'Including, now, the battle of Androlmarphos. We're lucky to be still alive, wouldn't you say?'
'Androlmarphos?' said Togura, blankly.
'Yes, yes, Androlmarphos.'
'Where's that?'
'Where's that? What's wrong with you? Did you just fall out of the sky? What do you mean, where's that? Androlmarphos is here. Around us. Under us. To the left of us, the right of us. It's where we are. We – tattoo this on your skin, in case you forget – we are now, and have been for some days, in Androlmarphos. The main port of the Harvest Plains, in case you didn't know. This thing we're sitting on is called a ship. That – '
'All right, all right,' said Togura. 'I get the picture. Don't be so hard on me. I've had a very difficult time.'
'So have I,' said Draven. 'Right now, I'm dying of fever.'
'You have my sympathies,' said Togura, without any sympathy; Draven looked too sick to fight or ride, but the vigour of his conversation proved him to be a very long way from death.
'Apart from the fever,' said Draven, stung by Togura's obvious lack of concern, 'I've been to Gendormargensis and back. I've been tortured. I've been killed.'
'For sure,' said togura. 'For sure. May I stretch out my bones right here? I feel faint.'
'Stretch away,' said Draven. 'Stretch away.'
Both of them were in fact rather ill, and both had over-excited themselves with too much talking. Draven roused later in the evening, to listn to gossip about someone called Menator, who had been parlaying with the enemy, and had been murdered.
'This is very bad news,' said Draven.
'Why?' asked Togura. 'Was this Menator a friend of yours?'
'No, my enemy,' said Draven. 'I swore to kill him and eat his liver. The first part of my vow is now impossible, and the second, in this heat, is probably already over-ripe.'
'What have you got against him?'
'I'll tell you,' said Draven.
And he did, in detail. But Togura found pirate politics too complex to follow, and fell asleep in the middle of the explanation.
The next day, just after soup, Draven resumed the tale of his trip to Gendormargensis and back.
'Gendormargensis is in Tameran,' said Draven. 'It's so far north that it's cold all year, so they make buildings out of ice. They freeze the heads of their enemies in blocks of the stuff. Wherever you walk in the streets, there's dead eyes staring at you.'
'If the buildings are made of ice then what happens when they light a fire?'
'They don't have proper fires, not in Gendormargensis,' said Draven. 'What they have is the heads of dead dragons. They shove their food between the jaws, and it cooks. They have live dragons, too. Hundreds of them. Armies of them. It was outside the dragon stables that they killed me.'
'They killed you?!'
'Killed me dead. Then hacked me apart. Split me from stem to stern. Chopped me into dogmeat.'
'You look healthy enough to me.'
'Ay. I was resurrected. A dralkosh it was which did the deed.'
'A dralkosh?'
'A woman of evil,' said Draven, with a shudder. 'Her name was Ampadara. Yes, that was the name. She was the chief torturer for the Lord Emperor of Tameran, the man they call Khmar. She had me cut to pieces, starting with my testicles.'
Togura at first had his doubts, but Draven backed up his tale with so much detail that it surely had to be true. Draven was eloquent about the terrors of the Collosnon Empire which dominated the continent of Tameran.
'The women have the rule of it,' said Draven. 'That's the worst part. The rule of women is a fearful evil.'
He told of the streets of Gendormargensis, which were paved with layers of ice-covered skulls; of the Yolantarath River, which ran red with the blood of human sacrifices; of the Lord Emperor Khmar, a huge giant of a man with three arms, who went about naked, butchering babies and eating their livers raw; of the evil Ampadara, mistress of the knife, an ugly hag with a voice as vicious as a whip.
'She laughed as she cut me,' said Draven. 'A foul laughter, like a bird of prey gone rabid.'
He told, in agonising detail, of his death and resurrection.
'It was that Ampadara who raised me from the dead,' said Draven. 'She meant to make me her slave. But I escaped. When all's said and done, a man's a match for any woman – though in this case it was a near thing.'
'But what were you doing in Lorford?' said Togura.
'Oh,' said Draven. 'That's another story.'
'It's one I wouldn't mind hearing,' said Togura, who felt much stronger today, and was not going to be put off as easily as he had been the day before. 'You owe me an explanation. You owe me quite a lot, for throwing me off the Warwolf.'
'Throwing you off?' said Draven, astonished. 'I did no such thing! You jumped!'
'I did not!' said Togura, indignantly.
'But yes – I was there. I remember. You were fooling around at the stern, watching the women get slaughtered. I told you to watch your footing. You remember – come now, don't tell me no. I even grabbed hold when the sea lurched you over. But you slid from my grasp, no helping it.'
'That's not true!'
'Well… perhaps I misremember a detail or two. But the main sighting's there. I wasn't to blame.'
'You threw me over!'
'That's a lie. I distinctly remember the weapons muqaddam had you in his grips. Throwing you or saving you, I'm not to know, but he had you. Didn't he?'
'Well, yes, but – '
'There you are then,' said Draven triumphantly. 'You say I threw you over and now you admit I didn't. Memory's a funny thing, young man. I tell you that. Don't trust yourself too far.'
Togura was about to protest further, but at that moment something strange was heard from the east. He could not see what it was; ships at anchor and harbourside buildings allowed him no vistas inland. There was a heavy grinding, growling sound, like ice breaking up, perhaps. He heard much shouting and screaming in the city, then an incoherent roaring, loud as breaking surf, or louder.
'What is it?' said Togura.
'We're under attack,' said Draven, with fear in his voice. 'We're under attack.'
Chapter 35
They heard a huge, discordant roaring, the crash of buildings being demolished, the rending of timbers, screams and alarums.
'What's happening now?' said Togura.
'If you're so honey-sniffing curious,' said Draven, 'go and see for yourself.'
Togura wasn't tempted.
Somewhere in the city, a fire started; smoke billowed upwards. Men, disorganised, running in panic, stumbling, falling, pushing each other, came hustling out of the streets and onto the quayside. They began swarming onto the ships. On Togura's ship, nobody was giving orders; the captain was not in evidence.
'Well,' said Draven. 'So much for all that octopus-talk' – he meant hype – 'about conquering the world. We've lost.'
'Lost what?'
'The battle. The war.'
'Which war?'
'The one we're fighting in, little loon,' said Draven. 'Hell's blood! Where's the captain?'
'What do you want him for?'
'So I can bugger his boots with a jack-knife! Wat the hell do you think I want him for? So we can get the ship
