The Wurms of Blearmouth

  “You think?”

  “I know. Decent weight. Solid, but soft, too.” He moved it up and down a few more times.

  “Looks like something you’d be happy doing all day,” Birds Mottle noted.

  Sighing, Hordilo sat back. “And you said you didn’t think I knew what you were thinking.”

  “Got me.”

  He rose. “All right, then.”

  “Upstairs?”

  “I get this all the time,” he said, “for being so handsome.”

  Her eyes widened. But he’d seen that look, too, plenty of times, and whatever she was thinking, why, she could keep it to herself.

  Feloovil Generous watched the two head up to Hordilo’s room. She shook her head. There was no telling the tastes of women, and of all the idiotic conversations she’d heard from Hordilo over the years, that one was close to tops. Can’t figure how he does it. How it works every damned time.

  We’ll still see her hang, of course. So, I guess, everyone wins.

  She patted the stinging slashes on her cheek, looked round to see if Felittle had cracked open the cellar door and slipped out, but even as her head turned she saw the door snap shut again, the latch thrown with a muted thunk. Good, that embarrassment from her own womb could rot down there, for all Feloovil cared.

  In the rooms above—all the rooms barring the one now occupied by Hordilo and that slutty woman—all of her girls were weeping and trying to put together what was left of them. Someone would have to sweep up the clumps of hair and bits of skin, but that could wait on her lovelies repairing themselves with make-up and wigs and whatnot.

  She’d warned her daughter about taking in that lizard cat. It might have shown up looking half-dead and with a witless look in its wandering eyes, but a wild creature was just that. It belonged out among the rocks, sliming across the cliff-faces above the waves eating birds and eggs and stuff, instead of killing and eating the village cats and some of the dogs, too.

  A spasm of grief clutched her at the thought of the two dogs Red had torn open. Scurry and Tremble had been decent hounds, a little fat and slow, true—fatally so, it turned out—and now Wriggle was all alone and pining under Ackle’s table … and where had that stinking man gone to? He should have been back by now, with Spilgit in tow, which would have given her the opportunity to turn this miserable day right around.

  Throat-cut tax collectors stung no tears in any village. Questions of vengeance didn’t need utterance, in fact, as it was more or less a given. She could picture a score of indifferent shrugs, and maybe a low quip about how Hood, Lord of Death, was the biggest tax collector of them all, or some such thing. A justifiable murder, then.

  She should never have trusted Ackle with the task.

  The door opened again and in strode three more strangers.

  The man in the lead, carrying in both hands a huge sword, fixed Feloovil with a glare and in a ferocious accent said, “Where are they, then?”

  “Up at the keep,” she replied. “Everyone’s up at the keep, and there they’ll stay, for as long as the Lord wants to entertain ’em. Now you three, you look worn out and all. So put those weapons away and sit down and I’ll check the cookpot.”

  They stared at her for a moment, and then the man with the sword sheathed it and turned to his companions. “Like Wormlick said, we’re almost there. Time for a celebratory drink.”

  The other man—the third one was a woman, slinky and evil-looking—edged up to Feloovil where she stood behind the bar. His beard could not hide the mottled rings on his face, and he was eyeing the stairs and licking his lips.

  The first man asked, “You got girls for hire, then?”

  “For you, aye,” she replied. “But not the one with ringworm. Got to take care of my girls, right?”

  The man glanced over at his companion and shrugged.

  “Always the way,” the ring-wormed man said in a grumble. “Never mind. You go on, Bisk. Take two and think of me.”

  The man named Bisk made a face. “Thinking of you won’t do me any good, Wormlick, if you know what I mean.” He then strode to the stairs and clambered up them as if he was one short cousin away from an ape.

  The woman sidled up beside Wormlick. “Don’t get down on yourself,” she said to him. “Things could always be worse.”

  “So you keep saying,” Wormlick replied, and then caught Feloovil’s eye. “You, ale and food, like you promised!”

  “And here I was starting to feel sorry for you,” Feloovil said, heading off to check the new pot of stew on its hook above the hearth.

  “Yeah?” Wormlick called out behind her. “Maybe I’ll just take what I want and damn to you, then! What do you think of that?”

  “Go ahead and try,” she replied, “and you’ll never leave the Heel alive.”

  “Who’d stop me?”

  She faced him. “I would, you rude pocked oaf. Don’t test me ’cause I ain’t in the mood. Now, d’you want to eat and drink in here? Fine, only pay up first, on account of you not being local and all.” She collected up a couple of bowls, filled them both with broth and then spat in one before turning to walk back to the strangers.

  But the woman was standing right in front of her. She took up the bowl not spat in and said, “This one will do me fine, love, and wine if you have it.”

  Feloovil watched the woman sway her way back to the bar. Now that’s what a good daughter should be like. Except for the evil eyes, of course. But then, at least evil implies some kind of intelligence. Ah, Felittle, it’s all your father’s fault, may his bones rot.

  Smiling, she carried the other bowl to Wormlick.

  Whuffine sat back down in his chair, listening to the wind start its moan outside. Beneath lowered lids he studied the hunched lizard cat in the cage. “So you ran to the old cave, did you? Made a mess of your cozy life in the Tavern and had to get out quick.” He shook his head. “But that cave ain’t yours no more,” he told the creature. “It’s mine, for my stores. Not even consecrated any more, since I made a point of breaking the idols and scattering the offerings into the sea. It’s … what’s the word? Desecrated.”

  The cat glared at him in the manner of all cats, its scaly tail twitching like a tentacle.

  “So I set the trap,” he continued, “knowing you’d be back sooner or later. Now here you are,” he finished with a sigh, “the ninth. The last of you.”

  Red hissed at him.

  “Enough of that, Hurl. Your witching nights are done with, now. For good. You was killing too many locals, not to mention their livestock. It couldn’t go on. I’m a patient man, a tolerant man, even, and minding my own business is my business. But you went and got greedy.” He shook his head. “Now it’s the cliff for you, Witch.”

  He rose, pulling on his fox-fur hat and collecting up his walking stick and then, in one hand, the chains looped through the bars of the cage. Kicking open the door, he dragged the cage outside, and onto the cliff trail that climbed to the lesser of the two promontories. The light was fading but the air had grown wild and he could hear the frenzy of the waves as they pounded the rocks down and to his right.

  As the cage scraped and growled its way up the trail in Whuffine’s wake, Hurl lunged against the sides, spat and bounced and cracked its head; its limbs shot out between the iron bars and slashed at Whuffine, but the chains were long and he remained beyond the lizard cat’s reach.

  He was breathing hard by the time he reached the half-floor of tiles that marked the summit of the promontory—the other half had tumbled down to the broken shore below a century back, maybe more, and nothing else remained of the temple that had once commanded this grisly view. But he remembered that ghastly edifice, and the way it crouched like an ape, its gnarled face peering across the bay’s surly waters to Wurms Keep. He doubted even Hood knew the name of the temple’s long forgotten god, or goddess.

  The wind-swept floor of worn tiles bore the faded, tessellated image of something demonic, its horror peculiarly blunted by the seemi
ngly laughing cherubs half-hanging out of its fanged mouth. Miserable faith for a miserable place: it was hardly surprising how those two meshed with such perfection, and could make nightmares out of what could have been simple lives. He suspected that bad weather was the cause of most evil in the world. Gods just showed up to give a face to the foul madness. People had the need for such things, he knew, the poor fools.

  He dragged the cage round until it balanced precariously on the cliff’s edge. Dropping the chains and keeping his distance, Whuffine walked out to look down at the thrashing chaos of the rocks and spume below. “Your sisters and brothers are waiting down there,” he said to the cat. “Or at least their bones are. I never liked shapeshifters, you know, and D’ivers are the worst of them all. But I would’ve tolerated you, darling. I would have. So it’s just too bad you got to end like this.”

  The lizard cat wailed.

  “I know,” he said, nodding, “you’ve barely the wits left to even know who you was. Not my problem, of course, but I think it makes this something of a mercy, at least for the witch, if not for the brainless cat.” He looked down at the caged creature. “So long, Hurl.”

  He went round until the cage was between him and the cliff edge, and then jumped forward and gave it a hard kick.

  The cat howled.

  Chains whipping across the tiles, the cage slipped from sight and plunged to the rocks far below.

  Whuffine stepped closer to the edge and peered down, in time to see it strike. In the instant before the mangled cage slid down beneath the waves, he saw that its door was swinging wildly. There was a flash of motion, weasel-like, and then nothing. “Ah,” murmured Whuffine. “Shit.”

  Glancing up, he saw a huge, battered ship lunging into the bay, appearing so suddenly he would have sworn it had been conjured by the storm itself. Racing past the cut, it churned through the swells and with a terrible sound that reached Whuffine atop the cliff, the hull drove into the sand. Waves exploded over its stern. The masts snapped and on their red billowing sails lifted into the air as the gale sought to carry everything into the sky. A moment later, amidst whipping lines, the rigging fell like a crimson shroud into the foaming seas.

  Upon the canted deck, figures were swarming.

  Whuffine sighed. “What a busy day.” Picking up his walking stick, he set out on the trail, down to meet these newcomers.

  Gust Hubb sat on a rock, hands over his bandaged ears as he rocked back and forth. He made low moaning sounds that the wind answered with glee.

  Heck scowled at the man for a moment longer and then turned to look up at the keep. “I don’t like the looks of that place,” he said. “And somehow, Gust, now it’s just you and me, I’m thinking the farther away we are from those necromancers—and Mancy the Luckless—the safer we’ll be.”

  “They owe uth!” Gust said, looking up, his working eye wild with the whites showing all around. “They owe me a healing! Ath leatht that! Look at me, Heck! Lithen to me! I want my tongue whole athain! It wath all their faulth!”

  The wind was fierce and bitterly cold. Rain filled with sea-spray was spitting into their faces: proof to Heck’s mind that the world didn’t think too much of them, and didn’t give a Hood’s heel about justice and making things right. It was all one long slog up some damned storm-whipped trail to some damned tower with some damned light shining and offering the false promise of warm salvation. That was life, wasn’t it? As pointless as praying. As meaningless as dying when dying was all there was, somewhere up ahead, maybe closer than anyone’d like, but then, wasn’t it always closer than anyone’d like, no matter when that was? Well, it felt close enough right now, and if Gust was aching and moaning and too gimpy to finish this cursed climb, why, Heck wouldn’t complain too much, and might even secretly confess—to someone, but no-one nearby—that it was a whisker’s trim from death where they were right now, and one step up the wrong way would see their bodies cold and lifeless before the dawn.

  No, he wasn’t sorry Gust was all done in, the poor man. Taking those necromancers aboard in Lamentable Moll had been the worst decision in Sater’s life, and the captain had paid for it with that life, and now the Suncurl was a gnawed, burnt and chewed up wreck, a sad end for the only ship to ever mate with a dhenrabi. Some things, it has to be said, just aren’t worth seeing close up, and that’s all I’ll say on the matter.

  “Whereth Birdth?” Gust asked.

  “Probably rolling in the furs with that sheriff,” Heck said, and just saying those words out loud made him feel suicidal. “She’s a love no man can hold onto,” he said morosely. “It’s my curse—maybe yours, too, Gust, the way she was eyeing that split tongue of yours—to love the wrong woman.”

  “Oh, thut up, Heck.”

  “No, really. I wish I was the kind of man who could look at a woman’s naked body and say, ‘nice, but it ain’t enough, ’cause you ain’t got the rest, so whatever it is you want from me, why, you ain’t gonna get it.’ If I was a man like that, appreciative and all, but with, well, with standards, I bet I’d be a happier man.”

  Gust had dropped his hands and was staring up at Heck with his one good eye. “We need to thave her.”

  “From what? She’s exactly where she wants to be!”

  “But thath theriff wuth ugly!”

  “Aye, ugly in that gods-awful lucky way some ugly men have, when it comes to women. Now, good-looking men, with those winning smiles and good skin and whatnot, well, I wish ’em all the evil luck the world can bring, but luckily, we’re not talking about them.” He shook his head. “It don’t matter anyway, Gust. She’s happy and it’s a happy without you or me and that’s what stings.”

  Hearing boots crunching on the trail below both turned, momentarily hopeful, until it was clear that there was more than one person coming up on them, and as the newcomers came round a twist in the trail, stepping out from behind an outcrop, Gust rose to stand beside Heck, and both men stared in disbelief.

  “You’re alive!” Heck shouted.

  Bisk Fatter drew out his sword. “Aye, and we got a thing about being betrayed, Heck Urse.”

  “Not uth!” Gust cried.

  Wormlick asked, “That you, Gust Hubb? Gods below, what happened to you?”

  “Forget it,” snapped Bisk, hefting the sword. “We ain’t no Mowbri’s Choir here, Wormlick, so save the songs of sympathy.”

  “I’ll say,” said Sordid, revealing a thin-bladed dagger in one hand and setting its point to the nails of the other in quick succession. “You never could sing, anyway.”

  Wormlick glared at her. “What would you know about it? I wouldn’t sing for you if you held my cock in one hand and that knife in the other!”

  She laughed. “Oh yes you would, if I asked sweetly.”

  “How did you survive?” Heck asked them.

  “We shucked off our armour and swam to the damned surface, you fool! But you were already under way, vanishing in the night!”

  “Not that,” Heck said. “I meant, how did you survive in each other’s company since then? You all hate each other!”

  “Treachery carves a deeper hate than the hate you’re talking about, Heck. Now, we’re here for our cut and then we’re cutting you.”

  “Ththill the idiot, eh, Bithk? Why would we cut you in on anything if you’re then going to kill uth?”

  “That’s just talk,” said Sordid. “He wasn’t supposed to tell you we’re going to kill you until after you gave us our cut. That’s what you get from a fifty-six year old corporal.”

  “And you take my orders!” Bisk retorted. “Making you even dumber!”

  “I’ll accept that for the truth you just admitted to, sir.”

  As Bisk Fatter frowned and tried to work out what she’d just said, Heck Urse cleared his throat and said, “Listen, there wasn’t no cut. We lost it all.”

  “We never had ith in the firthth plathe,” Gust added, sitting back down and clutching the side of his head again.

  “Sater’s dead,” Heck c
ontinued.

  “Birds?” Sordid asked.

  Heck’s shoulders slumped. “Not you, too?” He sighed. “She’s alive, down in that inn down there.” He gestured at the keep. “We picked up a cargo of trouble in Lamentable Moll, and we were just on our way to demand, er, compensation. Look at Gust. That’s what those bastards did to us.”

  “What bastards?” Sordid asked, her sleepy eyes suddenly sharp.

  “Necromanthers,” said Gust. “And if thath wuthn’t enouthff, they got Manthy the Thluckthless with ’em!”

  “And you want compensation?” Sordid laughed, sheathing her knife. “Corporal, we chased these idiots across the damned ocean. It really is a contest in stupidity here, and this squad you’re now commanding could crush an army of optimists with nary a blink.” Turning, she stared out to sea, started and then said. “Oh, look, here come the Chanters.”

  Her next laugh shriveled Heck’s sack down to the size of a cocoon.

  With two ashen-faced servants dragging the dead cook away by the feet, Lord Fangatooth grasped hold of Coingood’s arm and pulled him out through the doorway, leaving Bauchelain and his manservant in the steamy kitchen.

  “Did you write it all down?”

  “Of course, milord—”

  “Every word? And who said what?”

  Coingood nodded, trying to keep from trembling while still in the clutches of his lord, and the hand encircling his upper arm was spotted with blood, since it was the hand that had driven a knife through the cook’s left eye.

  “Find the clever things he said, Scribe, and change them around.”

  “Milord?”

  “I’m the only one who says clever things, you fool! Make it so I said them—is that too complicated an order for you to comprehend?”

  “No, milord. Consider it done!”

  “Excellent!” Fangatooth hissed. “Now, walk with me. Leave them to their baking—”

  “He’ll poison it, milord—”