“Do you mind?” the voice asked indignantly. “How dare you come into my presence, and scream like some sort of madman? What kind of gaoler are you?”
Slowly, Marius raised his hand to his mouth. As he stared, something shifted within the pile of bones. “Well?” the voice demanded. Marius opened his mouth, then closed it. This is impossible, he thought.
“What is impossible?”
Marius blinked.
“You can hear me?” He directed the thought towards his disembodied Yorick.
“Of course I can hear you. You’re no more than four feet away from me, you idiot. Which damn god sent you to torment me? Oceanus? Is it him? Come out, damn you!” Marius winced at the volume inside his head. “Come out, Oceanus, you watery coward!”
While Nandus’ skull ranted and shouted for Oceanus to show himself, Marius took the opportunity think quietly for a moment. That the pile of bones was Nandus was plain, and equally plain was that the madness he bore in life had stayed on beyond his death, needing only the appearance of another soul to draw him into conversation. With no way to form words, it was his life force that spoke, burrowing directly from Nandus’ bodiless consciousness to his. We can talk, Marius realized. We can converse. I don’t have to simply carry him back to shore and dump him on the dead. I can persuade him that it’s the right thing to do. He snuck a peek at the raving King, and all thought stopped. The pile of bones was on the move. What’s more, it had grown smaller, because a number of them had found their neighbours. A hand and forearm had risen from of the pile. As Marius watched, it drew out a socketed bone, which it fit on to its base, before finding another and fitting it alongside. A leg slid out from underneath, and a pelvis emerged to nestle against its upper end. Oh, my good God, Marius thought. It seems I won’t even have to carry him.
“Carry me where?” the voice intruded, and almost without thinking, Marius lowered the mental partition that separated his conscious and unconscious thoughts. Almost three decades of removing his facial features from his inner workings made such an action automatic. He counted to three, and projected what he hoped was a suitable air of secrecy.
“Not so loud, my liege,” he projected. “They’ll hear you.”
“Hear me?” Marius was gratified to hear Nandus lower its voice. “Who?”
“Your tormenters.” He made a great show of turning from side to side, as if seeking out approaching strangers. “We don’t have much time.”
“Who are you?”
Marius was fascinated by the sliding bones. As he and Nandus talked they slithered across each other like petrified snakes, fitting into each other soundlessly, almost absent-mindedly. Of course, the part of him that he had shielded from Nandus thought. He doesn’t know he’s dead. He doesn’t see it, so therefore, it can’t be. He sees a full body, so his body behaves in the right way. I could probably steal half his bones and the rest would simply compensate, and he’d never notice anything was wrong.
“Marius don Hellespont,” he projected. “Son of Raife, Your Majesty. Seventh generation Scorban, loyal to the crown.” That, at least, was mostly true. His father, like any good trader, was loyal to the crown, no matter who wore it, or which crown it was. Can’t make a living in prison, he’d always said. He’d been wrong, but Marius did not treasure the ways in which he had found out. The skull swivelled on its axis, imitating his movement, and Marius did his best not to shiver.
“Why are you here, don Hellespont?”
“To… to rescue you, sire. Your loyal subjects need you.” Again, that was mostly true, he thought. No need to define exactly which subjects they were. The skeleton’s hands reached down and picked up the skull, gently lowering it into place atop the completed vertebrae and setting it in place with a quick twist. Moments later, the final ribs were in position, and the skeleton swung about until it knelt on hands and knees, its blank, empty face pushed next to Marius’.
“Lead on, don Hellespont”, it said, and Marius nodded once, before turning his back upon it with a sense of relief and surveying the room. The corner from which he’d swum lay a dozen feet below him, barely visible through the gloom. Almost as far across lay the massive black opening of the doorway. Marius measured the distance. If he could get that far, push off hard and swim for all he was worth, he should be able to avoid falling past the lower edge of the door, some four feet or so below his current level. As long as he could make that perch it should be a small matter to clamber through and make his way back on to the outer deck of the ship. From there, he could climb down the incline of the boat to the sand, and use the alignment of the hulk to get his bearings. Then all he had to do was keep Nandus on side until he could get back to shore and find a way to contact the dead. Simple. Memories of his effort to rise from the stable floor made him gulp. The hard part would come first. He pointed towards the door.
“Down there, sire,” he said. “We make that opening, and put its bulk between us and your gaolers. Once outside, they’ll never catch us. Uh,” He glanced back at the skeleton. “Are you sure you can… uh… make it?”
The skeleton clapped a hand on his shoulder. Marius tried not to flinch. “Have no fear, brave peon,” Nandus said. “There’s good blood in this body. I’ve the strength of a horse, and the bravery of one, too.”
“Right.”
“Wait!”
“What?” Marius had tensed for the jump. Nandus’ command caught him off-balance. It took an act of will to stop himself sliding forward onto his face and over the lip of their precarious perch.
“Littleboots!” Nandus’ skull was rotating from left to right, scanning a view Marius could not begin to guess at. “My brave steed. I cannot leave without him.”
Marius turned back, and made sure the lid of his subconscious was very tightly shut. He did not need Nandus to know what he was thinking right now.
“Waiting for us outside, I’m sure, sire. We must hurry, lest, uh, lest he be discovered.”
“Yes, yes! Onward, my subject. Hold fast, darling!” Nandus’ voice rang loud in Marius’ head. “Daddy will be with you soon!”
Marius did a quick tour of his mental shutters, testing the locks and doubling the guard. Then he gathered his legs beneath him, made sure of his aim, and launched himself into space.
The journey was less painful this time, in part because he was far less successful in keeping himself afloat. Marius made no attempt to gain height, or even to keep himself on an even keel. He was falling, but this time, he was more in control of his motion. Who knows, he thought, I might even get used to this. There are baths in Borgho, and a club that swims the harbour in summer. I could join them. It could be a whole new lease of life for me. Images of himself, bronzed from the sun and muscular from all the swimming he was doing, flashed through his mind. He waved to the girls who had come to line the harbour wall, just to catch sight of him as he ploughed through the waves like a handsome, virile shark.
The door brought him back to the present by the simple expedient of striking him under the chin. Marius flailed for a moment, then grabbed the lower lip and hauled himself up. He twisted so that he sat facing the King’s skeleton, standing with feet braced on the golden floor of the stable.
“See?” he projected, hoping the King wouldn’t register the dull thumping in his jaw, or his wonderment at actually feeling pain. “Nothing to it.” He waved the King onward. “Your turn.”
The King looked right, then left, leaning out over the edge. “No sign of the enemy?”