Hugh Cook - The Wordsmiths and the Warguild

He failed.

His male organ began to pump.

At the last possible moment, Togura clapped a hand to his cock, which pumped hot jism over his palm. That saved him from splattering Day from bosom to thigh with his semen. But the disaster was still absolute, unmitigated and irretrievable.

"Oh no!" he cried, in agony.

"What is it?" said Day.

Then, realising precisely what it was, she began to laugh. Blithe spirit that she was, she could not take this technical hitch seriously. She was puzzled when Togura began to ram himself into his clothes.

"Tog," she said. "No. Don't go. Tog, it's nothing. Talk to me, Tog. Tog. Wait!"

But, when she clutched at him, he broke free and fled, still fastening his garments. He was so embarrassed he could not endure her presence. He wanted to die. Or bury himself in a hole for half a thousand years.

He escaped to the autumn air and stalked through the streets, furious. Raging. Hating himself and the world and his own rebellious flesh. He had failed absolutely and miserably at a man's most important test. He was worse than nothing. He was disgraced. He would never be able to look Day in the face again. She knew!

When his half-brother Cromarty had accused him of being a day-dreaming masturbator, that had been bad enough. But he had been able to deny it with a straight face, even though it was true. After all, masturbation was furtively acknowledged or hinted at by many. But to fail with a woman!

Togura remembered Cromarty boasting about Toff the milkmaid:

"She was hot, boys. Hot, drunk and flat on her back. So I stuck it in to the hilt. Rammed it in. She loved it. She begged for more. I gave it."

Everyone had their stories. Even Togura had his stories, though his were not true. (Could Cromarty's be untrue? He'd like to think so, but it was difficult. Cromarty was so brash, so arrogant, so confident.)

Brooding on his disaster, Togura grimly resolved that tonight would be the night, no matter what. He could never face Day again, but he would find a way. He would lose his virginity by morning, or die in the attempt.

Thus resolved, he bent his footsteps toward the townhouse of Melladona, one of the town's five whores, and rumoured to be the cheapest. She was awake and working; she had only lately discharged her last customer. He struck a bargain and paid.

He thought himself confident.

But when he actually saw her rancid flesh, her flaccid thighs, the fat veins snaking up her legs, the stale bruises and the odd blotched marks on her breasts, and the crinkling scar running from her neck to her naval, his courage failed. In her cold and narrow room, his worm disgraced him by shrinking to a cringing stump of flesh scarcely the size of a thumb.

He asked for his money back.

Melladona laughed, then, realising he was serious, attacked him. After he escaped into the street, she cursed him from the window. Trying to recover something from the debacle, he eased his ego by shouting a few well-chosen insults. Melladona responded promptly by emptying her chamber pot over his head.

Togura eventually washed himself off in someone's rain water barrel, then, sadder but not necessarily wiser, mooched through the night to the Wordsmiths' Stronghold. The gate was open, and someone, dressed in a winterweight coat and swaddled in a blanket, was sitting by the gate waiting for him.

"Togura Poulaan!" said Day Suet severely as he approached. "So there you are at last. Well? Aren't you grateful to see me? Don't you realise you're lucky to see me at all? Running off into the night like that! Stupid fellow! Most girls would have given you away forever."

"Day," said Togura, not knowing what to say.

She had come for him. She was his. This must be true love! But, all the same, she was a source of mortification to him. She knew! Standing in the light of the gatelamp, he hesitated.

"Don't just stand there, stupid!" said Day, impatiently. "Kiss me!"

Togura gathered her into his arms, and they kissed.

"Now take me inside," said Day, "And get me something to eat. It's cold out here, and I'm hungry."

"I don't know if the brothers would approve," said Togura.

Day kicked him in the shins, hard.

"I'm running out of patience, Togura Poulaan. You've used up most of your chances. You don't have many left."

"My lady," said Togura, the formality of romance coming to his rescue.

He took her hand in his and kissed it, gracefully. Then he led her inside. Unable to resist the opportunity to show off a little, he took her to the central courtyard to show her the odex. By night it was, when they stood in front of it, an amazement of brilliant colours, far brighter than the night lamps arrayed around the courtyard.

While they were standing watching, two figures dressed in black jumped down from the roof above and landed in the courtyard. Day squealed. The intruders drew swords. They were masked with darkness: only their eyes showed.

"We seek Togura Poulaan," said one, speaking a foreign variety of Galish rather than the local patois.

"The swordmaster-assassin otherwise known as Barak the Battleman," said the other.

"Here I am," said Togura – and instantly wished he had held his tongue.

"Joke with us again and you're dead," said one of the intruders, grabbing Day Suet by the throat. "The girl dies, too. Now tell us where we find our quarry. We know he's here! The whole town knows. We know him to his face, so try no substitutes. We know the head required in Chi'ash-lan."

Togura stood rooted to the spot, paralysed with terror. He had no weapons. Face to face with this twin death, what could he have done with weapons anyway?

"Tog," gasped Day. "He's hurting me!"

"Silence, girl!" snarled the man holding her, looking around. For the first time he looked directly into the odex, and so, for the first time, he saw its ever-changing maze of kaleidoscopic colours. "What," he said, slightly startled, "is that?"

Day did not answer, but Togura found voice enough to say:

"A kind of Door."

"You can go through it?"

"In a manner of speaking," said Togura.

At that moment, they were interrupted by sounds of argument beyond the courtyard. Then in came the Baron Chan Poulaan with a squad of bowmen and spearmen. Two wordmasters were clinging to the baron, trying to restrain him.

"This place is forbidden by dark," cried one.

But the baron advanced remorselessly.

"I'll have my son tonight," he said. "Or know the reason why. Ah, Togura! There you are! Come, boy. Heel!"

"Stay where you are," hissed one of the men in black.

"Who are your funny friends?" said the baron, advancing, with his men behind him. "Drawn swords, I see. Do we have a problem here?"

So speaking, the baron drew his own sword. He was by no means a master of the weapon, but he was strong, aggressive and enthusiastic. In Sung, he was regarded as fearsome.

The man holding Day in a throttle edged closer to the odex. His companion gave Togura a shove which sent him sprawling to the ground, then menaced the baron and his men.

"Back, rabble!" he said, speaking now in a loud, hard voice.

Baron Chan Poulaan was amused.

"There are at least seven of us and only two of you," said the baron, reasonably. "Throw down your weapons and surrender."

"I," said the man confronting him, "am a ninth-grade adept of the Zenjingu fighting cult. I can kill all of you without thinking. Your very existence here is at your peril."

"Your grammar suffers under stress," said the baron, dryly.

"Out, vermin! Do you not know the dread doom which walks in the midnight black of the Zenjingu fighters?"

"No," said the baron, frankly.

He was essentially a provincial man who led a narrow and provincial life; he knew nothing whatsoever of the Zenjingu fighters, whose very name was terror in the lands around Chi'ash-lan.