The Wordsmiths and the Warguild (24 page)

       
"That's
murder!" said Togura, shocked.

       
The young pirate gave a
twisted grin.

       
"Them or us,"
he said. "Which would you prefer?"

       
"Well ..."

       
It was indeed a
difficult question.

       
Jon Arabin gave another
order. And the weapons muqaddam grabbed Togura and started to drag him to the
edge of the deck.

       
"This is a joke,
yes?" said Togura.

       
The weapons muqaddam
made no answer.

       
"A joke?
Understand?" said Togura desperately. "A joke?"

       
They were now very close
to the edge.

       
"Draven!"
screamed Togura, sighting his friend at last. "Stop him!"

       
"Sorry, boy,"
said Draven, advancing at a casual saunter. "This isn't my ship. I've got
no authority here. So enjoy your swim."

       
"I can't
swim!" screamed Togura.

       
A lie - but he thought
it worth trying.

       
He locked his hands
round the stern rail, and, struggling vigorously, managed to kick the weapons
muqaddam in the guts. His enemy did not even grunt.

       
"Did you hear
me?" screamed Togura. "I can't swim!"

       
"Bait doesn't have
to swim," said Draven, grabbing hold of Togura's flailing feet. "Give
my regards to the chiefest of serpents."

       
"Don't do it!
Please!" begged Togura, as he lost his hold on the stern rail.
"Draven, help me!"

       
"Heave ho!"
said Draven, cheerfully.

       
They gave him the old
heave ho, and over he went. Arms and legs flailing, he tumbled through the air.
He hit the sea awkwardly with a crash, a shock of cold water, and a blunt, ugly
pain, as if someone had rammed his rectum with an iron bar. The impact drove
him deep.

       
Momentarily stunned,
lost to all knowledge of his place, time and name, he struggled for the light.
Breaking the surface, he gasped for air. A slip-slop wave slapped him in the
face. He remembered what was happening. A shrill whinny of terror escaped him.
He thrashed at the water as if having a fit.

       
"No no no,"
moaned Togura, drawing his legs up to try and stop anything from biting them.

    
   
Another wave slapped him
harshly, cutting off his moans. Blinking away the stinging salt of the sea,
squeezing a web of water from his eyes, he dared to look around. He could see
no women. No sea serpents.

       
The big seas hoisted him
up then slopped him down again. The Warwolf, bulking away from him, heeled in
the wind. He saw its lower timbers were foul with weed, barnacles and sea
squirts; it was overdue for careening. Draven waved to him from the stern, then
shouted something; the wind blurred away the sense of his words.

       
"What?"
shouted Togura.

       
Draven shouted more
unintelligible words, then pointed at something. What? Trying to see, Togura
forgot all about keeping his legs up. They drifted down. The next moment, Togura
felt something firm underfoot. Ah, ground! A miracle!

       
The ground began to
rise.

       
Oh no!

       
Togura began to cry out
with short, panting, uncontrollable, hysterical screams. Up came the green
surge in a smooth, hypnotic flow, riding up between his legs and lofting him
into the sky. He found himself straddling a sea serpent, which was racing
through the sea toward the ship. He began to slip. He grabbed for a handhold,
finding nothing but a few barnacles clinging to battle-scarred scales. Taking his
weight, the old scales themselves started to scab away, revealing fresh,
gleaming, frictionless scales beneath.

       
As the sea serpent raced
toward the ship, Togura slid sideways. He scrabbled desperately for purchase.
He had a brief, hallucinatory glimpse of the deck of the ship. It was below
him. Men were scattering in all directions. Then the sea serpent crashed down.
The stern splintered. Timbers smashed. Togura was thrown through the air.

       
Togura, bruised to the
deck, rolled to his feet in an instant. He stood there, swaying. The ship
lurched, the deck canted, and down he went again. He saw a scream wailing
between the sea serpent's jaws. Then the scream was gone. The jaws were turning
toward him.

       
Togura accelerated from
a crawl to a sprint in one and a half paces. Then he collided with a pirate.
Both went down. The sea serpent slavered above them. Blood dripped from its
jaws. Togura, paralysed with fear, mewled weakly with terror. But the pirate
bravely struggled to his feet, drawing his cutlass. A mistake. The monster
snacked on the cold steel, then munched down on the pirate. Togura slithered
away, then got to his feet and ran with a blind, lurching gait.

       
Knocked to the deck by
the ship's next ungainly movement, Togura turned to see half a dozen pirates
charging the sea serpent, using a spare spar as a battering ram. Wood
splintered, bones crunched, and Togura went humbling up the ratlines, climbing
for dear life or cheap, life at any price, there was no time for bargaining.

       
He climbed and climbed
until he could climb no more, and then, at a dizzy height, he hooked his arms
through rope netting and slumped there, exhausted. The ship, struck by another
sea serpent, heeled alarmingly then righted itself; the motion, amplified by
the mast, did sickening things to his stomach.

       
"Enjoy your
swim?" said a laconic voice beside him.

       
Togura opened his eyes
to look at his neighbour. It was the fair-haired young pirate he had conversed
with earlier in the day.

       
"You're a murderous
pack of unprincipled bastards," said Togura savagely.

       
The youth laughed.

       
"What did you
expect?" he said. "We're pirates! You got off lucky, though. Bait can
be cut, blinded, tortured. Or ship-raped, my hearty. If there's time. This time
there wasn't."

       
"Does that mean I
was bait all along? Did you expect to meet - "

       
"Not so angry, man.
Settle, settle! You, you were our much loved, honoured, respected passenger
until we met the monsters. Stall it, man, don't say it - of course we weren't
expecting them. None in their right minds - or out of them, for that matter -
would sail to a monster's jaws full knowing. My name's Drake. And yours?"

       
"Togura,"
mumbled Togura, his strength for anger fading.

       
"What?"

       
"Forester,"
said Togura, speaking up loudly, amending his name as he remembered who he was
masquerading as.

       
"Welcome, Forester.
Do you - "

       
The mast lurched
alarmingly.

       
"Dahz!"
exclaimed the pirate Drake, using a foreign obscenity.

       
Togura realised a sea
serpent had coiled itself around the base of the mast. Even as he watched, the
mast, very slowly, began to bend. Then, with a shudden shatter-crack, it
snapped.

       
They fell.

      
 
Togura screamed.

       
The sea roared up and
smashed them.

       
Engulfed in green,
harassed by rope, choking and breathless, Togura struggled for air and
daylight. Breaking up to the surface of the sea, he snorted water, sucked air,
was floundered over by a wave, ducked by another, hauled down by a third,
rolled over and over by a fourth, then lifted up by a fifth to an eminence from
which he saw the Warwolf, encumbered by a trio of sea serpents, crabbing away
through the sea with its broken mast trailing.

       
"Swim!" yelled
a voice.

       
It was Drake.

       
Togura saw his young
pirate friend, still clinging to the mast. What was better? To cling to the
mast until the sea serpents were ready for dessert? Or drown in the bottomless
ocean?

       
"Swim! Now!"
shouted Drake, wind and distance rapidly eroding his voice.

       
Togura struck out for
the mast and the ship, but it was hopeless. The sea was rough; a strong, fast
current was sweeping him away from the ship. Finally he gave up and trod water,
watching the ship, listing badly, dragging itself away from him, still in the
grip of three implacable monsters.

       
Seeing a stray spar
surfing through the water, Togura swam for it, reached it, latched on and clung
to it for dear life. One end was all munched, crunched and splintered; he
shuddered. The ship was now too distant for him to make out any detail of what
was happening on board, but he saw black billows of smoke beginning to rise
from the vessel. Soon one of the remaining masts was on fire; it was Togura's
guest that the ship was doomed.

       
"Drown down, you
buck-rat bastards," he muttered, cursing the ship and its crew.

       
By now he was very, very
cold; he began to shudder violently and continuously. He would be chilled down
to his death unless he could get to land. But there was no land anywhere near.
Or was there? The island of Drum was now much closer. The current was taking
him toward the shore.

       
The current was swift,
but, even so, it seemed a long time before he could cast off from the spar and
strike out for the shore. He swam very slowly. Caught in the surf, he almost
drowned, surviving by luck alone. The waves tumbled him onto a pebbly beach. He
struggled up the beach and across the driftwood line at high tide mark, then
shuffled into a cave and collapsed, exhausted.

Chapter 20

       
Waves thrashed, humped
and slubbered, mounted and surmounted, gashed themselves, recklessly, against
the rocks of Drum, sifted through seaweed, chopped each other into foam, then
hurled themselves against the beach, tumbling stones, sheals and crab claws
over and over in a bounteous explosion of spray. The daylight slowly weathered
away.

       
Exhausted, defeated and
badly frightened, Togura Poulaan lay in his cave in a state of collapse. At the
beginning of the day, buoyant with confidence, he had been a warm, brave,
well-fed questing hero, riding a ship on his way to high adventure. Now he was
a cold, hungry, shivering vagrant, a helpless waif of a gadling, marooned on
the island of Drum, home of the notorious wizard of Drum, an ill-tempered
necromancer known to have the unpleasant habit of feeding strangers to his
household dragons.

       
Togura wanted, very
much, to be home on his father's estate. In bed. With a cup of something hot to
warm and cheer him. He did not like it here. It was too cold, too wet, too
lonely. It was dangerous. Things would hurt him. He would never get off the
island alive. Recovering a little strength, he used it to produce hot tears of grief
and regret.

       
He was eventually roused
from his blubbering self-pity by a strange clinking crunching slithering sound
which he could hear even about the rouse, souse, suck, slap and gurgitation of
the sea. It sounded like four or five men dragging a log across stones. Or,
perhaps, like a large animal of peculiar construction making its way across a
beach.

       
Sitting up, Togura faced
the cave mouth. The strange noise stopped. A beast peered inside, then
withdrew.

       
- A dragon?

   
    
Togura was almost
certain he had seen a dragon. He did not know whether to scream, to run, to
freeze, or to pick up a stick and a stone so as to be prepared to fight for his
life.

       
In the event, he froze.

       
There was a hiatus, in
which Togura heard his own pounding pulse and the sea doing leisurely
break-falls on the beach. Then the dragon looked in again. It gave a prolonged
gurgling cough as it cleared its throat, then it spoke.

       
"Hello," said
the dragon, in Galish; the word was clear and distinct, marred only by a
superfluous bark at the end of it.

       
"Piss off!"
screamed Togura, hurling a rock.