The Red Worm's Way

voices spoke words he didn't understand, then he heard Zatchlas saying, "I am being careful."

The weight oppressing Morlock shifted, and shifted again. Morlock sluggishly realized that Zatchlas must be using his fallen body as a bridge to cross the stream. That meant Zatchlas was a Striga, or an ally of the Strigae.

Zatchlas grunted and the weight on Morlock's body increased. Zatchlas now carried the dead body of Thelyphron — straight out of the blessed boundary of the stream, where the Strigae could feast on it in peace.

Morlock seized the fallen wine cup, as the most available weapon, and surged to his feet, throwing Zatchlas a sprawl on the ground outside the corpse-house, the dead body of his father atop him. With surprising lightness, he leapt to his feet and ran off again, hauling the body with him toward the lights and the laughter of the fair.

Morlock ran after him into the carnival night.

* * *

Zatchlas was burdened with the dead body, but Morlock had been knocked almost unconscious. Zatchlas had almost reached the fairground before Morlock caught up with him. Several groups of people stood nearby, talking and laughing, in apparent indifference to what was happening before them. Morlock likewise ignored them and punched the bulky young man savagely on the right side of his fat sweating neck. Zatchlas went down.

Morlock bent over and seized the dead body with one hand, tossing it across his shoulder. (Fortunately, the dear departed Thelyphron has been rather elderly, and had died after some wasting disease had left his frame frail and thin.) Morlock turned to run back to the corpse-house, but Zatchlas managed to grasp him by one ankle, and this time it was Morlock who hit the earth with a corpse atop him.

He pushed the body off him and kicked up with both feet as Zatchlas' silhouette, dark and featureless against the nearby fair lights, approached. Morlock's double kick made contact with something under Zatchlas' loose robe that issued a tiny scream; Zatchlas screamed, too, a second later, in eerie harmony. Morlock leapt to his feet and smashed the wine-cup across Zatchlas' face. Amazingly, there was still some wine in it; Morlock saw the spray. Zatchlas screamed again, staggering back, clutching at his eyes.

His robe had fallen open. Morlock saw that, beneath it, he was naked. But things were attached to his pale sweaty skin: dark things with glittering green eyes. They had toothy mouths, each of them issuing dozens of grayish tongues, like red worms. Strigae. Dozens of Strigae hang by their tongues from Zatchlas' body.

Morlock felt rather than saw the approach of more townsmen. He looked up to see the groups from the fair converging on him. They were still talking and laughing and he still could not understand them. But now he saw why. There were no heads on their shoulders. Each of their necks ended abruptly in a pair of dry soft protuberances vaguely like lips. These moved as air passed through the open neck and they produced vague word-like murmurs which were not words. Their hands clenched and unclenched as they murmured and laughed and advanced Morlock.

He scooped up dead Thelyphron's frail body again and ran back to the corpse house as fast as he could. He threw the body through the doorway, to land asprawl on the corpse table, and leaped across the protecting stream.

The water level was low — no doubt much of it splashing out when he fell into it. The wine cup had proven a useful tool in need, so Morlock carefully set it down on the overturned empty barrel, next to the lit candle and the stubs of its dead predecessors. Then, from the full barrel, he dumped water into the stream until it ran full again.

He shouted out the open doorway: "Morlock: three; Strigae: zero. Try it again, you corpse-chewing bastards!"

He figured they would try something again, and he had a better chance of repelling it if they acted hastily and recklessly. He straightened Thelyphron's body out on the corpse table. If that jaunt didn't wake Thelyphron up, he reflected, nothing would.

"I'd like a drink," he reflected aloud, and glanced ruefully at the wine cup.

Amazingly, miraculously, magically it was full. His impulses betrayed him; Morlock had the cup in his hands and was drinking before he'd decided to do so.

The wine was gone in an instant. Strong, not very good, with an oddly bitter metallic taste to it. That didn't matter. Morlock wasn't a connoisseur of wines; he was a drunk. He drank it all, and didn't waste a drop.

At least there was only one cup, he thought, as he lowered it from his wet lips and set it down next to the candle. He studied it and saw thу cup was full again. He reached for it, then stopped.

All right, there it was. Myrrhina had sent him a magical cup that would refill whenever it was set down. A generous thing to do; she probably hadn't realized he was a drunk. It did mean she knew a little magic, but he had already suspected as much. The night was already well advanced — perhaps the Strigae were discouraged and wouldn't attack any more . . .

He drank the cup dry again, then set it down and watched it refill.

Morlock was not yet drunk; unquestionably, he would be soon. Drunk Morlock very nearly had the upper hand, and there didn't seem to be anything to be done about that now.

He decided he would do a rat patrol, one circuit of the corpse table for every drink. That would slow down the process some, and perhaps he and Thelyphron would make it to sunrise relatively intact.

Morlock took a quick trip around the corpse table in record time; there didn't seem to be any rats trying to climb the table. Perhaps they were all asleep, or discouraged. Or drunk. Morlock chuckled a bit at that thought as he drank his third cup, wasting some of the wine. He supposed one could get used to the brackish metallic aftertaste.

Morlock's trip around the corpse table went a little slower this time. It was really odd that there were no rats; he remembered seeing them earlier.

He peered under the table and saw some rats there, the same ones he had seen after Zatchlas had struck him. The one who had been sleeping was now dead, great troughs of raw flesh opened up in his sides. Beside him lay his three comrades, sleeping beside him, their bloodstained mouths yawning open, their snores making their whiskers quiver. It was really almost touching, the three rats wearily resting beside their fallen comrade. It would have been, of course, if they hadn't eaten him alive, but still. . .

Morlock wondered why they were tired, so tired — almost as tired as he was. As if they really were discouraged. Or drunk.

Or drugged.

Morlock swore violently and staggered to the doorway. He shoved a finger into the back corner of his mouth and leaned forward. Soon he was vomiting like a fountain, striving not to drip anything into the protective stream which would defile it into the protective stream. Striving successfully, too: he was an experienced vomiter.

When his belly was emptied of the drugged wine, Morlock leaned wearily against the doorpost and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

He had no idea what was in the drugged wine, but it had to be pretty potent: the cannibal rats must have passed out simply from eating their drugged comrade. He didn't think the drug itself would be fatal to him, as no doubt the Strigae looked forward to chewing his flesh in addition to Thelyphron's. But he had to come to grips with the fact that he might pass out soon. Indeed, he already felt it might be more than he could do to stand away from the doorpost.

They were watching him of course; they had watched him from the start. Perhaps Myrrhina was one of them; perhaps she wasn't. It suddenly occurred to him that Zatchlas had brought the wine. Perhaps she had not sent it at all. In any case, they had seen him drink the wine; they had seen him vomit. When he passed out they would see that, too, and come for Thelyphron. And for him.

Unless they couldn't see. He nodded, then regretted doing that — his head his head were half-full of some warm dark fluid, and moving it made the fluid slosh about. He nearly passed out then, but pulled himself together.

Morlock pushed the doorpost away and stood as straight as he could. Unhurriedly, trying to make it look less labored than it was, he crossed over to where the candle was burning on the upended barrel.

He stared at it and tried to think clearly. He might not have much time, perhaps not more than a few seconds. The top of the upended barrel was full of melted wax and wick-stumps. If he failed to snuff the candle properly, if he just tipped it over, it might burn for hours, giving the Strigae ample opportunity to see him.