The Corpse-Rat King

called it that were as intent upon smarming their way into the King’s favour as they were of preventing anyone from measuring the dimensions of any other palace, just in case. It was the glory of glories, the most exalted set of buildings in the cutlery-bearing world, the point around which all activity, interest and gossip flowed. It was the alpha, the omega, and the north point of all compasses. It was in exactly the opposite direction to that which Marius was shuffling with determined steps. By the time they reached the hillock that marked the outer limit of the village of Terfin, Gerd had pointed out this anomaly on no less than a dozen occasions.

“May I remind you,” he said again as they crouched behind a hedge and gazed down at the ramshackle gathering of huts and ditches that some farmer in more prosperous times had dared to call a town, “that we have a mission to accomplish?”

Marius reached out without looking and clamped a hand over his companion’s mouth. His finger and thumb pinched Gerd’s nostrils shut. It would make no difference to the dead man, but it helped him feel better.

“You have a mission, dead boy.” He waggled Gerd’s head from side to side. “I have a thirst, and a need to bathe.”

In truth, he wasn’t sure it was worth the effort to do either in this village. The ragged collection of wooden round houses looked as if a spray of water might cause them to crash onto each other like so many sticks. Marius had seen better constructions in a school for the blind. The only direction not represented in their construction was vertical. Every other point of the world was fair game, and, it seemed, the inability of the builders to collect or manufacture a single straight piece of wood had bordered on the perverse. It wasn’t that the village was badly constructed, Marius thought. He had seen badly constructed buildings before. It was just that, if he was feeling cruel, he could imagine the builders falling over whilst holding a bundle of sticks and being too knackered to do anything other than live in whatever arrangement the sticks fell in. Down on what could optimistically be dubbed the main street, a motley collection of farmers dragged themselves out of their front doors and towards the building farthest from Marius’ perch. Each time the door opened to admit another weary soul, an undertone of conversation leaked out. Marius waited, watching the trickle of men slow, and stop. When no more appeared on the street he let go his grip on Gerd and stood, brushing himself down and shrugging his shoulders in anticipation.

“Don’t wait up,” he said, stepping onto the hillock. Gerd grabbed his ankle.

“I could stop you.”

Marius licked his lips. The first cold ale of the evening slid down the throat of his imagination. The first warm barmaid was already in his lap.

“Boy,” he said, slowly sliding his other boot down his leg so that it fetched up against Gerd’s fingers and crushed them into the ground. “You and all the armies of the dead couldn’t stop me.”

He stepped from the hillock and strode along the centre of the road into the village. At every step he expected to hear Gerd’s leaden footsteps behind him, or at least a hissed curse from where the stupid boy cowered in the bushes. But nothing was forthcoming, not even a whispered insult. Marius laughed silently. Even dead, Gerd was a coward. The difference between the two men, Marius decided, was that he was a man of intent. And his intent was to get drunk, washed and bedded. Tonight. Tomorrow, he and whomever passed for a smith in this mud hill would strike a deal over the melting of the crown. Then he would buy himself a horse with which to ride to the nearest port, and set sail for somewhere where the dead were left out for the birds to scatter. Hell, he thought as stepped up to the tavern’s entrance, I’ll settle for a mule if that’s all they have.

The door swung open onto a scene Marius had encountered countless times. He had spent a lot of time in piddling little hinter towns, where the poor rubbed up against the edges of whatever kingdom claimed dominion over their scrubby fields. After a while, the tiny poteen taverns all began to resemble each other: a few rickety hand-assembled stools gathered around one or two even more rickety tables; a bar, if the villagers were lucky, made from the largest logs that the fit amongst them could haul into town and hew into some shape with their axes, and if they weren’t lucky, just a set of shelves with a woman in front to dole out the potato spirits and keep track of who owed how many pennies; if it were cold, some sort of fire, and if they’d thought ahead, a chimney. If not, a fire anyway, and walls black from the soot. Marius had spent long enough running from one petty crime to the next that even such grimy and depressing surroundings counted as some sort of welcome. He’d spent too many wet nights cowering under hedges and in hollows, alert for the sound of angry footsteps, not to appreciate a roof – any roof – over his head. He slapped his hands together in anticipation of the sour burn of rotgut, and stepped inside.

“Good evening, friends,” he said into the meagre light within.

Country people are a notorious mix of hail-fellow and close-mouthed partisanship. Marius wasn’t sure what would greet his arrival. Singing, perhaps. The murmur of conversation. Perhaps even the convivial clink of earthenware mugs as simple folk toasted each other’s work in the fields. He wasn’t prepared for the sudden stoppage of all sound, or the way the woman behind the rough-hewn bar dropped a bottle to smash unheeded upon the floor. He was particularly surprised by the screaming.

“Is there a problem?” he managed, before the first villager threw himself from his stool and dove behind the bar. The rest of the patrons followed in short order. Soon, the only noise louder than their pleas to God was made by bottles shattering as each figure crashed over the bar top to land amongst his fellows in the small space beyond. Marius watched in amazement, his hand still on the rough wood door. Slowly, he let it swing closed behind him, and took a step forward.

“Um, hello?”

The prayers became a touch louder, a smidgeon more desperate. Marius frowned.

“Excuse me?”

Now several older Gods were being called into play, possibly the first time their names had been uttered outside the penitents’ bedrooms since the King had standardised religion. Marius reached the bar, and leaned over it.

“Look, what is going on here?”

The denizens of the serving area screamed as one, and scrabbled to get away. Realisation struck Marius. They were trying to get away from him. He raised his hands in what he hoped was a friendly gesture.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. I just want a drink.”

“Demon!” one farmer gibbered. Another rolled his eyes back into his head and fainted. Marius jerked his head back as if slapped.

“Steady on. That’s a bit…”

His eye caught a stray bottle on the shelves, the last whole vessel teetering on the edge, ready to plunge towards the floor. Within its depths, a nameless liquid sloshed from side to side, helping to clarify the face reflected in the dull green glass. Marius stared at it for almost a full minute. Then, without thought for the bodies underneath him, he vaulted the bar and landed in front of the shelf. The villagers raced each other around the edge of the bar and banged through the door, screaming into the night. Marius didn’t notice. He reached out and drew down the bottle. It was a typical hand-blown affair, dull of hue, riven with runnels and faults from a too-cool fire. Marius buffed it as best he could with his sleeve, then walked on unsteady legs to stand before the fireplace. He knelt down, and held the glass so that the guttering flames illuminated the liquid within. A face stared back at him from the shining surface. His face, if he concentrated, and added life and animation to it. But not the face he knew, not the face that had grinned back at him from the surface of morning ponds, not the rakish smile and brown skin that had inhabited the looking glasses of whores from a dozen or more towns along the Meskin River.

The face that stared back at him, his face, was that of a man dead and buried. Grey skin hung loose from his bones. His eyes, so alert and aware of the world, stared dull and uncomprehending. His chapped and darkened lips, the teeth that protruded from between them, the rents and tears across his flesh from how many months spent in the company of shifting rocks and hungry insects… every angle showed the ravages of the ground. Marius blinked, and the lids in the bottle closed and opened with dull slowness. He licked his lips, and the tongue that parodied his movement emerged dried and black. Very slowly, with deliberate purpose, Marius drew the cork from the bottle and placed the open mouth against his lips. He tilted his head back and let the liquor fill his mouth. He swallowed, and waited for the pain of badly-distilled alcohol to send him into paroxysms of coughing. Instead, he felt nothing, not even a slow burn spreading from his gut to his extremities. He emptied the contents in two long pulls, then, as the sounds of weapon-bearing life came to him from further down the street, he