ARC: The Corpse-Rat King

by Lee Battersby

  It was Marius who, when he reached the bottom of his cups and had brains more booze than substance, would rail at the King and his government, and talk of hiring the storerooms carved into the cliffs below the palace and filling them with gunpowder. And it was Gereth who would laugh, and buy him another pot, and question him endlessly on the how and the when, and the how much.

  And suddenly, Marius was cramped by anger, and betrayal, and the most overwhelming flood of pity he had ever experienced, so that Bomthe’s smug catalogue of events was little more than a buzzing around his head, and when he did, at last, raise his eyes from vel Brinken’s bowed head it was with a look that caused Bomthe to stutter to a halt. The captain took a step back, then recovered himself. He nodded, once, as if confirming an inner suspicion.

  “None of this is familiar to you, Mister Helles?”

  Marius’ lips worked furiously to contain his thoughts, and eventually he controlled them long enough to bite out a single word.

  “No.”

  “Well, then.” Bomthe nodded to Spone. The giant mate reached down and grasped the back of vel Brinken’s hair. He hauled him upright, shifted his grip, and pulled the condemned man’s head back until he stood on his tiptoes, back arched in an obscene parody of a court dancer. Vel Brinken’s eyes stood out white against his bloodied face, fixed upon Marius as if begging him to do something, anything, to relieve his sudden terror. Marius closed his eyes, then slowly opened them again. Vel Brinken saw the deadness in his old friends’ gaze, and his own eyes closed in defeat. Bomthe nodded again. Spone drew his left arm up, then across the line of his prisoner’s taut throat in a single, swift arc. For an instant, nothing happened. Then blood welled up along the cut that Spone’s knife had drawn, and before Marius could draw breath, began to flood down vel Brinken’s throat and into the hairs of his chest. He jerked once, then again, his legs and arms flapping spastically as his body fought to retain the life that flooded out of him. Spone held him effortlessly aloft until the last spasmodic movement ceased and he hung in the mate’s grip like so much meat on a slaughterhouse hook.

  Marius tore his gaze away from the dead man, and saw Bomthe staring at him, his face an expressionless mask. As they matched gazes, Bomthe smiled, a tiny creasing at the corner of his lips.

  “First Mate Spone.”

  “Sir.”

  “Carry out sentence.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  The big man took a step towards the edge of the deck, dragging the two living prisoners, now screaming in uncontrolled terror, behind him. He lifted vel Brinken’s corpse without apparent effort, dragging the next in line upwards as the short chain tightened. With one flick of his enormous arm, Spone threw the dead man overboard.

  The chain between vel Brinken and the next prisoner tautened as his dead body went over the side, immediately pulling him hard against the railing. He stuck there a moment. Marius heard the crunch as the neck brace pulled up hard under the prisoner’s jaw, stretching his neck and pulling him off balance so far that he held on to the railing only by the tips of his whitened fingers. He struggled against it for a moment, but the dead man’s weight was too much. With a short, strangled cry, he was over the edge, his grip tight enough to pull a thin strip of wood from the railing. The last in line toppled over and screamed as he was dragged across the deck to the edge, hands feebly scratching at the floor beneath him. But the momentum ahead of him was too great. In one scrabbling, screaming pile of limbs he went up and over. Three splashes sounded in quick succession, and then there was only silence, and the thin trail of blood left behind by the final captive. Marius and Bomthe stared at each other across the spectacle. Then Bomthe turned, and motioned Marius to follow him. Still not speaking, they stood side by side at the ships’ edge and peered down at the dark water below.

  Where the prisoners had hit Marius could see the frothing passage of at least a dozen sharks, their bodies sliding around each other as they beat the sea to white foam. Gobbets of meat floated to the surface to be instantly snatched and swallowed by the writhing mass.

  “They follow the ship wherever we go,” Bomthe said. “Much easier to feed from the scraps we throw overboard than spend days in fruitless hunting.” When Marius said nothing he tilted his head, and observed him from the corner of his eye. “Who suffered the worst punishment do you think?” He straightened, while his passenger continued to watch the feeding frenzy below. “Master Spone. Escort Mister Helles back to his cabin, please.”

  “Sir.” Spone stepped forward, and laid a hand on Marius’ shoulder. “This way, Mister Helles.”

  Marius turned away from the carnage and walked back to his cell in silence.

  The Faraway Isles, according to those who have endured the eight month journey there and back and lived, is a veritable paradise on Earth. Long, sweeping beaches of golden sand edge forests of such startling beauty that syphilitic artists form orderly queues simply for the chance to paint them and shag the magnificent dark-skinned natives that populate the islands in a heavenly parade of innocence and sensual delight. Trees hang heavy with fruit in a rainbow’s profusion of colours, the tastes and textures of which leave such ordinary repasts as rabbit stew and cabbage potage as ashes in the mouth, and the crystalline blue waters of the shallow bays provide swarms of soft-boned fish that swim straight into a fisherman’s net, and whose flesh flakes so perfectly that once you have tasted it, the mere act of fishing resembles a desecration of God’s will. Assuming the listener is not lost within thoughts of such beauty that questioning them becomes impossible, it is often tempting to ask why the storyteller returned to tell the tale, why, indeed, he isn’t still lying on those golden sands, eating the perfect fish, and showing the beautiful native girls that little trick he picked up at Madame Mirabella’s House of Relaxation. The answer is invariably the same: “The captain caught me.”

  By contrast, the Dog Crap Archipelago looks exactly how it sounds.

  Discovered less than four hundred years ago by the famous Tallian adventurer “Literal” Edmund Bejeevers, the Dog Crap Archipelago lay like a giant turd across the passage between Borgho City and the Faraway isles. Early explorers found nothing there to recommend the place to anybody, and indeed, early maps show a simple ovoid outline with the words “Don’t Bother” written inside. A long, dripping string of shallow volcanic outpourings, its only advantage lay in a number of tiny freshwater lakes, and its location, halfway between Borgho and the Isles. They were a perfect place to lie up and replenish water supplies, as well as discard the barrels of waste and refuse that accumulated on the long voyages between ports.

  Those early explorers bought rats – which leaped ship at the sight of land – and chickens, which had occasionally escaped their ship-board pens. Pet dogs were thrown overboard by sailors who had tripped over the bloody mutts once too often. Sick cattle were disposed of on the basis that it’s bad enough tripping over pet dogs all day without landing face first in liquid cow shit.

  The cows shat, the rats ate the garbage, and the discarded pets ate the rats. Seeds fell from pelts, or flew in on the wind. The islands were home to no natural predators. In truth, they had no natural anything before those early explorers arrived.

  Within three hundred years, the first natives arrived.

  Refugees from who knows where, it was left to the idle to wonder at what kind of society they had fled that a shit-stained island full of feral dogs and rats seemed a better alternative. But arrive they did, and claimed the archipelago for themselves, and began trading with the, frankly, astonished traders who still stopped there and were more than happy to start charging for the things they had previously thrown away for free. In no time at all, the Dog Crap Archipelago enjoyed a status in trading circles that “Literal” Bejeevers could hardly have envisaged, and which had otherwise escaped his other major discoveries.

  It was Captain Bomthe’s intention to spend a week on the main island, to sell their waste and restock their stores with fresh water and fruit-gorged ca
ttle carcasses. It was Marius’ intention to stay in his cabin and ignore the entire escapade. As a plan it was foolproof, for all of seventy-two hours.

  Marius was lying on the floor, concentrating on a most ingeniously drawn pamphlet he’d discovered wedged into the space between two loose wall planks regarding the Queen of Tal and various members of her palace guard, when the sound of arriving cattle was replaced by a much more urgent commotion. Marius closed the pamphlet and lay with it on his chest, listening to the drama outside. He was trying to decide whether to rise and see whether the change in atmosphere was worth his attention, when there came a thunderous banging on his door, and Figgis came barrelling in.

  “Captain’s compliments, sir,” he said, drawing up short and averting his eyes, breathing heavily. “Your presence is required on the poop deck as soon as possible, if you please. Very important, sir.”

  Marius had rolled over and pulled his hood forward so that the young cabin boy could not see his face. He spoke round the corner of the hood. “Thank you, Figgis. I’ll be along presently.”

  The young messenger shifted his feet nervously but kept his ground. He stared at the planking before him. Marius sighed.

  “Should I apologise, Master Figgis?”

  Still the boy said nothing. Marius counted to three, then pulled himself up and turned his back on the waiting figure. He peeked at the skin beneath the edge of his glove, and saw it was grey, and rotting.

  “For what it’s worth, I hope it wasn’t too severe a beating,” he said, staring at his deadened flesh. “There will be worse once you’re an adult.” He smoothed down his glove, and straightened. “Away with you, now, and leave me to get ready.”

  In truth, he had nothing to do, but the less the crew knew of his particular habits, the safer he would feel. He may be able to survive a one way dip in the ocean, but he had no desire to walk all the way to the Faraway Isles underwater, or to discover how much of his flesh would survive the pursuing fish. Figgis silently left, closing the door gently behind him, and Marius sat on the edge of the ledge until he had estimated a sufficient time to wash and towel himself down. Only then did he stand, and emerge into the blast of the midday sun.

  The deck of the Minerva looked like the aftermath of a particularly vicious bar fight. The planks were awash with blood, and teams of navvies swept it over the side with massive-headed brooms. Towards the prow, the cargo doors were open. Haunches of meat were being lowered on ropes to the lower deck, where they would be smoked and cured for the journey ahead. Natives from the island ran here and there, carrying baskets of fruit upon their head, sternward along the side of the deck to where Marius knew more open doors would lead to yet more storage decks. The ever-present escaped chickens screeched as they careened across deck, the mate’s boy and his cronies in hot pursuit. Everything was bedlam as a hundred or more bodies wove and ducked past each other, orders were shouted and acknowledged, and the casual brutality of the officers was played out with languid good nature upon the straining backs of the crew. Overhead, the sun dominated yet another cloudless sky, adding its vindictive heat to the sticky atmosphere on board. Marius shaded his eyes with one gloved hand, and offered thanks to no god at all that being dead absolved him from the need to sweat. There was enough stench of unwashed humanity already without him adding to it.

  “Ah, Mister Helles. My thanks for joining us.” Captain Bomthe swung down from the poop deck to stand beside Marius. Marius glanced at him, and once again marvelled at how a man could stand in the midst of carnage and stink and yet look as if he had just emerged from a leisurely tea with the nobility. After a week of observing his ever-present starched uniform and stainless shirts, Marius had formed a fantasy: a cupboard in the captain’s quarters, with six months’ worth of identical uniforms on hangers, each one bearing a tag describing the day of the week to be worn, the exact time to be discarded, and the level of smugness to which the captain was entitled. Today was a day of high smug, judging by the tilt of the captain’s smoothly-shaved chin. At least I can match that, Marius thought, and I don’t have to risk a cut to do so. He nodded, and turned his attention back to the deck.

  “Are you ready to depart, then?”

  “I’m sorry?” Marius turned from the spectacle below. “What do you mean, depart?”

  “Didn’t Figgis explain?” The captain frowned. “I told him to fetch you.” He tutted. “I’m going to grow weary of beating that boy.”

  I doubt he’d say the same if the positions were reversed, Marius thought, but kept silent.

  “Perhaps you might fill in any missing details,” he said instead. The captain tilted onto his toes, then brought his heels back onto the deck with a crisp thump and began to stride down stairs and across the deck. Marius hurried to keep pace.

  “We’re to go ashore,” the captain said as they walked. “Big occasion for the natives, don’t you know. Death of the high muckamuck. Honoured guests of the royal family. Observe the funeral, eat the meal, swear in the new head banana, that sort of thing.”

  “Dead king?” Marius stopped in his tracks. Behind him a cow mooed, and he jumped forward before it could butt him out of the way. He stared towards the shore, blinking in shock as a hundred different possibilities presented themselves for consideration.

  “Yes. Quite sudden, apparently. Probably choked on a monkey or something.” Bomthe chuckled, and Marius assumed that the comment passed for humour wherever he came from. “Anyway, we’re for the off if we want to be presented to the wife and kids before teatime. I’ll be representing the Kingdom of Scorby, naturally, and you…”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, you paid for the trip. Thought you might like a free feed into the bargain.” Bomthe laughed again at his natural wit, and resumed his walk. “Come along now. Mustn’t be late. They may not be real royalty but I still don’t fancy a spear in the belly, yes?”

  The belly wasn’t the first part of Bomthe that Marius would stick a spear into, but he dogged the captain’s heels and followed him across deck to a rope ladder and down into a rowboat tied alongside. He’d had no desire to set foot on the island, but this new development merited all sorts of investigation. He may not be a real king, Marius decided as they pulled away from the side of the Minerva, but he’d do.

  FIFTEEN

  The island was not only as bad as it sounded, Marius thought as he stood ankle-deep in the scummy wash and watched sailors pull the longboat up the rocky beach, it was as bad as it could be made to sound. They had landed in the centre of a curving beach that provided the only stretch of sand on this side of the island, and now stood exposed on a wind-scoured strip of grey pebbles. Behind them lay a fringe of whitened, low-lying scrub and a few stunted trees that leaned over in the wind like pensioners at a soup kitchen. At the far end of the beach, in the dubious shelter of a small, twisted copse, a collection of huts marked the beginnings and end of human habitation at this end of the peninsula. As far as Marius could tell, none of the pathetic flora of the island had been harmed in the construction of the village. Instead, it appeared as if the huts had been cobbled together from whatever flotsam had washed up on the shore over the last three hundred years, as well as a smattering of items that could only have been stolen from visiting ships. Surely, no captain would willingly let go of the map board that served as the window shutter of that hut there, for example, or the collection of hand mirrors that tinkled in the wind from their current duty as some sort of half-assed mobile in that hut over there’s half-assed garden.

  A group of barely-dressed natives lounged under the trees, watching with disinterest as the crew swore and strained to drag the boat above the water line. Marius stared back at them, a look of deeply-held pain scrawled across his features. Eventually, the sounds of cursing withered away, and Marius glanced over his shoulder to see Bomthe lining the sailors up into some sort of ragged double line. He turned, and nodded to Marius with a smile.

  “Shall we proceed, Mister Helles?”

  Marius raise
d a hand towards the village. “Where? There?”

  “That’s right. Stand up, Wellings!” He slapped at one of the slouching crew members, who responded by stiffening almost an entire centimetre. “The King’s family will be expecting us.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “Kidding?” Bomthe’s smile was as nasty as the wind. “Why would I kid, Mister Helles? This village controls the only safe embarkation point on the entire southern peninsula. Any trade that comes, comes through here. In local terms, these people are the rich and noble. If we wish to continue trading with them, we need to make with the nicey nicey. Adjust that scabbard, Pergess, or you’ll be using it to carry your pego.” From the speed with which the sailor in question complied, Marius was only half-sure the threat was idle. Finally satisfied with the comportment of his troops, Bomthe swung around and raised his hand. “Ready, men. Mister Helles?”

  Grudgingly, Marius trudged out of the surf to stand at Bomthe’s side.

  “Forward!” As one, the detachment strode ahead, or rather, they shuffled and slid across the rolling pebbles beneath their feet, stifling whatever curses sprung to their chapped and bitten lips. The natives waited until the column was almost upon them. Then one of the older men leaned down and cuffed a boy sitting at his feet, who slowly rose and wandered down into the village, kicking at the ripples of sand that marked the short path.

  “Halt!” Bomthe commanded. The column shuffled to a stop. Marius stared into the centre of the half dozen huts. A small trestle had been erected in front of the largest of them, a pile of foot-long strips of bark to one side. Arranged along the table’s length were more strips. On top of them lay a range of unidentifiable lumps of various dull colours. Past the trestle, a spit turned over a small fire, staffed by a bare-breasted teenage girl who frowned with concentration as she pulled something from one nostril with an extended finger and flicked it into the fire. The creature on the spit could have been no more unmistakably a dog if it still wore its tags. Marius swallowed, and was answered by the taste of bile.