The Walrus and the Warwolf

the water. All looking heavy. And none had oars. Drake paused, shrugged, then walked out across the water.

By the time he reached the ship, he was having no trouble at all with his negative gravity. Those on deck crowded to the rails to watch, so he showed off a bit. Striding over the water with great aplomb, Drake paraded around the vessel, feeling still very sick but very clever all the same.

'Stop playing the fool, man!' shouted Rolf Thelemite from the deck. 'We need you up here, fast!'

Drake made a rude gesture for Rolf Thelemite's benefit. Then the Walrus himself, Slagger Mulps in all his hairy glory, shouted in a regular storm voice:

'Drake, you son of a snake-spawned cockroach, get your arse up here, now, before I come down there and kick it off!'

Drake was just considering whether the Walrus was also worthy of a rude gesture, and what his (Drake's) chances of survival would be if he made one, when the last of the enchantment wore off, suddenly and without warning. Gravity reclaimed him, and he fell into the sea, which was shockingly cold and wet besides. He spluttered and floundered a bit, while those on deck laughed loudly, then he swam overarm to the anchor cable, where he hung resting until a rope ladder was dropped so he could scramble up.'Here!' bellowed the Walrus. 'What's up?' asked Drake. He soon found out.

As the Walrus swiftly told him, in language almost salty enough to blister paint, Jon Arabin had been taken hostage by the locals, who thought that Baron Farouk of Hexagon would be worth a handsome ransom. They were holding him in the Bildungsgrift, an ancient (and usually abandoned) broch some three leagues inland. All of the locals had fled.

'No they haven't,' said Drake. 'There's someone snoring, and a blacksmith working still.'

'That forge is full of haunted metal,' said the Walrus grimly. 'I've been to see for myself. As for the snoring – that's Whale Mike, dead drunk in a stranger's bed. It would take six of us to shift him.'

'It wouldn't have taken six of you to shift me,' said Drake, slightly aggrieved.

'Aye, no,' said the Walrus, uneasily, 'but we had no time to search the town proper.'

In truth, a raiding party had gone ashore at dawn, had found Whale Mike asleep, had investigated the forge -and had fled immediately, having seen lean limbs of skeletal metal working unattended, stoking the furnace for the morning's work.

'Well then,' said Drake, 'it's a hard day for Jon Arabin, that's to be sure, but I'm off to bed. Wake me tomorrow so I can hear how you've handled it.'

'Not so fast!' said the Walrus, grabbing Drake by the collar as he sauntered away.

The collar, being rotten, tore free – but Drake stopped anyway.'What do you want from me?' he asked.

'Your luck,' said the Walrus. 'Man, the fortunes you've won by gambling – you're so fay you can luck this out blindfolded with both hands tied to your testicles.''Luck be buggered,' said Drake, turning away.

'Hold fast!' said Mulps. 'You'll be buggered yourself with a sealing spear unless you come to order quickly. I'm putting you in charge of rescuing friend Warwolf.'It was, Drake sensed, no idle boast.

'Okay then,' he said sullenly, 'I'll get Jon Arabin loose, or get him killed by trying.'

'None of that!' said the Walrus. 'Your life rides with his!'

'Ouch!' said Drake, his glorious stock of obscenities entirely failing him in the face of this news.

He saw – he was thinking fast, now – that Mulps had decided the situation was hopeless. They were like to lose Jon Arabin, which meant no admiral's hopes for the Walrus, hence no chance of extra booty to be divvied up between the crew, and thus, for a start, the possibility of civil war between the men ex-Walrus and the Warwolf originals.

Slagger Mulps was looking for a scapegoat, and had found one in Drake, the lucky one, whose glamorous dice and youthful insolence had not exactly made him widely beloved, at least not amongst the crewmen from the Walrus.

Jon Arabin's men thought better of Drake, as he had found when the Warwolf tried to have him thrown overboard more than a horizon away from the Teeth. But would they stand staunch against the Walrus? For an entire crew to face down Jon Arabin on Drake's behalf was one thing. For them to fight it out cutlass to cutlass with the likes of Ish Ulpin was another thing altogether.

Likely those from the Warwolf would throw in their lot with the Walrus men. Likely the men would relieve their frustrations by battering Drake to death. Which would suit Mulps just fine.'He won't do it,' said Simp Fiche loudly.

'Yes I will,' said Drake stoutly. 'And you'll come too, to help me. And – and Yot there, come on, Sully boy, get in behind. And – yes, Bucks Cat, you'll do. Thelemite, man, let's have the Rovac with us. Jez! Yes, you, Jez Glane, you're not that bothered that you can't hear me. Ish Ulpin, yes. And you – Haze, isn't it? And you – what's your name? What was that? Chicks, is it? Then fall in, friend Chicks.'

'Hang about!' said Slagger Mulps. 'Most of those are my men! Why are you taking mine?'

'Because yours are the best,' said Drake, blandly. 'Aren't they? I tell you what, I'll take Jon Disaster too. Grab some rope, Jon. We'll hang some locals once we've loosed Jon Arabin.'

And soon Drake was ashore with his negotiating team, each man kitted out with one or more sharp-edged instruments of pirate-style diplomacy. If all went wrong and most got killed, then Drake – if he survived – would return to the Sky Dancer to find the Walrus more in a minority than he had been. On the other hand … he might just light out for the furthest sand dune he could find, and hide there until the Sky Dancer departed.

Sweating and breathing heavily – it was only three leagues, to be sure, but few of them had walked even half that far for years – Drake and his nine death commandos arrived at the Bildungsgrift.

'Stop here,' said Drake, sitting in the semi-shade of a tall plant which was the local excuse for a tree.The pirates obeyed without question.

'First,' said Drake, like a veteran. 'Clarification of the aim. Then reconnaissance.'

He had learnt those big words from a couple of Galish-speaking soldiers while kicking around idle on Burntos, before the trouble started. They sounded good, and meant he had to do nothing for the time being but sit and stare at the broch.

The Bildungsgrift was not much, as castles went. The moat had filled up with windblow sand some five hundred years before; scurvy grass, docks, stinging nettles and wild radish (not ordinary radish, but the rare bitter- radish of Carawell, which is actually more of an onion) grew right up to the castle walls.

Those walls were not terribly tall, being scarcely twice the height of a man. Only a hastily arranged clutter of barrels and baulks of timber barred the gateway. No proud flag fluttered from the battlements – only a pair of women's bloomers, mounted on a fishing pole (and even those did not flutter, there being no wind). No helmeted warriors lined those walls, only some over-excited villagers armed with stones and fish-gutting knives.

'It's not much of a place,' said Rolf Thelemite. 'One good rush would take us through the gateway with no trouble at all.'

'Yes,' said Drake, proceeding with heavy irony and a masterly grasp of strategy. 'No trouble at all – until we got inside. Then, methinks, thinking being one of my fortes, we'd be outnumbered a hundred to one.'

The word he used for 'fortes' was 'chagcheex', a term from the High Speech which he had picked up from the wizard Miphon.

'Chagcheex?' said Jez Glane, quoting it back to him in bewilderment. 'What does that mean?'

'No idea,' said Drake, who in fact had a hazy idea that it meant octopus-raping abilities. 'But it sounds good, doesn't it?'

'It sounds better than those odds of yours, for sure,' said Glane. 'A hundred to one? Perhaps we'd better go home.'

'Aagh, stop talking like a mother-doll,' said Bucks Cat in disgust.

'Yes,' said Ish Ulpin. 'They're only peasants, not warriors.'

'And the odds, I warrant, are no worse than ten to one at worst,' said Rolf Thelemite.

This was optimistic. The odds were, in truth, closer to fifty to one. Though more than half of those in the castle were women and children, Drake was right in guessing that the pirates would get nowhere by force.'Comeon,' said Drake, 'let'sgo forward.''All of us?' said Yot.

'Yes,' said Drake, 'in caseasudden opportunity presents itself. We have to be ready to snatch our beloved captain if they give us the chance.'

At the back of his mind was the thought that, if the locals started throwing things, more targets would