Upon which the barman opened his bottom locker and pulled out strange vials, tubes, tubs, boxes, casks, jars and bottles, and mixed the most brain-blowing cocktail imaginable. Hemlock went into it, and paint, and tar, lamp- black, weedkiller and plutonium, the ink of a cuttlefish and the gall of a basilisk, a smidgin of belladonna and the blood of a (reputed) virgin, some powdered cannabis leaf and half a gram of heroin, some white of egg and some fermented fish, ground glass, tobacco ash, chopped-up leopard's whiskers, fine-ground horn of unicorn and two tomatoes, some mandrake, ginseng, tannin and quinine, chopped shark's liver seven days old, some high-grade lacquer and sulphuric acid, with lashings of honey to make the whole brew palatable.
In honour of the occasion, the barman unearthed a very old and ancient tankard made of glass – the only one of its kind on all the Greater Teeth. He poured the cocktail into it, slowly. The thick black liquid sat there, bubbling softly. The barman sprinkled some cinnamon on top and ceremoniously set the offering down in front of Drake.
'Get this dog-defecating fornicator inside you,' said the barman, with unwonted enthusiasm. 'That'll put hairs on your chest!'
Drake picked up the tankard with both hands, looked at it steadily, then sipped it with unaccustomed caution. Then:'What the hell,' he said.
And drank the rest down as a thirsty man would drink weak ale.
The barman watched expectantly, waiting for him to drop dead, or melt, or explode. Instead, Drake swayed a little. All colour left his face. He coughed once or twice, rather harshly, then spat out a little blood. Then, fairly rapidly, the colour returned to his face, his stance steadied, and he wiped his mouth and said regretfully:
'Well, it's a good drop, to be sure. Almost as good as a blow on the head. But the effect wears off powerful fast. Make me another one.'
But the barman shook his head.
'Boy,' he said, 'if that won't kill you, nothing will. One shot of that, and you should stay drunk till your grandchildren celebrate seventy. It ain't natural to drink that down and still stay speaking, far less standing. Boy, take it from me, and I'm an expert. Someone's worked the Black Arts on you, young man. They've taken away the gift of liquor – and all of liquor's friends.'
This was the opinion of a true professional, a specialist in chemical debauchery. As the words sank in, Drake shuddered. Someone had cursed him! Someone had doomed him to a life of perpetual sobriety!
He found it hard to think of a worse fate, but, after some reflection, imagined one – and hurried off to find a pirate whore to make sure it wasn't so.
14
It was standard pirate practice to feed competitors drinks while gambling. Drake, doomed to be sober, kept his suffering as secret as he could, and enriched himself.
Choosing games like backgammon and dice chess, where there is a strong element of skill, Drake would gamble, drink, play drunk, raise the stakes, make a drunk's blunders, raise the stakes again – then use a sober man's wit, as if by accident, to find the tactics to sweep the table.
And the things he won! Pearls, diamonds, snuff, gold, jade, silver, a wad of coca leaf, and one-night stands with the wives of twenty different men.
Yet profit is not all, and scarcely compensated Drake for lost pleasures. For now, when raucous drunkards sang and shouted, it was no longer the warm hubbub of friendship which he heard, but the braying stupidity of morons and madmen. Sober, he no longer laughed to see a helpless
dipsomaniac resorting to tortured spastic contortions to get a mug to his lips. He no longer fell about with rejoicing laughter when one man vomited over another: instead he was bored. And remote. And cold.
He found himself living his life as though he had just come back from a funeral.
He saw now that the cosy togetherness of drinking sessions was an illusion created by the alcohol. Each drinker was in fact drowning in a separate pool of booze. But Drake, who could no longer drown himself, envied them.
When he was not gambling, Drake would usually quaff an ale or two in company to quench his thirst, then have half a dozen more out of sheer good manners, plus a couple on top of that just to keep up his reputation. The beer made him piss more frequently, and that was it.
Soon, most pirates began to latch on to the fact that young Drake had a harder head than he pretended. But they did not stop gambling with him. No: ego compelled them to sit at table with him, downing the drinks and raising the stakes, to see who would slide under the table first. Drake once or twice consented to lose, and disappear beneath the table.
'See?' said the pirates, each to each. 'He's got his limits just like any other.'And returned, in force, to test him again the next day.
On occasion, evil men spiked Drake's drinks with drugs and poisons. Sometimes he felt slightly dizzy, and once, having swallowed enough cyanide to kill a horse, he became positively breathless for thrice three dozen heartbeats. But always the worms within his body brought their complicated chemistry into play, and the ancient genius of the genetic engineering of a lost and forgotten civilization preserved his flesh from yet another toxic onslaught.
Drake could no longer fuddle his wits with alcohol, or die from poison, or vanish into the world of drug-dream hallucinations. And the disease which could kill him had yet to be built. Sex still had its consolations, but these, of course, were momentary. The beauty of drunkenness is that it can last a lifetime – which, in the case of the Orfus' pirates, it often did.
Drake won much money but few friends. Lonely, he bought companionship in the form of a dog, which he named King Tor.
The dog is the favourite beast of the Demon, being undiscriminating in its appetites, and dirty, and loud, and ugly, and the habitat of vermin, and not very bright. Drake loved dogs. He bought King Tor a spiked collar, sharpening the spikes until they glittered. He decided to train this new companion to kill rats and fight alongside him when the Warwolf's heroes rumbled with the men of the
As a sober man gambling with drunks, Drake was now so prosperous he was getting into money-lending and agiotage. Stokos was, without doubt, the best place in the world to live – but the Teeth were the place to get rich.
Drake began nurturing dreams of enhancing his earnings by setting up his own branch of the temple of Hagon. Surely worship of the bloodlord Hagon was precisely the right religion for the Greater Teeth. Yes, and he should practise being a priest right here and now, since he fully intended to buy into the priesthood on his return to Stokos. That was only natural, seeing as how he was so devout.
With establishing a temple in mind, Drake attended the Slaving Day Sales in the middle of winter, intending to buy the first of his women. But there was nothing worth having, if one did not like fat – and Drake didn't. What he did find was a familiar face, Sully Datelier Yot, in chains.
'Why, Sully Yot!' said Drake cheerfully. 'What brings you to the fair islands Teeth Major? A little far from the forge, aren't you?'
Yot made no reply, but sat there snivelling. Something – fear, perhaps, or maybe a virus, or possibly just the cold of the midwinter island air – had set his nose to running.
'Why so quiet?' asked Drake. 'Cat got your tongue? If not, I've got a dog that's eager to have it.'
And Drake stroked Yot's cheek softly. Yot pulled away. But he didn't go far, since he was roped to a floor- shackle.
'Darling!' said Drake. 'Why so cold? When we last met, at 'Marphos, you were so eager to embrace me. Yes.
