Alfric looked (he could not help himself). The line, hard line of the wire, deep-bitten, a red line, red, inflamed, blood oozing actual red where the wire had cut the skin, strength sufficient and you could take off a man’s head, or could you? No, probably not, cutting through the actual spinal column would be too much, and anyway there’s much meat there, a lot of meat, meat stronger than you might expect, stronger Alfric looked away.
The Wormlord was swilling some water round his mouth.
The Wormlord spat into his empty soup bowl.
The Wormlord unwrapped his false teeth and inserted those oratorial aids into his mouth. He had not used them earlier when boasting of the exploits of his youth, but this was a more serious matter.
‘Ciranoush Norn,’ said Tromso Stavenger. ‘It is to you I speak. Wu Norn. It is to you I speak also. Earlier I reserved the right to make an example of a molester of ambassadors. Now I have made such an example. Let this be recorded. We do not permit ambassadors to be molested within our domain. We hope the point is made. Permanently.’
Ciranoush Norn replied:
‘It is.’
His voice was not steady. Even so, Alfric did not doubt the courage of the valorous Ciranoush. The present circumstances would have unsteadied anyone.
‘Good,’ said the Wormlord. ‘Let the banquet resume.’
Diffidently, talk began again. Waiters descended upon the corpse of Pig Norn, rolled it up in a spare tablecloth and dragged it away. The soiled chair was removed and a fresh one substituted; and Nappy seated himself in the fresh chair, and began to banquet himself.
Nappy picked up the chicken’s arse which Pig Norn had been eating. Nappy finished it off with every sign of enjoyment, and washed it down with ale from Pig’s half-empty mug. Nappy wiped his greasy fingers on the tablecloth and beamed in delight.
‘Well,’ said Nappy, ‘this has been an eventful evening, hasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said Alfric unsteadily, trying to remain polite.
And, to Alfric’s mounting horror, Nappy insisted on making further Smalltalk. And still the banquet continued, with Alfric a prisoner of the proceedings since those proceedings were in his honour.
At last, knightly carcasses began to slide beneath the table, the victims of an overconsumption of liquor. As uproar ended and talk lulled away, various untunchilamons came forth from the banquet hall fireplaces to plunder the remnants of the feast. Nappy persuaded one to perch on his finger, and showed it to Alfric.
‘It — it’s beautiful,’ said Alfric awkwardly.
True enough. The tiny dragon shone, glittered and forthblazed like a living gem.
‘It likes me,’ said Nappy simply.
Smiling, smiling.
He was so happy.
He was such a happy fellow.
‘Yes,’ said Alfric, trying to coax sincerity into his voice. ‘I’m sure it does like you.’
‘Most people do, you know,’ said Nappy, ‘once they get to know me.’
‘I’m sure they do,’ said Alfric. ‘And I’m glad I’m getting to know you now.’
This may not seem much of a speech, but it cost Alfric immense effort. He was glad when Nappy was diverted by the spectacle of half a dozen dragons lapping at dregs of spilt ale with their tiny tongues. Soon there were a great many drunken dragons blundering about the banquet table or tracing erratic flightpaths through the air. One maniacal monster started feuding with a candleflame, a sight which Nappy found so droll that he laughed until he cried.
The surviving Norn brothers, Ciranoush Zaxilian and Muscleman Wu, did not laugh.
Nor did they cry.
But Alfric could imagine what they were thinking.
CHAPTER NINE
The next night, Alfric Danbrog rode forth on his second quest. His task was to dare go to the Spiderweb Castle which was guarded by the swamp giant, and there recover the silver sword known as Sulamith’s Grief. Abuneheid was naught but cloud; no glimpse of the welkin wanderer was possible. But Alfric sensed that the moon was above; and sensed too that the moon was swelling, girthing, giving itself to acresce.
He rode alone, but did not consider himself lonely. Nor was he unhappy. For the moment, he welcomed the solitude which gave him the liberty to explore the solipsistic universe of his own thoughts.
The night through which he rode was empty of all human life except his own, which did not displease him. He remembered the absurdity with which the sea dragon Qa had conjured: the spectre of a thousand million people in Yestron. It was impossible, of course. And yet…
What if some nightmare should make it true?
Imagine.
Imagine the people ranked in their tens of millions, their hundreds of millions. Their clattering laughter littering the streets. Their sewage flowing in rivers. Their hair, the growth of it filling warehouses between dusk and dawn. The sheet-sheath growth of their fingernails, a mere fraction of a night’s extension being sufficient to pave a mansion. Sebum and semen, a hundred barrels of each produced each night. The moon’s bloody flux, a stenchtide ravaging through the streets, a periodic disaster itself sufficient to drive the sensitive insane. The very beaches of the Winter Sea bricabraced with goatskin condoms and unwanted abortions, evidence and aftermath of lust.
A thousand million people.
No wolf-haunt wilderness any more, only roads and houses, houses and roads, neighbours forever at squabble over each other’s pigs and chickens, farms pocket-handkerchiefed by the everdivision of inheritance, one man’s water fouled by his neighbour’s leakage, and no act or decision free from scrutiny and interference, the very fact of inevitable observation being a most telling form of such interference.
Nightmaring thus, Alfric shuddered.
It was true that Alfric had his uses for the world of human voices, of beerbreath taverns and vaginal beds, of eyefriendly faces and laughing teeth, of saliva nipples and corrugated ears. Yet, even so, he often resented the existence of other people; and, though he knew Galsh Ebrek to be a small city, and knew Wen Endex to be a land virtually unpopulated, he often felt crushed to a state of claustrophobia by the everpressure of other flesh and other psyches; and, in imagination, conjured with worlds in which he would be the sole inhabitant, graced by the gift of many years of unimpeded meditation and optional exploration.
In many ways, life in the Bank was ideally suited to Alfric’s temperament. Money is a set of abstractions, and he much preferred abstractions to people; he enjoyed scheming with the unreal, the essentially metaphysical, to create power; and it sometimes seemed to him miraculous that such abstract delights could prove so remunerative in practical terms.
True, Alfric’s job involved a certain amount of human (and inhuman) contact, for as a Banker Third Class he was both diplomat and negotiator.
But a banker need not necessarily treat humans (or inhumans) as if they have any authentic existence in their own right. Rather, they can for the most part be treated as abstractions. As production units, consumption units, statistics to be manipulated by the Equations of Leverage.
And when Alfric negotiated with anyone on behalf of the Bank, he never (or, at least, very rarely) became involved with that person on an emotional level. Thus, though he had made several visits to the Qinjoks, and had dealt effectively with King Dimple-Dumpling on such visits, he was not to any extent personally embroiled in the king’s affairs.
An ideal state of affairs!
But…
If Alfric were to become Wormlord, charged with the governance of Wen Endex and the welfare of all the people of the nation, then things would change. He would inevitably be inextricably tangled in the mesh-work of loyalties and responsibilities which characterizes kingship.
