Hugh Cook: The Wordsmiths and the Warguild

"We go as an embassy," said Drake, patiently. "We'll be safe enough. They're civilised, you see."

"I think maybe you're bloating the fish a bit," said Togura, using a bit of idiomatic pirate-talk. "Ambassadors don't usually come so short in the tooth."

"Oh, I'm just going along as a pair of ears," said Drake. "I was born in Selzirk, see, so I speak the local ingo. I've got authority to take a companion. Do you want to come?"

"No thanks."

"Have you got enemies in Selzirk, then?"

"No," said Togura. "But I've got a home in Sung."

"Man, home is a place for old men to die in. We're young! Come! We're leaving tomorrow!"

"I'll think about it," said Togura.

"It was his chance, perhaps, to venture to the heart of the action, to dare all and hope to become a world historical figure, a hero, a giant bestriding the world of events. In the event, however, he turned it down, and Drake left without him."

Finding that Bluewater Draven was sailing to the Greater Teeth on a courier cutter, Togura begged a ride; from the beer-table map, he knew the Greater Teeth were a step closer to home, so he quit Runcorn, leaving, without regret, the melancholy, mostly deserted city, and his best chance of proving or disproving certain theories of history.

As the courier cutter coursed for the Greater Teeth, Draven did his best to dispel the prevailing gloom aboard, a gloom which was consequent on defeat behind and an uncertain future ahead. He organised sing-songs, joke-telling sessions and a fishing competition.

Togura, who won the fishing by catching a small thresher shark, was dismayed to find that the first prize was being thrown overboard. Second prize was the chance to command the courier cutter for a man overboard exercise; fortunately, the man with the second-best fish was a competent seaman, and Togura, very angry and very wet, was rescued from the waters of the deep.

Third prize was a choice between getting keelhauled or eating the thresher shark, raw, bones and all. Shark-eating proved to be an amusing spectator sport; the man playing gourmet vomited twenty-seven times before he finally mouthed down the very last of the fish.

"Fourth prize," said Draven jovially, "is getting skinned alive."

However, as only three people had caught fish, fourth prize was not awarded.

Drake also organised a tug-of-war, a rat-fighting competition and a knuckleskull league, knuckleskull being a pirate game which is played with cudgels, and tends to lead to bad headaches or worse. Then there was the game of "Quivliv Quoo," which means, literally, "Slippery Octopus." One person ties another up; the captive, if he can escape, gets the chance to throw a bucket of water over the person who did up the knots. There was, once, a drinking race; they did not have enough liquor on board for a second session.

They also played the traditional pirate game of "First Off," which, though it was obscene and improper in the extreme, did not lead to Togura losing his virginity.

Then there was story telling.

Draven told the best stories, for he had been to that weird and wonderful place, the continent of Tameran. Most of his stories were about the evil dralkosh, Yen Olass Ampadara, who had tortured him, killed him, then resurrected him.

"A one-woman brothel, she was," said Draven. "She took on the whole army once, out in the open sun. I was there. I saw it. Even when they were exhausted, she still hand't had enough."

And Draven told the story of how, thanks to his wisdom, his cunning, his sagacity, his strength and his courage, he had finally been able to outwit the Ampadara woman and escape, returning, in the end, to his beloved Greater Teeth.

"That Ampadara woman," said Draven, "she was the most monstrous bundle of female sin I've ever clapped eyes on. In her own person, she was argument enough for the rule of men over women. Her every act was designed to break me – she couldn't bear to see a man live free."

"She might tell it different," said Togura, still displeased about having been thrown overboard from the cutter.

"Ay," said Draven. "So she might. But then, she was the most wily liar in all of creation."

"What happened to her then?" asked Togura.

"That," said Draven, "is another story. I'll save it for tomorrow's night watch."

But Togura never got to hear that story, for when dawn broke the next day, they found themselves closing with the islands of the Greater Teeth, notorious lair of the Orfus pirates, of whom Draven was one.

In former days, many generations ago, the island of Drum had been the centre of piracy. Then the sea dragons had arrived. In theory, pirates and sea dragons could have coexisted. In practice, the pirates had failed to conceal their contempt for sea dragon artistry; outraged sea dragon poets, philosophers, orators, rock gardeners, punsters and pyrotechnists had responded by slaughtering their critics. The surviving pirates had retreated to the Greater Teeth.

Since then, the sea dragon population of Drum had sharply decined, thanks largely to their promiscuous sexual habits, which had helped spread disastrous venereal diseases through their ranks. Indeed, over the last couple of generations, an epidemic of a viral disease causing an acquired immune deficiency syndrome had almost driven the sea dragons to extinction.

However, the pirates, being creatures of habit like everyone else, had not returned to Drum; they had stayed on the Greater Teeth.

As a small boy, hearing idle adult talk of pirates living on the Greater Teeth, Togura had imagined rows and rows of huge molars – perhaps twice the height of a man – with one or two pirates squatting on top of each. He had imagined the pirates dressed in beggarman rags; in his fancy, the molars had been set in the middle of butterfly meadows.

Traces of this boyhood misapprehension remained in his mind, so he was surprised, at first, to see gaunt skerries thrusting up from the surf, and, beyond those skerries, towering rock ramparts crowned with trees.

"Where are we?" he asked.

"This is Knock," said Draven. "We'll berth at the Inner Sleeve, which is my home harbour. You'd best stay at my home for the time; you've nowhere else to go."

"Why, thank you," said Togura.

"You look surprised. Don't be so. I may be rough, but I've got my honour, like any other man. I pay my debts."

This was said with such sincerity that Togura, for a moment, actually believed it; in any case, whatever he thought of Draven's honour, he did need somewhere to stay, so Draven's invitation was welcome.

The coastline of Knock was forbidding. Rocks awash with water jutted from the waves; other rocks lurked beneath the surface.

"Is this dangerous?" said Togura.

"Naw," said Draven. "We all know these waters as well as we know our toenails."

A moment later, the courier cutter scraped on the bottom, suggesting that none of them knew their toenails terribly well. They got off without damage, but Togura became increasingly jittery, watching the sea swashbuckle agaisnt the pitiless cliffs.

A big skerry slipped past, giving him aview of a new stretch of ciff. At first, in a moment of dreamlike dismay, he thought he was looking at a vast expanse of black cloth seething with lice, and that the lice were screaming at him. Then he realised that the entire cloud-challenging cliff was one huge bird rookery, and that what he was hearing was the cries of a million sea birds.

Ahead was a clutter of skerries, with a narrow sealane between them and the cliff. The courier cutter sailed into the sealane and promptly lost the wind. Men began to furl the sails.

"Well then," said Draven. "How do you like it?"

"How do I like what?" said Togura.

"My home."

"Your home? Where?"

"There, of course," said Draven, pointing at one of the larger skerries. "Can't you tell a house rock when you see one? Look, don't you see the handholds cut in the side?"