Hugh Cook - The Walrus and the Warwolf

However, the truce to which the captains had pledged their crews held good, at least for that night. Indeed, Drake, to his startlement, found himself quite enjoying the company of Ish Ulpin, for the pale-faced man had an amazing fund of stories about wild times in Chi'ash-lan and elsewhere.

While the company was good, the night itself was dreadful, the weather worsening relentlessly. By dawn, the Tusk and Jade were nowhere to be seen. Menator had planned for this, ordering the ships to rendevous at D'Waith if separated. But Jon Arabin had no intentions of trying anything so stupid, knowing full well that Abousir Belench and Bluewater Draven would skive off to do some private raiding.

The Sky Dancer then took a terrible hammering in five days of wild seas and variable winds. By the time the worst of the storm was over, they were lost. The surviving navigational aids, when released, huddled against the mourning wind, refusing to fly.

Closing with the first land sighted, they found it to be Carawell, largest of the Lesser Teeth, those fishing islands lying north of the Greaters. They anchored shortly in Brennan, Carawell's harbour. Arabin planned to stay long enough to repair sails, refurbish their storm-battered longboat, and fix leaks which kept three men continually at the pumps.

'They don't care much for pirates here,' said Slagger Mulps dourly, eyeing the low and solid stone houses of Brennan.

'Aye,' said Jon Arabin, 'but they don't have much quarrel with us, either.'

As the Lesser Teeth were poor, and most pirates such bad sailors, few risked raiding these dangerous northern waters.'Mayhap we should take hostages,' said Slagger Mulps.

'No need,' said Arabin. T was wrecked here once. It's not a bad place. Not like Lorp.' (And, thinking of Lorp, he shuddered.) 'But we'll pay for what we take. There's thousands of islanders, all told – wouldn't do to stir them up.'

'We'll likely stir them up just by being here,' said Mulps.

'No, no,' said Arabin. 'Look – I'll take a party ashore. We'll claim ourselves a diplomatic mission from Baron Farouk of Hexagon, voyaging to Tameran to establish diplomatic relations and a trade in low-weight high-value items such as diamonds, spices and arachnid silk.'

'You do talk lovely when the wind's from the east,' said Mulps sourly.'I was born with honey in my mouth,' said Jon Arabin.

In truth – a truth he never trusted any pirate with – he had been educated in a convent school in Ashmolea, where he had delighted his tutors by his dedication to rhetoric, grammar, elocution and linguistic philosophy.

(The rough-talking Walrus had his own dire secret. In his youth, he had been a gardener's boy in Chenameg. All through adolescence, he had longed to win a place in King Lyra's poetry league. Hence: many lines about damsel-blushing bloom in cheeks of cherry blossom, fish-surfaced aroma of blue winds of heavenly sunlight, and so forth. Then came the day when he ran amok in drunken rage, having found the rumours that his verses were used by the King for toilet paper were – alas! – entirely true.)

'Go then,' said the Walrus, speaking roughly, as a pirate must. 'If your liver returns, I'll honour you by eating it.''I'm flattered,' said Arabin.

And went ashore, taking with him a handful of men who could play the role of courtier – i.e., could put two words together without inserting an obscenity between them. Young Drake went with him, and Sully Yot. Rolf Thelemite, who had always pretended to be more noble than the rest of them. Simp Fiche, who, for all that could be said against him, at least knew how to eat with his mouth shut. Ching Quail, who had spent his youth trying to win entry to the banker's guild.

Arabin also took – as muscle – Bucks Cat and Whale Mike. But both were under strict instructions to play the role of deaf mutes.

Ashore they went, and played their roles as best they could. But the good people of Brennan soon had their doubts. These could not possibly be ambassadors! No, just looking at the way Jon Arabin carried himself, it was obvious that he could be no less than the bold Baron Farouk himself.

'If your trade hopes come true, Baron – my apologies, I meant Ambassador,' said old Gezeldux, who ran the best bar in Brennan, 'will your ships then port in Brennan?'

'That depends how much you over-charge us by,' said Jon Arabin.

A sally which raised – for they were all relaxed – a roar of laughter.

Things went so well ashore that the venture did not end as the swift diplomatic mission Jon Arabin had planned, but became something of a party. The pirates paid good gold for better ale, heard local jokes and told their own, and were, naturally enough, asked about Hexagon.

'Let my son play geographer,' said Jon Arabin, with a nod in Drake's direction.

'Your son?' said a local, dubious about the possibility of a blood connection between the corn-haired Drake and pitch black Jon Arabin.

'Well, he's my son in a manner of speaking,' said Jon Arabin. 'His mother, after all, was my wife. She was blonde – and so was the servant I thought was a eunuch.'This claim raised a roar of drunken laughter.

'Anyway,' said Jon Arabin, 'let my son tell of Hexagon, for he knows the island true, and the seas around.'

So Drake told of the silver-horned unicorns of Hexagon; of men who fly in kites and fire-balloons; of a seamless metal pillar rising half a league skywards from the Games Court of the Baron's palace; of a shark the size of a ship and a jellyfish the size of a longboat; of a place where the sea boiled continuously and floating rock bubbled to the surface, while overhead circled a strange disc which looked to be made of gold.

These tales he told, and others equally incredible. All were disbelieved – and for a very simple reason. They were all true. And, as is well known, truth is far, far stranger than fiction.

'Methinks in truth this Hexagon's a place so boring a traveller must fiction it up to win half a hearing at all,' said old Gezeldux.

'No,' insisted Drake. 'We have strange things there, strange things. Look – this was given me by the Baron's eldest daughter. Is it not strange enough for you?'

And he showed off a cameo brooch, the only one he had ever seen. The Baron's eldest daughter, when prisoner on the Warwolf, had used it to bribe her guard of the moment – Drake – to admit her manicurist to attend most urgently to two broken nails and a disgustingly dirty set of cuticles.

'A trinket,' said Gezeldux, with something in his voice suggesting he might have sneered had that been in his nature. 'There's nothing strange about that.'

'Ah,' said Drake, 'but I'm living proof of strangeness myself. I've matched you drink for drink, yet my hands don't shake.'And he held them out sober in front of him.

'You see,' said Drake, 'on Hexagon we worship the Flame, and as a priest of the Flame I am guarded against all intoxication.'He saw Yot looking at him, scandalized; he winked.'What's this Flame?' asked a voice.Drake told. His audience fell about laughing.

'Don't laugh,' he said. 'People have been killed for less than that.'

But he could not convince them that anyone could take such fabrications seriously.

'And,' said old Gezeldux, 'my hands aren't shaking yet either. See?'

This naturally precipitated a drinking contest, which Drake, equally naturally, won.

His tale about being a priest of the Flame, consecrated to eternal sobriety, began to win some credence. The hard drinkers of Brennan set out to test it in earnest. They fed him with ale and with rum, plied him with vodka and strawberry liqueur, topped his mug with Essence of Anemone and spiked it with Heavenly Dreams, dosed him with cider and treated him to cognac – all with no effect.

By that time, everyone in the bar (except Drake) was thoroughly drunk.