minimize the chances of Drake getting personally battered.
Beforethey could start their advance, Chicks, acoward at heart, faked an epileptic fit. Afterwards, he lay still, pretending, no matter how hard they kicked him, to be unconscious.'I'll wake him up,' said Jon Disaster grimly.
And kicked Chicks so hard in the head that the man was knocked truly unconscious.
'Maybe I should stay behind and look after him,' said Simp Fiche.
'Were you born with a cock or weren't you?' said Ish Ulpin.
Simp Fiche made no reply, but kept pace wit h the others as they advanced. Several fish-heads were flung in their direction, but these fell short.'Piss poor thowing,' said Jez Glane.
'Here's far enough,' said Drake, halting thirty paces in front of the gate.He challenged the castle, using Bucks Cat as an amplifier.
'Hoy,' muttered Drake, his throat still scratchy from last night's boozing.
And Bucks Cat shouted, in a voice that made Drake's head feel as if it was splitting from stem to stern: 'Hoy! You farts up there!'
' Don't embellish,' muttered Drake.' Just the plain words will do.'
'Don't embellish!' roared Bucks Cat. Then paused, and asked of Drake: 'What does embellish mean?''It's another word for tattoo,' said Drake.
'Oh,' said Bucks Cat. Then roared out: 'Don't tattoo the Warwolf, unless you want your head shoved up your arse until you suffocate!'
Drake groaned and sat down, covering his face with his hands.
'Is something wrong?' asked Bucks Cat. 'Don't you feel well?'
'I had a hard night,' said Drake, allowing himself to be helped to his feet again. 'I think … I think I'll go into the castle to talk with them direct. Face to face, aye, that's the stuff.''I'll go with you,' said Rolf Thelemite instantly.
'Ah. . .Rolf, man. . .I,ah. . . I think we may have to do a night attack.' Thus spoke Drake. He scratched through his memories of soldier-talk on Burntos, then continued: 'I want you to reconnoitre the rear approaches. Make a sketch map so we can show the others, back at the ship.'
'A sketch map,' said Thelemite. 'Anyone got any writing materials?'
Strangely, none of the pirates had about them quill, ink or parchment. Or, for that matter, a tuning fork or a cookery book,achestnutoracolander,orachunkofthemoonofthe month before.'I've got some tobacco,' volunteered Jez Glane.'Thanks,' said Drake, heavily.
Fortunately, Simp Fiche had a small money-bag made out of human skin. While Bucks Cat held Jez Glane in an armlock, and Ish Ulpin went through his pockets looking for the tobacco, Simp Fiche unpicked the seams of his money-bag.
'What were you planning to do with these?' said Ish Ulpin, pulling from Jez Glane's pockets a full half-dozen high-class condoms, each made from the caecum of a lamb.'Screw your mother backwards,' said Jez Glane. Ish Ulpin cuffed him.
'Belay that!' said Drake, in a voice so loud it hurt his own head.
His throat felt as if it had been torn open by the shout. But it got results, as Bucks Cat released Jez Glane. Ish Ulpin, perhaps momentarily ashamed of his uncomradely behaviour, even turned over to Glane a tenth of the tobacco just stolen from him.
Then, as Ish Ulpin began to glove his fingers one by one with the condoms taken from Glane, Rolf Thelemite took the unpicked bag of human skin from Simp Fiche.
'I'll get the map done on this,' said Thelemite, bravely, as a Rovac warrior should. 'I'll find a thorn, draw my blood, then map out our war with that.''Good, good,' said Drake. 'Yot – you come with me.'
'Why me?' said Yot plaintively. T thought you were going alone.'
'There should be a representative present from the Walrus men,' said Drake, 'to see that no underhand deals get done.'
'I've not been with the Walrus for months,' protested Yot, fearful of danger.'You're one of ours at heart,' said Trudy Haze.
'Aye,' growled Ish Ulpin, 'go with Drake. Otherwise he might sell us all as slaves in exchange for Arabin. You go, Sully. Keep him honest.'So Yot went.
Drake wanted his fellow Stokos-islander along in case the kidnappers would take him as part of the ransom – as eating meat, perhaps. Despite what Ish Ulpin had said, Drake doubted there would be much trouble if he traded Yot to the locals.
The pair scrambled over the rubbish in the gateway and down into the central courtyard, where they were ringed by jeering children. Drake thought about grabbing one and threatening to cut its throat unless Arabin was released. He dismissed the thought almost immediately, unable to convince himself that anyone could seriously value anything as intrinsically worthless as a child.
The children were dispersed by a small negotiating party of middle-aged fishermen.'So you want Baron Farouk back, do you?' said one.
'He's not Baron Farouk,' said Drake bluntly. 'He's Jon Arabin, pirate of the Greaters. Release him immediately, or Lord Menator of the Teeth will north to Brennan with a fleet, then kill off every fish-raping sodomist's son on Carawell, which means the lot of you.'The fishermen laughed.'I'm serious!' said Drake.
He intended to shout, but what came from his suffering throat was more of a squawk. The fishermen cackled more.'Him? A pirate? Would you be a pirate too, perhaps?'
T am,' said Drake, trying, with a complete lack of success, to sound as savage as he felt. 'A blooded blade of the free marauders.' . They laughed the more.
'And how,' said one of them, eventually, wiping the tears from his eyes, 'how does a sprig of a boy like you hold his own amongst men?'
'Because I'm hard as iron and as bitter as steel,' said Drake promptly, which set them off again.
Unfortunately, the locals had a faulty conception of pirating. Sheltered on their sand-bank islands, hearing only second-hand rumours richly embroidered, they firmly believed that the initiation rites of the Orfus pirates involved cutting off one's nose and the top joint of one's left little finger.
Moreover, Carawell was one of those places where boys stay boys a long time, for the fathers control inheritance rights to the wealth – which on Carawell was land and
fishing boats – and the boys must be meek, respectful, humble and in need of advice, or get disinherited.
So Drake looked, to the fishermen, absurdly young to be sent to negotiate, and an obvious liar into the bargain. They took much the same view of youth as did the Partnership Banks: adulthood only began at age twenty-five, if then.
'Sprigling,' said one of the fishermen. 'We knowwhyit's you they've sent to do talk with us. It's because Baron Farouk's your father.'
'He's no such thing,' said Drake. 'He's my captain true, and there's an end to it.'
'Young one, you've trapped yourself twice. Last night he called you his son, with half us there in witness.'
Drake hazily remembered Jon Arabin doing something of the sort, about the time that Drake was contemplating drinking a bowl of firewater.
'That's a term of honour,' said Drake. 'He calls me that because he loves me, since the time I saved his ship from a Neversh.''From a Neversh!' spluttered one of the fishermen.
And their mirth was virtually unquenchable.
The Lesser Teeth were isolated, true, but they played chess here as men did everywhere, and knew that a Neversh is not just the most delicate piece on the chessboard – those six wings the first thing to break off when children get hold of the pieces, and never mind about the eight feet – but a real live world-destroying monster of the terror-lands beyond Drangsturm.
No way could a boy like this kill a legend-haunter like that!
'Face truth,' said one of the fishermen. 'Your father's here, and here stays until we get five scarfs of diamonds, a gillet of gold, some ninety ropes of arachnid silk, and fifty thousand steel fish hooks.'
