Hugh Cook - The Walrus and the Warwolf

'Oh, this no good, Jon,' said Whale Mike, tears blubbering down his swollen sallow face. 'Oh, this not good way to end.'Then he said no more, for grief made him speechless.

Watching Mike's tormented face, Drake remembered . . . yes, remembered Mike in the rowing boat which had gone by the name of the Walrus. In that boat, while rowers slowly hauled a horizon away from Stokos, Mike had tried to speak for Drake's life. And later? Yes. When the big ship by the same name as the rowing boat had been wrecked, when the Walrus had gone down on the Gaunt Reefs, Mike had saved Drake then.

And had sheltered him when he stowed away on the Walrus, driven to join Slagger Mulps' expedition south by the orders of King Tor and Lord Menator. I owe him.

And suddenly Drake found he could not endure Mike's sorrow any more. He cleared his throat. 'Aagh,' said Drake. And spat into his hand.

'So you're awake,' said Ika Thole – who had less and less which was good to say with every passing day.

'I'm awake,' said Drake. 'And amongst comrades. Friends, aye. Friends is luck, or so I'm told. So I'm rich in luck to have so many comrades. But it means we'd have little food to share around if it came to eating.'

'Are you talking of killing someone, then?' said Thole. 'Killing for eating?'

'Nay, man,' said Drake. 'For it's not come to that, and I hope it never will. I'm talking of eating. Food. But if we were to have food, it's Mike we should be feeding. That's what I'm thinking. For if we ever break out of here, it's his strength we'll be needing.'

'Talk away,' jeered Sully Yot. 'For there's no food here.'

'But if there was,' said Arabin, quietly, guessing at Drake's situation, 'it's Mike we'd be feeding. Isn't that so? What about it, Mulps?''Of course,' said the Walrus, without thought.

Since there was no food on offer, it mattered not to him what he said.And the others were equally easy in agreement.

Whereupon Drake reached into his pocket and, slowly, pulled out his one surviving packet of seamless silver foil. It crinkled in his hands as he tore it open, displaying the shrivelled chunks of lightweight fibre inside.

Men stared at it as men will stare at the luminous beauty of golden ingots.'Mike,' said Drake, firmly, 'hold out your bowl.'

Whale Mike, still crying, held out his bowl. It looked pathetic in his hand – tiny, in fact.

Then – it hurt, but he did it – Drake tipped all the food into Mike's bowl, where it mingled with the water.

'There,' said Drake. 'Perhaps it will taste a bit better when it mixes with the water.'Taste better?

As they watched, the stuff swelled with the water, took on form – and gave off a delicious smell. The smell of beef.'Why, magic meat!' said Drake, amazed.

And, despite himself, bitter at what he had given away. But he kept his bitterness from his face. Or I'd spoil the taste of the stuff for Mike.

Whale Mike lifted the bowl to his face. He breathed in the smell. Men watched the bowl as if it held their lives. Then Mike lowered the bowl again. He had stopped crying, though his face was still streaked with tears.

'We share,' he said, in a voice thick but firm. 'That good. That not so? You my friends. We share.'Silence. Then:

'If we're going to share,' said slim dark Salaman Meerkat, 'we'd better add this to the share. Or else it won't go far.'

And he pulled a foil packet from a hiding place of his own.

'Aye,' said quavering old Tiki Slooze, after a bit of a pause. 'And this.'And he too produced a packet of magic meat.

Then, one by one they came out, the hidden packets, the treasures stashed secret by greeding men, the food which none had been able to eat. And there was not just magic meat, either. Ish Ulpin had a handful of walnuts. Harly Burpskin came up with a length of salami which he had been hiding in his underwear. Jon Disaster had an orange. An orange? An orange? They were fearful rare at the best of times, but there it was, gleaming like a summer sun.

At first they were mostly shame-faced. Then Bucks Cat laughed, and others too began to laugh, or themselves to cry, or to embrace their comrades.And then they ate.And it made the best meal of their entire lives.

On the fourth day, they were all taken out of the pit. They were marched away at spearpoint then bound to individual posts – all except Bucks Cat, who was tied to three posts, and Whale Mike, who was secured to four.'This looks like torture time to me,' said Ika Thole.'Man, you're a happy little fellow,' said Slagger Mulps.

'Yes,' said Thole sourly. 'Happy as a walrus in a shit-heap.'

'Belay that!' said Arabin. 'We're one crew here, Walrus and Warwolf together.''One dead crew,' grumbled Thole.

And Jon Arabin's own morale was so low that he quite failed to find an answer for that.

It was clearly party time for their enemies. There was drinking, eating, wrestling, fighting and gambling. Then the enemy started into Pru Chalance.

By nightfall, pieces of the late Pru Chalance were being barbecued and eaten. Some of the Collosnon soldiers were kicking around heads which had once belonged to Quin

Baltu and Ching Quail. The weapons muqaddam was also dead; he had been buried upside down, with only his ankles showing above the surface (his feet having been cut before he was buried).

'We'll kill off some more of them tomorrow,' said Tamsag Bulak, who wanted the current festivities (which were in honour of his own birthday) to last several more days. (After that, any surviving pirates would be shipped to Favanosin for final disposal).

'Great Tamsag,' said two of his subordinate captains, 'Great master of the Pale, Horse amongst Horse, Scalp-taker amongst Scalp-takers . . . may we not take one of the younger men for our pleasure tonight? He'd still be in good shape for torture tomorrow.'The admiral considered.Would Khmar approve?Hear the word of Khmar:

'All things are permitted to the victorious. But to the defeated – nothing.'

Undoubtedly, Tamsag Bulak and his men were the victorious. He felt he could indulge these two captains, who had valuable connections – one was a cousin of the Ondrask of Noth (a favourite of the Lord Emperor Khmar) while the other was related to a notable warlord by the name of Chonjara. Long-term political considerations, in the end, compelled Bulak to answer as he did:

'Take one of them. But take him somewhere private, or the other men will be jealous. And feed him plenty of strong liquor before you do anything with him – I don't want him breaking loose to make trouble.'

'Your will shall be obeyed,' said the two captains, and, having made reverence to their admiral in the Collosnon fashion, went to make their choice from the pirates, who had all been left tied to torture posts for the night.

Torches in hand, they wandered along the ranks. They paused momentarily in front of Sully Datelier Yot, then moved on, wanting nothing to do with anything which had that many warts. They admired Bucks Cat and wondered at Whale Mike, but decided, reluctantly, that both were too dangerous.

Then they stopped in front of Drake.

He, more dead than alive, looked at them with very little interest. So this was the end, was it? Well, he'd had a good life. He noted, not for the first time, the oval ceramic tile each of his enemies wore slung round his neck in plain sight, each tile decorated with a black spider on a background which, having seen it by daylight, he knew to be green.

The two captains, as officers, were not compelled to wear such amulets, which were only compulsory for lower ranks. But the brash young navy of the Collosnon Empire had so far developed four traditions. The first three were simple: sodomy, rum and the lash. The fourth was th.at every single person should wear an amulet, to show solidarity.