Hugh Cook - The Werewolf and the Wormlord

Well.

What Xzu said had some logic to it.

The plan was at least worth trying, if Alfric really wanted a delay.

‘I’ll do it,’ said Alfric.

‘Good,’ said Xzu. ‘What was the trigger word?’

‘Tolfrigdalakaptiko,’ said Alfric. ‘I won’t forget it.’

But, once Alfric had the peasant Norton Brick in his possession, Alfric cast the trigger word from his mind. Because Alfric had made up his mind. He would not do what the Bank wanted. Whatever secret ‘political concerns’ had led the Bank to seek a delay in the Wormlord’s release, Alfric was still going to pursue his own ends.

He was going to see the Wormlord set free and Herself killed, and was then going to make himself king, with or without the support of the Bank.

Thus decided, Alfric took Norton Brick to the Green Cricket, got him drunk then left him there, the trigger word unspoken and the story untold.

Then Alfric went home to his house on Vamvelten Street, and there prepared his gear for the journey which lay ahead. One of his jobs was to clean and sharpen the deathsword Bloodbane, for he had decided this was very much the blade to take to war against Herself.

When Alfric at last went to bed, he slept long, and dreamt his way through many tangled dreams. This was understandable, for he was exhausted by his confrontation with Comptroller Xzu. His recent fever had left him weak, and he needed his sleep.

But the dreams of that sleep were tormented.

Alfric Danbrog dreamt of Herself. Blighted was Her birth and pitiless was Her growth. He dreamt that a company of Yudonic Knights marched against Herself, and in his dreams he saw that even these staunch warriors feared to march against such a shrewd and ruthless foe.

Then dream became nightmare, and he dreamt that his father was dead, killed by Herself. Alfric stood by his father’s body, overcome by the cruellest of griefs. The flayed corpse was hideous in death, and Alfric wept over it. His tears fell red-hot to the earth and there became buttons of bronze.

A dreamshift took him.

And Alfric found himself running as a wolf through drenching forests while helmeted men pursued him. Grim was their pursuit, and silent, utterly silent, the whole thing was silent, though he was breaking through branches in his panic, and tearing his way through webworks of thorns. Even though he screamed in anguish, nevertheless his world was silent, for he could not hear himself killed.

Abruptly, Alfric burst from the woods into the streets of Galsh Ebrek, and found himself running between carts piled high with scorlins of seaweed. Then he found himself floundering amidst shellfish and driftwood, his wolf become eel.

Then After a series of strange transitions in which he imagined himself first bird and then fox, Alfric dreamt that he was standing in the Imperial Court in Tang, his body days unwashed and his clothes in like condition. With him was the sea dragon Qa, and, to Alfric’s distress, the great poet stank of rotten meat and regurgitated fish. Nevertheless, the Emperor of Tang was polite. The Emperor sipped from a cup. Nectar was in that cup, but this drink with blood was blended, and somehow the Emperor’s voice was mixed up with that of King Dimple-Dumpling, and And another dreamshift took Alfric to a cave deep-delved in the Qinjoks, and there he did battle with the ogre king. Bloodbane was in Alfric’s hand, and flames of blood ran bright-burning down the blade as he matched his skills of slaughter against the monsters who confronted him. Then the sword became a horse, and he mounted it, the bit-clenching beast bearing him away to a cave where he stood knee-deep in seawater. There were rings in the water, rings glinting cold and gold in the gloom of the sea. Drowned in the same water were many blades of war, and gilded cups which had once kissed the lips of kings.

And Alfric, in his dream, knew himself to be dreaming of death; and knew that this was because he expected to shortly die.

Then the images changed, though their burden did not; and Alfric dreamt himself to be once more in the Spiderweb Castle, looking upon the blanched faces of princes once bounteous, watched the frozen flesh of a long-dead sage who still bent as if to construe the runes, listening to the echoes of the voices of ghosts…

Then the dreams changed again.

And Alfric found himself dreaming that he was trapped in the sagaworld of the songs of the Yudonic Knights of Wen Endex.

In his dreams, Alfric longed to escape to his desk at the Bank, to the clean world of paperwork, the ordered world of interest rates and agiotage. But he could not escape. He was doomed to a world of boiling oceans and wolfhaunt wilderness, of cold forests and turbulent rivers, of mountains gripped by winter’s icy binding, of ship and sword, of dare and danger, of slaughter and battle, of heroes and corpses.

Then Alfric woke, for someone was hammering at the door.

It proved to be his father.

‘A new night has begun,’ said Grendel Danbrog. ‘And we are ready to march upon Saxo Pall.’

And Alfric, finding himself doomed to the world of heroes for real, had no option but to buckle on his sword and march forth to face his future.

With the deathsword Bloodbane sheathed at his side, Alfric Danbrog joined the Yudonic Knights of Galsh Ebrek who marched upon Saxo Pall.

Under a swollen moon they marched. Their numbers had greatly increased since the meeting in Grendel’s bam. Instead of two dozen knights, there were almost two hundred in the army which assaulted the Wormlord’s fastness. The gates of the great stronghold were thrown open at their demand, and they tramped, the mud from their boots despoiling the carpets, their hounds loping alongside them as they stormed into the castle.

None tried to stand against them until they got to the Wormlord’s sick room. There they found Ursula Major standing on guard. She looked poised and impeccable, her linen clean, her jewels splendorous by lamplight, her hair bound back by bands of silver, all but for one frail strand of blondeness which wisped around her mouth.

‘Halt,’ said she.

They halted.

‘You can go no further,’ said Ursula Major, ‘for I am of royal blood. To touch me is treason. ’

‘Not so, sister,’ said Grendel, stepping forward from the ranks.

‘I acknowledge you not as my brother,’ said Ursula Major.

A reasonable statement, this, if appearances were anything to go by. For Grendel Danbrog was a massive man of middle years, coarse in dress and feature, the stench of many unwashed years upon him. Whereas Ursula Major was in her early twenties, the gloss of well-scrubbed health upon her elegant face. Still, all there knew the truth, and Grendel did not bother to restate it. Instead, he shoved the woman out of the way, flung open the sickroom door, and entered.

The Knights followed, though only the first half dozen could actually fit into the room.

In that chamber was the Wormlord. The old man was tucked up in bed, kept warm by flannel pyjamas, his feet comforted by a hot rock wrapped in a towel; but (as always) his head was capped by his horned helmet. Tromso Stavenger looked unspeakably comfortable as he lay there supping upon lukewarm gruel which was being fed to him (a spoonful at a time) by a nubile young serving maid. Unless Alfric was badly mistaken, Stavenger was somewhat disconcerted at the sudden arrival of the Knights, and was not altogether pleased by their advent.

However, when he had been made to understand what was going on, the Wormlord agreed to leave his sickbed, and spoke of his longing for battle as he struggled into his clothes.

‘My teeth!’ said Stavenger.

His teeth were found and placed in his mouth. Good! It would not do for a king to die without his teeth.