The Wordsmiths and the Warguild (42 page)

Chapter 39

       
The seas at the end of
summer mourned onto the rocks of Togura's island of exile. He cast a chip of
wood adrift. Watching it wash away in the waves, he wished himself home.

       
Elsewhere on the island,
Draven was campaigning. The last leader of the pirates was dead, killed at
Androlmarphos. Draven said that Elkor alish, who had led them since then, had
no claim to their loyalty:

       
"After all, he's
never had to face a vote in a free election. Remember that, boys. We all know
that elections are the only way to get government of the pirates, by the
pirates, for the pirates."

       
"But," said
someone, "Elkor Alish is the world's greatest war-leader. We need an
alliance with him. He can make us rich."

       
"Rich?" said
Draven. "All the profit so far has gone to the earth, enriched with our
blood and bones. I can't see that changing . If I could, of course I'd make an
alliance for income - the pirate trade is thin at times, no doubting. But to
make an alliance for the privilege of losing my liver? Now that's another
story."

       
So spoke Draven.

       
But Togura, of course,
never heard him.

 
      
Togura was
far away, trying to decipher the weather-worn inscription of an ancient
seashore tomb. Giving up, he sat down on a rock and looked out to sea. The sun
was burning down into the Central Ocean. Soon it would be night.

       
Elsewhere, Draven was
still at work.

       
Ten days later, he was
still at it.

       
"I'm an honest
man," said Draven, making politics to pirates. "You don't believe it?
No doubt you've been listening to that fool Mellicks, a drunken sod of a sot
with a barnacle backside, a liar since birth, like his whore-beefing father
before him. Now listen here - "

       
The days weathered away.

       
While Draven politicked,
Togura, on his lonesome, explored paths, tunnels and stairways, the legacy of
generations of stoneworking. He discovered the stoneworkers of the Greater
Teeth: a dwarvish undercaste of untouchables, an inbred people with stunted
noses, heart defects and bad teeth. He heard the melancholy melodies of their
pan pipes, then tried, without success, to reproduce those melodies on his
triple-harp.

       
"Hark to me,"
said Draven, addressing a pirate gathering. "Harken up. You - you, you,
the woman in the corner - fart off! You men now - hear me out. What do we want
from life? Two ships for riding - one made of wood, the other made of woman.
We've got that. So why so many of us killed for no good purpose, tideline
wreckage on a foreign shore ...?"

       
While Draven preached
and debated, Togura, elsewhere, investigated sea caves - some, half-flooded by
the tides, used as harbours or as dry docks. He met the shipwrights of the
Greater Teeth, who were slaves but proud regardless, for they were masters of
their craft; he heard stories of their strange and distant lands, and, in
return, played them music, the like of which they had never heard before.

       
"How can I get
passage to Sung?" he asked.

       
"Nobody sails for
Sung," he was told. "Some, though, sail on the now and then for the
Lesser Teeth."

       
"How so?" he
asked.

       
"Because the
Greaters have the rule of the Lesser."

       
Exploring this half-hope
of getting at least half-way home, Togura learnt that under the rule of the
pirate chief Menator - now dead - the pirates had conquered the sand-shore
fishing islands known as the Lesser Teeth. They now maintained a shipboard
garrison in Brennan Harbour, the only half-decent port in the Lesser Teeth, and
extracted tribute from the populace.

       
Precisely two and a half
days after Togura learnt of this, a few pirates arrived in the Greater Teeth,
having come south from the Lesser, in an open boat. They brought a tale of
terror. On a dark night of hard and driving rain, the people of Brennan had
rowed out to cut the anchor ropes of the three garrison ships, which had been
driven ashore and wrecked. The crews had been slaughtered.

       
"We set out to get
an empire," said Draven, darkly, to all the pirates who would listen.
"At this rate, we'll be lucky to keep our bones."

       
Togura, despairing of
any swift return to Sung, accepted an invitation to tour the Outer Rocks, the
most barren part of the Greater Teeth. There, he played music for sealing
parties. Sealing was an important part of the economy of the Greater Teeth,
which could not be sustained by loot alone. Oil for lamps, furs for clothes,
meat for the pot - all of this the seals provided. Seal blubber was eaten by
all; being an excellent antiscorbutic, it helped keep them healthy.

       
While Togura was playing
music on the Outer Rocks, Draven, still on the island of Knock, was calling out
his main rival for the pirate leadership:

       
"Your father had no
cock. He used a sausage instead. So that's what you were born with. But your
mother bit it off at birth. Draw, you cockless hunk of shit-ballast, draw!"

      
 
They drew, and fought,
blade against blade. Draven killed his rival. Thanks to his diligent
campaigning and the eloquence of his steel, Draven's triumph over the
imperialists was complete; having convinced his peers of the futility of
fighting wars of aggression in foreign lands, he was elected leader.

       
"What now?"
asked someone.

       
"What now? Why, get
your cocks out, boys, and breed, boys, breed. We're down a generation, so let's
make up for it."

       
This programme of action
- simple, cheap and practical - proved suitably popular.

       
Togura, sitting alone on
the shores of the Outer Rocks, brooded about the news of the breeding
programme. He could not participate, for he had no woman of his own. He played
his triple-harp to the wind, the gulls, the seals alive and dead, and the
heaping surf of the flotsam-jetsam waves; homesick, he longed for Sung, and
mourned for the loss of his true love, Day Suet. He remembered the voice of Day
Suet, the warmth of Day Suet, the naked thighs of Day Suet, and the night when
she had almost made him a man.

       
Day Suet was gone
forever, for an evil Zenjingu fighter had thrown her into the odex, and had
then jumped in after her. Togura had gone questing for the index which spoke the
Universal Language, and which would have allowed him to rescue Day, but he had
failed to find it. All he had was a magic casket - it would, he supposed, make
a good tinder box - and this stupid triple-harp.

       
"At least I
tried," said Togura.

       
And comforted himself by
telling himself how very hard he had tried.

       
A message came from
Draven, brought by word of mouth:

       
"Come back. We need
you to play at a banquet."

       
Togura supposed that the
banquet was to celebrate Draven's accession to the leadership of the pirates of
the Greater Teeth - as indeed it was, at least initially. But by the time
Togura got back to Knock, which was a few days later, the purpose of the
banquet had changed dramatically. It was now to honour the warrior Elkor Alish
and the mercenary army which had lately arrived from the far-off islands of
Rovac to serve under his war banner.

       
"A week," said
Togura, sagely, "is a long time in politics."

       
Elkor Alish, who had
been defeated at Androlmarphos, had now recovered the death stone and two magic
bottles besides. It was a mystery how Alish had managed to steal these things
away from the enemy, but there was no doubt about what they signified. They
meant power, glory, victory. War fever swept the Greater Teeth. Loud-mouthed
imperialists once more boasted about how they would be princes, kings, lords of
pomp and circumstance in a world-conquering empire.

       
And Draven?

       
He cheered for conquest
with the rest.

       
The soldiers of the
mercenary army from the islands of Rovac had come, for the most part, in
trading ships chartered in the west, though a few had arrived in Rovac
longships - slim, beautiful, shallow-draught vessels which Togura would have
thought too fragile to dare the open ocean. He could only guess what hardship
the longship crews had suffered on their long journey east.

       
Elkor Alish had brought
five longships and two hundred Rovac warriors to the Greater Teeth; most of the
Rovac and most of their ships were at Runcorn. The Rovac were the proudest,
hardest, most humourless men Togura had ever seen; they frightened him, for it
seemed that a grim, relentless Purpose possessed them.

       
Elkor Alish spoke to a
general meeting of all the fighting men in the Great Hall of Knock (which
should by rights have been called the Great Cave.) He spoke partly in Rovac,
partly in Galish. He was entirely changed from the relaxed, genial man Togura
had met after the defeat at Androlmarphos.

       
Now that Alish once more
had the chance of victory, he too had become hard, humourless, driving. When he
spoke, his voice rang out, a thundering challenge in which even Togura could
hear the underlying notes of remorseless fanaticism. Alish spoke of war,
conquest, glory, vengeance. And men cheered, shouted, stamped their feet,
roared out their absolute approval. Even Togura found himself, for a moment,
excited by the prospect of war, loot, slaughter, arson, rape.

       
At the banquet which
followed, pirates and Rovac warriors got drunk together, drinking away as if
their leading ambition in life was to die of alcoholic poisoning or cirrhosis
of the liver. While mostly everyone got legless, Togura, promising himself a
dram or two later, played his triple-harp to general acclaim.

       
There was no
confrontation between Alish and Draven, for Draven knew when he was defeated.
At the height of the banquet, he stood and freely pledged himself to the world
conqueror:

       
"I, Bluewater
Draven, speak to you, Elkor Alish, that all men may hear and know. Harken! By
my heartbeat's blood, I swear, with all my honour, to love you as my brother,
to obey you as my captain, to accept you as my king, to follow your wars to the
hilt of my sword and the last of my leather. I ask nothing in return; to serve is
enough."

       
It was handsomely said.
There were cheers. The banqueting men guzzled down drink after drink and got
raucous. The Rovac roared out drunken poetry in their own language. Togura
noted that neither Draven nor Elkor Alish drank much; they spent a lot of time
conferring together, their voices masked by the uproar all around.

       
Finally, Draven sent one
of his sidekicks to Togura with a message:

       
"Elkor Alish and
myself are removing our enjoyments to my own home. Follow, with your
harp."

       
Togura obeyed.

Chapter 40

       
In Draven's cave home,
Togura played a little light music, but Alish and Draven scarcely listened.
They were talking business. It was Alish who took the initiatives.

       
Togura, listening, was
amazed at the range of subjects they covered. Alish discussed the rule of the
Greater Teeth, the appointment of a judge to resolve any disputes between Rovac
warriors and pirates, a revised ration scale, a programme of weapons training,
the provisioning of Runcorn...

       
In the end, Togura
listened no more, but played; Alish's bodyguards dozed. Draven served a little
wine. Togura was not offered any. The bodyguards refused; they had their orders
from Alish. Draven himself did not drink, saying he had enough.

       
But Alish drank.

       
And, having drunk, grew
sleepy.

       
We'll talk on
tomorrow," he said.

       
Then tried to stand, and
stumbled.

       
"Strike!"
roared Draven, in a bellow so loud it hurt Togura's ears.

       
Alish's bodyguards were
instantly on the alert. They drew weapons, preparing to fight to the death. One
of them made as if to attack Draven.

       
"No, no," said
the pirate, making a warding gesture with his hands. "There's nothing
wrong. I was only calling my slave, Strike. That's his name. Strike.
Understand?"