The Wurms of Blearmouth (3 page)

“Just to prove it to you, then,” said Hordilo, rising up and tugging on his cloak, “I’ll do just that. I’ll head out there, into this horrible weather, to check on my comrade.”

“Use a wooden bucket for that grease,” said Ackle. “You don’t want to insult your friend, do you?”

“I’ll just head over to the Kelp carter’s first,” said Hordilo, nodding as he adjusted his sword belt.

“For the grease.”

“That’s right. For the grease.”

“In case your friend’s seized up.”

“Yeah, what is it with these stupid questions?”

Ackle held up two dirt-stained palms, leaning back. “Ever since I died, or, rather, didn’t die, but should’ve, I’ve acquired this obsession with being … well, precise. I have an aversion to vague generalities, you see. That grey area, understand? You know, like being stuck between certain ideas, important ideas, that is. Between say, breathing and not breathing. Or being alive and being dead. And things like needing to know how many hands Lord Fangatooth has, which by my count is seven right hands and two left hands, meaning, I suppose, that he rarely gets it wrong.”

“What in Hood’s name are you going on about, Ackle?”

“Nothing, I suppose. It’s just that, well, since we’re friends, you and me, I mean. As much as you’re friends with Grimled … well, what I’m saying is, this cold slows me up something awful, I’ve found. Maybe I don’t need grease, as such, but if you see me out there sometime, not moving or anything. I guess the point I’m making, Stinq, is this. If you see me like that, don’t bury me.”

“Because you ain’t dead? You idiot. You couldn’t be more dead than you are now. But I won’t bury you. Burn you on a pyre, maybe, if only to put an end to our stupid conversations. So take that as a warning. I see you all frozen up out there, you’re cord-wood in my eyes and that’s all.”

“So much for friendship.”

“You got that right. I ain’t friends with a dead man I don’t even know.”

“No, just lumps of magicked iron with buckets for heads.”

“Right. At least we got that straight.” Hordilo pushed the chair back and walked over to the door. He paused and glanced back to see Ackle staring out the window. “Hey, look somewhere else. I don’t want your dead eyes tracking me.”

“They may be dead,” Ackle replied with a slow smile, “but they know ugly when they see it.”

Hordilo stared at the man. “You remind me,” he said, “of my ex-wife.”

Comber Whuffine Gaggs lived in a shack just above the comber’s beach. He’d built it himself, using driftwood and detritus from the many wrecks he’d plundered, as lost traders struck the sunken reefs that were noted only on the rarest of maps, with the grim label of
Gravewater
, and which the locals called
Sunrise Surprise
. Indeed, the night storms on this headland were nasty, bloodthirsty, vengeful, cold and cruel as a forgotten mistress, and he’d made his home a doorstep from which he could view her nightly tirades, wetting his lips in the hope of something new and wonderful arriving in splintered ruin and faint, hopeless cries.

But it was a cold squat, here above the beach, the wooden walls gritted in the cracks and polished like bone by the winds, and so he’d made of those walls two layers, with a cavity in between into which, over the course of three decades, he’d stuffed the cuttings from his scalp and beard.

The smell of that stuffing was, admittedly, none too pleasant to the guest or stranger who paid him a visit, if only to look over the loot he’d scrounged up from the wrack, and such visits had become increasingly rare, forcing him to load up his handcart for the morning market that sprang up in Spendrugle’s centre square every few weeks or so. That journey both exhausted him and left him feeling depressed; and it wasn’t often that he came back at the day’s end with anything more than a handful of the tooth-dented coins of tin that passed for local currency.

No, these days he was inclined to stay at home, especially now that a mad sorceror had taken over the Holding, and strangers had a way of ending up with a hanged-man’s view of the scenic sites that made Spendrugle such a charming village. So rare had his visits become he truly feared that one day he might be mistaken for one of those hapless strangers.

He’d heard the ship come in this past night, striking the reef like a legless horse sliding across a dhenrabi’s bristling hide, but the morning had broken unruly cold, and he knew that he had plenty of time in which to explore, once the sun climbed a little higher and the wind whipped back round.

The lone room of his shack was bright and warm with a half-dozen ship’s lanterns, all lit up and hissing from the occasional drop of old rain making its way down through the roof’s heavy, tarred beams. He was perched on the edge of an old captain’s chair, its leather padding salt-stained but otherwise serviceable, and sat leaning far forward to make sure every hair he scraped off his jaw and cheeks, and every strand he clipped from his head, fell down to the bleached deerskin he’d laid out between his feet. He had been mulling notions of adding a room …

It was then that he heard voices drifting up from the beach. Survivors were rare, what with the rocks offshore and the deadly undertow and all. Whuffine set down his blade and collected up a cloth to wipe the soap from his face. It was simple decency to head down and offer up a welcome, maybe even a cup of warmed rum to take the chill from their bones, and then with a smile send them on their way to Spendrugle, so Hordilo could arrest them and see them hung high. It wasn’t much by way of local entertainment, but he could think of worse.

Like me, dangling there beneath the overhang atop Wurms’ stone wall, with the gulls fighting over my tender bits.
No, he wouldn’t find that entertaining at all.

Besides, delivering such hapless fools had its rewards, as Hordilo gave him the pickings from whatever they happened to be wearing and carrying, and the fine high leather boots he now pulled on reminded him of that, making this venture out into the bitter cold feel worthwhile. He rose from the chair and drew on his sheepskin cloak, which was made of four hides all sewn together in such a way that the heads crowded his shoulders and the hind legs hung like dirty braids past his hips. He’d been a big man, once, but the years had withered his muscles, so that now his frame was all jutting bones and stringy tendons, wrapped up in skin like chewed leather. He didn’t have many tender bits left, but he knew the damned gulls would find them, given the chance.

Pulling on his fox-fur hat, made of two skins with the heads hanging down to protect his ears, and the bushy tails pulled into a warm fringe round the crown of his dented skull, he gathered up his knobby walking stick and set out.

The instant he emerged from his shack he halted in surprise to see two bent-over figures hurrying down the trail. A man and a woman. Gaze narrowing on the man, Whuffine called out, “Is that you?”

Both villagers looked up.

“Why, I’m always me,” Spilgit Purrble said. “Who else would I be, old man?”

Whuffine scowled. “I ain’t as old as I look, you know.”

“Stop,” said Spilgit, “you’re breaking my heart. I see you’re getting ready for a day of picking through bloated corpses.”

But Whuffine was studying the sands of the trail. “See anybody on your way down?” he asked.

“No,” said the woman. “Why?”

Whuffine glanced at her. “You’re Feloovil’s daughter, ain’t you? Does she know you’re here? With him?”

“Look,” said Spilgit, “we’re going down for a look. You coming or not?”

“That’s my beach down there, Factor.”

“The whole village takes its share,” Spilgit countered.

“Because I let them, because I’ve been through everything first.” He then shook his head, making the fox-heads flap and the sharp canines run eerily along his neck—he shouldn’t have left in the upper jaws, probably. “Anyway, look at the ground here, you two. Someone’s come up the trail—Hood knows how I didn’t hear that, or even see it, since I was at the window. And if that’s not enough, there’s more.”

“More what?” Spilgit asked.

“Whoever it was passing me and my shack, it was dragging bodies. Two of ’em, one to each hand. Makes for a strong person, don’t you think? This trail’s steep and dragging things up all this way ain’t easy.”

“We didn’t see anyone,” Spilgit said.

Whuffine then pointed down towards the beach. “I just heard voices below.”

Felittle gasped. “We should go and get Hordilo!”

“No need,” said Whuffine. “I was going to send them up, anyway. It’s what I do.”

Spilgit spat but the wind shifted and the spittle whipped up and plastered his brow. Cursing, he wiped it away and said, “You all have blood on your hands, don’t you? That tyrant up in the keep found himself the right people to rule over, all right.”

“You’re just saying that,” said Whuffine, “because you’re sore. What’s it like, eh? Being made useless and all?”

“That’s a usurper up there in Wurms.”

“So what? His brother was, too. And that witch before him, and then that bastard son of Lord Wurms himself—who strangled the man in his own bed. And what was he even doing in that bed with his stepfather anyway?” Whuffine shrugged. “It’s how them fools do things, and us, why, we just got to keep our heads down and get on with living and all. You, Spilgit, you’re just a Hood-damned tax collector anyway. And we ain’t paying and that’s that.”

“I don’t care,” Spilgit said, taking Felittle’s arm and pulling her along as he trudged past Whuffine. “I quit. And when the Black Fleet shows up and an army lands to bring down in flames Wurms Keep and that mad sorceror with it, well, I don’t expect there’ll be much left of Spendrugle of Blearmouth either, and the gods of mercy will be smiling on that day!”

During this tirade, voiced as Spilgit marched on, Whuffine fell in behind the two villagers. He thought about pushing past them both, but with living people on the beach, maybe it paid to be cautious. “Anyway,” he said, “why are you two going down there, now that you know there’s survivors? You ain’t going to warn them off or anything, are you? If you did that, why, Hordilo and Lord Fangatooth himself wouldn’t take kindly to that. In fact, they’d have to find somebody else to hang.”

Ahead, Spilgit paused and swung round. “I’m surviving one more winter here, Whuffine. You think I’d do or say anything to jeopardize that?”

“I like the hangings,” said Felittle, offering Whuffine a bright, cock-stirring smile. “But aren’t you curious? How did anyone survive that storm? They might come from mysterious places! They might have funny hair and funny clothes and talk in gibberish! It’s so exciting, isn’t it?”

Whuffine flicked a glance at Spilgit, but couldn’t read much from the man’s expression, other than the fact that he was shivering. To Felittle, Whuffine smiled back and said, “Aye, exciting.”

“Aren’t you cold?” she asked him. “You don’t look cold. How come you’re not cold?”

“It’s my big kindly heart, lass.”

“Gods below,” Spilgit said, swinging round and pulling Felittle with him.

They rounded the last bend in the trail and came within sight of the beach. And there on the pale strand stood two men, one tall and dressed in fine clothing—black silks and black leathers, and a heavy burgundy woolen cloak that reached down almost to his ankles—and beside him a more bedraggled figure, a man Whuffine guessed was a sailor, by the rough clothes he wore and the way he stood on those bowed legs. Beyond these two, the surf was crowded with corpses and detritus. Out on the reef the wreck had already been battered to pieces, with barely a third of the hull remaining, and only the foredeck, over which was wrapped the tangled remnants of a sail that looked partly scorched.

Spilgit and Felittle had both paused upon seeing the strangers, proving once again the pith behind the bluff when it came to that tax collector. Whuffine edged past them and continued down to the strand. “Welcome, friends! Mael and all his hoary whores have looked kindly upon you, I see. To think, you seem to have escaped unscathed from the furies, while your poor companions behind you lie cold and nothing but meat for the crabs. Do you give thanks for such mercy? I’m sure you do!”

The taller man, fork-bearded and with his hair slicked back from his bared head, frowned slightly at Whuffine and then turned to his companion and said something in a language the Comber didn’t understand, to which the man grunted and said, “Low Elin, Master. Seatrader tongue. Eastern pirates. Sailor’s Cant. It’s just the accent that’s thrown you. And by that accent, Master, I’d say we’ve hit the Headland of Howling Winds. Probably the Forgotten Holding, meaning it’s claimed by the Enclave.” This man then turned to Whuffine. “There’s a river other side of the keep, right?”

Whuffine nodded. “The Blear, aye. You know well this shore, then, sir. I’m impressed.”

The man grunted a second time and spoke to his companion. “Master, we’re on a Wreckers’ Coast here. That heap of sheepskin and furs with all his happy words and big smile, he’s eager to start stripping corpses and picking through the wrack. See those boots he’s wearing? Malazan cavalry officer, and he ain’t no Malazan cavalry officer. If we was badly hurt he’d probably have slit our throats by now.”

Slipgit laughed, earning a glare from Whuffine, who was struggling to hold onto his smile.

The tall man cleared his throat, and then spoke in passable High Elin. “Well then, let us leave the man to his task, since I doubt our dead comrades will mind. Alas, as we are hale, there will be no throat-slitting just yet.”

“The villagers won’t be any better,” the other man then said, eyeing Spilgit and Felittle.

“Do not be so quick to judge us,” Spilgit said, stepping forward. “Until recently, I was the appointed Factor of the Forgotten Holding, and as such the official representative of the Enclave.”

The sailor raised his brows at that, and then grinned. “A damned tax collector? Surprised they ain’t hanged you yet.”

Whuffine saw Spilgit blanch, but before he could say anything, the Comber cleared his throat and said, “The lord is resident in his keep, good sirs.” Then, shifting his attention to the taller man, he added, “And he will be delighted to make your acquaintance, seeing as you’re highborn and all.”