was rigged out in flame-coloured taffeta most unfitting as wear for one who was a daughter of Lonstantine Thrug. In a further offence against custom, she had brought her pet owl to banquet. The name of the creature was Aquitaine Varazchavardan, a fact which Alfric Danbrog could not help but learn, since Justina often addressed the feathered beast by this name.
(The owl, for its part, said precious little in return.)
It was said that Justina Thrug was truly her father’s daughter, and that nothing could abash her dauntless courage; but Alfric found such rumour hard to credit when he was confronted by this overloud and overweight female, a woman hardly overyoung.
Alfric was glad when the traditional banquet-time storytelling began, for it drowned out the Thrug. The tales that were told were all the usual, traditional stuff. Heroes venturing against those monsters which inhabit the wastelands. The glut of slaughter from the great battles of land and sea. The glory of the poets of the past who won deathless fame by fabling the heroes of such tales. The sacrifices made by those who, eager for fame, paid scant heed to the safety of the house of flesh. The plight of an outcast doomed by the betrayal of his king.
On and on went the storytelling, some in prose and some in verse, but all noble, heroic, inspired by visions of grandeur.
Listening, the Yudonic Knights indulged themselves in heroic ecstasies. They were no longer the inhabitants of a muddy little city in a minor province of the Izdimir Empire; they were not the denizens of an insignificant land half-engulfed by swamp; they were not the members of a bullyboy class dedicated to exploiting the labours of a subdued and sullen peasantry. Rather, they were lordly heroes in a land built for the accommodation of such men; their houses were palaces; their bad-tempered wives were compliant maidens who delighted in braiding broidered silk and looming fleeces for the comfort of their men; their estate was great, and their destiny to be greater yet.
At last, the Wormlord himself got to his feet, and (still without his teeth) began his tale of how he had marched against Her son, had met that monster, and had defeated him.
‘My making was not by way of words moth-eaten. Rather it was through deeds that I became the man you see before you.’
Thus began the Wormlord. And by like boast he continued, until at last his tale was done.
Other boasts followed. Recitals of ancestral sovereignties; of lordly deeds which had set the world aflame with admiration; of the splendour of gold and the open-handed kings who had oft won fame by their dispensing of the same; of savage foes who had marched against the kings, only to be broken and defeated and backdriven by the might of the righteous.
And, for a while, Alfric was buoyed up by this stuff. But after a while it all got too much, and he wished he could leave. But he could not. This was his banquet, put on especially for his honour. If he left before it was finished, he would be insulting his king and his fellows.
In the end, Alfric dared himself away from the table long enough to take a piss — this itself a breach of custom, but he was past caring — only to find another flatulent hero-belcher in action when he returned.
On went the night, full of the wind of words. Of ring-prowed ships; of men in bearskin gloves manning such ships, the masts and sails of the same sheeted with ice; of swords adorned with coiled gold; of steeds with plaited manes, brave beasts which outran the wind; fell monsters encountered and defeated on a murky moor; horns heartening heroes as men graced with deathless courage met their end in contest with onswarming hordes of heartless reptiles; war-arrows embedded in corpses strewn upon steep rocky screens, discarded at the foot of precipitous crags, lying derelict in waters bloody and disturbed.
Of this sang the song-singers; and they sang also of the undisturbed valour of men who died without complaint though they were pierced to the vitals by deadly-barbed boar-spears; and of the outlandish grief which doomed the hero Hroblar to an uncouth death when his hand-meshed battle-corslet animated itself and ate through his flesh to the bone.
Also they sang — there was no stopping it, though Alfric would have been content to see all of creation come to an end rather than endure any more of this stuff — of the weapon-smiths of old and the weapons of their making.
Ah, the weapons!
Iron agleam in moonlight. Deathblades tempered in the blood of warfare. Ripple-patterned damascene slicing through the flesh of alien creatures ravenous for blood. The fighting fangs of heroes. Twist-patterned steel which had dared the hearts of heroes. Swords which lopped hands, which chopped feet, which shortened legs at the knees, which gouged out hearts and vivisected horses, which dissected the aorta and tasted the filth of the lower bowel.
Of such the poets sang, much to the delight of this company of heroes.
Of swords they sang, and of armour.
Buckler’s proof against a basilisk’s breath. Meshed mail. Gaunt helms topped with boars and dragons.
And the journeying, the endless trekking and marching and climbing endured by the thousands of heroes of legend, all of it to be described a footstep at a time, complete with descriptions of the texture of the mud through which they walked, and the very length of the leeches which there battened upon their flesh.
Earth was their way. Mud was their way. Wind was their way. Fire was their way. Ice was their way. Toes and hamstrings. Shins and shoulders. Corpses stretched lifeless. Lordless men manning the bulwark battlements. Heroes doomed to perish from the fiercest of griefs, dying encumbered by battle-hamess, fighting in death in honour of their battle-vows, vaunting their boasts with the blood of their lungs on their lips.
Then at last the boast-telling was over, and serious drinking began. Alfric drank himself, in defiance of his custom. Heard but parts of the tabletalk, that talk rapidly mounting to uproar. Loud, over-loud, striving above all other voices, was that of Justina Thrug, asking a question.
‘What,’ asked Justina, ‘is a virgin?’
Someone volunteered an explanation.
‘Oh!’ said she. ‘Now I remember!’
Then she looked across at Alfric and said:
‘Well, sweet wag, are you happy eating with your friends at that great big blood-brother plate?’
‘Happy enough,’ said Alfric.
Though in fact he was most unhappy at being reminded of the existence of his meal companions. He had (somehow) almost managed to forget about them entirely. Remembering their existence was unpleasant, for they were disgusting. Ciranoush, just to his right, repeatedly regurgitated his food, chewed the mouthfuls then swallowed again. As for Pig, why, Pig had drenched his food with a most revolting sauce, which was supplemented by a steady drip-drop of sweat which oozed from the bulky face of that entity. Right now, Pig was eating a chicken’s arse, teasing away the delicate flesh, and, into the bargain, eating the yellow knobs of well-cooked yellow chickenshit.
‘More beer, young sir?’ said a waiter.
‘Please,’ said Alfric.
Then realized the waiter was no waiter, no, it was Nappy, Nappy was there, at his elbow, his side, and Alfric was near-paralysed with terror, for he had no help, no chance, no hope, he was doomed, he was done, he was dead, there was no getting away.
But nothing happened.
Nothing happened to Alfric.
Nappy filled Alfric’s mug from a big jug. Then put down the jug. Then Pig Norn was groping at Pig Norn’s throat, clutching and clawing, writhing and striving, but it was no good, no good at all. The garotte was of wire, thin wire deep-biting hard, and Nappy was hauling on the wooden toggles which were tightening the wire.
In desperation, Pig Norn began to thrash about in his chair, trying to overbalance it. But the chair was heavy, solid oak was its weight, and Nappy was strategically positioned, behind Pig and immune to Pig’s fistings and Sailings. And Pig’s feet were starting to drum, to drum, to drumbeat their death, and Pig’s eyes were bulging, swelling, swollen, horror-glazed, hands spasming And And the legs spasming also, the drumbeat a death-rattle, a nothing, with bowels and bladder giving way in the aftermath, and stench rising to an absolute silence, all and everyone transfixed, horrified, all but for one old man singing tum-ti-tum-ti until someone hit him on the head with something hard and he collapsed unconscious.
Nappy loosened the garotte.
