The Walrus and the Warwolf

'Nobody insults steel by making it into fish hooks!' said Drake.

He was scandalized at the very thought – and, these days, it took a lot to scandalize him.

'Nobody does?' said one of the fishermen. 'Then, sorry, but your father dies.'

'And you die with him!' said Drake. 'For am I not a priest of the Flame? Look – is that vodka? It is!'

And he wrestled a skin of the stuff away from the man holding it. He, with a man's contempt for a boy, tried to wrest it back – and found out what blacksmith's muscles are made of.'Watch!' said Drake.

And drank as if thirsting to death.

Then wiped his mouth and looked around.

'Could any man amongst you do as much?' he said. 'No! And why can I? Because I am of the Flame! The Flame is with me! Yield up my father! Or I will call the wrath of the Flame upon you! Thus!'

And Drake swigged more vodka to ease his throat, then began jigging up and down on the spot, still clutching the skin of hard liquor, and chanting:Flame of Flames, I summon ye! Flame of Flames, I call! By the Sacred Names I call ye, Yah-ray hoo-ray, yah-ray hoo-ray! Yah-ray yah-ray! Hoo-ray hoo-ray! Dharma dharma, hoo-ray hoo-ray!

At which point Sully Datelier Yot, appalled by this open blasphemy (his faith had weakened, true, yet he did not Disbelieve) shouted:'No! No! Stop! Stop! Or the Flame will kill you!'

'Yea, verily verily,' roared Drake, working Yot's protest into his act. 'Bring down the Flame!'And he raised his arms to the heavens.Far off in the distance, a cockerel cried:'Co co rico! Co co rico!'

There was a crash of thunder. The sky went green. Blue lightning writhed across the heavens in patterns like those a thread of water makes as it scrawls down a crooked stick. Then the clouds were gashed open by a Flame. It descended slowly, a monstrous whirling column of angry purple and crackling red. Down from the heights it came, until its base stood before Drake and its heights in the heavens.

'Fall down!' said Drake sternly, wondering what on earth had been mixed with that vodka. 'Fall down and worship the Flame! Repent your sins or die!'

Most of the fishermen were already grovelling in the dust.

'The Flame!' whimpered Yot, in religious ecstasy. 'It is true! I did believe, really! Always!'

And he embraced his god. And, touching the whirling column of fire, was knocked back as if kicked by an elephant. He stretched his length senseless on the ground.

'Enough!' shouted Drake. And then, hoarsely: 'You are Believed.'

Slowly, the column of fire whirled into nothing. The lightning ceased tormenting the sky, which lost its seasick tinge and became, once more, a blue so crisp it looked worth biting. In the distance, dogs were barking.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then a woman began a wailing scream. It proved infectious, and soon all the locals in Bildungsgrift were fleeing, screaming as they went. The rubbish in the gate was scattered aside by the fury of their flight.

'Well,' said Drake, looking around the warm, sunny courtyard, where nobody was left but himself and Yot (who was still unconscious). 'Well, that was. . .'But he was not sure what it had been.'That was something,' he finished, lamely.

'What was something?' asked Jon Arabin, striding out of a tower-base door.'Didn't you see it then?' said Drake.'See what? I heard some thunder – was there a squall?''Never mind,' said Drake. Tt'sover.'

'What happened to Sully Yot?' said Arabin, sighting Yot's unconscious form.'Man,' said Drake, 'he got so frightened by all these locals here that he plain flew into the air, aye, flapping his arms like madness. He were ten times his own height off the ground when he slipped and fell. But the sight so amazed the locals that they turned and fled.'

'Oh yes!' said Arabin, with a grin. 'Tell me another one!'Drake, who needed no further invitation, promptly did.

'Enough of your nonsense,' said Ish Ulpin, entering the courtyard in time to hear the end of Drake's second joke. 'The peasants are running, so let us be hunting.'

'Nay,' said Arabin. 'Whatever's scared the locals, they may recover their wits in a moment. Let's be getting back to the ship while the getting's good.'

Bucks Cat supported Ish Ulpin's stance, but the pair of them were outnumbered. So back to the ship they all got, carrying Sully Yot and friend Chicks between them. Which made their journey mighty long, even though Yot recovered his senses after scarcely half a league.

23

D'Waith: extremely small community with large-scale pretensions (this walled village claiming to be a city state); commands most easterly harbour of Ravlish Lands, some 100 leagues north of Lesser Teeth, 50 leagues west of Argan and 70 leagues (as the fish-bat flies) south of Island Drum.

The pirates ravaged Brennan in a half-hearted way. Stone buildings thwarted arson; the haunted metal in the forge (which they did not dare enter) disturbed them; the thought of their damaged ship lying at anchor in a hostile harbour disturbed them more. In the end, they burnt every boat in reach and left it at that.

A few hardy souls (such as Bucks Cat and Ish Ulpin) wanted to go on a search-and-destroy mission into the hinterland, seeking candidates for skinning alive, but most thought (rightly) that this would be rank foolishness.

'Those so arrant in their anger can stay behind to hunt lonesome,' said Jon Arabin. 'The rest of us are going.'

And go they did. The Sky Dancer slipped to sea that evening, ghosting all night on the moth-wing airs of a preternaturally smooth-browed sea, the loudest sound aboard being that of the pumps still working to keep them afloat. Jon Arabin planned to put in to D'Waith, in the north, to make repairs he had originally thought to encompass at Brennan.

That night, Drake worried over what he had seen at Bildungsgrift. The next morning, he questioned Yot about it.

'You tell me what happened,' said Yot. T don't remember anything. Except – yes, there was some lightning. And I got hit by it, or so my burns would suppose. Look!'Yot had nasty burns on his hands.'And the same on my feet,' he said.'Go see Jon Arabin,' said Drake. 'He'll doctor you.'

And Drake himself went looking for Rolf Thelemite, who insisted on showing him a nicely drawn sketch map of the backside of Bildungsgrift, with places marked for siege ladders, and a diversionary assault, and fall-back positions in case of a sally from within.

'That's very, very professional,' said Drake. 'You must show it to Menator back home, for he'll need it doubtless when we take the Lessers in earnest, which we must, them being anchored so close to us. Now tell, man – what saw you yesterday? In the way of strangeness, I mean. Just before the enemy ran.'Rolf Thelemite frowned.

'A … a colour in the sky,' he said. 'Though I don't remember what. A squall, but no rain that I remember. And a windspout, aye, a bit irregular in colour, but wind all the same.'

'Windspout?!' said Drake, who had never heard of any such thing.

'Aye, and I've seen them in desert before, only sand. They rain fish sometimes, but that's at sea, or the near-land. Yes. Big, sometimes. Suck up horses and houses. Why, there was one I remember in a battle once – won us clean through to victory when we was close to defeat.'

'But yesterday's … I mean … it was strange, wasn't it?'

'Oh, there's many things strange, by land and sea,' said Rolf Thelemite. 'Windspouts, aye, and rainbows round the midnight moon. The green flash at sunset, aye, most will tell you it's myth, but I've seen it, man, I've seen it. And fire which walks through swamps without burning, and balls of fire which sit on masts in a storm – and that does burn, man, I've seen the strongest shaken by it.'

'But this was stranger than those other things, surely,' said Drake. 'The sky changing colour, for a start. You've never seen that before!'

'Oh yes I have,' said Rolf Thelemite. 'When I was in the far north of Tameran – and not many Rovac have gone campaigning there, believe me, for all that we're said to battle in every war that's going – why, up there in