The Walrus and the Warwolf

leagues inland from Androlmarphos. The work was tough, the rations poor, and the view monotonous. His galley once went upstream as far as Selzirk itself, but docked in the magnificent capital of the Harvest Plains by night, and was gone again before dawn. That irked Drake as much as anything else.

At least those twenty days gave him plenty of time to plan for his future. He would go back to Stokos. Yes. He would throw himself on the mercy of King Tor. Or would he? No: he would come not with a plea but with a sword. He would offer himself to Tor as an executioner. A Suppressor of Unorthodox Religions.

Once Drake's eloquence had persuaded Tor of the danger posed by Gouda Muck's cult, surely the king would be only too glad to have a vigorous young man like Drake in charge of the suppression of Muck's outlandish heresies.Yes.

And once he had an official position, a fancy title, a sizeable income and a rainbow-coloured uniform designed to show off his muscles, he'd make another assault on Zanya Kliedervaust. But he would refine his tactics first. He might even try some of the things the wizard Miphon had suggested. Would he pledge his love with poetry? No, never – he'd feel ridiculous. But he might take her flowers. Well, one flower, anyway. And maybe he shouldn't be so direct about demanding her body. Maybe he should give her some time to get used to him. How long? Three days? No, two should do it. . .

After twenty days on the galley, Drake expected liberty. But got no such thing. Instead, he was battened down in the hold of the Gol-sa-danjerk, a foreign ship which gave him less air, less space and less light than the Flying Fish, and kept him on shorter commons besides. Where he was bound, he knew not; the other exiles imprisoned with him knew as little as he.

'With luck,' said Drake, 'we're being deported to Stokos.'

In fact, they had all been sold into slavery, and were being carried north-west toward a slaving port in the Ravlish Lands.

At last, after what seemed an age – but was really only seven half-days and a fingerlength – an unfamiliar voice of command ordered them up on deck. They scrambled up through a recently unbattened hatch to find their ship still at sea. Another vessel was connected to the Gol-sa-danjerk by grappling hooks. Copious quantities of blood on the deck suggested that the connection had not been entirely welcomed. Indeed, Drake observed that most of the crew had become corpses. Strangers dressed in sealskins were busy stripping those corpses.'Pirates,' said Drake to himself.This was a guess, but it was accurate.

'Which of you jerks can sail?' roared a pirate, in something approximating to Galish.All except Drake proclaimed themselves to be sailors.

'You,' said a pirate, pointing at him. 'You know the sea, or don't you?'

T know something better,' said Drake, with a metalworkers' conceit which marked him as a true son of Stokos. T know steel. Hammering, shaping, forging and sharpening. I'm a master craftsman, don't you know.'

Gouda Muck would have laughed bitterly to have heard that joke – though Drake did know some of the basics.

'You're a landlubber, then,' said a pirate, and knocked him to the deck.

Drake swiftly realized his mistake. The other prisoners swore themselves to be pirates, and were accepted into the fraternity of the sea-robbers. Drake, on the other hand, was looked on as near to useless.

A prize crew was left on the Gol-sa-danjerk, but Drake was dragged on board the pirate ship. Its sails, he saw, were black. It seemed strangely familiar. He was half-persuaded that this was the very same barque which he had seen anchored in the harbour of Cam the morning after his sixteenth birthday.'What ship be this?' he said.'The Walrus, friend,' said a voice.That voice sounded familiar. Indeed, it came from the mouth of Bucks Cat – one of the jeering boatmen who had forced Drake into the sea to drown a horizon away from Stokos. Even though that was more than half a year ago, the horrors of the occasion were, to say the least, vivid in Drake's memory.'You!' said Drake.'And me,' said another man.

A lean, pale man. Ish Ulpin!

'Come along, darling,' said Ish Ulpin. 'We're going to introduce you to the captain. He might like a nice young boy like you.'

So Drake was led along the deck of the Walrus. And an evil barque she was, too, a stinking tub of reeks and rats, with decks near as dirty as her bilges. Drake, however, had no time for detailed inspection, for he was shortly confronted with her captain, one Slagger Mulps. This man was knicknamed'the Walrus' – hence the name of his ship.A weird sight he was.

Slagger Mulps was very tall and very thin, and had a very long very sharp nose. But what first impressed was his beard and his hair, both of which were green.

'On your knees!' said Ish Ulpin, 'for you stand in the presence of our great captain, Slagger Mulps, the Walrus himself.'

Drake held his ground. Ish Ulpin drove hard, bony thumbs into pressure points in Drake's shoulders, forcing him down to his knees.'Who are you?' said Slagger Mulps.

His eyes, like his hair, were green – like those of the wizard Miphon. His arms were long, dangling right down to his knees. He had, Drake saw, two thumbs and three fingers on each hand.

'If you want me to talk,' said Drake, 'first find a human being for me to talk to.'Drake Douay had made a big mistake. He had said the worst of all possible things. For the Walrus was acutely conscious of his strangeness.

He had led the worst of childhoods imaginable – teased, bullied and rejected on account of his green hair and his multiple thumbs. The experience had marked him for life.

The Walrus stared at Drake, envying his perfect conformity (height apart) to the human norm.

T,' said the Walrus, 'am human. What's more, I'm likely the man who will kill you.'

'Lucky you don't have a mirror,' said Drake, 'or you'd likely kill yourself.'

The Walrus, who had seen himself mirrored in glass, metal and water often enough, was overcome with fury. Raising his voice, he shouted:'Who wants to play with this thing before I kill it?'T do,' said a rough, gruff voice.

And forward stepped a barrel-chested hairy brute in bloodstained sealskins, his coarse-featured face surrounded by shaggy black hair and a great big black beard. It was Andranovory.The Walrus immediately regretted having spoken.

Andranovory was the worst of his men – a drunken, murderous, argumentative bully, an untrustworthy sadist hated by at least half the crew. In the past, he had treated prisoners in ways which gave Mulps nightmares.

'There are others more worthy,' said the Walrus. T give the pleasure of playing with this – with this thing to Ish Ulpin.'

'And I,' said Ish Ulpin, 'yield that pleasure to my shipmate, Andranovory,'

That personage grinned at Drake, showing broken rot-brown teeth.

'Atsimo Andranovory,' he said, introducing himself. 'I believe we've met.''Oh, I don't think we have,' said Drake.

'You don't remember me?' said Andranovory. 'Well, you'll remember me hereafter. Give me a suck!'

And the raptor exposed his weapon to the cool sea breeze. His knob was crusted with festering sores.'Suck!' said Andranovory.

T'llnot playwoman,' said Drake, in a voice shaking with tension.

Mulps sympathized with the boy who did not want to play woman – not, at least, with so many men watching.

'Lazy little bugger!' said Andranovory, giving him an idle slap. 'But we can cure that. String him up by the ankles till he learns when he's well off.'

While Mulps did not approve of such tortures, he could scarcely intervene. If his crew ever learned the true nature of his sensitive, infinitely tender soul, they would surely lose faith in him as a captain. Mulps was aware that he was not much of a sailor, or much of a fighter, either – it was his thrift and financial acumen, more than anything, which had brought him control of the ship.

So Mulps could only stand back and watch helplessly as Ish Uplin and Bucks Cat, obedient to Andranovory's commands, tied Drake's hands behind his back then tied a rope to his ankles. The rope was slung over a yard- arm.

Drake lay on the hard deck, staring up at the blue sky. All around were unfriendly faces. He wished he had not given Andranovory those duff directions on the dockside of Cam, more than half a year ago. But, at the time, it had seemed such an innocent little trick.'Mike!' yelled Ish Ulpin. 'Come help us haul a rope!'

And something far too large to be human came trundling along the deck. It was twice the height of any man.