The food was good, the drink was good, and the company was bearable, so Cabal bore it where once he might have gone to bed, leaving the others with an unspoken curse to be visited upon their next of kin. Two hours later, Bose waved over Captain Lochery, fresh from completing the offloading of the
‘Captain Lochery,’ said Cabal, as he watched the man offer a piece of sour bread to his calf, which gratefully devoured it, ‘I cannot help but notice that you are feeding your leg.’
‘Aye,’ said Lochery, unabashed. ‘It gets hungry.’ In explanation, he rolled up his right pantaloon leg to reveal what Cabal had assumed would be pale flesh but was actually a beautifully carved wooden prosthetic. In the outer right calf there was a small hole, and from this hole an inquisitive rodent’s face was peering out at them.
There were cries of astonishment from the others, but Cabal went down on one knee to look more carefully. ‘I don’t recognise the species. It looks a little like a guinea pig, and a little like a dwarf rabbit, but is barely bigger than a hamster. What is it, Captain?’
‘Guinea what was that? Rabby? I don’t know anything of those, Master Cabal, exotic though they sound. But this is a dreff. They’re only found on this island.’ He slapped his thigh, but gently, so as not to disturb the creature. ‘I lost this leg when I was a lad. One day out from here. The weather was strange, and the creatures of air and water were disturbed. My ship – she was the
‘I’ve heard of nightgaunts,’ said Cabal. ‘Slick, rubbery, faceless black creatures with horns and wings. What are these seagaunts?’
‘Much the same,’ said Lochery, ‘except at sea. They fell on us. I saw poor old Jecks Pilt borne off by them. They tried to do the same to me, filthy flapping things, but I got a deadman’s grip on the rigging of the foremast – she was lateen rigged, by the bye – and I was not going to let go, not with Jecks’s screams still echoing in my ears. But the ’gaunts, they wanted something for their trouble. So . . .’ He waved at the wooden leg.
‘Well, Captain Mart, he was a good man, he said to me, “You’re a sailor through and through and no leg- thieving seagaunts are going to take that away from you.” At least, that’s what he said later, ’cause I’d flaked out at the time from loss of blood. Anyway, he had a favour owed to him by a sorcerer in the city, and he took me to him – big tower at the northern end of the Spice Quarter, some dodgy evoker’s got it now, last I heard – and he comes up with this little beauty. See, dreff live in trees from the Sinew Wood, south-east of the Lake of Yath. The trees can move, but they got no brains. The dreff have brains – pretty good ones, considerin’ how little they are – but they can’t look after themselves. So, the dreff and the sinew trees are sort of . . .’ He looked for the word.
‘Symbiotes,’ supplied Cabal, intrigued by the insight into an alien ecology.
‘Pals,’ continued Lochery. ‘Now, this sorcerer says dreff are clever and they know a good thing when they see it, which is a roundabout way of saying that they train up easy. Keep ’em fed and happy, and they’ll be your pals for life. This little fella in here, Checky, he knows that when I throw my hip forward, it’s walking time, and he makes the leg – finest sinew wood, this is – shift at knee and ankle. Fact is, that he just seems to know now, we been together so long.’
He fed the dreff the last of the sour bread before gently nudging its head back in and bunging the whole with a stopper perforated with air holes. ‘They live about ten years. Takes about six months for you to understand each other, and they go a bit mad a few weeks before they die, sleeping a lot, making the leg bend all ways, so you know it’s time to get to the Sinew Wood with a box trap and some sour bread. They love the stuff.’
He looked off into the middle distance, lost in the past. ‘But you know the worst part of all of this? Not my leg, no, there’s people suffer worse. No, I still think of Jecks, the poor sod. You know what?’
The rhetorical question was interrupted by Cabal rising. ‘He was never seen again. Goodnight, gentlemen. An early start tomorrow.’
Chapter 7
IN WHICH THE EXPEDITION EXPLORES A NAMELESS CITY OF EVIL REPUTE
‘Wamps,’ said the sergeant, as he checked the ties on his scabbard.
‘Wamps!’ replied Bose, hand held up.
‘Wamps,’ said Cabal, ‘are a species. Not a greeting.’
‘Oh,’ said Bose, unabashed. ‘They sound rather harmless, though, don’t they?’ He tested the name several times with different intonations, each implying wamps were cuddly, warm, docile and fun to have around the house.
Sergeant Holk, a man with his experience measured in scars and a hard, weather-beaten face, looked at Bose as a father might look at a child who wants a wolverine for Christmas, ideally one with rabies. ‘They’re bigger than a man. They have nine legs and heads like great bats with no eyes at all. They’re disease-ridden killers . . . Just a scratch from one can kill you, even if it takes a year of miserable, agonising sickness to do it.’
‘Do be quiet,’ said Corde. The sergeant’s predilection for gruesome hyperbole was proving counterproductive. It was Corde who had found him at one of the ill-regarded dives he was becoming quite adept at locating. The sergeant had agreed to tell them what was known of the empty and partially ruined city to the east in exact, non- folklorish terms for he had been there.
So far his advice had been very much of the ‘Don’t go there’ variety, of which the presence of wamps was the newest variant. Warming to his theme, the sergeant said, ‘Six years ago, I went in there with a platoon to raid the old library. Special commission, you see. We got the scrolls we went in for, but it was dusk by the time we were ready to move out. The wamps ambushed us. They’ve got a few brains, and they don’t fight like animals. They’re cunning, see? They can creep up walls and drop on you from above. That’s what happened to us. Thirty of us went in, only four of us got out.’
‘Without a scratch, I presume?’ said Cabal, drily.
The sergeant just laughed and pulled up the left side of his jerkin. Beneath, the flesh was not simply scarred but missing down to the ribs, which showed as slats beneath a thin covering of skin. His audience watched,
