Wolf's-head, Rogues of Bindar Book I

by Chris Turner

  “‘Forked tongue’ is actually an epithet that comes to mind,” emphasized Baus.

  Skarrow, Madluck, and Mulfax took up their jars once again. But they were not half way down the boulevard before Tilfgurd abandoned his load, frightened out of his wits at Salmeister’s sallow-cheeked grimace that peeked back at him. Smiss and Tilfgurd argued amongst themselves. Who was to carry their loads? Smiss suddenly refused to exchange jars with Tilfgurd.

  Graves, weary of the charade, grabbed Tilfgurd by the ear and dragged him along the street, while the Captain turned his attention to a chuckling Nuzbek who glanced smugly back.

  “This reminds me—where are those females attendants of yours?”

  Nuzbek snorted, “They could be half-way to Owlen for all I know. They are capable women.”

  Loops put in: “I spied the tall brunette playing up to old Calestum at the Fisherman’s Pump earlier this evening.”

  “Eh?” grunted Graves. “Which one?”

  “The one with the vampish smile—and vivacious swagger . . . Nadir, or something like that.”

  “That hardly narrows it down. All Nuzbek’s dames look like that.”

  “Captain, you remember the spunky, raven-haired filly with whom we experienced the most funk . . . ? We were trying to control the mob turned on Nuzbek’s crew when—”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “Come to think of it, the other lady cronies were striving to net Retrar and Douyou, and not making a bad go of it. They were all tucking it up, slogging four pots of ale when I left the Fisherman’s pub—that was at half past nine.”

  Graves gave his knee a slap. “Well Nuzbek, your dames seem to know their business. How be it that you, Smiss, and Dunkin, leave our magician and his two thunderbrains to their ruminations and go gather them up. I’m considering everybody accomplices in this charade. Human-shrinking and bottle-caching! What degeneracy!—” he gave a thoughtful murmur “—unless, of course the attendants can cajole their way out of a charge.” He left the idea hanging while slipping a meaningful wink at his mates.

  The front line of officers laughed.

  Nuzbek bristled with outrage. “What kind of an operation are you running here, Graves?”

  “A profitable one.”

  The officers cooed agreement, with the exception of Tilfgurd who was still peeved at having his ear pulled.

  Nuzbek clamped his arms about his chest and sank into a dismal crouch. Baus could almost feel the hatred exuding from his pores.

  Nuzbek was bunted into action. Smiss and Dunkin departed. They went to fetch Nuzbek’s aides. Three other civilians wearing grog-filled expressions stepped in to take charge of the magician and his two cronies.

  Baus squinted in the gloom and saw indistinct glimmers caught at the edges of the ragged fog. The lighted alleys shimmered in a floating haze and back to Baus’s right, fingers of mist crawled their way between the black spaces, dragging over dismantled awnings and drawn-down canopies.

  A vagrant gust ruffled a tent at the fairground’s edge and Baus heard the restless flap of canvas over the wet moaning of the wind. He thought he could be in one of those tents away from this misery, just an ordinary vendor. What to do? He was not bound or tethered; no one roped him, outside of Graves’ hard paw, herding him along like a wegmor.

  Should he run?

  Baus’s eyes watered. Conceivably he could squeeze between the foggy tent-aisles and lose himself in the folds of darkness. He was in no condition to make a last scrambling sprint—grog-fogged as he was. Too many officers were in proximity; not even to say, thinking of the ploy, seemed to hurt his head. Matters could end up in darker waters than they already were.

  Bleak anguish struck Baus and he rejected the plan. He snuck a dark look back at the Captain’s face and was not pleased with what he saw. Weavil was plodding behind him, a miserable shrunken doll with a head like Dombhu the Clown. Nuzbek marched on with pig-headed obstinacy, a brooding figure with sagging back, drooping lips, eyes limpid fires, trained especially upon Weavil, who seemed in some ludicrous way to have gained a vicarious revenge. However, Baus was not aware that the magician was not as witless as he seemed. Before the officers had seized him, he had slid a finger onto a trunk, surreptitiously snatched at some very small articles positioned near the top—objects that the officers had failed to recognize as items of potency.

  A particular shape looked very much mismatched—a polished stick—a midnight-black shaft around nine inches long. The same rod that Nuzbek had grabbed and had rendered the volunteer Conikraul so limp during Nuzbek’s exhibition. The other, a pinkish-golden pyramid, was no larger than an oversize marble, an item which wrought discomfit to the eye when it was seen from the side, vibrating and pulsing like a loathsome lantern. Pellucid coruscations gleamed deep in its interior. Nuzbek’s face had been an emotionless mask during the pilfering; so artful had been his sleight of hand that none, save Nolpin, had taken notice of the transfer to a pouch within his robe.

  Uyu and Migor hounded the company’s heels with an irritating smugness. Graves’ crassly-disposed humour suggested that the vendors return in no less than a year to receive their final reimbursement, an act which provoked groans from the two.

  Through the still-animated streets of Heagram the procession wound its way to attract gogglers whose faces, swarming in and out of the filigreed windows of inns, gaped in merriment. Lanterns swung high from the iron-traced lampposts. Muted custard-yellow glows penetrated the mist, revealing the glinting projections and cornices of the domiciles and pubs.

  Baus’s neck burned with shame. The disgrace of being marched like a common criminal was overwhelming, but he staggered on, and a vagabondish fierceness swelled in his heart. He winced to think of what Weavil must be feeling at this instant.

  The group threaded their way past the last line of pubs—the Snogmald Tavern and Rockgobbler Inn whose fish caught by Baus, they served. They moved out to Maritimer’s Square, past the town hall and on through the narrow gaps of the path through Grumboar forest. The root-riven pathway was one of general unpleasantness, surely a disreputable corridor to gain the prison yard if there was one, but tread it they did, breasting the forsaken place of ‘the Whispering Trees’ know as ‘Watchwarth’—aka the walled fort leaning on the western edge of hazel trees people nicknamed ‘The Yard’.

  The seaside fog hung in the air and atop the cliffs, the sallow flame of Melgrum’s lighthouse winked with a bloody undertone to barely illuminate the fog-rich gloom. Baus’s spirits degenerated.

  What seemed to have been an impulsive gambit, had ended in a pervasive nightmare.

  CHAPTER 2

  SKULLDUGGERY IN HEAGRAM’S YARD

  “While the criminal mind is a world unto itself, who is to say that a punishment is just for such a mind?—in the end, can any particular crime be given its ‘due dessert’?

  “Perhaps the superior criminal intellect is completely alien to our means of examination, imbued with a multi-layering of an incomprehensible depravity, not the least of which founds itself upon the basic pillar of artistic cunning . . .”

  —From Alphonzo’s Almanac for Aesthetes, a controversial discussion by ‘Jargoon the Philosophist’.

  I

  Inauguration into prison life had descended swiftly for the five new arrivals. Nuzbek’s peevish airs had earned him varied debasements amongst the inmates—as a result of three robust thugs, Zestes, Dighcan and Paltuik, who guarded proclivity for brutishness and coercion. Zestes had duck-like feet and apish arms and a long black bandanna wrapped round his balding scalp, and loathed pompousness for which Nuzbek was infamous. Dighcan, who was owner of the copper tangle of curls, deceptively calm face and flattened bovine nose, moved about on a pair of log-like legs. Paltuik, peculiar for his minatory lip curl and foul temper, had greased back his black lank hair with wax and boasted of his indomitable prowess in brawling. All three of these ruffians were from birth committed to a course of criminality in matters of head-bashing, wealth-seizing
and general hooliganism.

  Such was the way at Heagram prison.

  The criminals who attended the compound were held on charges of larceny, banditry, rowdiness, piracy, extortion, kidnapping and murder—amongst other offences, including bone-cracking and indecent exposure. Before Baus’s first sunrise, he and Weavil had been rough-housed, thrown into the latrines, chafed, bruised and subjected to unnameable indignities. Nuzbek’s troupe had been spared no less brutal handling. Dighcan had personally attended to pulling Nuzbek’s top hat over his ears and twirling him round like a top in the privy. Zestes spent a goodly time soaking him with cups of his urine and hoofing him in the ribs with hobnailed boots. There was a great deal of guffawing and knuckle-fluffing to follow. All pranks were in good fun, naturally, affirmed the inmates . . .

  As was the uncanny way with the black-robed Nuzbek, circumstances had a way of achieving equipoise. On the following morning, as the first grainy rays of dawn spilled over the yard, watchguards Ausse and Germakk found Dighcan hanging upside down from his heels from a branch of sprawling hazelwood that stood in the center of the compound. His nose glowed a sullen fuchsia, weirdly, while Dighcan mustered no recollection of how he had arrived in that position. He pleaded ignorance of the affair, spouting a garbled tale of being bound, gagged and transported through shadows and mist.

  By midmorning, Zestes was still missing and the constabulary began to grow concerned, but Ausse discovered the convict a half hour later squatting dazed behind the ‘hive’, the solitary confinement, with his head gripped in his hands. It was adjacent to the south wall of the compound where he had shared a similar experience to his muddled comrade, Dighcan. Instead of fuchsia, his nose glowed a sallow yellow. Altered humbly by the experience, Dighcan had gained a tolerable respect for Nuzbek—as had the rascals, Zestes and Paltuik, responsible for much of his mistreatment. When Graves witnessed the sorry state of Zestes and Dighcan, he pulled at his nose and wondered about the likes of Nuzbek and his shadow-doused magic. He looked narrowly at the leering magician who tottered with a waft of arrogance alongside the prisoners’ barracks. The Captain ordered a search made upon his person, which revealed nothing—no weapon, thaumaturgical device or industrious item—barring a handful of trinkets not worth their weight in sand. Graves, scowling, had returned to the Warden’s office to re-examine the disquieting mysteries tucked away in his cobwebbed storage closet. The warden studied the hollow and hopeless faces peering back at him with a revulsion. Their glazed expressions gaping through the glass could only evince in him an emotion of disdain. Twice he had resisted the urge to break open a jar and learn more about the freakish occupant cloistered within, but caution had prevailed; practiced wisdom was the best watchword.

  Baus and Weavil enjoyed perhaps an easier integration into prison life than the magician crew. As pugnacious as he was, Baus decided that an altercation with the likes of Dighcan or Zestes, or even the red-bearded Valere, or sardonic, ferret-faced Lopze, would prove unproductive. For the most part, he remained aloof, humming sea chanteys to pass the time while alleviating the boredom of captivity with speculations on prison escape. He resided somewhere between the midway mark to rock bottom in the pecking order of these rogues, and so silently received his share of cuffs, abrasions and bully-whacking from a new set of peers. But survival was critical and Baus realized that circumstance could not be altered. Weavil, in theory, caught the brunt of crude jokes, the majority of them accompanied by a swift hoof in the rear or a biff that sent him sailing through the air like a tamegendron. ‘Ankle-nipper’ or ‘Globe-nogger’ was his common title, also ‘Poodle’, a cognomen he despised and had earned due to the comic nature of his head and height.

  Heagram’s gaol consisted of thirteen inmates—a sordid collection of swindlers, thieves, kidnappers and ruffians as has been mentioned—but now it boasted eighteen upon the arrival of Baus, Weavil and Nuzbek, Nolpin, Boulm. Overseeing the compound was the notable Captain Graves, a severe sort who assumed the role of ‘Primary Warden’—Heagram being too small a district to command a separate police chief and warden. While in an advisory capacity, Tilfgurd remained commander of the two prison deputies, Ausse and Germakk, Graves was the absolute governor. On a part-time basis, Skarrow and Mulfax were the other deputies’ peers. The four comprised the teams that patrolled the grounds by day and guarded the barracks by night, all wielding snapperwhips, poison daggers and a long-hooked bill to prod any disorderly convicts into obedience.

  The compound consisted of a rectangular field: a waist-high barren tract of spongebush and tussock spread out along Heagram’s northern quarter. About a mile from the sea, the area had once kept the old keep of Lord Smitheron safe, back in days when the region had been known as Särch when it enjoyed its brief but prosperous period of opulence. The blackstone had been razed by sea raiders a century ago, but the outer wall remained strong: an enclosure of limestone ramparts, a foot thick, fifteen feet high and weathered grey and white from salt and lichen. The wall surrounding the entire grounds and the old court was roughly eight hundred feet by four hundred feet—a terrain which by some peculiarity of the architect’s planning, ran on a slightly downward tilt toward the sea. A replacement wooden watchtower, had been erected in the last half century—a twenty five foot high octagonal structure, part of the southern masonry and gate that peered out over the beobar portcullis, fashioned of black-varnished, reinforced bars. A barbaric iron lantern overhung the portcullis along with a crudely forged emblem depicting a man chained at the leg and striking a clam with a mallet. The watchtower, buttressed by slats of timber, was capped with an antique bronze cupola and stood upon a narrow portico, behind which the guards’ quarters sheltered and the well-furnished Warden’s office, two dusty repositories, and a lavatory and refectory.

  If Baus thought escaping the yard was to be easy, he was naive. The inner-facing wall was sanded smooth of footholds and its summit was cemented with shards of broken glass. Surrounding the rampart for a mile or more, spread a compact dense forest whose tangly depths and murky pools were enough to deter even the most venturesome of escapists. Limestone cliffs, sheer and forbidding, flanked the western wall which couched behind the guards’ quarters and commanded an imposing view of the sea.

  Upon the felons’ arrival, Graves had confiscated their weapons and monies, a total of fourteen cils, razor, pocket knife and several soiled handkerchiefs. Five of these cils belonged to Weavil, nine to Baus, and none to Nuzbek or his cronies. The three ‘emergency cils’ that were taped inside the lining of Baus’s right sock were not yet discovered, nor the bizarre items concealed in the flaps of Nuzbek’s black boots.

  Graves had appeared the following morning to inspect the new arrivals. A vicious cat scratch, Baus noticed, was raked along his left cheek. Nadek, who had been apprehended by Skarrow and Madluck in the wee hours, apparently had proven to be a rather ‘lively’ house guest, and her spiritedness had earned her a charitable release. Now Graves, walking on remarkably stiff legs, had taken the newcomers aside, and with Tilfgurd hounding his heels like an eager lackhound, addressed each of them in turn with a formal salute.

  “Well, gentlemen—you are now official inmates of Heagram prison! Be proud, and stand to attention! No boorishness is to be seen while I am in command!” He smoothed out his moustache.

  “Normally I am not a man ruthless or pettifogging, merely a martinet for rules. Morals comprise the clear makings of law! This is my own maxim. Rules must be adhered to with verve! Are we clear? Excellent then! This brings about the most noteworthy aspects of my speech. As Warden, I must cite these regulations, which briefly go as follows:

  “Item 1: Prisoners must maintain an appropriate level of hygiene.

  “2: Prisoners are expected to remain civil and attentive to prison officials. Politeness is considered an asset.

  “3: Prisoners are required to perform proscribed duties day to day, to be determined at the commencement of each day.

  “4: Curfew is strictly monitored and rig
idly enforced—9PM—no exceptions.

  “5: Once lights are extinguished, prisoners are to remain in the barracks until 6AM.

  “6: Prisoners caught trying to escape the compound are sentenced to three weeks’ solitary confinement in the flap-trap, the hive as we call it, that structure which stands by the south wall.

  “7: No brawls, combats, skirmishes or violent behaviours are allowed in the yard, barracks or work area.

  “8: Likewise, no offensive advances, abasements or molestations or vigours are permitted upon fellow prisoners.”

  Graves’ lips parted and the breath whooshed past his lips. “Are we clear?” He twirled an index finger and motioned toward the faded yellow notice pasted to the barracks’ façade. “There are the rules! Heed well.”

  The newcomers gave no comment, only stared back with crab-like apathy. Baus’s stomach lurched with hunger. The barracks were drab and unappealing. A long, low, green-lichened stone outbuilding sported an almost flat tin roof and two glumly-barred windows poised above a rickety veranda.

  Graves persisted in his jovial discourse: “Here at Heagram, deeds are catalogued on a demerit system. Anyone caught contravening an injunction aforementioned is awarded a penalty based on the severity of the crime. For example, suppose our magician here was to omit a cleansing of himself after a toilet visit, well, he would be assigned a demerit in violating Item 1. Having made two similar infractions, thereafter, he would serve an entire day in the hive, having plunged his demerit tally in an excess or quantity of three points. If Nuzbek were to further neglect curfew and in wanton mood sneak an abasement or groping upon Nolpin, then he would earn himself an additional eight demerits. Is this clear? This totals eleven demerits, which earns him three days in solitary.”