by Hugh Cook
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.
'Drake,' said Yot, in a pale voice, 'I can ... I can be of use to you.'
'Can you now?' said Drake. 'I don't really think so. I've got more taste than to want to bugger you. And I'd never let you suck anything you might just possibly bite off. But I can use you for fish bait - if the fish aren't too fussy tomorrow. And that's about all that you're good for.'
'Drake, I can - I can tell you things.'
'Tell me things? Like what? Like the precise and exact taste of Gouda Muck's arsehole?'
'Drake . . . things about home. You know. Cam. Your uncle. Your parents. Drake, your brother Heth.'
'Yes, and how hot the sun was, and how cold the rain,' said Drake, pretending news of Heth meant nothing to him.
But Yot knew better.
'Drake, I saw Heth just before I left Stokos last, and that was recent. He was come to Cam to marry.'
Drake gave no verbal acknowledgment of interest, but the intensity went out of his knife-sharpening. Stokos! Cam! His uncle! His parents! Heth!
'Your uncle paid for the marriage. Yes, that's why it was in Cam.'
Drake pretended not to hear, but his sharpening strokes got slower and slower, and little tears pricked his eyes. It had been so long since he saw the Home Island last, so long since he wandered its streets of forge-hammering and coal dust.
'Tell me then,' said Drake at last, emotion beginning to choke his voice. 'Tell me about all of it.'
So Yot began to talk, and fear gave him eloquence. The words poured out of him, and what he didn't know he invented.
Before he had gone too far, Drake was offering him some ale to moisten his throat. Then, after a few tales more, he insisted that Yot must eat, yes, and change into fresh sealskins which Drake would lend him. And when at last Yot had talked himself out, Drake sat rocking on his heels for a while, stroking King Tor with an absent-minded hand and brooding.
'Well now,' said Drake, 'that was worth hearing and all. Come - there's a banquet tonight to mark the end of Slaving Day. It's a good do, or so I've heard. Will you come with me? We'll get some real food and good drink with it, then talk some more.'
'If you don't mind,' said Yot, still in that same pale voice, 'I'd rather rest a bit if I may.'
'For sure,' said Drake, content, and glutted with nostalgia. 'You can do what you want. We'll be together plenty in the future, as we make you into a pirate.'
'I'm not sure I've really got what it takes to be a pirate,' said Yot.
'Don't run yourself down,' said Drake. 'Be brave! Be strong! Be confident! Come now - rest, and we'll talk again tomorrow.'
So Drake took himself off to the banquet, alone, and a great treat it was. Musicians from the kingdom of Sung played for them, so they ate to the accompaniment of the skirl of the skavamareen, and the uproar of krymbol and kloo. Naked bodies danced for their delight, and performed charades of love by flaring torchlight. There was food by the table-load, with plenty of lobster, crab, gaplax and crayfish. It was a well-organized affair, with an unending supply of good drink, and plenty of buckets to vomit into.
Drake indulged himself, drinking cold rice wine and warm brown beer. It bolstered his ego to know the others were admiring him as he quaffed down quantities of alcohol which would have killed an ordinary man, and, what's more, would have embalmed the corpse into the bargain.
The banquet finally reached the rowdy stage, with knife-throwing and wrist-wrestling, a brawl, and some extra-special entertainment laid on by Jon Arabin, who whipped one of his wives raw in public, having caught her out in adultery.
Drake left shortly afterwards, staggering markedly as he quit the banquet, so his future gambling partners would register the fact that he could indeed get drunk like other mortals. Actually, he was not even slightly tipsy - but, by the time he reached his home cave, he was staggering a little for real, out of sheer fatigue.
A low-burning whale oil lamp showed Drake that Yot was curled up in a corner. A number of things in the cave had been shifted - his bean bag, rocking chair, laundry basket, sea-chest, water cask, oil barrel, fishing tackle, harpoon rack and wardrobe. Had Yot been searching the cave? Or had some villain taken advantage of the banquet, and of Yot's deep sleep (or complaisant terror) to rummage the cave in search of Drake's fabled gambling treasure?
Drake was too tired to care either way. He knew Yot was no danger to him, for Drake was now the nearest thing to a friend that Yot had in all the Greater Teeth. And as for the gambling treasure - why, that was safely hidden in five separate places, and even at low tide the shallowest of those places demanded a three-fathom dive.
'We'll have to teach you to be a guard dog as well,' said Drake to King Tor, scratching that dignitary behind the ears. 'Or maybe I should start keeping geese.'
And, with that, he laid himself down on his pallet and pulled the blankets over himself, without bothering to undress or take off his boots. King Tor nosed his way under the blankets. Drake took the dog into his arms, and they cuddled together in an indiscriminate heap, sharing each other's fleas.
Very late at night, as Drake and dog lay snoring, Sully Datelier Yot roused his flesh to wakefulness and got to his feet. He extracted a shark-killing knife from the tangle of Drake's fishing tackle, raised the blade to his lips and kissed it. Then, shaking with fear but unshakable in his resolve, he bent over his sleeping enemy and struck with all his force.
The knife went home.
'Die, Demon-spawn!' screamed Yot.
And struck again, even as Drake heaved up from the bed. Drake rolled away, pulling a blanket with him. He swore viciously and whipped the blanket at Yot's knifehand. As wool entangled steel, Drake closed the distance.
They grappled, all knees, elbows and panting bones. Drake got a stranglehold. With hands that were wet with blood, he choked his enemy, squeezing his fingers deep and hard to the windpipe.
Once sure that Yot was dead, Drake threw the body outside, and hurled the bloody dog-corpse after it.
'Sleep with the man you murdered!' shouted Drake at the corpse. 'It's your one chance to sleep with your betters!'
Then stalked around his cave, kicking things until he had exhausted his anger. Then started to shake, as the shock of his brush w
ith death set in. Then began to cry, first for poor King Tor, and then for his own exiled condition, and then simply because he was over-tired and heavily stressed.
Then he did the sensible thing, which his mother would have recommended had she been there, and went back to sleep for the rest of the night. Only his mother would have insisted that he take his boots off first.
When morning came, Drake was disgusted to find that Yot was still alive. He had thick black bruises on his throat, true, but could still walk and talk and breathe, eat and drink - he was, in short, a living demonstration of the difficulties attendant on killing a properly constructed human being.
Abject in fear, Yot knelt at Drake's feet, snivelling once more.
'Give me one good reason why I shouldn't kill you,' roared Drake. 'Just one!'
'I had to kill you,' sobbed Yot. 'I had to. I didn't want to, but it was my duty. I like you, Drake, honestly, but you're - you're a son of the Demon.'
'By the oath I am!' said Drake. 'And proud of it! That's the way my father raised me, and that's how he'd have me be!'
'No, not that kind of son. A true son. Flesh of the Demon's flesh. Spawn of his spawn. He came from the halls of hell to take your mother by night.'
Drake considered this intriguing notion for a few moments.
'I've never heard such nonsense in all my life,' said Drake. 'But supposing it was true, I'd take it as a compliment. To me, for my parentage. To my mother, for attracting such high-born attention. And to my childhood's father, for winning a woman the Demon himself would want.'
'But it means you're evil, don't you see? The Demon's the enemy of the Flame. That's why Gouda Muck sent us.'
'Sent you? '
'Yes. Fifty of us. All over the world. Looking for you. To - to - well. . .'
'To kill me?' asked Drake. 'Well, yes.'
At first Drake was incredulous. Then he remembered his last visit to Narba. Then an old face from Stokos, a past neighbour of Gouda Muck, had made a diligent attempt to knife Drake properly.
'Fifty looking for me!' said Drake. 'How many worshippers has the Flame claimed, then?'