Hugh Cook - The Werewolf and the Wormlord

‘The sword,’ said the Wormlord, ‘has proved itself.’

As Ciranoush stared at the jewels in dumbfounded silence, Alfric steadied his head for long enough to add: ‘If further proof is demanded, seek it yourself on Island Thodrun. Qa lies dead, his body butchered, as other bodies will be before all differences in this kingdom are settled.’

‘Other bodies?’ said Ciranoush. ‘What mean you by that?’

‘You will not ask that question!’ said the king. Then he tossed the chip of lapis to Alfric, who surprised himself by catching it neatly. ‘A souvenir,’ said Tromso Stavenger. ‘I might give you another souvenir before the night is out. A head. A head for you to take home. The head of one of the brothers Norn.’

‘My lord,’ said Ciranoush, ‘how has the family Norn excited your displeasure?’

‘I am told,’ said the Wormlord, ‘that your brothers Pig and Wu have been brawling with the orks who happen to be ambassadors from the king of the Qinj oks. ’

‘Then I will see that apologies are made,’ said Ciranoush.

Without further ado, Ciranoush called his brothers forth from the mass of Yudonic Knights gathered in the throneroom. A sullen Pig and a slowvoiced Wu made formal apologies to the king.

‘I am not necessarily entirely satisfied by your apologies,’ said the king. ‘It may be that I will make an example of one of you. I do not say that this is necessarily so. Only that I reserve the right to so act. Any offence against any ambassador is a most serious matter, whatever the nature of that ambassador. What I need from you now is a peace. A peace between the brothers Norn and the family Danbrog. Is there a peace between you? Alfric?’

‘There is,’ said Alfric.

Pig hesitated, then said:

‘Yes, there is.’

And Wu:

‘My brother speaks for me as well.’

‘Good,’ said Stavenger. ‘Then you will all four of you sit together as a token of mutual trust and alliance. The three brothers Norn and Alfric Danbrog. Come, let us retire now to the banqueting hall.’

That they did, and soon a most uncomfortable Alfric Danbrog was seated at table with the three brothers Norn. Pig was seated to Alfric’s left and Ciranoush to his right, with Wu a further place to the right. A four person Trough of Friendship was brought forth and set in front of them, that they might all eat from the same dish in token of the truceship to which their king had bound them. A select portion of a gigantic river worm (a worm which was all of a horselength from nose to tail) was placed in that dish, and vegetables mounded on top of it.

A great heat rose from the river worm; and heat likewise flushed forth from the brothers Norn; and further heat assailed Alfric from the hall itself, a hall heated by a full half-dozen blazing fireplaces. It is scarcely surprising that he found himself sweating, and that his neighbours were similarly afflicted.

Certain formalities then took place; then the Wormlord took out his false teeth and wrapped them in a silken handkerchief, and all knew they were free to eat, which they did.

As the banquet got underway, Alfric did his best to ignore the brothers Norn. Easy enough to do, since Justina Thrug was seated opposite, and she was enough to take anyone’s mind off his neighbours. She was a phenomenon.

Justina Thrug was a meaty woman with the most abstraklous history of debauchery. On this occasion, she was rigged out in flame-coloured taffeta most unfitting as wear for one who was a daughter of Lonstantine Thrug. In a further offence against custom, she had brought her pet owl to banquet. The name of the creature was Aquitaine Varazchavardan, a fact which Alfric Danbrog could not help but learn, since Justina often addressed the feathered beast by this name.

(The owl, for its part, said precious little in return.)

It was said that Justina Thrug was truly her father’s daughter, and that nothing could abash her dauntless courage; but Alfric found such rumour hard to credit when he was confronted by this overloud and overweight female, a woman hardly overyoung.

Alfric was glad when the traditional banquet-time storytelling began, for it drowned out the Thrug. The tales that were told were all the usual, traditional stuff. Heroes venturing against those monsters which inhabit the wastelands. The glut of slaughter from the great battles of land and sea. The glory of the poets of the past who won deathless fame by fabling the heroes of such tales. The sacrifices made by those who, eager for fame, paid scant heed to the safety of the house of flesh. The plight of an outcast doomed by the betrayal of his king.

On and on went the storytelling, some in prose and some in verse, but all noble, heroic, inspired by visions of grandeur.

Listening, the Yudonic Knights indulged themselves in heroic ecstasies. They were no longer the inhabitants of a muddy little city in a minor province of the Izdimir Empire; they were not the denizens of an insignificant land half-engulfed by swamp; they were not the members of a bullyboy class dedicated to exploiting the labours of a subdued and sullen peasantry. Rather, they were lordly heroes in a land built for the accommodation of such men; their houses were palaces; their bad-tempered wives were compliant maidens who delighted in braiding broidered silk and looming fleeces for the comfort of their men; their estate was great, and their destiny to be greater yet.

At last, the Wormlord himself got to his feet, and (still without his teeth) began his tale of how he had marched against Her son, had met that monster, and had defeated him.

‘My making was not by way of words moth-eaten. Rather it was through deeds that I became the man you see before you.’

Thus began the Wormlord. And by like boast he continued, until at last his tale was done.

Other boasts followed. Recitals of ancestral sovereignties; of lordly deeds which had set the world aflame with admiration; of the splendour of gold and the open-handed kings who had oft won fame by their dispensing of the same; of savage foes who had marched against the kings, only to be broken and defeated and backdriven by the might of the righteous.

And, for a while, Alfric was buoyed up by this stuff. But after a while it all got too much, and he wished he could leave. But he could not. This was his banquet, put on especially for his honour. If he left before it was finished, he would be insulting his king and his fellows.

In the end, Alfric dared himself away from the table long enough to take a piss — this itself a breach of custom, but he was past caring — only to find another flatulent hero-belcher in action when he returned.

On went the night, full of the wind of words. Of ring-prowed ships; of men in bearskin gloves manning such ships, the masts and sails of the same sheeted with ice; of swords adorned with coiled gold; of steeds with plaited manes, brave beasts which outran the wind; fell monsters encountered and defeated on a murky moor; horns heartening heroes as men graced with deathless courage met their end in contest with onswarming hordes of heartless reptiles; war-arrows embedded in corpses strewn upon steep rocky screens, discarded at the foot of precipitous crags, lying derelict in waters bloody and disturbed.

Of this sang the song-singers; and they sang also of the undisturbed valour of men who died without complaint though they were pierced to the vitals by deadly-barbed boar-spears; and of the outlandish grief which doomed the hero Hroblar to an uncouth death when his hand-meshed battle-corslet animated itself and ate through his flesh to the bone.

Also they sang — there was no stopping it, though Alfric would have been content to see all of creation come to an end rather than endure any more of this stuff — of the weapon-smiths of old and the weapons of their making.