The Wurms of Blearmouth Read online

  Now shivering, he studied the three strangers making their way down the trail.

  Hordilo Stinq’s pirating days were behind him now. He liked the feel of solid ground under him, even as that terrible sea still held him close, within reach, stubborn as an ex-wife whose sole reason to breathe was the conviction that she was still owed something by the fool she’d tossed away, and it didn’t matter how many years had passed since he’d last wallowed in her icy arms. The watery witch never let him wander too far from her thrashing shores. These days, it was nothing to step outside to begin his daily patrol, and feel on the wind the wet spray of her bitter spite. Aye, an ex-wife, spitting like a cat and howling like a dog. A hoary, wild thing with venom under her long nails and dead spiders in her hair.

  “You ain’t answered me, Stinq,” said Ackle, who sat across from him and was, thankfully, not looking Hordilo’s way, busy instead plucking clumps of old mud from his deadman’s cloak. “Ever been married?”

  “No,” Hordilo replied. “Nor do I want to be, Ackle. Want no ex-wives chasing me down everywhere I go, throwing snotty runts at my feet I never seen before and sayin’ they’re mine. When they aren’t. I mean, if my seed produced anything as ugly as that—well, gods below, I’ve known plenty of women, if you know what I mean, and not one of them ever called me ugly.”

  Ackle paused, examining a long root he’d pulled from the woolen cloak. “Heard you like Rimlee,” he said. “She can’t see past her nose.”

  “Your point?”

  “Nothing, friend. Just that she’s mostly blind. That’s all.”

  Hordilo drained his tankard and glared out through the thick, pitted glass of the window. “Feloovil’s whores ain’t selected for how good they look—see, I mean. How good they see. But I bet you wish they wasn’t the smelling kind, don’t you?”

  “If they smell I remain unaware of it,” Ackle replied.

  “That’s not what I meant. They smell just fine, and that’s your problem, isn’t it?”

  At that Ackle looked up—Hordilo could see the man’s face reflected blurrily, unevenly, in the window, but even this distorted view couldn’t hide Ackle’s horrible, lifeless eyes. “Is that my problem, Hordilo? Is that why I can’t get a woman to lie with me no matter how much I offer to pay? You think so? I mean, my smell turns them, does it? Are you sure about that?”

  Hordilo scowled. Out on the street beyond he saw Grimled stump past, making the first circuit of the day. “You don’t smell too good, Ackle. Not that you could tell.”

  “No, I couldn’t. I can’t. But you know, there’s plenty of men in here who don’t smell too good, but they get company in their beds upstairs anyway, every night if they can afford it.”

  “Different kind of smell,” Hordilo insisted. “Living smell, if you know what I mean.”

  “I would think,” said Ackle, straightening in his seat, “that my smell is the least of their concerns. I would think,” he went on, ‘that it’s more to do with my having been pronounced dead, stuck in a coffin for three days, and then buried for two more. Don’t you think it might be all that, Stinq? I don’t know, of course. I mean, I can’t be sure, but it seems plausible that these details have something to do with my lonely nights. At least, it’s a possibility worth considering, don’t you think?”

  Hordilo shrugged. “You still smell.”

  “What do I smell like?”

  “Like a corpse in a graveyard.”

  “And have I always smelled that way?”

  Hordilo scowled. “How should I know? Probably not. But I can’t really say, can I? Since I never knew you before, did I? You washed up on shore, right? And I had a quota to fill and you were broke.”

  “If you’d let me lead you to the buried chest you’d be rich now,” Ackle said, “and I wouldn’t have been strung up because your lord likes to see ’em dance. It could’ve gone another way, Hordilo, if you had any brains in that skull of yours.”

  “Right. So why don’t you lead me to that damned chest you keep talkin’ about? It’s not like you need the coin anymore, is it? Anyway, the whole point you’re avoiding is that we hanged you good, and you was dead when we took you down. Dead people are supposed to stay in the ground. It’s a rule.”

  “If I was dead I wouldn’t be sitting here right now, would I? Ever clawed your way up out of the ground? If that coffin lid wasn’t just cheap driftwood, and if your ground wasn’t so hard and if your gravediggers weren’t so damned lazy, why, I would never have made it back. So, if there’s anyone to blame for me being here, it’s all of you in this lousy village.”

  “I didn’t dig the grave though, did I? Anyway, there ain’t no buried chest. If there was, you’d have gone back to it by now. Instead, you sleep under the table, and that only because her dogs like rolling on you to disguise their scent. Feloovil thinks you’re funny, besides.”

  “She laughs at my dead eyes, you mean.”

  Hordilo glanced into the tavern’s main room, but Feloovil was still sitting behind the bar, her head barely visible, her eyes closed. The woman stayed up till dawn most nights, so it was no surprise she slept most of the day every day. He’d watched that useless Factor, Spilgit Purrble, slink past her a while earlier, and she’d not raised a lid, not even when the man returned from his upstairs room only moments later, and wearing a change of clothes. There’d been a suspicious look on the Factor’s face that was still nagging Hordilo, but for the moment he didn’t feel like moving, and besides, with Feloovil asleep it was no difficult thing to draw the taps for a flagon or two, on the house as it were. “Lucky you,” he finally said, “that she’s got an uncanny streak in her. Unlucky for you that her girls don’t share it, hah.”

  “With what they must see in a man’s eyes every night,” said Ackle, “you’d think they’d welcome mine.”

  “Lust ain’t so bad t’look at,” Hordilo said.

  “Oh indeed. Why, it charms a woman right out of her clothes, doesn’t it? I mean, it’s just like love, isn’t it? Love with all the dreamy veils torn aside.”

  “What veils? Her girls don’t wear veils, you fool. The point is, Ackle, what they see every night is what they’re used to, and they’re fine with that. Dead eyes, well, that’s different. It puts a shiver on the soul, it does.”

  “And does my reflection in the window keep you warm, Stinq?”

  “If I had an ex-wife, she’d probably have your eyes.”

  “No doubt.”

  “But I don’t need reminding of what I’ve been lucky enough to avoid all these years. Well, sometimes, but not all the time. I got a limit to what I can stomach, if you get my meaning.”

  “I get your meaning, Stinq. Well, sometimes, but not all the time, as you’re such a subtle man.”

  Hordilo grunted, and then frowned. Grimled should have been by already, second time around. It was a small village, and doing the circuit was what Grimled did, and did well, since he didn’t know how to do it otherwise. “Something funny,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Fangatooth’s golem, Grimled.”

  “What about it?”

  “Not ‘it.’ ‘Him.’ Anyway, he showed up as usual—”

  “Yes, I saw that.”

  “The rounds, right? Only, he ain’t come back.”

  Ackle shrugged. “Might be sorting something out.”

  “Grimled don’t sort things out,” Hordilo replied, squinting and wiping at the steamy glass. “To sort things out, all he has to do is show up. You don’t argue with a giant lump of angry iron. Especially one carrying a two-handed axe.”

  “It’s the bucket head that I don’t like,” said Ackle. “You can’t talk to a bucket, can you? Not face to face, I mean. There is no face. But that bucket’s not iron, Stinq.”

  “Yes it is.”

  “Got to be tin, or pewter.”

  “No, it’s iron,” said Hordilo. “You don’t work with Grimled the way I do.”

  “Work with it? You salute it when you pass it by. It’
s not like you’re its friend, Stinq.”

  “I’m the lord’s executioner, Ackle. Grimled and his brothers do the policing. It’s all organized, right? We work for the Lord of Wurms. It’s like the golems are milord’s right hands, and I’m the left.”

  “Right hands? How many does he have?”

  “Count it up, fool. Six right hands.”

  “What about his own right hand?”

  “All right. Seven right hands.”

  “And two left?”

  “That’s right. I guess even the dead can count, after all.”

  “Oh, I can count, friend, but that doesn’t mean it all adds up, if you understand my meaning.”

  “No,” Hordilo said, glaring at the reflection, “I don’t.”

  “So the bucket’s iron. Fine, whatever you say. Grimled’s gone missing and even I will admit: that’s passing strange. So, as executioner and constable or whatever it is you say you do, officially, I mean, and let’s face it, you chirp something different every second day. So, as whatever you are, why are you still sitting here, when Grimled’s gone missing. It’s cold out there. Maybe it rusted up. Or frozen solid. Go get yourself a tub of grease. It’s what a real friend would do, under the circumstances.”

  “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.”