Hugh Cook: The Werewolf and the Wormlord

A light rain was falling outside, misting against Alfric’s spectacles so that, had he wanted perfect vision, he would have had to cleanse those optical devices thrice in every sixty heartbeats. He did no such thing, having found it wiser to avoid such full-time occupation. Instead, he cursed a couple of times, then went and collected his orks and his pack horses from the bam.

‘Where now?’ said Cod.

‘Now,’ said Alfric, ‘we find you two somewhere to sleep for the night.’

Alfric thought this should not prove too difficult. But, once his orks had been refused lodgings by five foul netherskens of the lowest kind, he began to revise his estimate of the difficulties involved in finding lodgings for a pair of orks in Galsh Ebrek in the dead of night.

‘Don’t worry about us,’ said Morgenstem. ‘We can sleep in the mud.’

Doubtless they could. But Alfric had more than a rough idea of how the ogre king would react if he knew his ambassadors had been so insulted. The possibilities were appalling.

‘No,’ said Alfric. ‘I’ll find you somewhere to sleep. Somehow.’

Should he take them up Mobius Kolb? He had the option of presenting them to the Wormlord that very night. By rights the Wormlord should offer them the freedom of Saxo Pall. But what if the Wormlord refused them hospitality? That would be a dreadful blow to Alfric’s prestige. Doubtless the Bank itself would quarter the orks if all else failed. But how would that look on Alfric’s dossier? He was a Banker Third Class, not a miserable clerk or an appretice shroff. One of his rank was meant to be ambassador, negotiator and arbitrator all rolled into one. It would be a black mark against him if he came whining to his superiors complaining that he couldn’t find a couple of spare beds in the largest city in Wen Endex.

Then inspiration struck.

‘The Green Cricket, that’s the place.’

He had to go there anywhere, to return the pack horses he had hired.

‘What place?’ said Cod.

‘It’s an inn,’ said Alfric. ‘An inn in Fraudenzimmer Street.’

With orks in tow, Alfric ventured to the backlands of Galsh Ebrek, to Fraudenzimmer Street and the dark-gabled frontage of the Green Cricket. There Alfric delivered the pack horses into the care of Brock the Ostler.

‘How are you for beds tonight?’ said Alfric.

‘That,’ said Brock, eyeing the orks doubtfully, ‘is something you’d have to ask Herself.’

So Alfric took his orks to the front door and knocked. The overhang of the second storey sheltered the doorway from the downfalling rain. Under that overhang was a huge iron cauldron, a relic of the orking days of yore. Its bottom had rusted out years ago, but it remained a potent token of the horrors of the past. To Alfric’s disgust, both Cod and Morgenstem burst into tears at the sight of it.

‘Gods,’ muttered Alfric.

He banged on the door of the lushery, demanding an entry. He wanted to be gone, gone, away from these embarrassingly over-sensitive animals. However, his unsubtle overtures drew no response from the Green Cricket.

‘Allow me,’ said Cod the ork, wiping away his tears.

And Cod fisted the door until its timbers shivered.

A dwarf-hole level with Alfric’s knees opened abruptly and a dwarf looked out.

‘Who is it?’ said the dwarf Du Deiner.

‘Myself,’ said Alfric.

‘And who’s that?’ said Du Deiner, who was looking from candlefire brightness into the murk of an overhung night.

‘Myself is Herself,’ said Alfric. ‘I come from bog, my body drenched with blood but my appetites unsated. I seek a dwarf. I yearn to ravage its flesh for its liver, to gouge out its eyes and pull off its ears for my porridge.’

‘Oh, you,’ said Du Deiner, belatedly recognizing the voice. ‘Hang about, I’ll open the door.’

The dwarf was as good as his word, and shortly laboured the door open with some help from his colleague Mich Dir.

‘Come in,’ said Du Deiner.

‘In, in,’ urged Mich Dir, for the draught from the open door was making the candles flaze.

In went Alfric with his orks following on his heels.

‘No!’ said Du Deiner, when he saw the first of the monsters. ‘They can’t come in. They’re-’

‘They’re friends,’ said Alfric, inverting the dwarf.

Du Deiner kicked, struggled and bit. When he bit, Alfric dropped him.

‘Stop that!’ This command came from Anna Blaume herself, she bedizened in flame-coloured taffeta, she enshrined in state behind the battlements of her bar. She followed up her order by saying: ‘Why, it’s Ally!’ Then, cheerfully: ‘Come in, come in!’

‘I am in,’ said Alfric, somewhat vexed that this blowsy publican should name him ‘Ally’ in public.

Izdarbolskobidarbix was the name he preferred. Failing that, Mister Danbrog. Or, as a minimum courtesy, Alfric. He had told Ms Blaume as much on many occasions; but she was immune to lectures.

‘Do you drink?’ said Blaume, speaking not to Alfric but to the orks.

‘Beer,’ said Cod.

A wide-eyed Morgenstem said nothing, but looked in askance at the roistering room where drunks sat in each other’s laps or lay on the floor, hammered artificial flatulence from empty wine skins, and made popcorn in a huge wok perched atop a charcoal brazier. A drunk tossed a handful of popcorn skywards. A velvety green vogel swooped from the rafters and snapped one nipplebit nicely. Then it settled on Morgenstern’s head. The ork clawed at it in a frenzy.

‘Skaps,’ said Blaume, sharply.

The vogel launched itself into the air, circled thrice, then hooked itself on to a smokey rafter and chittered with malicious laughter. The vogel is the parrot-bad of Wen Endex, a creature noted more for misbehaviour than for speech.

‘She’ll have a beer too,’ said Cod, putting his arm around a much-shaken Morgenstem.

‘He,’ said Alfric, by way of correction.

(Did orks have their own native tongue in addition to Toxteth? Or did they, like the ogres of the Qinjoks, acquire that language with their mothers’ milk? A question worth pursuing, but not now.)

‘Hello Anna,’ said Alfric, as beers for all were served.

‘Hello,’ said she. ‘Good to see you again.’

Then Anna Blaume broke off to talk to her child, little Ben Zvanzig (son of Sin Zvanzig), who was crying.

‘There now,’ said Blaume, giving him a tea-towel. ‘Dry your pepper-weepers and don’t be poorly.’

‘But it bit me,’ sobbed Ben.

‘Well, that’s what they do, my dear,’ said Blaume. ‘Any time you try to strangle them, at any rate. Sheila, my love. Taken Ben upstairs and put him to bed.’

Whereupon little Ben Zvanzig was led away by Anna Blaume’s girl child, a slip of a thing who was aged eleven. (And who was her father, then? That must remain one of the smaller but nevertheless insoluble mysteries of the universe, for even Anna Blaume herself had not the slightest idea.)

‘Well, Ally,’ said Blaume. ‘What have you got for me, apart from trouble?’

‘This,’ said Alfric, pulling a saladin ring from his pocket.

This had cost him nothing, for it was a gift from the ogre king. (Strange, that it had not been converted to treefall rubbish like the rest of the Qinjok tribute — but perhaps Alfric’s pocket was possessed of magical properties which protected its contents from the Curse of the Hag.) Though the gift had cost nothing, it was a handsome present even so; and Alfric experienced a certain amount of painful regret as Blaume took it from him.

‘That’s lovely,’ said she, and lent over the bar to kiss him.

‘I’m glad you like it,’ said Alfric, kissing back politely.

As he did so, he caught Blaume’s smell, which was that of a well-greased frying pan; for Anna Blaume regularly rubbed her skin with lard to check the progress of a discomforting disease of the integumentary system.