'Let's find ourselves a swim,' said Drake.
'A swim?'
'Something to float us,' said Drake.
The ship, struck again, staggered, listed. It was holed. It was sinking. Togura was knocked to the ground as men brawled for possession of a choice 'swim,' a well-founded barrel. He lost sight of Drake.
The deck canted. The seas surged up. Togura staggered upright. Water boiled around him. He struck out, trying to swim, lest the descending rigging snag him and drown him under. Clearing the ship, he floundered round, turning in the water. He caught a glimpse of fully-rigged masts and canvas plunging under.
The water was cold and turbulent. The waves smashed down the screams of drowning men. The blue sky billowed above. Everywhere, pirates were going under. With a shock, Togura realised that hardly any of them could swim.
Then, with a greater shock, he realised that another ship was sinking. And a third was in trouble. Big trouble. As he watched, it suddenly turned turtle and plunged down out of sight, quick as gasping.
Another ship was riding through the waves toward him, closing the distance steadily. It looked as if it would ride him down. He saw men busy at its deckrail. Boarding nets were being lowered. Big, slow and stately, the ship ploughed through the seas toward him. he could make out its figurehead: a grene-haired girl with three breasts and five nipples.
Closer still it came, till he could see the name of the ship painted on its bow. He could see it, but he could not read it; it was scripted in arcane foreign ideograms he had never seen before in his life. Looking up, he saw the canvas being furled: the ship was losing headway.
'Swim, boy!' shouted someone.
It was Draven, floundering toward the ship.
'Come on, Forester!' yelled another voice. 'Don't just float around wallowing! You're not in the bath, you know!'
That was Drake.
Togura struck out for the ship. As it yawed, he saw the black tar of its undersides. It plunged down again, rolling toward him. He grabbed the though hemp of the boarding net.
'Climb, you lazy whoreson dog!' shouted Draven, already half way to the deckrail.
But Togura could not. He clung there, shivering, exhausted. Someone climbed down to him. It was Drake. Who grabbed his hair.
'Up,' said Drake, yanking.
He was merciless.
Togura managed to claw his way up a bit. Drake helped him. Bit by bit they scavenged their way up, while the rolling seas tried to batter them to death against the ship's indigo topsides.
They gained the deck, and Togura promptly fainted.
When he recovered, Drake told him the news. The enemy, for reasons unknown, had turned back for Androlmarphos. And the whales had gone.
They were, for the moment, safe.
Chapter 36
Togura lay dreaming wild, chaotic dreams. Waves went stumbling-tumbling through his memories, stirring up unfragmented images which bit, raged, swore, hummed, pulsed, sweated, stank, sang, sundered and bifurcated.
Ants clambered out of his navel.
He was giving birth.
While the ants swam through his fluids, feeding on his milk, Slerma ate Zona. The moon burnt blue. Guta pulled a hatched from his head then wrestled with a sea serpent, his sex striving.
'Shunk your cho,' said Day Suet, running her eager little golls over Togura's body as he savoured the curves of her bum.
Her woollen chemise tore open and a wave rolled out of it, swamping him down to green anemone depths where turtles spun out lofty poetry in the accents of sea dragons. He swam downwards, breaking his way through mounds of salt beef, fighting through to the sun.
'Zaan,' said the sun.
Its light washed over him, scoured away his skin, hollowed his bones, dragged his brain out through his nostrils then washed his guts in rosepetal water. He fell through a hollow tower, pursued by the music of a kloo, a kyrmbol and a skavamareen.
'Unlike yours,' said someone, 'my floors are not knee-deep in pigshit.'
'Who said that?' said Togura.
And was so curious to discover the truth that he chased his question over the edge of Dead Man's Drop and fell screaming to the pinnacles below. They shattered his body, killing him.
The shock woke him.
Waking from his dreams, Togura blinked at the sun. He was lying on the deck of the ship; it was so crowded with refugee pirates that there was no hope whatosever of finding accomodation below.
'Zaan,' said Togura, looking at the sun, then looked away, blinking at purple after-images.
Togura remembered that the Wordsmiths had given him the rank of wordmaster. He thought his chances of getting back to Sung were now remarkably good, yet it seemed that, having failed to find the index, he would be returning empty-handed. Perhaps he could at least bring back another language.
Yes. He could see what he should do. Invent a language, claim that it was spoken on one of the smaller islands of the Greater Teeth, and gain kudos for making a valuable contribution to the Wordsmiths' quest to discover or invent the Universal Language. He would call his invented language Pirate Pure. Togura thought he could assemble Pirate Pure easily enough, using Orfus pirate argot, bits and pieces of Savage as spoken on the Lezconcarnau Plains, and his own made-up words.
'Zaan,' in Pirate Pure, could be a name for the sun.
The scheme was dishonest, but it was, really, no more daft than any of the other mad projects the Wordsmiths were engaged upon. As far as Togura could remember, one wordmaster, noting that all men swear, had been attempting to create a Universal Language made entirely from insults and obscenities, from the 'rat-rapist' of Estar to the 'lawyer's clerk' of Ashmolean bandits. Another had claimed that the Universal Language was the language of love, and, on the strength of that theory, had left to do practical research in foreign brothels.
Togura had also heard of a scholar who, thinking the Universal Language might in fact be the Eparget of the northern horse tribes of Tameran, had gone to the Collosnon Empire to research it. Perhaps his grasp of foreign etiquette had been faulty, for he had returned as a jar of pickled pieces. (More accurately, part of him had returned – even bulked out with some spare dogmeat, he had made a pretty slim coffin-corpse.)
In Togura's considered opinion, the Wordsmiths were a bunchy of ignorant nerks. But they did have the odex. Which gave them a source of income. And, if he could cut himself a slice of the income… well, that would at least solve the purely practical problem of scraping a living for himself.
'Hi, Forester,' said Drake, bragging along the deck with a little swagger; his face had taken a knuckling, so he had obviously been in a fight, but, from the look of him, it would appear he had won.
'What've you been fighting over?'
'A woman,' said Drake. 'A most beautiful bitch with red hair thick in her armpits. Her name's Ju-jai.'
'Where is she?' said Togura, looking around.
'Not so eager,' said Drake, laughing. 'She's on the Greater Teeth. A scrumpy little bit, though. Hot meat, well worth kettling. How's yourself today? Feeling better?'
'Much,' said Togura.
Drake sat himself down, and they began to talk. Drake boasted of the way he had first deflowered the virginal Ju-jai, some three years ago; Togura, for his part, narrated the intimate details of his sexual exploits with admiring women like Day Suet and the slim and elegant Zona.
