The Wordsmiths and the Warguild (41 page)

       
They also played the
traditional pirate game of "First Off," which, though it was obscene
and improper in the extreme, did not lead to Togura losing his virginity.

       
Then there was story
telling.

       
Draven told the best
stories, for he had been to that weird and wonderful place, the continent of
Tameran. Most of his stories were about the evil dralkosh, Yen Olass Ampadara,
who had tortured him, killed him, then resurrected him.

       
"A one-woman
brothel, she was," said Draven. "She took on the whole army once, out
in the open sun. I was there. I saw it. Even when they were exhausted, she
still hand't had enough."

       
And Draven told the
story of how, thanks to his wisdom, his cunning, his sagacity, his strength and
his courage, he had finally been able to outwit the Ampadara woman and escape,
returning, in the end, to his beloved Greater Teeth.

       
"That Ampadara
woman," said Draven, "she was the most monstrous bundle of female sin
I've ever clapped eyes on. In her own person, she was argument enough for the
rule of men over women. Her every act was designed to break me - she couldn't
bear to see a man live free."

       
"She might tell it
different," said Togura, still displeased about having been thrown
overboard from the cutter.

       
"Ay," said
Draven. "So she might. But then, she was the most wily liar in all of
creation."

       
"What happened to
her then?" asked Togura.

       
"That," said
Draven, "is another story. I'll save it for tomorrow's night watch."

       
But Togura never got to
hear that story, for when dawn broke the next day, they found themselves
closing with the islands of the Greater Teeth, notorious lair of the Orfus
pirates, of whom Draven was one.

       
In former days, many
generations ago, the island of Drum had been the centre of piracy. Then the sea
dragons had arrived. In theory, pirates and sea dragons could have coexisted.
In practice, the pirates had failed to conceal their contempt for sea dragon
artistry; outraged sea dragon poets, philosophers, orators, rock gardeners,
punsters and pyrotechnists had responded by slaughtering their critics. The
surviving pirates had retreated to the Greater Teeth.

       
Since then, the sea
dragon population of Drum had sharply decined, thanks largely to their
promiscuous sexual habits, which had helped spread disastrous venereal diseases
through their ranks. Indeed, over the last couple of generations, an epidemic
of a viral disease causing an acquired immune deficiency syndrome had almost
driven the sea dragons to extinction.

       
However, the pirates,
being creatures of habit like everyone else, had not returned to Drum; they had
stayed on the Greater Teeth.

       
As a small boy, hearing
idle adult talk of pirates living on the Greater Teeth, Togura had imagined
rows and rows of huge molars - perhaps twice the height of a man - with one or
two pirates squatting on top of each. He had imagined the pirates dressed in
beggarman rags; in his fancy, the molars had been set in the middle of
butterfly meadows.

       
Traces of this boyhood
misapprehension remained in his mind, so he was surprised, at first, to see
gaunt skerries thrusting up from the surf, and, beyond those skerries, towering
rock ramparts crowned with trees.

       
"Where are
we?" he asked.

       
"This is
Knock," said Draven. "We'll berth at the Inner Sleeve, which is my
home harbour. You'd best stay at my home for the time; you've nowhere else to
go."

       
"Why, thank
you," said Togura.

       
"You look
surprised. Don't be so. I may be rough, but I've got my honour, like any other
man. I pay my debts."

       
This was said with such
sincerity that Togura, for a moment, actually believed it; in any case,
whatever he thought of Draven's honour, he did need somewhere to stay, so
Draven's invitation was welcome.

       
The coastline of Knock
was forbidding. Rocks awash with water jutted from the waves; other rocks
lurked beneath the surface.

       
"Is this
dangerous?" said Togura.

       
"Naw," said
Draven. "We all know these waters as well as we know our toenails."

       
A moment later, the
courier cutter scraped on the bottom, suggesting that none of them knew their
toenails terribly well. They got off without damage, but Togura became
increasingly jittery, watching the sea swashbuckle agaisnt the pitiless cliffs.

       
A big skerry slipped
past, giving him aview of a new stretch of ciff. At first, in a moment of
dreamlike dismay, he thought he was looking at a vast expanse of black cloth
seething with lice, and that the lice were screaming at him. Then he realised
that the entire cloud-challenging cliff was one huge bird rookery, and that what
he was hearing was the cries of a million sea birds.

       
Ahead was a clutter of
skerries, with a narrow sealane between them and the cliff. The courier cutter
sailed into the sealane and promptly lost the wind. Men began to furl the
sails.

     
  
"Well then," said
Draven. "How do you like it?"

       
"How do I like
what?" said Togura.

       
"My home."

       
"Your home?
Where?"

       
"There, of
course," said Draven, pointing at one of the larger skerries. "Can't
you tell a house rock when you see one? Look, don't you see the handholds cut
in the side?"

       
"You mean we have
to climb up there!"

       
"Yes, and pull the
ship up after us," said Draven, deadpan.

       
"Oh,
bullshit," said Togura, realising he was being conned.

 
      
"Not
so," said Draven. "There's no bulls in the Greater Teeth. Though
fishshit makes a handy meal when the famines come."

       
"The famines?"

       
"Every tenth year
they come," said Draven, solemnly. "All the little stones come to
life. They crawl up from the sea. Feeding. You can hardly walk, for they're
shifting under your feet. They'll eat the leather from your boots, the snot
from your nose. If you're not careful, they'll crawl up your arse and eat -
"

       
"Give it a
rest," said Togura. "That's a story on stilts if ever I heard one.
You won't get me believing a dreamscript like that - I'm not a child, you
know."

       
"No?" said
Draven. "You could've fooled me."

       
At that moment, they
were hailed by a boat rowing out from a cleft in the cliff. Their courier
cutter had been sighted by a lookout; soon more oar-boats came to meet them,
and they were towed into the cleft, which was larger than it seemed at first
blush. The cliff-cleft opened onto a small, rock-locked harbour, where they
docked.

       
After a dockside
conference at which news was exchanged - many of the women and children who had
come to meet the cutter were soon weeping, for the cutter broughtnews of many
deaths - some of the men set out in smaller boats to spread the news throughout
the Greater Teeth. But Draven set off home. Tougura went with him.

       
They travelled through
long, gloomy tunnels, reaching, at last, a cave home which had light shafts
piercing through a seaward cliff face, and a waste shaft delved down sheer to
the black night of a seafilled cave. In an inner chamber lit by smoky seal-oil
lamps, Draven and Togura ate, feeding on crabs, fish paste, whelks, edible
seaweeds, pickled onions and mushrooms.

       
Two of Draven's women
served them. The women wore their hair in the leading fashion of the Greater
Teeth: grown long, it was tied in a multitude of plaits evenly arranged around
the head, so that some plaits, falling directly over the face, served as a veil
of sorts. After the mela, the women - who did not speak to the men - served
small cups of a hot, dark fluid which Togura took to be liquid mud.

       
"This is
coffee," said Draven.

       
"Coffee?"

       
"Foreign stufff. We
get it by way of loot, but seldom. It's rare, so drink - you'll not get it
elsewhere."

       
Out of courtesy, Togura
drank. He decided that he would not care if he never got it elsewhere. All
things considered, he'd rather have an ale.

       
Togura supposed that he
would get the chance of an ale soon enough, for there would surely be a
homecoming feast of some kind. But he was wrong. There was no feast - only a
gathering of sombre, serious men who came to talk politics with Draven. Who was
forthright in his views:

       
"I said for
starters we'd no business whoring after foreign wars. The sea's a steady
business, we'd no need for speculations. This empire talk's no good for
us."

       
"Many men,"
said a pirate, "support this Elkor Alish. They say he's got an army coming
from Rovac."

       
"Ay, walking on
water no doubt. Many man say this, and many men say that, but I tell you one
thing for certain - many men are in their graves thanks to this empire
nonsense. You speak of support for Alish. I say: here's a blade. Good steel,
this. A length of it can unsupport a hero, if need be."

       
"Walk softly,
friend Draven. Some would call that treason."

       
"Would they? And
are we not free men? Since when did a pirate hold his tongue, under the sun or
out of it? Treason, you say! What kind of lubber-lawyer talk is that? What
next? A law of libel and a court of defamations?

       
"Come, friends,
what's this talk of treason? This Elkor Alish weighs upon the earth like an
emperor, yet his empire non-exists. Non-existing, how does it dare to claim our
freedoms? All our gain is loss. We've had not a whit-jot benefit from these
foreign wars, yet many men breathe earth or water thanks to this foolishness. I
say: finish it. Elkor Alish can lord it over Runcorn with those who wish to be
lorded over. But we: we lord it over ourselves. I say: if Elkor Alish ventures
here, we'll feed him steel to breathe. This steel. With my own hand I'll do
it."

       
Thus spoke Draven. Then,
turning to Togura:

       
"Did you hear what
we were talking of?"

       
"Me?" said
Togura. "I'm stone deaf."

       
"Ay, and mute, too,
if you're wise. Now, enough of this dirging! I'm home from the wars, I'll not
talk blood and burial all night. Let's have a bit of sparking, hey? Deaf-mute,
sing us a song."

       
Togura hesitated.

       
"What,
silence?" siad Draven. "Is this how you repay hospitality?"

       
Togura knew, by now,
something of the nature of pirate fun. It could well be that he was in the most
fearful danger. What if they didn't like his singing? They might cut out his
tongue! What if they did like it? They might reward him by cutting his
testicles off - he had heard vague rumours of such things happening to favoured
singers in far-off Chi'ash-lan.

       
Coming to a decision,
Togura hauled out the casket which held his triple-harp.

       
"Sholabarakosh," said Togura.

       
"What kind of a
song is that?" said Draven.

       
"It's not a song,
it's the name of my harp," said Togura, taking the triple-harp from the
box, which had now opened.

       
Shyly, he struck up a
note. Then conjured up some percussion. Then suddenly, without warning, roused
the air with trumpets louder than elephants. One man sat up so fast he knocked
himself out against an overhang.

       
"That's
something!" said Draven. "Can you pick up this tune?"

       
And he sang the tune of
"The Pirate's Homecoming," the words of which begin like this:

               
"Her thighs were hot, her thighs were wide,

               
And ready she was waiting."

       
After a little bit of
difficulty, Togura managed to pick up the tune. Soon he was embellishing it.
Truly, as has been Written (in Golosh IV, magna 7, script 2, verse xii): Music
hath Powers. Soon all the pirates, though they had no liquor inside them, were
singing, clapping and slapping their thighs; and Togura, no longer in fear of
death or demolition, was learning what it was like to be popular.