Philip Palmer - Hell Ship

And, indeed, I often felt that Cuzco was a truly magnificent creature. He was a land giant with the power of flight; his armoured wings made him somehow lighter than air, and so he was able to effortlessly dance among the clouds, though he weighed more than Fray and myself put together. And his body was beautiful, in its own eerie fashion: he had two torsos, linked by bands of armoured flesh, and orange scales that glittered in the light. And claws on his haunches and torsos that could, when he so chose, be as delicate as hands. And no head; his face was on the breast of his left body, and he had features that were expressive and flexible and eyes that seemed to me to twinkle with delight when his mood was cheerful; though that was, in all honesty, not often.

“I fear Sharrock is harbouring a secret plan,” I admitted “He thinks he knows a way to defeat the Ka’un.”

“Perhaps he does.”

“You know he doesn’t. It’s folly.”

“I once,” said Cuzco, “had ideas like that.”

In his first year on the ship, Cuzco had, like me, attempted to attack the Tower. And to do so he had gathered a formidable army of aerials who had joined Cuzco in his attempt to breach the Tower’s invisible barrier from above. But storms had battered them and Cuzco’s six wings had been ripped off him so that he crashed like a rock in the lake, and the savage gusts of air had ripped the entire flock of aerials into shreds. Blood had rained upon us all that day; blood and beaks and feathers and scales and fragments of unrecognisable internal organs that pelted downwards and left our bodies soaked and stenched. Many of Cuzco’s followers were still mutilated after their mauling by the storm; and none of the aerials ever spoke to him now.

“Perhaps you could talk to him,” I said. “Counsel him to be-”

Cuzco stood up and his hackles rose, and terrifying spikes emerged from his body.

“I will tell him nothing of the sort! What do you take me for, you cowardly colon-full-of-shit? You do not comprehend,” said Cuzco, “what it is to be a warrior!”

“I comprehend it totally.”

“My kind were masters of all creation! We vanquished all the lesser breeds in our galaxy, and we were proud of it!”

“Your words bring you shame. You are nothing but a monster, Cuzco,” I told him, wearily.

Cuzco snarled; and then he stood; and leaped off the cliff top; and with grace and majesty he flew above the clouds, a patch of orange blurring the blue sky.

“Monster,” I said sadly, knowing it was true. If I’d met Cuzco in any other setting, he would have been my enemy, not my friend.

I was tired of running; I had been running for days; yet still I ran.

I knew that in the trees they were faster than me; so I seized my moment and broke through into a clearing, and knew it was just a few more minutes to the lake But then I whirled and saw that the wretched monkeys had me surrounded. They had clubs and knives; there were a hundred or more of them. An army. They cackled and screamed with delight; and were clearly convinced I was not capable of causing them any further trouble, with the odds so heavily in their favour.

They did not, it seemed, know Sharrock!

I clutched the stone in my hand, relaxed my body, and calculated the distance between myself and Mangan and his regiment of tree-huggers. My eyes quietly scanned the mob. I identified the dominant beasts who needed to be slain first; and then I cleared my throat so I could deliver a battle-roar to confuse and paralyse the more timid ones.

I also considered how I could use the monkeys themselves as weapons; using the bodies of the dead ones to club the live ones, whilst using my teeth to bite and sever arteries. I recalled the time on Latafa when I was faced with a baying mob of two hundred highly trained four-armed centurions, and slew them all. All in all, I concluded, my task here was difficult, but by no means impossible. For as the historians of Maxolu all agree-with only those two irksome exceptions-I am indeed the greatest Northern Tribe warrior of all time!

The monkeys roared more rage, and started to slowly move towards me. I thought for a few moments more. Calculating all my options. Plotting my various potential battle moves.

Then I quietly let the stone drop out of my hand.

“Do your worst,” I said calmly.

And they did.

I laid Sharrock’s bloodied body down upon the grass, and I bathed him in water from the water-of-life well; oozing the healing moisture on him through the spiracles in my tentacle tips.

“Can you speak?”

He grunted, and opened his mouth; inside was a bloody void. As I’d suspected, his tongue had been ripped out. His torso was bruised and bloody, and I suspected there was severe internal damage. They’d also eaten one of his eyes.

He grunted as the water drizzled on to his naked body.

Just as I’d feared, Mangan and the arboreals had taken their revenge.

For twelve cycles I tended to Sharrock; nursing his wounds, talking to him; telling him stories. His wounds healed, and his tongue grew back quickly; but he was not communicative even when he did speak.

After six cycles he was able to walk.

After ten cycles he made a sword out of a tree branch; the wood was tough and the point was viciously sharp. He killed a non-sentient grazer and skinned it and fashioned himself a scabbard. He used the hooves to make knuckle guards, to help him with hand to hand combat. For days he collected stone remnants at the quarry and from then on always carried a bag of stones and a sling.

“Will you take revenge?” I asked him.

“You want me not to?” he said mockingly; for his tongue was now regrown.

“I want you to forgive them,” I said.

“You know I cannot do that,” Sharrock said sternly.

“Please, Sharrock. For me?”

“Never!” he snarled. “Those branch-fucking savages tricked me. Ambushed me! I was trying to do as you told me, live in peace. But they attacked me anyway.”

“And now,” I said sadly, “you will attack them?”

Sharrock looked at me; his pale blue eyes were calm. And he never, I noticed, felt the need to blink as many bipeds did.

“No,” he said, calmly. “These weapons are just for self defence. I gave a beating, I took a beating. Further violence would be folly, so now I’m done. From this point on, I embrace the way of peace.”

“You really mean that?”

“I really mean it,” Sharrock avowed.

I felt so proud.

Over the next twenty or so cycles, I got into the habit of spending the early mornings with Sharrock by the lake side.

He loved to fish; he had fashioned lines and nets and captured dozens of fish each day, all of which he released back into the water. And he was a gentler spirit now, after the mauling from the arboreals. A status quo had been achieved; indeed, Mangan and Shiiaa and the other arboreals occasionally invited Sharrock to share their cabin at night, and there they told each other tales. Sharrock had passed, and survived, his brutal initiation.

Sharrock talked often to me about his family-his love-partner Malisha and his daughter Sharil, and Malisha’s brothers Tharn and Jarro, and their love-partners Clavala and Blarwan, and their assorted children-with love and tenderness. And he told some delightful stories about the stupid things that young Sharil used to do, and the even stupider things he used to do to make her laugh.

And I told him that I had been merely a child when I was taken by the Ka’un. I had never had sex, or known adult love; my adolescence ended when I was captured by alien invaders and brutally beaten by the then occupants of the Hell Ship.

He was clearly shaken by that story; it affected him sorely for days.