Hugh Cook - The Wicked and the Witless

And nobody could hope to travel unobserved.

Once captured, Sarazin's fate was to be sold to the Slavemaster. The Slavemaster was the greatest gangster of them all, a warlord who traded with the lesser gangs and, from time to time, put together convoys which went to the Araconch Waters to trade with the greater warlords who had set themselves up in business there.

Sarazin, sick and sore, asked no questions about the Slavemaster as he was driven east along a track which never strayed far from the Manaray Gorge. At last, he was brought to a walled stockade built without a formidable cave complex.

There he was given leave to rest while they awaited the arrival of the Slavemaster. Rest he did, sprawled full length on raw rock, too weary by then for curiosity, regrets or despair. Glambrax stretched out beside him, for once too wearied for mischief.

For some time Sarazin lay there, almost comatose. Then he heard someone call his name. 'Ho, Sarazin I' said Lod.

Was it Lod? It certainly sounded like Lod. So Sarazin opened his eyes, and looked up, and saw… Tarkal. 'Do you recognise me?' said Tarkal, his face inscrutable.

'You are Tarkal of Chenameg,' said Sarazin wearily. 'You are of the Favoured Blood.'

'And you are Sean Sarazin, our honoured guest,' said a familiar voice, and, yes, it was indeed Lod, as large as life and as merry. And before Sarazin knew it he was being stripped of his clothes and bundled into a hot tub. After a bath came a massage, then sleep, blessed sleep in clean linen, as unexpected as his experience in Drake Douay's guest room, and every bit as welcome.

Tarkal of Chenameg, the Slavemaster himself, gave Sarazin two days to rest and recover before he invited him to dine with him. Glambrax attended the meal, as did Lod. Amantha was nowhere to be seen, and Sarazin did not like to ask where she was.

Throughout the meal, Lod and Glambrax made most of the running, chaffing each other, joking and jesting, punning and storytelling, while Sarazin and Tarkal sat in silence, preoccupied by their own thoughts. At that dinner, Tarkal wore one of the bards which had been taken from Sarazin, while Lod wore the other. Sarazin wondered if he would ever get them back.

During the meal, Glambrax told outrageous stories about the terrible Drake Douay, who, by his account, had tried to torture Sean Sarazin to death. He gave a spirited and improbable account of their escape from Douay.

'… and just as well we escaped,' said Glambrax. 'For he'd sworn to cut up young Sean as ratbait.' 'What about yourself?' said Lod.

'Why, no, not me,' said Glambrax, 'for I never tortured him as Sarazin did.' At that, Tarkal finally spoke: You tortured Douay? 'In Selzirk,' said Sarazin.

For he could not deny responsibility, even though the actual inflicting of pain had been done by other hands. You were lucky indeed to escape,' said Tarkal.

'Oh, lucky enough,' said Sarazin, in no mood to tell the truth, since it would have been a laborious process to unstitch all of Glambrax's lies – and, besides, the truth was shameful, involving as it did the theft of Douay's bards. 'Still,' continued Sarazin, 'you've been lucky yourself.'

What?' said Tarkal. To be ruling here? As Slavemaster? There was no luck in that, friend Sarazin. I was in the right place at the right time.'

'Of course,' said Sarazin. 'Ruling in Shin and all.' It would have been easy for Tarkal to remove himself and his people from Shin to the wastelands long before refugees were on the move in great numbers. 'But why then didn't you set yourself up at the Gates?'

'Oh, I did,' said Tarkal. 'When word reached Shin that the Swarms were invading, I saw my opportunity. I saw what must inevitably happen. There are few routes of escape, and the Gates are one of the best. So I set myself up as lord of the Gates.' 'Then – what? Douay came?'

'No. A brute called Groth pushed me out of the Gates. Douay – or Lord Dreldragon, or whatever you want to call him – came later. I've never met him. Yet.' 'You're thinking of meeting him?' said Sarazin.

'I'm curious,' said Tarkal. 'Curious to see what he might do with Sean Sarazin.'

He said it quietly. Watching Sean Sarazin. Who saw Glambrax wink at him. The dwarf had anticipated this!

'You joke, of course,' said Sarazin, casually. 'For you have honour, surely. Douay is a monster, a brute addicted to slaughter and torture. He hates me as he'd hate a sister- killer. Tarkal, I know there's true nobility in your nature, thus… your jest frightens me not, for I know it for what it is.'

Tarkal chewed on some fish, spat out a stray scale, then said:

'Indeed I jest. Tomorrow, Sean, I'll let you go east. I'm running a convoy east to the lords of the Araconch Waters. You'll be my guest of honour on the trek.'

'Tell me then,' said Sarazin urbanely, 'what manner of lords be these? In the history I learnt, the shores of the Waters were empty of human life.'

'Indeed,' said Tarkal. 'Well, Lod can tell you the ins and outs of recent history.'

And Lod obliged, telling of the sanguinary events which had accompanied the mass influx of refugees, of the lordlings who had made themselves suzerain over one wretched piece of rock or another, of war, murder, killing, torture, organised rape, slavery, cannibalism, oppression, treachery and assorted bloodbaths – history in miniature, in fact.

Late that night, Lod came in secret to Sarazin and told him another tale. According to Lod, Tarkal hated Sarazin intensely because, in Lod's words:

'Your marriage to his dear sister Amantha was but a form of rape.'

By Lod's account, in the morning Sarazin would be seized, gagged, tied, taken down through ever-descending caves to one which opened by the shores of the Velvet River, deep in the sunless depths of the Manaray Gorge.

'There,' said Lod, 'you will be loaded on to a raft and taken downriver to Douay. Do you understand?'

'I understand,' said Sarazin, gently, 'that you were ever a joker, Lod, my friend. But tonight I think the joke in the worst of taste. Surely it is an evil thing for you to thus impugn your brother's honour. Why, I remember when once you swore he sought to murder you!'

'So he did,' said Lod darkly, "but I've purchased my life through the worst kind of abasement.' 'You've roused my interest,' said Sarazin. 'Pray tell!'

'Now you joke!' said Lod. 'Your life is at stake! You must run, run, run tonight or you're doomed, dead, done for!'

Lod became so insistent that, at last, Sarazin realised that Lod was not here on his own account but on Tarkal's. So he allowed Lod to chivvy him into his clothes, and then to lead him to freedom – and, when Tarkal triumphantly ambushed them, Sarazin consented to scream in feigned terror and despair.

Though he found the whole performance hard work, for he was not one of the world's natural thespians.

The next morning, Sarazin was hogtied and loaded on to the raft that was to take him downstream to the Gates of Chenameg. Tarkal and Lod were both coming along for the journey, as were half a dozen fighting men.

'Why does my dwarf run free?' said Sarazin, for Glam- brax was capering on the raft.

'He has sworn himself to my service,' said Tarkal. 'At least until we reach the Gates.'

'Glambrax!' said Sarazin. 'How could you? You vile, treacherous, gamos-sucking turd!'

In response, Glambrax simply hauled out his shlong and pissed all over the unfortunate Sean Sarazin. Who screamed in wrath which – this time – was not feigned at all.

Then, mercifully, Sarazin was gagged, which meant he need do no more acting. Tarkal's fighting men untied the raft and pushed it out into the flow of the Velvet River and away they went, bucketing down the swift-flowing river which sprinted between the sullen walls of the Manaray Gorge.