Hugh Cook: The Werewolf and the Wormlord

And Ciranoush Zaxilian Norn.

The trouble between Alfric Danbrog and the brothers Norn had started years ago, and it had started with Ciranoush.

Entry to the Bank was by competitive examination. While Ciranoush and Alfric were both Certified Geniuses, Alfric had won a marginal triumph in such examination, and therefore had been accepted by the Bank on the same day that Ciranoush was rejected. Ciranoush had promptly accused Alfric of bribing the Bank’s examiner, and of forging medical records to conceal a scandalous genetic deficiency.

The passing years had done nothing to ease Ciranoush Zaxilian’s jealous passion. Rather, Alfric’s success had served only to increase his enemy’s contumelious hatred; and Ciranoush had successfully joined his brothers Pig and Wu to a campaign of steady calumniation directed against his rival. So, in his thirty-fourth year of life, Alfric found himself almost in a state of feud with the brothers Norn.

Which boded ill for the welfare of Alfric’s orks when at last they got to Galsh Ebrek.

The city of Galsh Ebrek, a muddy urbanization on the Riga Rimur River, was the Chivalric Centre of the Yudonic Knights and the capital of Wen Endex. Once Alfric and his orks reached the city they would be safe, at least from Her.

They set forth on the last march to Galsh Ebrek on a night of bitter cold. This final stage of their trek from the Qinjoks was dangerous, for they had to pass through a tract of wilderness where She liked to hunt, for She was close enough to the city to have hope of prey, yet far enough removed from its halls of power to have sure hope of escape after Her murders.

Alfric confessed to no fear, and gave his orks no hint of the danger. But he kept his sword loose in its scabbard. However, the journey was uneventful, and toward midnight they came in sight of the Riga Rimur and the city on the far side of the river. To close with the fast-flowing waters, they had to follow a gnarled track through rucked swamplands where marsh lights flared a ghostly blue-white in the night. Unlike many of his people, Alfric had no fear of the cold lilting flames of marsh-wisp. If anything, he loved the night: his greatest danger being that he would love it too well.

‘So that’s Galsh Ebrek,’ said Cod, looking at the huddling houses and the huge upsurge of Mobius Kolb which lay on the far side of the river.

‘It is,’ said Alfric.

There was a whimpling on the waters of the Riga Rimur where the wind rucked the surface. Here and there, lights gleamed briefly in the liquid black and then were gone again. Those lights were signs of organic life: for in the river there swam fish with phosphorescent eyes.

‘How do we get across?’ said Cod.

‘We swim,’ said Alfric.

‘Swim!’ cried Morgenstem. ‘But we can’t!’

All orks can swim. Their blubber-burdened bodies are well equipped for enduring the cold of the rivers of Wen Endex in winter. Furthermore, since orks can breathe underwater, it is impossible for them to drown. However, the grey-skinned monsters are ever reluctant to dare fresh running water, for in most of the rivers and streams of Wen Endex dwell ferocious worms which eat orks.

‘Relax,’ said Alfric. ‘I was only joking.’

‘Joking!’ said Morgenstem. ‘You call that a joke?’

And the ork was so upset that Alfric feared he might have created a major diplomatic incident. But, slowly, Morgenstem’s fright eased, and the ork at last accepted Alfric’s apologies.

‘But,’ said Morgenstem, ‘if we don’t swim, how do we get across?’

‘By ferry,’ said Cod. ‘It’s coming for us already.’

And so it was. The ferryman looked at the orks in askance. Of course he would have to take them across the river. The ferryman was a commoner and Alfric a Knight, so that settled that. But there remained the chance that the ferryman would create a diplomatic incident by insulting Alfric’s monsters.

‘Greetings, my good man,’ said Alfric, in the tones of hearty condescension with which a Yudonic Knight often addresses a commoner. ‘Hurry us across to the further shore if you will. Our good king Stavenger is waiting for these his guests. The Wormlord will not be pleased if you delay us, for these are the ambassadors from the Qinjoks, the ambassadors for whom he has long been waiting.’

This was a bluff, but it worked. The ferryman made no untoward comments about the orks, but instead maintained a sullen silence as he took the expedition across on his creaking boat. Alfric and Morgenstem went on the first trip, Cod came across with a horse on the next, then the remaining horses were shuttled across the Riga Rimur.

As Alfric and his orks were waiting for the last of the horses to arrive, a zana came dancing toward them across the waters.

‘Look!’ said Cod. ‘What is it?’

‘A zana,’ said Alfric. ‘One of the wild rainbows of Wen Endex. Have you never seen one before?’

‘No,’ said Cod, watching the zana come nimbling up the riverbank.

The ork’s unfamiliarity with this phenomenon is not surprising, for the zana are rare once one moves any distance from Galsh Ebrek. Zana are not really rainbows, for the colours displayed by the splay of a zana are red, gold, green, blue and pink. Furthermore, unlike rainbows they can be touched, though it is unwise to do so because they sting.

‘Yow!’ cried Cod, having just been so wounded.

‘Did you touch it?’ said Alfric.

‘Yes,’ said Cod. ‘And it bit me!’

Morgenstem picked up a handful of mud and hurled it after the retreating zana. Hit by the mud, it hummed, shattered into spectral splinters, then reformed and slid onwards.

‘Are you hurt?’ said Alfric.

‘Yes,’ said Cod, who was not disposed to be brave.

So Alfric was forced to sympathize, and gentle the ork’s hand to soothe the pain.

Meanwhile, he noticed they were drawing a lot of odd glances from the passing foot traffic. In theory, while She was on the loose, night was far more dangerous than day. In practice, since the Yudonic Knights were constrained by custom to walk the night until She had ceased her depredations, the nights were actually safer. With so many knights out hunting Her, bandits and such preferred to strike by the winterlight sun. Thus those who travelled favoured the dark.

Among those who went past were old men and older woman stooped beneath huge burdens of firewood. Others laboured past carrying buckets of water balanced on shoulder-poles, buckets filled from the river just upstream from the dungdump. Some muttered to themselves, but none insulted the orks to their faces. Still, Alfric was glad when the last of the horses came ashore and he was ready to proceed.

‘What’s in the barrels, master?’ said the ferryman.

‘A ransom of jade from the Qinjoks,’ said Alfric. ‘The annual tribute from King Dimple-Dumpling.’

‘Wealth of the orgre king, eh?’ said the ferryman.

‘Yes,’ said Alfric. ‘You should have taken your chance. You could have been rich for life.’

Then both laughed, and Alfric led horses and orks towards the city gates.

As has been said, Galsh Ebrek lay on (and, when the rain had been exceptionally heavy, at least partially in) the Riga Rimur River. Once it had been a walled city, but the swampy ground and the periodic delinquencies of the Riga Rimur had conspired to defeat the stonemason’s art; with the result that nothing remained of the masonry of lore and yore but for the massive bastions of the Stanch Gates. In place of stonework battlements, a rickety pale enclosed the city, this enclosure being largely notional due to the extent to which the fence had been vandalized by lawless wreckers in search of firewood.

While the city proper was very much a lowland affair, it was backed by a huge upthrust of rock. Mobius Kolb was the name of this mountainous granitic crescendo, and its bare and barren slopes were notable for the majestic monuments to power which they supported.