The Wurms of Blearmouth

  “No he won’t. He’s too subtle, and that’s what all this was about—making me look clumsy and oafish. That damned cook! Well, he won’t be messing things up anymore, will he?”

  “No, milord. But … who will make the meals?”

  “Find someone else. None of that matters now. We need to devise a way of killing them. But cleverly, just to show them. We need genius here, Scribe!”

  “But milord, it’s—well, it’s not in my nature to think diabolically.”

  Fangatooth shook him. “You think the way I tell you to think!”

  “Yes, milord!”

  Lord Fangatooth held up his fist and said, “This is a game of murder, my friend, and I mean to win it or die trying!”

  Emancipor found a jug the contents of which smelled vaguely alcoholic. He downed a mouthful, and then another. The taste was sweet, cloying, and it burned his throat and made his sinuses drain down the back of his mouth, and then his eyes started watering fiercely. Grunting, he drank some more.

  “Power that lacks subtlety,” said Bauchelain as he gathered and began lining up a half dozen wooden bowls of varying sizes, “betrays a failure of the intellect. Do you think, Mister Reese, it is safe to say that our host lacks certain nuances, degrading the very notion of tyranny? The veil is absent. Sleight of hand unimagined. The obfuscation of language and the unspoken threat are revealed as, well, let’s be honest, as unexplored realms in this lord’s mind. All of this, I must admit, is disappointing.”

  “Well, master, this is a backwater holding, after all.”

  “There is grit in this flour,” Bauchelain said. “A millstone needs replacing. I am afraid I made no note of the dentition of our host or his servants, but I imagine we would see teeth worn down, chipped and gouged. Backwater indeed, Mister Reese, as you say.” Dusting his hands, he stepped over to Emancipor and gently pried the jug from Reese’s hand. “Extract of the vanilla bean, Mister Reese, is rather expensive. I believe you have already drunk down a month’s wages, so it is well that the cook is no longer alive to witness such sacrilege.”

  “Master, my stomach is on fire.”

  “I imagine it would be. Will you survive?’

  “No.”

  “Your pessimism has lost whatever charm it once possessed, Mister Reese.”

  “Must be all the poisons, Master, squirreling my brain. Thing is, everywhere I look, or even think of looking, I see doom and disaster, hoary and leering. Shades in every corner and heavy clouds overhead. I ain’t known good luck in so long I’d not know the lad’s face if it up and kissed me.” He set about finding another jug. He needed something to quell the fires in his gut.

  “Do you like cookies, Mister Reese?”

  “Depends, Master.”

  “Upon what?”

  “What I been smoking, of course.”

  “I suggest that you constrain your blends, Mister Reese, to simple rustleaf.”

  “You don’t want me to eat your cookies, Master? I thought you said you weren’t going to poison them.”

  Bauchelain sighed. “Ah, Mister Reese, perhaps I only wish to see them shared out fairly among our hosts. It is, after all, the least we can do for their hospitality.”

  “Master, they tried to kill us.”

  Bauchelain snorted. “It is a kindness calling such crude efforts an attempt to kill us. Tell me, do you know how to make icing?”

  Emancipor scratched at his whiskers, and then shrugged. “Seen the wife do it enough times, so, aye, I suppose.”

  “Ah, your wife baked?”

  “No, she just made icing. In a big bowl, and then ate it all herself, usually in one night. Once a month, every month. Who can fathom the mind of a woman, eh, Master? Or even a wife.”

  “Not any man, surely. Or husband.”

  Emancipor nodded. “That’s a fact, Master. Mind you, I doubt most women can fathom each other, either. They’re like cats that way. Or sharks. Or those river fish with all the sharp teeth. Or crocodiles, or snakes in a pit. Or wasps—”

  “Mister Reese, do get on with that icing, will you? Korbal Broach so loves icing.”

  “Sweet tooth, then.”

  “I suppose it shows,” Bauchelain said in a tolerant murmur. “So like a child, is my companion.”

  Emancipor thought about that, conjuring in his mind Korbal’s broad, round face, the flabby lips, the pallor and the small, shallow eyes. He then thought about children, envisaging a toddling Korbal Broach running in a pack of runts, big-toothed smile and a snippet of hair on that now bald head. He shuddered. The fools. They should’ve known. One look, and they should’ve known. Those kind you do away with, head in a bucket, left out in the snows overnight, accidentally mixed up with the dog food, don’t matter how, you just do away with them, and if the world trembles to your crime, relax, that was the rattle of relief. Aye, that boy running with his gang, a gang that kept getting smaller, with all those pale parents wondering where their children vanished to, and there stood young Korbal Broach, face empty and eyes emptier. They should’ve known. Priests can’t cure them, sages can’t unlearn them, jailers don’t want them.

  Bundle him in a sack of lard and raw meat and dump the whole mess into a pit of starving dogs, aye. But who am I fooling? Children like Korbal never die. Only the nice ones die, and for that alone the world deserves every damned curse a decent soul could utter. “Master?”

  “Mister Reese?”

  “You done with that vanilla?”

  “That’s right,” said Spilgit, “two shovels.”

  Gravedigger looked up blearily from the heap of dead people’s clothes that he’d sewn together to make a mattress and pillow. “That’s my job,” he said, reaching for the clay jug, his arm snaking out like a withered root to tangle hairy fingers in the jug’s ear, then drag it across the floor back to his bed.

  “You look settled in, friend,” said Spilgit. “I’ve been temporarily barred from the Heel, you see, and well, a man needing to stay warm has to work. Physical work, I mean.”

  “You gonna use a shovel in each hand, then?”

  “That’s a silly idea, isn’t it?”

  “Right. So the other shovel, what’s that for? Taxes? You taxing my one shovel and claiming the other as payment?”

  “I think you’ve had a bit too much to drink.”

  “Too much and what you’re saying might make sense. Too bad for you, then, isn’t it?”

  “Taxation doesn’t work that way.”

  “Yes it does.” Gravedigger drank.

  “All right, it does work that way. You keep one shovel and the tax collector takes the other one, and uses it to build you a nice level road.”

  “Oh yeah? So how come it’s me building that road, breaking my back and using my own shovel to do it with? While you sit there doing nothing, but you got a key in your pocket, and that’s the key to a giant vault full of shovels. So tell me again, what good are you to anyone?”

  “This is ridiculous,” Spilgit said. “People have different talents. You build roads, or in this case, dig graves, and I do the collecting, or in this case, er, dig the graves.”

  “Exactly, so take one shovel and go to it.”

  “But I’d like both shovels.”

  “Once a tax collector, always a tax collector.”

  “Listen, you drunk fool! Give me the shovels!”

  “I ain’t got two shovels. I only got the one.”

  Spilgit clutched his head. “Why didn’t you say so?”

  The man tipped the jug again, swallowed, and wiped his mouth. “I just did.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Where’s what?”

  “Your shovel.”

  “You tax that shovel away from me and I ain’t got no more work, meaning I don’t earn nothing, meaning you can’t tax a man who don’t earn nothing, meaning you’re useless. But you know you’re useless, don’t you, and that’s why you want to take up grave digging, so you got yourself a real job, but what about me?”

  “Ar
e you going to loan me your shovel or not?”

  “Loan now, is it? You gotta pay for that, mister.”

  “Fine,” Spilgit sighed. “How much?”

  “Well, seeing as I’m renting the shovel from Hallig the pig trencher, and he’s charging me a sliver a dig, for you it’ll have to be two slivers, or I don’t see any profit for my kindness.”

  “Kindness means you don’t charge anything!”

  “I’m a business man here, Tax Collector.”

  “If you rent me that shovel, I’ll have to tax your earnings.”

  “How much?”

  “A sliver.”

  “Then I make nothing.”

  Spilgit shrugged. “I doubt anyone’d ever claim renting shovels was a profit-making enterprise.”

  “Hallig does.”

  “Listen, that damned shovel is leaning outside your front door. I could have come up here and just taken it and you’d never have known the difference.”

  Gravedigger nodded. “That’s a fact.”

  “But I thought to do this legitimately, as one neighbour to another.”

  “More fool you.”

  “I see that,” Spilgit snapped.

  “Now what, then, Mister Tax Collector?”

  “I’m taxing you that shovel.”

  Gravedigger shrugged. “Go ahead, now it’s Hallig’s problem. Only the next time you need to bury somebody, don’t bother coming to me. I’m now unemployed.”

  “I’ll loan you a shovel from the vault.”

  “Right, and I suppose you want me to be grateful or something. Is it any wonder tax collectors are despised?”

  Spilgit watched the man take another drink, and then he left the shack, collected up the shovel, and then, noticing another shovel beside it, he collected that one too, and headed off.

  Red huddled in the wet cave with nothing but bones for company. Just below, down a slant of bedrock, the seas surged with foam and uprooted trees from some tumbled cliff-side; and with each thunderous wave Red’s refuge grew more precarious as water rolled up and over the rock.

  Amidst the racket, the bones jumbled around the cat seemed to whisper, in flinty voices, and he could almost make out the words as he crouched, trembling with fury. The low susurrations filled his skull. He glared at the bones, and saw in the gloom skulls among them. The skulls of lizard cats. They rustled and shifted before his eyes, and the whispering grew more urgent.

  Red could smell a whiff of power, old power, and a need gripped his soul like a clawed hand about a throat.

  Ssss … sssembling!

  Semble! Semble you fool!

  Yowling, the cat shook with tremors, and the bones crowded close, and things suddenly blurred.

  The sorcery made the sweat on the cave walls steam and spit. Stone fissured and fell, shattering. In the miasma surrounding Red, old bones pushed into the cat’s body. There was terrible pain, and then triumph.

  “I am Hurl! Witch Hurl!”

  She tottered to her feet, impossibly weak, and looked down at her naked form. Leathery skin stretched over bones, tendons like twine. Not enough flesh, not enough living tissue to make her whole, to make her as she once was. But, it was enough.

  Hurl cackled. “I have my mind back! My beautiful, perfect mind! And … and … I remember everything!” A moment later she slumped. “I remember everything.”

  She needed food. Fresh meat, hot, bloody meat. She needed to feed, and she needed it now.

  Feeling frail, she ventured out from the cave, skirting the foaming tumult. It was almost dark, the storm coming in like a bruise on a god’s forehead. There were corpses wedged among the rocks. Then she saw one lift an arm. Cackling, Hurl scrambled towards the hapless figure.

  But when she crouched over him, she found herself looking down upon a dead man. Who then smiled. “I was never much of a sailor,” he said. “Tiny said: take the tiller. I tried to warm him, but the Chanters listen to nobody. I’m stuck. Will you help me?”

  “You’re dead!” she spat.

  “I know, and that’s the thing, isn’t it? We’re all cursed with our lot. I was probably alive once, but it’s not like I can go back. No-one can. Still, if you help me get out of this crevasse, then I could walk home. It’s somewhere across the ocean, but I’ll find it, I’m sure. Eventually.”

  “But I need warm flesh! Hot blood!”

  “Don’t we all, darling?”

  She shook her head. “You’ll have to do, for now. It isn’t much, but it’s something.”

  “A philosophy we share, my sweet. Now, about this help—oh, what are you doing? You’re eating my thigh. That’s not very nice, and you an old woman at that. Well, I suppose if you eat enough of me, I’ll be able to squeeze free. So that’s something. When you’re dead, it pays to remain optimistic, or so I have found. Not too much on that one now, all right? Here, see, you can reach the other one, too. It’s much fresher, I’m sure. Horrible weather we’re having, isn’t it?”

  Tiny Chanter turned to survey his surviving siblings as they gathered on the beach, the icy water thrashing up round their ankles as the storm worsened. “It’s simple now,” he said. “We kill everybody.”

  The one sister among them, Relish, snorted. “That’s your plan, Tiny?”

  “That’s always my plan.”

  “Exactly, and see where it’s gotten us.”

  Frowning, Midge said, “It’s got us on shore, Relish.”

  “Like Midge says,” growled Tiny, “it’s got us here, and that makes it a good plan, just like it’s always been a good plan, since it got us wherever we ended up, and we ain’t ended up anywhere but where the plan meant us to end up, and if you think I’m going to keep on tolerating your bad moods and foul mouth, Relish, well, that ain’t in the plan.” He turned to the others. “Draw your weapons, brothers. There’s killing to do, and that killing ends with those two sorcerors who stole our treasury.”

  “They didn’t steal our treasury,” said Scant. “It was a squad of city guards and that treacherous captain, Sater.”

  Tiny scowled. “But she’s dead, and we had nothing to do with that, meaning we’re still hunting for justice, and punishment, and those sorcerors objected to us killing them and that’s not allowed. We got to answer for things like that.”

  Puny Chanter laughed. “Sater got between a dhenrabi and his mate! That was funny!”

  Sneering, Relish said, “It’s only funny to you, Puny, because you’re sick in the head.”

  “That’s funny, too! Hah hah!”

  “Be quiet all of you,” commanded Tiny. “Draw your damned weapons and let’s get on with it. Stint, Fren, Gil, you kill that man up at the shack. But don’t mess up that fur cap of his. I want it. The rest of us, we go to the village. We get us a warm meal if we can find it, and maybe a few tankards, and then we kill everyone. Then we go up to that keep and kill everything there, too.”

  “It’s your genius what leaves me speechless,” said Relish.

  “I wish,” Tiny replied. Then he pointed at two of his brothers who were both gripping the same, huge sword. “Flea, Lesser, what in Hood’s name are you doing?”

  “It’s our three-handed sword, Tiny,” said Flea.

  Tiny walked up to Flea and whacked him on the side of the head. “Let go of that! There, take that axe, the five-bladed one. Let’s go everyone, we’re in for a bloody night.”

  They set off up the beach, falling into single file on the trail, with Stint, Fren and Gil taking up the rear.

  Leaning on his walking stick, Whuffine Gaggs stood beside his shack and watched the ten strangers approach. They were a big lot, he saw, each one with weapons bared and marching in a way that seemed ominous. Probably Tarthenal blood in the line, somewhere a few generations back. The sight of them made him feel nostalgic. The one woman among them was more reasonably proportioned. In fact, he saw as they drew closer, she had more curves than a clay ball, and knew how to use them as she bounced and rolled her way up the trail.

  The one in
the lead offered up a bright smile that didn’t reach his eyes, and simply trudged past Whuffine, as did all the others barring the last three. They halted and readied their weapons.

  Whuffine sighed. “It’s like that, is it?”

  The one in the centre of the line shrugged. “Tiny says we kill everybody.”

  “You got me all over nostalgic here,” Whuffine said.

  The man grinned and turned to the man on his right. “Hear that, Stint? The old comber remembers better days.”

  “A good way to go on your last day,” Stint replied.

  Whuffine glanced back to see that the others had all vanished somewhere up the trail. He looked back at the three brothers. “Tell you what,” he said, “you go on, tell your brother you did me in like you were told to, and leave it at that.”

  “We don’t lie to Tiny,” said the one named Stint.

  The third man frowned. “That’s not true, Stint. Remember the porridge?”

  Stint sighed. “You still on about that, Fren?”

  “It had to be you!” Fren shouted.

  “Listen,” said the first brother, “we’re wasting time and it’s cold, so let’s just do this, loot the shack and get on our way.”

  “Don’t forget the hat, Gil,” said Stint. “Tiny wants the hat.”

  Whuffine nodded. “It’s a fine hat, isn’t it? Alas, it’s mine and I ain’t selling it or giving it up.”

  “That’s all right,” said Gil, his grin broadening. “We’ll take it anyway.”

  “You’re making me defend my hat,” said Whuffine, raising his walking stick and gripping the silvered end with both hands.

  The three brothers laughed.

  They stopped laughing when the shaft shimmered, became a thick-bladed longsword, the blade of which then burst into flames.

  A rather short time later, Whuffine stood amidst sizzling chunks of human flesh, from which wisps of smoke rose as if from candlesticks. He watched the last bits of gore burn crispy black and then flake off from the blade of his sword. A moment later the weapon shimmered again and once more he was holding his walking stick. He looked down at the remnants of the three brothers and sighed. “It ain’t good to get me all nostalgic.”