The Corpse-Rat King

to their knees.

“They won’t go no farther, sir,” one of the sailors reported.

“That’s fine, Quig,” the Captain replied. “No need for much more.” The sailors slapped at the prisoners until they shuffled apart as far as the chains would let them – without the bolts to restrict them there was perhaps a foot between each man. They knelt back on their heels, drinking in the night and the fresh air. Bomthe gave them a few moments, then coughed slightly. As one, the prisoners stiffened, and bent over themselves in attitudes of terror. Marius glanced up at the first mate. The big man was staring at the prisoners with an impassive gaze. Marius swallowed, and risked another attempt to speak.

“Captain,” he began, and winced. When Spone made no move to shatter his bones he took a breath and continued. “Captain, what is this? What’s going on?”

“What’s going on, Mister Helles,” Bomthe stepped forward and stood behind the prisoners, facing Marius, “is government business.”

“What are you talking about? What did you mean about… these men have been tortured.”

“These men,” Bomthe pulled back the head of the middle prisoner and stared down at his terrified face, “are prisoners of His Imperial Majesty Tanspar the First, having plotted to murder the King and his family and seize control of the parliament. They have confessed, and are here for the carrying out of their sentence.”

“But Tanspar is dead. You don’t have to–”

His Majesty’s physical condition is of no interest to me. His payment is good either way.”

“What? No. I mean, why do you…?”

Bomthe looked up, and smiled. “Why me? Out here, instead of the block at Justice Square?” He dropped the man’s head, and moved to his left, grabbing the head of the next in line and staring at it in the same way as before. “I don’t question His Majesty’s commands,” he said softly. “I just carry them out.” He frowned, and glanced up at Marius. “Tell me, Mister Helles,” he said, twisting the prisoner’s head so that he and Marius stared directly at each other. “You seemed to know this man.”

“What?”

“You heard me.” Bomthe gave the unresisting head a gentle shake. “In the room, you recognized him, didn’t you? It makes for a strange thought, does it not, that you would take board on my ship, through an intermediary, that you would pay an exorbitant fee in such short time without protest, that you would break into the one store on this ship that contains not a single item a petty lock pick might be expected to steal, and after all that, you and this traitor to the crown recognize each other. What do you say, Mister Helles?”

Marius stared at the prisoner. He slowly raised his head, matched Marius’ gaze for long moments, then slowly, imperceptibly, shook his head. Marius echoed the movement, tearing his gaze away from the bloodied visage back to the captain.

“No,” he managed to croak. “Not even slightly. I, uh…” He took a deep breath, then steadied his gaze. “I was simply shocked at the inhuman conditions in which I found them. You run a barbarous sort of prison, sir.”

Bomthe matched his stare for half a dozen heartbeats, before tilting his head back and uttering a short bark of laughter. “Ha! Well said, sir, even if I don’t believe a word of it.” He entwined his fingers in the prisoner’s hair and shook him vigorously. The weakened man made no effort to resist, simply toppled from one side to the other. “You do know this man, I am sure of it, but it makes no matter to me. It doesn’t change his situation. Or yours,” he added, his smile tightening.

Marius looked away. “And what has this wretch and his friends supposed to have done to warrant such cruelty?”

“Oh, I’m sure you know,” Bomthe said, letting loose his grip and standing back. The captive slumped to one side. Spone quickly stepped forward and held him up with his leg. “Treason, sedition, attempted murder.”

“And how?” Marius asked, not wishing to hear the answer but knowing all too well what it would be. Because he did recognize the beaten and bloodied wretch before him, and recognizing him, knew exactly what plan he had implemented and failed. Because Gereth vel Brinken had been a drinking buddy of Marius’ since he first started sneaking out from his father’s house to drink at the dockside taverns.

It was Marius who, when he reached the bottom of his cups and had brains more booze than substance, would rail at the King and his government, and talk of hiring the storerooms carved into the cliffs below the palace and filling them with gunpowder. And it was Gereth who would laugh, and buy him another pot, and question him endlessly on the how and the when, and the how much.

And suddenly, Marius was cramped by anger, and betrayal, and the most overwhelming flood of pity he had ever experienced, so that Bomthe’s smug catalogue of events was little more than a buzzing around his head, and when he did, at last, raise his eyes from vel Brinken’s bowed head it was with a look that caused Bomthe to stutter to a halt. The captain took a step back, then recovered himself. He nodded, once, as if confirming an inner suspicion.

“None of this is familiar to you, Mister Helles?”

Marius’ lips worked furiously to contain his thoughts, and eventually he controlled them long enough to bite out a single word.

“No.”

“Well, then.” Bomthe nodded to Spone. The giant mate reached down and grasped the back of vel Brinken’s hair. He hauled him upright, shifted his grip, and pulled the condemned man’s head back until he stood on his tiptoes, back arched in an obscene parody of a court dancer. Vel Brinken’s eyes stood out white against his bloodied face, fixed upon Marius as if begging him to do something, anything, to relieve his sudden terror. Marius closed his eyes, then slowly opened them again. Vel Brinken saw the deadness in his old friends’ gaze, and his own eyes closed in defeat. Bomthe nodded again. Spone drew his left arm up, then across the line of his prisoner’s taut throat in a single, swift arc. For an instant, nothing happened. Then blood welled up along the cut that Spone’s knife had drawn, and before Marius could draw breath, began to flood down vel Brinken’s throat and into the hairs of his chest. He jerked once, then again, his legs and arms flapping spastically as his body fought to retain the life that flooded out of him. Spone held him effortlessly aloft until the last spasmodic movement ceased and he hung in the mate’s grip like so much meat on a slaughterhouse hook.

Marius tore his gaze away from the dead man, and saw Bomthe staring at him, his face an expressionless mask. As they matched gazes, Bomthe smiled, a tiny creasing at the corner of his lips.

“First Mate Spone.”

“Sir.”

“Carry out sentence.”

“Aye, sir.”

The big man took a step towards the edge of the deck, dragging the two living prisoners, now screaming in uncontrolled terror, behind him. He lifted vel Brinken’s corpse without apparent effort, dragging the next in line upwards as the short chain tightened. With one flick of his enormous arm, Spone threw the dead man overboard.

The chain between vel Brinken and the next prisoner tautened as his dead body went over the side, immediately pulling him hard against the railing. He stuck there a moment. Marius heard the crunch as the neck brace pulled up hard under the prisoner’s jaw, stretching his neck and pulling him off balance so far that he held on to the railing only by the tips of his whitened fingers. He struggled against it for a moment, but the dead man’s weight was too much. With a short, strangled cry, he was over the edge, his grip tight enough to pull a thin strip of wood from the railing. The last in line toppled over and screamed as he was dragged across the deck to the edge, hands feebly scratching at the floor beneath him. But the momentum ahead of him was too great. In one scrabbling, screaming pile of limbs he went up and over. Three splashes sounded in quick succession, and then there was only silence, and the thin trail of blood left behind by the final captive. Marius and Bomthe stared at each other across the spectacle. Then Bomthe turned, and motioned Marius to follow him. Still not speaking, they stood side by side at the ships’ edge and peered down at the dark water below.

Where the prisoners had hit Marius could see the frothing passage of at least a dozen sharks, their bodies sliding around each other as they beat the sea to white foam. Gobbets of meat floated to the surface to be instantly snatched and swallowed by the writhing mass.

“They follow the ship wherever we go,” Bomthe said. “Much easier to feed from the scraps we throw overboard than spend days in fruitless hunting.” When Marius said nothing he tilted his head, and observed him from the corner of his eye. “Who suffered the worst punishment do you think?” He straightened, while his passenger