Tome of the Undergates

Heavy masks of shock settled over the young man and shict’s faces, neither of them able to muster the energy to cringe as Denaos slid a long arm into the slit and reached up the Cragsman’s leg. Quietly, Kataria cleared her throat and leaned over to Lenk.

‘Are. . are you going to ask him?’

‘I would,’ he muttered, ‘but I really don’t think I want to know.’

‘Now then, as I was saying,’ Denaos continued with all the nonchalance of a man who did not have his arm up another man’s trouser leg, ‘being reasonable men and insane pointy-eared savages alike, I assume we’re thinking the same thing.’

‘Somehow,’ Lenk said, watching with morbid fascination, ‘I sincerely doubt that.’

‘That is,’ Denaos continued, heedless, ‘we’re thinking of running, aren’t we?’

‘You are,’ Kataria growled. ‘And no one’s surprised. The rest of us already have a plan.’

‘Which would be?’ Denaos wore a look of deep contemplation. ‘Lenk and I have rather limited options: fight and die or run and live.’ He looked up and cast a disparaging glance at Kataria’s chest. ‘Yours are improved only by the chance that they might mistake you for a pointy-eared, pubescent boy instead of a woman.’ He shrugged. ‘Then again, they might prefer that.’

‘You stinking, cowardly round-ear,’ she snarled, baring her canines at him. ‘The plan is to neither run nor die, but to fight!’ She jabbed her elbow into Lenk’s side. ‘The leader says so!’

‘You do?’ Denaos asked, looking genuinely perplexed.

‘Well, I. . uh. .’ Lenk frowned, watching the movement of Denaos’s hand through the Cragsman’s trousers. ‘I think you might. .’ He finally shook his head. ‘Look, I don’t disapprove of looting, really, but I think I might have a problem with whatever it is you’re doing here.’

‘Looting, as I said.’

Denaos’s hand suddenly stiffened, seizing something as a wicked smile came over his face. Lenk cringed and turned away as the man’s long fingers tensed, twisted and pulled violently. When he looked back, the man was dangling a small leather purse between his fingers.

‘The third pocket,’ the rogue explained, wiping the purse off on the man’s trousers, ‘where all reasonable men hide their wealth.’

‘Including you?’ Lenk asked.

‘Assuming I had any wealth to spend,’ Denaos replied, ‘I would hide it in a spot that would make a looter give long, hard thought as to just how badly he wanted it.’ He slipped the pouch into his belt. ‘At any rate, this is likely as good as it’s going to get for me.’

‘For us, you mean,’ Lenk said.

‘Oh, no, no. For you, it’s going to get much worse, since you seem rather intent on staying here.’

‘We are in the employ of-’

‘We are adventurers in the employ of Evenhands,’ Denaos pointed out. ‘And what has he done for us? We’ve been at sea for a month and all we’ve got to show for it is dirty clothes, seasickness and the occasional native-borne disease.’ He looked at Lenk intently. ‘Out at sea, there’s no chance to make an honest living. We’re as like to be killed as get paid, and Evenhands knows that.’

He shook a trembling finger, as though a great idea boiled on the tip of it.

‘Now,’ he continued, ‘if we run, we can sneak back to Toha and catch a ship back to the mainland. On the continent proper, we can go anywhere, do anything: mercenary work for the legions in Karneria, bodyguarding the fashas in Cier’Djaal. We’ll earn real coin without all these promises that Evenhands is offering us. Out here, we’re just penniless.’

‘We’ll be just as penniless on the mainland,’ Lenk countered. ‘We run, the only thing we’ve earned is a reputation for letting employers, godly employers, die.’

‘And the dead spend no money,’ Denaos replied smoothly. ‘Besides, we won’t need to take jobs to make money.’ He glanced at Kataria, gesturing with his chin. ‘We can sell the shict to a brothel.’ He coughed. ‘Or a zoo of some kind.’

‘Try it,’ Kataria levelled her growl at both men, ‘and what parts of you I don’t shoot full of holes, I’ll hack off and wear as a hat.’ She bared her teeth at Denaos. ‘And just because you plan to die-’

‘The plan is not to die, haven’t you been listening? And before you ask, yes, I’m certain that we will die when they return, for two reasons.’

‘If they return,’ Kataria interjected. ‘We scared them off before.’

‘When they return,’ Denaos countered. ‘Which coincides with the first reason: this was just the probe.’

‘The what?’

‘Ah, excuse me,’ the man said as he rose up. ‘I forgot I was talking to a savage. Allow me to explain the finer points of business.’

Lenk spared a moment to think, not for the first time, that it was decidedly unfair that the rogue should stand nearly a head taller than himself. It’s not as though the length of your trousers matters when you piss them routinely, he thought resentfully.

‘Piracy,’ the tall man continued, ‘like all forms of murder, is a matter of business. It’s a haggle, a matter of bidding and buying. What they just sent over,’ he paused to nudge the corpse at his feet, ‘is their initial bid, an investment. It’s the price they paid to see how many more men they’d need to take the ship.’

‘That’s a lot of philosophy to justify running away,’ Lenk said, arching an eyebrow.

‘You had a lot of time to think while hiding?’ Kataria asked.

‘It’s really more a matter of instinct,’ Denaos replied.

‘The instinct of a rat,’ Kataria hissed, ‘is to run, hide and eat their own excrement. There’s a reason no one listens to them.’

‘Forgive me, I misspoke.’ He held up his hands, offering an offensively smarmy smile. ‘By “instinct”, I meant to say “it’s blindingly obvious to anyone but a stupid shict”. See, if I were attacking a ship bearing a half-clad, half-mad barbarian that at least resembled a woman wearing breeches tighter than the skin on an overfed hog, I would most certainly want to know how many men I needed to take her with no more holes in her than I could realistically use.’

She opened her mouth, ready to launch a hailstorm of retorts. Her indignation turned into a blink, as though she were confused when nothing would come. Coughing, she looked down.

‘So it’s not that bad an idea,’ she muttered. Finding a sudden surge of courage, she looked back up. ‘But, I mean, we killed the first ones. We can kill them again.’

‘Kill how many?’ Denaos replied. ‘Three? Six? That leaves roughly three dozen left to kill.’ He pointed a finger over the railing. ‘And reason number two.’

Lenk saw the object of attention right away; it was impossible not to once the amalgamation of metal and flesh strode to the fore.

‘Rashodd,’ Lenk muttered.

He had heard the name gasped in fear when the Linkmaster first arrived. He heard it again now as the captain of the black ship stood before his crew, the echo of his heavy boots audible even across the roaring sea.

Rashodd was a Cragsman, as his colossal arms ringed with twisting tattoos declared proudly. The rest of him was a sheer monolith of metal and leather. His chest, twice as broad as any in his crew, was hidden behind a hammered sheet of iron posing as a breastplate. His face was obscured as he peered through a thin slit in his dull grey helmet, tendrils of an equally grey beard twitching beneath it.

And he, too, waited, Lenk noted. No command to attack arose on a metal-smothered shout. No call for action in a falsely elegant voice drifted over the sea. Not one massive, leathery hand drifted to either of the tremendous, single-bit axes hanging from his waist.

They merely folded along with the Cragsman’s titanic arms, crossing over the breastplate and remaining