The Walrus and the Warwolf

He led Drake from the hall to a bare stone room where half a dozen guards stood waiting. Drake wiped the tears from his eyes. Took some deep, slow breaths.

What's done is done. Can I set it to rights? Maybe. But I'll need a lawyer. So no more grief. Business first.

'Right,' said Drake, in a voice which was as much business as he could manage. 'Time for me to be going.''Where to?' asked Plovey, who seemed amused.

'Why, to get a lawyer to start with,' said Drake. 'Aye. We'll get petitions drawn up, yes. Asking clemency for Walrus and Warwolf. Pardons and such.''You're not going anywhere,' said Plovey. 'Seize him!'The guards grabbed Drake. He was astonished.'What's this?' said Drake.'This,' said Plovey, 'is your arrest. It's the consequence of the stories you've been telling, both to me and to others.'

'But those stories were true!' said Drake. 'I was telling the truth all along! You know that now! You've had proof of it!'

'Indeed we have,' said Plovey. 'So you stand condemned by your own mouth. For your story holds you to be a pirate.''And that amuses you?'

'Indeed it does. For you see, dear boy, the penalty for piracy is to be tortured to death.'

Kicking and screaming, Drake was carried away by the guards. And Plovey, smiling sweetly, went' home to the charms of his lawful wife, with the feeling of a day's work well done.

48

Elkor Alish: Rovac warrior who accompanied Morgan Hearst on a quest for the death stone, a weapon of surpassing power; later attempted to use death stone against Hearst and others; Hearst lost his right hand while helping thwart the attempt.

Before Drake was incarcerated in the cell where he would wait until the death-torturers were ready, his gaolers stripped him of his clothes.'You can't leave me naked!' protested Drake.

'Of course we can,' said a cheerful turnkey. 'Don't worry, me little rantipole. You won't be wanting clothes much longer. You'll be dead in a couple of days.'

So Drake was consigned to his cell, and there he lay on a mat of filth which had once (a very long time ago) been straw. And wept. For his life, for his liberty, for the horrors of the world.He could see now the error of his ways.

He had done so many things that were wrong, yes, badly wrong, criminally wrong.

'For a start,' muttered Drake, 'I should never have run off with Muck's mastersword. No, that was a low, cowardly thing to do. I should have caught the old bugger in a back alley one dark night, yes, and cut his heart out. That would have saved a lot of trouble.'And later, in Runcorn:

'I should never have tried to rule so sweetly. That's not my style. No. I should have got together a pack of

knifemen, yes, to do for the opposition subtly. Why, when Garimanthea turned against me, I should have had him jugulated proper fast. No playing around!' And more recently, in Selzirk:

T should never have gone into Muck's temple to try to sweet-talk Zanya. That was ego speaking, aye. Too much pride. Hubris, in fact.'

Actually (to be pedantically precise) what he said was not 'hubris' but 'me thinking I could walk across fifty leagues of fresh-laid eggs in lead-shod boots without breaking a one of them'. But by that he meant 'hubris', for he had the concept right enough, even though he knew no precise word in any language to express it.

I should never have gone into that temple, no,' said Drake. 'I should have got together fifty men with knives and hatchets, aye, all bribed with promises of treasure. Aye, that's the way. Send others in to kill, burn, plunder, kidnap. I was trying to do things lawful-like, and that's how I fell afoul of the law. A big mistake, man.'

Yes. He should have organized a big raid to kill out the temple. Then, when he had Zanya in chains in some private place, he could have started talking some sense into her head.

'But I really thought she'd come with me,' moaned Drake. 'Man, I really did. I thought we had something going there.'

There is no telling how long these recriminations might have lasted, or where they might have led, for the very next day another prisoner was flung into Drake's cell: a garrulous old man named Shix, who had been imprisoned for brewing bad beer and worse wine.

After that, Drake never got a moment's peace, for Shix suffered verbal diarrhoea while awake, and kept rambling on (though less coherently) even when asleep. If he had said something interesting, that might have been excusable, but he was a dreary old pedant who thought himself the world's best brewer and its best winemaker as well.

In the days which followed, Drake learnt far more than he wanted to about yeast and hops, casks and grapes and zymome and malt, gluten and wheat, the rape which remains after wine-making, the derelictions of the average vintner, and hundreds of other technicalities in which he had no conceivable interest.

All this talk of wine and beer set him to thinking about the magical brew he had tasted in Brennan, which had left him drunk and free-floating. At the time, he had made a resolution to seek out more of the stuff from wizards.

Aye.

And if he had resolutely pursued intoxication, he would never have become ensnared in this terrible city. He would have gone somewhere comparatively safe, such as the terror-lands south of Drangsturm, where there were only the monsters of the Swarms to contend with, and not lawyers and judges and such. But no, he had not taken the hint that magical liquor had offered him; instead, he had tamely accepted a life of sobriety, and was now to pay a fearful price for his foolishness.But when?

When were they going to seize him, and strap him to a torture table, and subject him to a slow, lingering death of utmost agony?

Drake got so curious about this vital question that finally he asked a gaoler.

'When are we going to torture you to death?' said the gaoler, scratching his head. 'Why, I don't rightly know. What's your name?''Drake Douay.'

'Ah! Drake Douay! So this is where you finished up! We all thought you'd escaped. Wait around, me younker, and I'll find out.'

And the gaoler waddled away, leaving Drake to think:

Me and my big mouth!

The gaoler returned later in the day.

'Well,' he said. 'There's some good news and some bad news.''I'll have the good news first.'

'The good news is that you've already been tortured to death. Legally, I mean. When it was your turn and we couldn't find you, the executioners put a dog on the table and made do with that. A legal fiction, you understand?'

'Yes,' said Drake, who thought he did even though he didn't. 'So can I go? Do I get out of here?'

'Well no. For that's the bad news. Legally, you're dead. I've sighted your death certificate meself. We can't have dead men walking round the city, can we?''So what happens now?'

'Why, me pretty little younker, you grows yourself older. Then in time you dies, thus matching reality with the paperwork. Till then, you sit there nice and happy, another breathing corpse for the auditors to count come Assessment Day.''What's Assessment Day?'

'Oh, that's technical, that's technical,' said the turnkey, who didn't rightly understand accounting practices but was unwilling to confess his ignorance.

So Drake was left to linger in his desolation of filth, squalor, dungeon darkness and perpetual hunger. Sometimes, he heard rumours of the outside world: that the sun had died, that a forest had marched west out of Chenameg, that a thousand dragons had ravaged Selzirk. All kinds of wildness circulated in the muttering gloom.

Old man Shix died, and his corpse was taken away. Shix had irritated Drake intensely, but now he longed to