Hugh Cook - The Walrus and the Warwolf

'Our good friend from the Ebrells is talking good sense,' said the weapons muqaddam (who had abandoned his name twenty years previously on joining the Church of the Anonymous Congregation).'Sense?' said Arabin, in anger.

'Jon, man,' said the weapons muqaddam, 'don't let pride do the talking for you. For pride is a monster. Remember what you owe to the boy.''Owe?' said Arabin, in outrage. 'I owe him nothing!'

'Myself you spoke to after you rid the ship of the Neversh,' said the weapons muqaddam. 'Aye, back in the disaster days in the Drangsturm Gulf. You told me then you'd never have done it without Drake Douay standing staunch beside you.'

As the weapons muqaddam spoke, Drake remembered the gut-wrenching terror of the battle against the Neversh. Remembered storm wind, cold water, the evening darkening. Remembered Jon Arabin's bald head looking, in the gathering night, like an egg decaying to darkness. Remembered, most of all, the moment when he had become sure that Arabin, despite his threats, would never kill him.He felt the same now.

Or felt, at any rate, that Arabin did not want to kill him. The eyes told that tale. But the man might be pushed to slaughter anyway, to salvage his pride.'Jon,' said Drake. 'Jon . . .'He did not know what to say.

'You've no words, have you?' said Arabin, in a heavy voice, hand falling to the hilt of his falchion.'Steady up!' said Harly Burpskin.

'Who are you to tell me to steady up?' said Arabin, turning on the hapless helmsman.

Burpskin held his ground with a courage which Drake would not have credited him with.

'Captain mine,' said Burpskin, 'there's something you ought to know, which I've never told. You remember Island Tor, aye, when you sent three of us by boat to scout out the island. That first evening we found a harbour, safe, wide and deep. Drake Douay, his thought was all for the ship. The ship's our survival, that's what he said. He-'

'AH this talk is rubbish,' said Jon Arabin. 'I've reason to need the blood of young Drake Douay. He spoke against me when all pirates met to talk through Menator's offer of empire. Worse, he insulted me by offering me a place in his service when he became king upon Stokos.'

'So what?' said the weapons muqaddam. 'He's but a boy. We're men. Since when did we expect the sense of a man from the head of a boy?'

'Aye,' said Baltu. 'And, boy or otherwise, he saved your ship. More than the once.'

'He wished to save it again by offering you that harbour I spoke of,' said Burpskin. 'But me and the others, we were too hot for pressing on.'

'So you were derelict in your duty!' roared Arabin, finding at last some way to lose his temper entirely. 'And you're derelict now! You're the helmsman, aren't you? I set you at the wheel myself. What have you done? Have you lashed it? Have you dared? Oh, no good running away. Too late for that!'

And, shortly thereafter, Burpskin was lashed to the main-mast, and a whip was streaking blood across his back. After which Arabin, now in a truly evil mood, organized a training session in unarmed combat with the weapons muqaddam, Quin Baltu and Ika Thole. At the end of it, they were all of them battered, bloody and bruised, and Baltu had lost four teeth.

There followed ten days of hell in which, through worsening weather, Jon Arabin drove his ship and his crew like a madman. Then, finally, he drank himself drunk on Dog's Breath rum, took sick in his cabin for two days, and emerged as a new man. Rage, hate, bile and injured pride forgotten.

'Drake,' he said, and embraced him. 'I'm glad I didn't lose you.'

'Jon, man,' said Drake, 'that was neat to watch when you knocked out Baltu's teeth. You must teach me some of that stuff.'

'We'll start you training today,' said Arabin. 'With weapons, too. The weapons muqaddam will organize it. The whole crew should get into it again – the weather's easing, and we'll have plenty of time as we run for the west.''The west?' said Drake. 'Aye. We turn west today.'

'But we've not yet reached the Drangsturm Gulf!' said Drake.

'What?' said Drake. 'Did you think this good ship was going to run to the terror-lands, grapple with the Swarms and capture a monster that way?'

'Well, why not?' said Drake. 'That's what the Walrus did. I told King Tor all about it when I reported to him.'

'Aye,' said Arabin. 'So Tor believes it. And Menator too, for that's the kind of fool he is. But – Drake, man, I'm not so stupid. I hear the Walrus had some trouble while provisioning at Island Burntos. I know the place, aye. Likely one of the provisions taken aboard was the Neversh which Mulps produced at the Teeth.'

'Well,' said Drake, 'if you think that, then why not go to Burntos yourself?'

'Because Drake Douay was at the heart of whatever trouble happened there,' said Jon Arabin. 'Do you think I'd risk my ship in a place where the son of the demon Hagon has been stirring things up? I might if I could get at the truth – but I'm wise enough to know the truth's the last thing I'd get out of Drake Douay.

'Nay, man. We're on our way to Hexagon. That's one of the Scattered Islands, far out in the Central Ocean. Ships from Narba trade there regular, aye, and bring back rumours. They claim that Baron Farouk of Hexagon has a baby keflo in his menagerie, purchased from Drangsturm for twice its own weight of silver.'

'This keflo,' said Drake. 'Is that the monster which is built with a turtle shell, with legs and hooks and claws and things underneath?'

'Aye, so it is,' said Arabin. 'So you've learnt something on your travels! Like all of the Swarms, it grows fearful large, but this one should be small enough to get aboard. If rumour proves true.''What date has the rumour?' said Drake.

'The rumour is recent,' said Jon Arabin, 'So I've high hopes that fact will satisfy claim. If the keflo's there, and small enough to get aboard, that's half our problem solved.''And the other half?' said Drake.

'The other half of our problem,' said Jon Arabin, 'will be persuading Baron Farouk to part with this rare and most expensive monster. With luck, we won't have any trouble.'

Lord Menator: Galish-born warlord-adventurer who has made himself ruler of the Greater Teeth (having been aided in a crucial debate by Drake Douay).

Menator, a broken-nosed man as bald as Jon Arabin, notable for the blue rose tattooed on his left cheek, has agreed to help the ogre Tor launch an invasion of Stokos.

Menator plans for this invasion to be the start of a War of Empire which will see his forces conquer the western seaboard of the continent of Argan.

Baron Farouk of Hexagon did in fact have a keflo in his menagerie. He also proved extremely reluctant to sell it. However, after a certain amount of unpleasantness, which involved (among other things) the kidnapping of his eldest daughter and the burning of his capital city, he released the monster into the care of the Warwolf, which sailed home in triumph.

'Now,' said Jon Arabin to Lord Menator, 'I've captured a monster just as the Walrus has. So I've as much right to be admiral as he has.'

Menator, of course, wanted neither Walrus nor Warwolf as admiral. He wanted his own hand-picked men to take positions of power in his planned empire. Besides which, he hated blacks – and had his doubts about gangling green-haired double-thumbed mutants. As Walrus and Warwolf were too powerful and popular for Menator to refuse them directly, he had set them a challenge which should by rights have killed them.Yet they had survived.

They had proved beyond all doubt that they were both worthy of power and position.

Lord Menator had been startled to see them return at all, awed by their captive monsters, and deeply shaken by their tales of appalling sufferings endured while questing in the terror-lands south of Drangsturm.