Fools.
Groaning, with a last look back at Bena Younger, Emancipor Reese clambered out of the crow’s nest and began the climb down.
Korbal Broach reappeared briefly on deck only to descend into the hold once more. He emerged a hundred heartbeats later grunting under the weight of a massive, misshapen bladder-like thing replete with limp rat tails and tiny clawed feet all curled in tragic demise. And hundreds of dusty, wrinkled, tiny black eyes none of which took note of the small crowd of staring sailors while Korbal carried it to the foredeck.
Once there he unhitched a grappling hook, checked its knot at both ends, then, crouching down, he impaled the mass of meat on the hook, straightened with a grunt and heaved the mess over the side. A loud splash, then the line paid out for a time.
Standing nearby, quite apart from the crew and their captain who’d watched with mouth hanging open and now a thread of drool dangling, Emancipor Reese frowned at his master at his side. “Uh, fishing with that…”
Bauchelain gave a single nod, then clapped his manservant on the shoulder-making Emancipor wince as a bruise flared beneath that friendly blow-and said, “Think even a dhenrabi, crazed as it might be in this season of mating, would pass up such a sweet morsel, Mister Reese?”
Emancipor shook his head.
Bauchelain smiled down at him. “We shall be towed for a time, yes, to hasten our journey. The sooner we are freed of the lees of Laughter’s End, the better, I should think. Do you not agree, Mister Reese?”
“Aye, Master. Only, how do we know where that dhenrabi might take us?”
“Oh, we know that, most certainly. Why, the dhenrabi breeding beds, of course.”
“Oh.”
“Stay close to the prow, Mister Reese, with knife at the ready.”
“Knife?”
“Of course.” Another savage clap on the same shoulder. “To cut the rope at the opportune moment.”
Emancipor squinted forward, saw the line’s sharp downward angle. “How about now, Master?”
“You are being silly, Mister Reese. Now, I think I shall take my breakfast below, assuming Cook is willing.”
“Willing? Oh, aye, Master, he is that I’m sure.”
“Excellent.”
Gust Hubb opened his remaining eye and found himself staring up at Heck Urse’s face.
That now smiled. “Ah, awake now, are ya? Good. Here, let me help you sit up a bit. You lost more than a bucketful of blood, you need your food and Cook’s gone and made up some gruel just for you, friend. No ears, no nose, half a foot and broke bones, you’re a mess.”
“Bucket?”
“Oh, aye, Gust, more than a bucketful-I saw the bucket, I did.”
Heck Urse then spooned some slop into Gust Hubb’s mouth.
He choked, fought back a gag reflex, swallowed, then swallowed some more, finally coming up for a gasp of air.
Heck Urse nodded. “Better?”
“Aye. Cook’s a poet, Heck, a real poet.”
“That he is, friend. That he is.”
Dispersed, nay, flung away like so much dross, souls found themselves once more trapped within iron nails embedded in wood.
“I told you a mercantile venture would’ve been better,” Master Baltro said.
“I’m not ready for oblivion, oh no,” hissed Viviset. “Once I escape-”
“You won’t escape,” cut in the one voice (apart from the Jhorligg’s and they’d heard just about enough from it, thank you very much) that didn’t belong to any nail. “Dead currents are cutting into the Red Road now. Our chance is lost, forever lost.”
“Who in Hood’s name are you, anyway?” demanded Hag Threedbore.
“I wish I knew.”
“Well, go away,” said Threedbore, “we don’t like your kind around here.”
“A mercantile venture-”
“Something’s nibbling my spleen!” cried Lordson Hoom.
Through the scarred crystal lens, the sun curl wallowed fitful and forlorn, and the huge man standing at the prow of the Unreasoning Vengeance slowly lowered the eyepiece. He turned about and studied his eleven brothers and two sisters, not one short or even of average height, not one not bound in massive muscle-women included-and he smiled.
“Blessed kin, we have them.”
All fourteen now set to preparing their weapons. Two-handed axes, two-handed swords (one of them a three-hander thanks to an overly ambitious but not too intelligent weapon smith back in Toll’s City), falchions, mattocks, mauls, maces, flails, halberds and one very nasty looking stick. Armour glinted as it was wont to do in morning sunlight; helms were donned, indeed, jammed down hard over thick-boned skulls. Silver-sheathed tusks gleamed on a few of the men who betrayed more than the normal hints of Jhag blood.
Around them swarmed the crew, all undead since that saved feeding and watering them and they never slept besides, while down below in the hold enormous, starving beasts growled and roared in frenzied hunger, pounding against their cages.
Tiny Chanter, the eldest in the family and so its leader, unslung his own weapon, a two-ended thing with one end a crescent-bladed axe and spike and the other a studded mace that had the word SATRE painted on it in red, because Tiny couldn’t spell, and then scanned his kin once more.
“We have them,” he repeated.
And he smiled again.
All the Chanters smiled.
One undead sailor, noting this, screamed.