guard. 'That's easy enough explained. Things human-built tend to break when an ogre gets hold of them. The king's always complaining about how fragile everything is.'
'Oh,' said Drake, eyeing the king.
Who sat on a throne of black iron. Wearing leather trousers and a leather jacket, both studded with iron. Refreshments on an iron table beside him: live frogs in a huge bowl of cast iron. Blood in a chalice of wrought iron. A heap of mules' eyes on a plate of pig iron. At his feet, a gryphon.
'What,' said Drake, 'am I charged with?'
'You expect a bill of particulars?' said the guard, with a laugh. 'We're not so stupid. If you knew what you were charged with, you'd be inventing lies and fantasizing alibis right now. Wouldn't you?'
'I'd be doing no such thing,' said Drake, indignantly. 'I'm a humble, law-abiding apprentice. And very religious into the bargain.'
'We'll see about that,' said the guard. 'Your case is next.'
Upon which King Tor pronounced sentence on his latest victim:
'Cut off the top of his head then feed him his own brains.' Drake shivered. And an orderly shouted:
'Dreldragon Drakedon Douay! Be upstanding! Advance to receive justice!'
Drake got to his feet and strode forward with as much of a swagger as he could manage. His body was alive with frantic pulses. His heart was asking for out. His arsehole was quivering. His knees trembled.
He halted, ten paces in front of the king. Set his feet shoulder-width apart. And tensed the muscles in his legs, to keep them from shaking. He eyed the king's gryphon uneasily. The brute appeared to be asleep, its purple wings folded against its tawny lionskin body. On its great hooked eagle's beak was what looked suspiciously like dried blood.
'What have you been doing wrong?' said Tor, in a buffalo-built voice.
'Man,' said Drake, in a loud voice which rang against stone and against iron, 'you're real hot on wrong. How about some right for a change? If it pleases your majesty - and even if it doesn't - I've done a good bit right in my time. Yes. Good work at the forge. Good work with steel. Good work at sword, too.'
King Tor snorted.
'Don't snort so quick!' said Drake. 'It's logic, isn't it? Right should mean as much as wrong. But here you only talk of wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. All about error. Well, I say this. Maybe I killed a couple of watermelons. Maybe I took a little twig off a tree - sorry about that, your ugliness, but it'll live. Anyway, those are only little wrongs. The great rights of my life should cancel them out altogether.'
'You're talking nonsense,' said King Tor.
'Not so!' exclaimed Drake. 'Man, you should set up a court of rights as well as a court of wrongs. I volunteer for trial in such a court. I guarantee I'd walk away with reward rather than punishment. Stands to reason, doesn't it? If wrongs deserve punishment, rights deserve rewards. And in my case, rights outweigh wrongs by nine thousand to one.'
Tor laughed. Even at ten paces, Drake was assailed by royal halitosis. Tor's breath stank like a heap of guts which has sat for twenty-four days in a midden pit. Drake did his best not to flinch.
'Let's see, little mannikin,' said King Tor. 'Let's see exactly what you're charged with. Bring in the witnesses!'
While Drake was still suppressing his indignation about being called a mannikin, the witnesses trouped in. And a long line they made. They began to give evidence.
There was the watermelon seller.
There was the Protector of the Royal Trees.
There was the owner of a certain coal cart.
There was the owner of a certain house which had been wrecked by a certain coal cart.
There was the father of agirl of fourteen whom Drake had deflowered on his birthday.
There was the owner of a certain boat which was somewhat the worse for wear as a consequence of Drake's birthday celebrations.
There was—
But why go on? It is a long list, and the recital of such a list would not increase the world's wisdom, and might well give the unwise certain ideas they would be better of f not having.
Once the witnesses had finished, King Tor said:
'What have you got to say for yourself?'
'What have I got to say for myself?' said Drake. 'Why, that I'd like to marry your daughter. For I'm just the man, as the witnesses have proved. Yea. For I am strong, brave, determined, resolute in decision, ruthless in action, swift, cunning, subtle as a serpent, fit, healthy, and the boldest cocksman who ever stalked the streets of Cam.'
'Do your talents excuse you from obedience to the law?' said King Tor, in something which sounded fearfully like anger.
'Man,' said Drake. 'There's no excuse needed. Those petty little quibbling pranks hardly rate a slap on the hand, far less the greater punishments. Why, they're all but boyish larks of one kind or another.
'And I'll have you know this. That girl wasn't much of a virgin, she'd had her father and brother before me.
'As for the other things, why, most of them weren't my fault either. They were the fault of the way the world' s built. It's a right flimsy place, your majesty, not built to take the s
train of hard-living men like you and me. Why, if that cart had been built proper, it would never have ruptured when it hit that wall. That wall wasn't built well, either, or it would have stopped the cart. And that boat wasn't up to much, either.
'All in all, if you must talk punishment, I think you could let me get away with all this for no more than a slap on the hand.'
King Tor sat in thought.
He drank a draught of blood. Good stuff! He burped, and wiped his lips. He plucked a frog from the snack-bowl and munched it down. Ah! Great eating!
'Well,' said King Tor. 'We were all young once.'
Drake waited.
The king drank some more blood.
A little dripped from his lips to his leather trousers.
'You're right,' said King Tor. 'Those were but boyish pranks. So I'll let you off lightly. We'll have you birched in public today. You spend tonight buried to the neck in the public dungheap. Towards morning, we'll put you on a boat. Three leagues from shore, you'll be thrown overboard. That is my justice!'
Drake knew he had got a good deal. But he could not resist the impulse to push his luck.
'Man,' said Drake, 'my offer for your daughter still holds good.'
Tor sat in silence, staring at Drake. Then:
'You have a very high opinion of yourself,' said Tor.
'I'm a man's man, man,' said Drake, wishing he had kept quiet.
Tor considered. There was, for once, something close to silence in the Iron Hall. Everyone assembled wanted to hear the king's judgment. Would this boy get to marry Hilda, the king's daughter? Or would he be torn to pieces on the spot for his impudence?
'You hold yourself nicely enough,' said Tor, slowly. 'But substance may differ from appearance. That three-league swim from sea to shore should tell us rather more about you. If ... if you can make it back to my palace before sunset, then you're the man to marry my daughter.'
'Why, that's right handsome ofyou,' said Drake. 'It's a deal.'
And they shook on it. As Tor's six-fingered hand closed on Drake's, the ogre squeezed. Just slightly. Drake winced, and squeezed back.
'Good muscles there,' said Tor, approvingly. 'Good luck!'
'Thought of the fair visage of your daughter will sustain me, sire,' said Drake gravely. Tor laughed, released Drake and clapped his hands. 'Take him away!' said Tor.