Steven Erikson - The lees of Laughter's End

Despite this, terror held the three ex-soldiers by their throats, especially when Ably Druther sat up, then twisted onto his hands and knees and jerkily regained his feet. Blood wept down his torso front and back, triggering in Heck’s mind a dismayed revulsion that the man didn’t even have the decency to use a napkin. Hands groping, Ably Druther took a step closer.

That step pitched him from the walkway and the trio of shrieks redoubled as the headless first mate plunged down onto them.

Fingers snagged whatever they caught, and Gust wailed as his other ear was torn away from the side of his head, a blessing of symmetry if nothing else, but now terrible crunching, crackling sounds surged into his brain to war with the endless swishing of water.

Flailing, he scrabbled free from the corpse’s reach, landing face-first into the crevice between raised gangway and hull, only to find his gaping mouth suddenly filled with oily fur, squirming as he instinctively bit down even while gagging. A piteous squeal from the rat that ended on an altogether too high note as if bladders of air had been disastrously squeezed, and fluids most foul filled Gust Hubb’s mouth.

His stomach revolted with spectacular effect, propelling the mangled rat a man’s length out onto a tumbling landing on the walkway, where it came to rest on its back, tiny legs in the air, blood-wet slivery tongue lolling down one side of its open mouth.

Heck Urse, in the meantime, was being choked to death by a headless First Mate-who clearly wanted a head and any one would do. As a result, he forgot all about the risks of holding the lantern, electing in his extremity to use it as a weapon. In this, instinct failed him, since such a weapon was in truth likely only effective against the back of his assailant’s head. A head that wasn’t there. The hard, hot bronze of the lantern’s oil-filled body cracked Urse in the face, igniting his beard and breaking his nose. Blinded, he flung the lantern away, spreading a flaring sheet of burning oil in its wake.

This elongated sheet of fire landed in between Birds Mottle’s legs, as she was at that moment sitting up. As heat rushed for her nether parts, she kicked, lunging backward, to land skidding on the dead rat, all the way to the head which met her own with a solid crunch. Eyes pitching upward, she sagged unconscious.

Blood having extinguished his smouldering beard, Heck now had both hands on the lone hand squeezing his neck, and he began breaking fingers one by one. From Ably Druther came a series of anal gasps of, presumably, pain. And finally Heck Urse was able to twist free, clambering onto the first mate’s back, where he pounded down with futile abandon.

Gust Hubb loomed into view, his earless head ghastly in the flickering firelight, vomit slicking his chin to mingle with the blood streaming down both jawlines. Bulging eyes fixed on Heck Urse.

“Kill it! Kill it! Kill it!”

“I’m trying, you damned fool!” Heck retorted. “Get me a sword! A spike! Get me ropes, damn you!”

Gust Hubb scrambled past on the walkway. “Get it yourself! I ain’t staying down here-no way-and I ain’t ever coming down here again!”

Cursing, Heck reached for his knife. Still straddling the struggling body of Ably Druther, he twisted round and hamstrung the first mate, one side, then the other. “Try walking now!” he snarled, then giggled, pushing himself back onto the walkway, yelping at the still-licking flames, then crabbing towards Birds Mottle.

“Wake up, love! We gotta get out of here- wake up! ”

The third hard slap to the side of her face brought a flutter to her lids, then her eyes snapped open and she stared up at him, momentarily uncomprehending.

But Heck couldn’t wait, and he began pulling Birds to her feet. “Come on, sweet. There’s a demon or something down here-Gust’s already bolted, the bastard-come on, let’s go.”

She looked at him blankly. “The ship’s on fire. That’s not good.”

“We’ll get the crew down here, every damned one of them, to put it out.”

“Good. Yes. It’s not good if everything catches fire.”

“No, darling, that it ain’t. Here, watch your step…”

With Heck Ursedragging a mumbling birds Mottle up the steep steps to the deck above, the headless corpse of Ably Druther was left more or less on its own, attempting to regain its feet but, alas, its legs had stopped working. Dejected, the first mate sat down on the walkway, forearms resting on thighs and hands hanging down.

The spark of life could leap unfathomed distances, could erupt in places most unexpected, could indeed scurry along tracks of muscle and nerve, like a squirrel with a chopped tail. And sometimes, when even the life itself has fled, the spark remains. For a little while.

Once seated, Ably Druther ceased all movement, beyond a fainting slumping of the shoulders that quickly settled. Even the blood draining from various wounds finally slowed, the last drops thick and long.

Of the dread slayer, there was no sign.

The flames, which had been climbing the tarred hull, predictably eager, suddenly flickered, then guttered out.

And soft footsteps sounded, down the walkway from the head. Large, almost hulking, a figure wearing a full-length hauberk of black chain that slithered in the gloom. Bald pate a dull grey, thick-fingered hands reaching down as the figure crouched above the crushed body of the rat.

A soft whimper escaped Korbal Broach’s flabby lips.

The very last rat aboard Suncurl. His most cherished, if temporary, servant. Witness to the monstrosity that had slain the first mate with such perfunctory delight. And well of course the victim’s head was missing. That made perfect sense, after all.

Korbal Broach paused, cocking a suitably attached ear.

The panic above seemed to have dwindled. Perhaps the crew had abandoned ship, and oh, that would be regrettable. Surely neither the captain nor Bauchelain would permit such a thing. Did not Bauchelain know how Korbal so cherished these myriad pulses of sordid, not-especially-healthy lives? A harvest promised him, yes, once they were no longer necessary. Promised.

Why, Korbal Broach might have to pursue them, if truly they had fled A rasping cackle from the darkness-somewhere far down towards the stern.

Korbal Broach frowned. “Rude,” he murmured, “to have so interrupted my precious thoughts. So rude.”

The cackle crumbled into a rasp, and a voice drifted out. “You.”

“Yes,” Korbal Broach replied.

“No, it can’t be.”

“But it is.”

“You must die.”

“So I must. One day.”

“Soon.”

“No.”

“I will kill you. Devour your round head. Taste the bitter sweetness of your round cheeks. Lap the blood in its round pool beneath you.”

“No.”

“Come closer.”

“I can do that,” Korbal Broach replied, straightening and walking towards the stern. He passed beneath the grainy rectangle of lesser darkness that was the still undogged hatch. And in his mailed hand was a crescent-bladed short-handled axe that seemed to be sweating oily grit. Gleaming most evil.

“That cannot hurt me.”

“Yes, no pain. But I have no wish to hurt you.” And Korbal Broach giggled. “I will chop you up. No pain. Just pieces. I want your pieces.”

“Bold mortal. We shall indeed test one another… but not right now.”

Korbal Broach halted. The demon, he knew, was gone. Disappointed, he slipped the handle of the axe under his belt. He sniffed the air. Tasted the darkness. Listened to the slurp and swirl of water beyond the hull. Then, scratching his behind, he turned and began climbing the steps.

He never reached the top. But then, he had never intended to.

At the rush of chaotic commotion on the mid-deck of the Suncurl immediately following the screams from below, Emancipor Reese crouched down in the doorway of the cabin hatch, stared out at the shrieking, hair-tearing, biting, clawing mob of sailors thrashing this way and that. Bodies plummeting over the rail. More screams rising up unabated from the hold’s hatch. And he muttered, “Not again.”