‘How long,’ the Trell asked, ‘was she pinned down? Your mate?’
‘Nine years or so.’
‘And the argument?’
‘I sense a certain belligerence in you, Trell.’
, ‘Belligerence, Jaghut?’ Mappo bared his fangs in a cold grin. ‘Your senses have dulled with disuse, I think.’
‘I see. And you imagine you can best me?’
‘I was asking you about the argument.’
‘Something trivial. I have forgotten the details.’
‘But you found yourself alone, at least until the villagers took pity on you and elected you their Provost. And then… you fell in love?’
Bedusk Agape winced.
Precious Thimble gasped. ‘Oh! I see now. Oh, it’s like that. She spurned you. You got mad, again, only this time you couldn’t very well bury the whole village-’
‘Actually, I considered it.’
‘Um, well, you decided not to, then. So, instead, you worked up a curse, on her and all her young pretty friends, since they laughed at you or whatever. You turned them all into Tralka Vonan. Blood Feeders.’
‘You cannot hope to break my curse, Witch,’ said Bedusk. ‘Even with the wiz-ard’s help, you will fail.’ The Jaghut then faced Mappo. ‘And you, Trell, even if you manage to kill me, the curse will not die.’ He refilled his goblet for the third time. ‘Your women will have a day or so before the curse takes effect. In that time, I suppose, they could all endeavour to become pregnant.’
All at once Quellsat straighter.
But when he saw Precious Thimble’s express, his delighted smile turned somewhat sheepish,
Down on the narrow strand of what had once been beach, at the foot of the raw cliff, waves skirled foam-thick tendrils through the chunks of clay and rock and black hairy roots, gnawing deep channels and sucking back into the sea milky, silt-laden water. The entire heap was in motion, settling, dissolving, sections collapsing under the assault of the waves.
Farther down the beach the strand reemerged, the white sand seemingly studded with knuckles of rust, to mark the thousands of ship nails and rivets that had been scattered in profusion along the shoreline. Fragments of wood formed a snagged barrier higher up, and beyond that, cut into the cliff face, weathered steps led up to a hacked-out cave mouth.
This cave was in fact a tunnel, rising at a steep angle up through the bowels of the promontory, to open out in the floor of the village’s largest structure, a stone and timbered warehouse where the wreckers off-loaded their loot after the long haul of the carts from the cliff base. A tidy enterprise, all things considered, one that gave employment to all the folk of the village-from tending the false fires to rowing the deep-hulled boats out to the reef, where the stripping down of the wrecks took place, along with clubbing survivors and making sure they drowned. The local legend, concocted to provide meagre justification for such cruel en-deavours, revolved around some long- ago pirate raids on the village, and how someone (possibly the Provost, who had always lived here, or the locally famous Gacharge Hadlom Who Waits-but he left so there was no way to ask him) had suggested that, since the sea was so eager to deliver murderers to this shore, why could it not also deliver death to the would-be murderers? And so, once the notion was planted, the earth was tilled, with mallet and pick and flint and fire, and the days of fishing for a living off the treacherous shoals soon gave way to a far more lucrative venture.
Oh, the nets were cast out every now and then, especially in the calm season when the pickings got slim, and who could deny the blessing of so many fish these days, and fat, big ones at that? Why, it wasn’t so long ago that they’d damned near fished out the area.
The beach was comfortable with half-eaten corpses rolling up on to the sands, where crabs and gulls swarmed. The beach helped pick the bones clean and then left them to the waves to bury or sweep away. On this fast-closing night, however, something unusual clawed its way to the shore. Unusual in that it still lived. Crabs scuttled from its path as fast as their tiny legs could manage.
Water sluiced from the figure as it heaved itself upright. Red-rimmed eyes scanned the scene, fixing at last on the steps and the gaping mouth of the cave. After a moment, it set out in that direction, leaving deep footprints that the beach hastened to smooth away.
‘Do you really think I can’t see what’s going on in your skull, Quell? You’re right there, first in line, with the three of us lying in a row, legs spread wide. And in you dive, worse than a damned dog on a tilted fence post. Reccanto waiting for his turn, and Glanno, and Jula and Amby and Mappo here and Gruntle and probably that damned undead-’
‘Hold on a moment,’ growled the Trell.
‘Don’t even try,’ Precious Thimble snapped.
They were marching back to the tavern, Precious Thimble in the lead, the other two hastening to keep up. That she was tiny and needed two steps for every one of theirs seemed irrelevant.
‘Then again,’ she went on, ‘maybe that Jaghut will go and jump the queue, and by the dawn we’ll all be planted with some ghastly monster, half Trell, half Jaghut, half pissy wizard, half-’
’Twins?’ asked Quell.
She swung a vicious glare back at him. ‘Oh, funny.’
‘Anyway,’ added Quell, ‘I’m pretty sure that’s not how things like that work-
‘How would you know? No, me and Sweetest and Faint, we’re out of here as soon as we can get our gear together-you can collect us somewhere down the road. This damned village can go to Hood, with Bedusk Pall Kovuss Agape in the lead. They’re damned wreckers anyway, and if anybody deserves cursing to damnation, it’s them.’
‘I wouldn’t disagree there,’ said Mappo.
‘Stop trying to get under my skirt, Trell.’
‘What? I wasn’t-’
Quell cut in with a snort. ‘You don’t wear skirts, Witch. Though if you did, it’d be so much easier-’
Now she spun round. ‘What would be, Quell?’
He’d halted and now backed up. ‘Sorry, did I think that out loud?’
‘You think the curse on this village is bad, you just wait and see what I can come up with!’
‘All right, we take your point, Precious. Relax. You three just go, right? We’ll get the carriage fixed up and find you, just like you said.’
She whirled about once more and resumed her march.
Gruntle saw the three in the street, closing fast on the entrance to the tavern. He shouted to catch their attention and hurried over.
‘Master Quell, your driver is a heap of broken bones back there, but he’s still breathing.’
‘Well, he should have let go of the damned reins,’ Quell said in a growl. ‘And now I got to do healing and that takes time. That’s just great-how am I supposed to fix the carriage? Why can’t anybody else do anything useful a round here? You, Witch-go and heal Glanno-’
‘I can’t do that! Oh, I can set splints and spit on wounds to chase infection away, but it’s sounding as if he needs a whole lot more than that. Right, Gruntle?’
The tattooed warrior shrugged. ‘Probably. ‘
‘Don’t even try,’ she snarled at him, and then stalked into the tavern,
Gruntle stared alter her. ‘What did she mean? Try what?’
‘Getting under her skirt,’ said Quell.
‘But she doesn’t wear-’
‘That’s not the point,’ the wizard cut in. ‘You’re thinking like a man. That’s your mistake. It’s all our mistakes, in fact. It’s why we’re standing out here, three men, no women. If we’d gone and said, why, Precious, we wouldn’t even think of it, you know what she’d say then? “What’s wrong with me? Am I too ugly or something?” and we’d be in trouble all over again!’
Gruntle glanced bemusedly at Mappo, who, rather cryptically, simply nodded.
Quell straightened his still-wet clothes. ‘Lead me to him, then, Gruntle.’
At one end of the corral there was a stable and next to it, a loading platform built of weathered planks that
