Hugh Cook - The Walrus and the Warwolf

Finally, after a crewman from the Walrus was found floating face-down in the Inner Sleeve with fifty-seven nails hammered into his head, the teasing stopped.

While all this work was going on, the encysted snake buried deep within Drake's gut quietly allowed its flesh to dissolve. A mob of eggs hatched in the wreckage of its body, and myriad worms began to infiltrate Drake's bloodstream. They embedded themselves in the walls of his duodenum, set up residence in the portal vein, squatted in his liver and crept up to his brain; they housed themselves in his stomach; they invaded his lymphatic system and burrowed into his bones. And multiplied.Drake became feverish.

For five days he endured high temperatures, rigors and blistering thirst. Arabin's own women took care of him. They soothed him, sang to him, sponged his forehead and fed him crab soup, fish roe, sea slugs, pulped sea anemones and other invalid food.And then the fever broke.And Drake felt fine.

He felt better than he had ever felt before in his life – and this was scarcely surprising. For the snake which had eaten its way into his flesh in Ling dated its ancestry back through the millenia to a tailored organism especially designed to complement the other defences of the Plague Sanctuary. The worms which had metastasized throughout his body were fulfilling the designs of an ancient science, normalizing his body functions, enhancing the action of his immune system, detoxifying poisons and killing off disease organisms.

The worms were rapidly finishing off an obscure low-grade viral infection distantly related to glandular fever, the start of a tubercular infection, two exotic venereal diseases which had not yet had time to debilitate their victim, a troublesome amoeba which had recently begun to cause him some intermittent diarrhoea, and a couple of wild and wonderful infections (native to the Greater Teeth) unknown to any standard classification.

So, while Drake had always been comparatively healthy, he now felt really good. So good, in fact, that he had to celebrate his recovery with a drink or three.

He did so – but even after his fifth mug, he felt scarcely more than a tingle.'What're you selling me?' he demanded. 'Water?'

'You young pups,' said his barman, shaking his head. 'You don't know your limits. But I'll help you find yours.'

And he mixed Drake a Skull Splitter, a popular cocktail consisting of equal measures of vinegar, methylated spirit, absinthe, vodka and apricot wine.'Drink this!' said the barman.

'Ah!' said Drake, as the poison went burning down his throat. 'That tastes better.'

A warm glow filled his stomach. He waited for a sense of langorous well-being to cosy his soul, for the harsh outlines of the world to soften and the burden of gravity to be at least partially nullified. But nothing so pleasant happened.

Instead, after a few moments, the warm glow was gone, and he was back where he started.

'Look, man,' said Drake, 'I don't know what fancy kind of coloured water that was, but I'm buggered if I'm paying for it.'

'It's strong enough for most folks,' said the barman, aggrieved. 'Why, three of those and Slagger Mulps was legless.'

'Sure, but I'm not a wimp like the Walrus. I'm a drinking man, the real article. So pour me something stronger. If you know how!'

'Aye,' said the barman, sensing a challenge here to his professional reputation. T can pour stronger, if that's what you want. But I won't be responsible for the consequences, mind.'

'I'm ready,' said Drake, fiercely. 'Hold back on nothing!'

Upon which the barman opened his bottom locker and pulled out strange vials, tubes, tubs, boxes, casks, jars and bottles, and mixed the most brain-blowing cocktail imaginable. Hemlock went into it, and paint, and tar, lamp-black, weedkiller and plutonium, the ink of a cuttlefish and the gall of a basilisk, a smidgin of belladonna and the blood of a (reputed) virgin, some powdered cannabis leaf and half a gram of heroin, some white of egg and some fermented fish, ground glass, tobacco ash, chopped-up leopard's whiskers, fine-ground horn of unicorn and two tomatoes, some mandrake, ginseng, tannin and quinine, chopped shark's liver seven days old, some high-grade lacquer and sulphuric acid, with lashings of honey to make the whole brew palatable.

In honour of the occasion, the barman unearthed a very old and ancient tankard made of glass – the only one of its kind on all the Greater Teeth. He poured the cocktail into it, slowly. The thick black liquid sat there, bubbling softly. The barman sprinkled some cinnamon on top and ceremoniously set the offering down in front of Drake.

'Get this dog-defecating fornicator inside you,' said the barman, with unwonted enthusiasm. 'That'll put hairs on your chest!'

Drake picked up the tankard with both hands, looked at it steadily, then sipped it with unaccustomed caution. Then:'What the hell,' he said.

And drank the rest down as a thirsty man would drink weak ale.

The barman watched expectantly, waiting for him to drop dead, or melt, or explode. Instead, Drake swayed a little. All colour left his face. He coughed once or twice, rather harshly, then spat out a little blood. Then, fairly rapidly, the colour returned to his face, his stance steadied, and he wiped his mouth and said regretfully:

'Well, it's a good drop, to be sure. Almost as good as a blow on the head. But the effect wears off powerful fast. Make me another one.'

But the barman shook his head.

'Boy,' he said, 'if that won't kill you, nothing will. One shot of that, and you should stay drunk till your grandchildren celebrate seventy. It ain't natural to drink that down and still stay speaking, far less standing. Boy, take it from me, and I'm an expert. Someone's worked the Black Arts on you, young man. They've taken away the gift of liquor – and all of liquor's friends.'

This was the opinion of a true professional, a specialist in chemical debauchery. As the words sank in, Drake shuddered. Someone had cursed him! Someone had doomed him to a life of perpetual sobriety!

He found it hard to think of a worse fate, but, after some reflection, imagined one – and hurried off to find a pirate whore to make sure it wasn't so.

Name: Sully Datelier Yot. Birthplace: Stokos.

Occupation: disciple of Gouda Muck, worshipper of the Flame, apostle of Goudanism.

Status: once Muck's apprentice, but now an Instrument for the Practice of the Revealed Disciplines of the Flame.

Description: lank pale stripling barnacled with warts.

Present location: the slave holes of Knock.

It was standard pirate practice to feed competitors drinks while gambling. Drake, doomed to be sober, kept his suffering as secret as he could, and enriched himself.

Choosing games like backgammon and dice chess, where there is a strong element of skill, Drake would gamble, drink, play drunk, raise the stakes, make a drunk's blunders, raise the stakes again – then use a sober man's wit, as if by accident, to find the tactics to sweep the table.

And the things he won! Pearls, diamonds, snuff, gold, jade, silver, a wad of coca leaf, and one-night stands with the wives of twenty different men.

Yet profit is not all, and scarcely compensated Drake for lost pleasures. For now, when raucous drunkards sang and shouted, it was no longer the warm hubbub of friendship which he heard, but the braying stupidity of morons and madmen. Sober, he no longer laughed to see a helpless

dipsomaniac resorting to tortured spastic contortions to get a mug to his lips. He no longer fell about with rejoicing laughter when one man vomited over another: instead he was bored. And remote. And cold.

He found himself living his life as though he had just come back from a funeral.