The Wordsmiths and the Warguild (39 page)

       
He was merciless.

       
Togura managed to claw
his way up a bit. Drake helped him. Bit by bit they scavenged their way up,
while the rolling seas tried to batter them to death against the ship's indigo
topsides.

       
They gained the deck,
and Togura promptly fainted.

       
When he recovered, Drake
told him the news. The enemy, for reasons unknown, had turned back for
Androlmarphos. And the whales had gone.

       
They were, for the
moment, safe.

Chapter 36

       
Togura lay dreaming
wild, chaotic dreams. Waves went stumbling-tumbling through his memories,
stirring up unfragmented images which bit, raged, swore, hummed, pulsed, sweated,
stank, sang, sundered and bifurcated.

       
Ants clambered out of
his navel.

       
He was giving birth.

       
While the ants swam
through his fluids, feeding on his milk, Slerma ate Zona. The moon burnt blue.
Guta pulled a hatched from his head then wrestled with a sea serpent, his sex
striving.

       
"Shunk your
cho," said Day Suet, running her eager little golls over Togura's body as
he savoured the curves of her bum.

       
Her woollen chemise tore
open and a wave rolled out of it, swamping him down to green anemone depths
where turtles spun out lofty poetry in the accents of sea dragons. He swam
downwards, breaking his way through mounds of salt beef, fighting through to
the sun.

       
"Zaan," said
the sun.

       
Its light washed over him,
scoured away his skin, hollowed his bones, dragged his brain out through his
nostrils then washed his guts in rosepetal water. He fell through a hollow
tower, pursued by the music of a kloo, a kyrmbol and a skavamareen.

       
"Unlike
yours," said someone, "my floors are not knee-deep in pigshit."

       
"Who said
that?" said Togura.

       
And was so curious to
discover the truth that he chased his question over the edge of Dead Man's Drop
and fell screaming to the pinnacles below. They shattered his body, killing
him.

       
The shock woke him.

       
Waking from his dreams,
Togura blinked at the sun. He was lying on the deck of the ship; it was so
crowded with refugee pirates that there was no hope whatosever of finding
accomodation below.

 
      
"Zaan," said Togura, looking at the sun, then looked away,
blinking at purple after-images.

       
Togura remembered that
the Wordsmiths had given him the rank of wordmaster. He thought his chances of
getting back to Sung were now remarkably good, yet it seemed that, having
failed to find the index, he would be returning empty-handed. Perhaps he could
at least bring back another language.

       
Yes. He could see what
he should do. Invent a language, claim that it was spoken on one of the smaller
islands of the Greater Teeth, and gain kudos for making a valuable contribution
to the Wordsmiths' quest to discover or invent the Universal Language. He would
call his invented language Pirate Pure. Togura thought he could assemble Pirate
Pure easily enough, using Orfus pirate argot, bits and pieces of Savage as
spoken on the Lezconcarnau Plains, and his own made-up words.

       
"Zaan," in
Pirate Pure, could be a name for the sun.

       
The scheme was
dishonest, but it was, really, no more daft than any of the other mad projects
the Wordsmiths were engaged upon. As far as Togura could remember, one
wordmaster, noting that all men swear, had been attempting to create a
Universal Language made entirely from insults and obscenities, from the
"rat-rapist" of Estar to the "lawyer's clerk" of Ashmolean
bandits. Another had claimed that the Universal Language was the language of
love, and, on the strength of that theory, had left to do practical research in
foreign brothels.

       
Togura had also heard of
a scholar who, thinking the Universal Language might in fact be the Eparget of
the northern horse tribes of Tameran, had gone to the Collosnon Empire to
research it. Perhaps his grasp of foreign etiquette had been faulty, for he had
returned as a jar of pickled pieces. (More accurately, part of him had returned
- even bulked out with some spare dogmeat, he had made a pretty slim
coffin-corpse.)

       
In Togura's considered
opinion, the Wordsmiths were a bunchy of ignorant nerks. But they did have the
odex. Which gave them a source of income. And, if he could cut himself a slice
of the income ... well, that would at least solve the purely practical problem
of scraping a living for himself.

       
"Hi,
Forester," said Drake, bragging along the deck with a little swagger; his
face had taken a knuckling, so he had obviously been in a fight, but, from the
look of him, it would appear he had won.

       
"What've you been
fighting over?"

       
"A woman,"
said Drake. "A most beautiful bitch with red hair thick in her armpits.
Her name's Ju-jai."

       
"Where is
she?" said Togura, looking around.

       
"Not so
eager," said Drake, laughing. "She's on the Greater Teeth. A scrumpy
little bit, though. Hot meat, well worth kettling. How's yourself today? Feeling
better?"

       
"Much," said
Togura.

       
Drake sat himself down,
and they began to talk. Drake boasted of the way he had first deflowered the
virginal Ju-jai, some three years ago; Togura, for his part, narrated the
intimate details of his sexual exploits with admiring women like Day Suet and
the slim and elegant Zona.

       
"Have you children,
then?" said Drake.

       
"Oh, a few bastards
here and there," said Togura. "That's why I had to leave Sung.
Jealous husbands, raging fathers, murderous boyfriends ..."

       
"Aye," said
Drake. "I know the score."

       
At that moment, they
were interrupted by a wounded man who had been slowly making the rounds of the
deck, talking to each and every pirate. The man had his arm in a sling, a little
dead blood staining the sling-cloth. He had black hair and a square-cut black
beard; his clothes, now battle-stained, had once been elegant. His demeanour
was proud, haughty, arrogant - yet his voice was friendly enough.

       
"How are you,
boys?"

       
"Hearty, sir,"
said Drake.

       
"Except," said
Togura, "we've been a precious long time away from women."

       
The stranger laughed.

       
"Youth," he
said, "is a wonderful thing. Now listen, boys - there'll be a ration of
hardtack and water at sunset. Not much - but we'll be on short commons till we
reach Runcorn."

       
"Runcorn?"
said Togura. "Where's that?"

       
"It's a city on the
coast to the north," said the stranger. "Where do you come from,
boy?"

       
"Sung," said
Togura.

       
"Ah. One of our
bowmen. I thought we lost you all in the fighting."

       
"I'm hard to
kill," said Togura manfully.

       
"Good," said
the stranger, with a touch of amusement in his voice. "That's what I like
to see."

       
"Excuse me,"
said Togura, "but when do we reach Runcorn?"

       
"That," said
the stranger, again amused, "depends on the wind. But it'll be some time
within our lifetimes, that I guarantee. Any other quetions?"

       
"No, sir,"
said Drake, speaking for both of them before Togura could ask any of the
hundreds of supplementary questions boiling in his head.

       
The stranger nodded and
moved on down the deck to a little group of gambling pirates, who laid down
their cards to attend to him.

       
"He's a happy
fellow," said Togura.

       
"Man, that's his
style," said Drake. "Since we lost, he's probably bleeding to death
inside. But he wouldn't let us see that, no way."

       
"Who is he
then?"

       
"Elkor Alish, of
course."

       
"Who?" said
Togura.

       
"Have you just
fallen out of an egg or something?" said Drake. "Who do you think he
is?"

       
"Well, a sea
captain, I suppose," said Togura.

       
"What?" said
Drake. "Like Jon Arabin?"

       
"Who's Jon
Arabin?"

       
"Man, your head's
got as many holes as a pirate's wet-dream! You'll be forgetting your own name
next!"

       
Togura, who sometimes
found it hard to keep track of his aliases, could hardly disagree. He shrugged
off the criticism and tried again for an answer:

    
   
"Well then, who is this
Elkor Alish?"

       
"You really don't
know? Okay then, Elkor Alish used to be the ruler of Chi'ash-lan. He made
himself famous by working a law so every woman had to serve out a year in the
public brothels from when she was blooded."

       
"Blooded?"
said Togura.

       
"You know,"
said Drake. "From when her months began."

       
"Oh," said
Togura.

       
He was puzzled, as he
hadn't a clue what Drake was talking about. Blooded? Months? It meant nothing
to him. But he didn't want to appear more ignorant than he had already, so
didn't question further.

       
"Anyway," said
Drake. "For a while he got really rich."

       
At this point, Drake's
story - which was, incidentally, pure invention - was interrupted as Draven
came strolling along. He was rattling some dice in his fist.

       
"I can hear your
dice talking," said Drake. "And I can already hear them telling lies.
Don't roll with him, friend Forester, for he'll have you rolling for your
spleen unless you're careful."

       
"Sure," said
Togura. "I know how far I can trust him. He threw me overboard once."

       
"I did no such
thing!" protested Draven. "That's slander! We settled it out already,
remember? You misremembered."

       
"Our friend
Forester is a bit shaky in the head," said Drake. "He'll butterfinger
his own name unless he's careful."

       
"Yes, but,"
said Togura, "I was thrown overboard. To the sea serpents! You remember,
Drake. You were there. Draven chucked me over, isn't that so?"

   
    
"Why, no,"
said Drake, blandly. "You were such a brave little sword-cock you insisted
on challenging the sea serpents, hand to hand. You were that keen on jumping we
couldn't restrain you."

       
"That's a
lie!" said Togura.

       
"Such heat and fury,"
said Draven, laughing. "Stoke you up on a cold day, and we'd be warm in no
time."

       
"You don't know
what you put me through," said Togura bitterly. "You don't know what
I suffered."

       
"We all
suffer," said Draven. "Why, I've done my share of suffering myself.
Like when the torture-rats bit off my nose in Gendormargensis."

       
"Your lower nose, I
suppose," said Drake. "For your snout's still as big and ugly as
ever."

       
"No, no," said
Draven. "It's not my snorter I'm talking about, it's my sniffer. Let me
tell you ..."

       
And he was off again,
launched on one of his tales of the terrors of Tameran and the evils of the
dralkosh Yen Olass Ampadara, she of the blood-red teeth, the man-demolishing
stare, the stone-shattering laughter.

       
At sunset, hardtack and
water were handed out, with the ration-handlers putting a daub of red pain on
the left hand of every man (or the left cheek of amputees) so none could claim
rations twice. The next day, it was some indigo paint on the right hand, and
the day after that it was some black on the forehead.