Hugh Cook - The Walrus and the Warwolf

There was no nonsense about passengers on the good ship Flying Fish. They were battened down below decks for the passage to Androlmarphos, a run of about two hundred leagues as the aasvogel flies, but rather more as the ship tacks. The Flying Fish, which held several unofficial records for ultra-slow passages, generally made the voyage in six days.

Drake, being battened down below, was unable to hang over the stern rail waxing maudlin as the cliffs of Stokos receded into the distance. He hung over the side of his bunk instead, miserably seasick, and vomited into the pitching gloom. Fortunately, he was on the lowest bunk, with nobody below him. Unfortunately, there were three men in the tiers above, each as sick as he was . . .

By the time Drake had vomited up everything in his stomach, the anaesthetic effects of alcohol were beginning to wear off, and both his body and psyche were suffering. He tried to console himself by eating and drinking, but continued seasickness made both these enterprises counterproductive.

Bad weather stretched the voyage out. Once, the ship was almost wrecked on the shores of Hok, a mountainous coastal province of the Harvest Plains, lying due north of Stokos. Finally, nine full days after leaving Cam, the Flying Fish reached her destination.

It was a pale, unsteady youth who finally staggered down the gangplank to the dockside at Androlmarphos, the great trading city commanding the delta of the Velvet River. This was the first time Drake had set foot on the continent of Argan, fabled land of ruined cities, fallen empires, monsters, magic, sages, wizards and worse. He expected immediate amazements – but was swiftly disillusioned.

The bustling docks were much the same in 'Marphos as in Stokos. The ships looked no different; many, indeed, hehad seen before at Cam. And, while the place was a polyglot babble of foreign languages, the dominant argot was the Galish Trading Tongue, which he knew well enough already.

Since Androlmarphos recognized Bankers' Money, Drake had no need to find a money-changer. Anywhere inland, he would have been lesslucky:butin' Marphos a full half-dozen currencies mingled promiscuously. He could even have spent the jives and shangles minted by his own King Tor, had he had any to his name.

Drake bought a fish sandwich and, eating it slowly, watched men lose money to a quick-talking rogue who hid a peanut under one of three little cups, shuffled these, then asked his victims to guess its hiding place. Drake was too canny to risk cold cash on a sucker's game like that, but nevertheless found the sight heartening – it suggested the Demon was worshipped here in Androlmarphos, if not in name then at least in deed.He went to search for a bar.

Seventeen days later, when the last of his money was almost gone, someone tapped him on the shoulder and spoke his name. Turning, he saw it was Yot.

'Why, Sully Datelier Yot!' said Drake. 'What brings you here? Come to enjoy yourself, perhaps?''No,' said Yot, drawing a knife. 'I've come to-'

But Drake, waiting to hear no more, threw half a mug of beer into the boy's face, then grabbed his knifehand. Their struggle precipitated a general bar brawl – it was that kind of drinking establishment, the only kind which would have tolerated Drake's seventeen-day binge. In the end, the Watch broke up the fight.

Yot escaped, but Drake was caught and hauled before a judge. He heard, as others have in his predicament, many fulsome phrases about the need for personal responsibility and the shortcomings of the younger generation. Then heard his sentence:'Ship out or else.''Or else what?' asked Drake incautiously.

'Or else we'll chop off both your feet and sell them to raise funds for charity!' roared the judge, who, having tried three dozen identical cases that day, was losing his sense of proportion.

'I've got no money,' said Drake, who had been stripped of the last of his funds by the Watch.

'Then we'll help you earn some,' said the judge with a pleasant smile, which suggested that something particularly nasty was coming. He had till then been speaking in Galish, but lapsed momentarily into Legal Churl. There was a pause before the translation came:' Twenty days hard.''Hard?' said Drake, in bewilderment.It sounded thoroughly obscene to him.'Hard labour, fool!'

Drake then spent twenty days chained to the oar of a galley, rowing up and down the long sweaty river-leagues inland from Androlmarphos. The work was tough, the rations poor, and the view monotonous. His galley once went upstream as far as Selzirk itself, but docked in the magnificent capital of the Harvest Plains by night, and was gone again before dawn. That irked Drake as much as anything else.

At least those twenty days gave him plenty of time to plan for his future. He would go back to Stokos. Yes. He would throw himself on the mercy of King Tor. Or would he? No: he would come not with a plea but with a sword. He would offer himself to Tor as an executioner. A Suppressor of Unorthodox Religions.

Once Drake's eloquence had persuaded Tor of the danger posed by Gouda Muck's cult, surely the king would be only too glad to have a vigorous young man like Drake in charge of the suppression of Muck's outlandish heresies.Yes.

And once he had an official position, a fancy title, a sizeable income and a rainbow-coloured uniform designed to show off his muscles, he'd make another assault on Zanya Kliedervaust. But he would refine his tactics first. He might even try some of the things the wizard Miphon had suggested. Would he pledge his love with poetry? No, never – he'd feel ridiculous. But he might take her flowers. Well, one flower, anyway. And maybe he shouldn't be so direct about demanding her body. Maybe he should give her some time to get used to him. How long? Three days? No, two should do it. . .

After twenty days on the galley, Drake expected liberty. But got no such thing. Instead, he was battened down in the hold of the Gol-sa-danjerk, a foreign ship which gave him less air, less space and less light than the Flying Fish, and kept him on shorter commons besides. Where he was bound, he knew not; the other exiles imprisoned with him knew as little as he.

'With luck,' said Drake, 'we're being deported to Stokos.'

In fact, they had all been sold into slavery, and were being carried north-west toward a slaving port in the Ravlish Lands.

At last, after what seemed an age – but was really only seven half-days and a fingerlength – an unfamiliar voice of command ordered them up on deck. They scrambled up through a recently unbattened hatch to find their ship still at sea. Another vessel was connected to the Gol-sa-danjerk by grappling hooks. Copious quantities of blood on the deck suggested that the connection had not been entirely welcomed. Indeed, Drake observed that most of the crew had become corpses. Strangers dressed in sealskins were busy stripping those corpses.'Pirates,' said Drake to himself.This was a guess, but it was accurate.

'Which of you jerks can sail?' roared a pirate, in something approximating to Galish.All except Drake proclaimed themselves to be sailors.

'You,' said a pirate, pointing at him. 'You know the sea, or don't you?'

T know something better,' said Drake, with a metalworkers' conceit which marked him as a true son of Stokos. T know steel. Hammering, shaping, forging and sharpening. I'm a master craftsman, don't you know.'

Gouda Muck would have laughed bitterly to have heard that joke – though Drake did know some of the basics.

'You're a landlubber, then,' said a pirate, and knocked him to the deck.

Drake swiftly realized his mistake. The other prisoners swore themselves to be pirates, and were accepted into the fraternity of the sea-robbers. Drake, on the other hand, was looked on as near to useless.