"God Avenger!" muttered Morlock (causing Death, who was manifest nearby, to signify hastily against the name of this alien god). He hoped that Hlupnafenglu had caught the treacherous Yaniunulu, or this day was looking bleak indeed.
"Hey!" someone shouted at him. "What are you? Crazy?"
"Maybe," Morlock admitted. He turned to see two armed watchers in city livery coming up the stairs. One had a mace in his hand, the other a drawn sword. The sword was Tyrfing. Morlock remembered he hadn't replenished the talic charge in the sword's crystalline lattice after he had summoned it this morning. If he had, he could have summoned it to himself now.
"Duelling on the anchor stairs is illegal, citizen!" said the watcher in the lead, a citizen with white hair. "Didn't you know that?"
"No."
"Well, it is, and the penalty's a pretty heavy fine. Pretty heavy. You'll find it inconvenient to go to court, and if you can't pay you might even end up in the Vargulleion. You wouldn't like that, would you?"
"No."
"On the other hand, you could just pay us at a bargain rate and save the time, too."
Morlock untied the wallet from his belt and shook it.
"That's the idea," said the watcher approvingly. "Now let's say-ghost bite me, partner, he's a never-wolf."" He pointed at Morlock's human shadow falling in the summer-hot sunlight against the gray stone of the anchor tower.
Morlock didn't deny it, since there was no point, but waited to see what the guards would do.
"I've never heard of anything like this!" the white-haired watcher said to his partner. "A never-wolf running around the city killing citizens, a string of honor-teeth around his neck like he's some kind of chieftain."
"Okhurokratu, you are being the stupidest of city watchers I am ever hearing of," his scar-faced partner remarked bitterly. "We've been seeing this guy before, that time when in the Shadow Market you keeping to try ratwriggling out of the meatcakes."
"I've never been in a meatcake in my life. But I guess I remember what you're talking about: when the young crook tried to pick his pocket."
"He was never him picking his pocket that! The citizen is was saying so!"
"He's not a citizen. He was a never-wolf then and he's a never-wolf now, and if you want meatcakes we can make some out of his liver."
"Stupid, stupid. The citizen is being the one they are calling Khretvarrgliu."
"The-Don't try and slap that turd in my hand. There's no Khretvarrgliu. The Sardhluun made him up to justify that prison break."
Scarface-Morlock remembered the citizen, but not his name-lifted the sword in his hand. "This is being the sword of Khretvarrgliu. My cousin, who is been trying to join with the Sardhluun since forever, he was been always telling me about it. He keeps making it fly through the air to him."
The first guard turned to Morlock. "That true? Can you show me?"
Morlock considered his answer carefully. "If I do, I will have to kill someone with it. There is a curse on the blade." It was a lie, but he owed the City Watchers no truths; they were no blood of his.
"Hm," said white-haired Okhurokratu thoughtfully. "I guess there's been too much fighting on the stairs today as it is. Yoy, partner?"
"Oh, for ghosts' sake," muttered the other watcher, and handed Tyrfing past his partner to Morlock. Morlock gave the bag of money to the surprised and delighted Okhurokratu and received Tyrfing from Scarface, and sheathed it.
"That should cover the fine," said white-hair, weighing the bag in his hand. "I won't say come back again, because I hate the stink of a live neverwolf. But if you come back, remember to bring plenty of this."
"He is being a rat-licker," Scarface said apologetically, "because he can't not be being."
Morlock nodded and walked past them down the long stairway.
It turned out, when he dragged his weary damp carcass back to the outlier settlement, that Hlupnafenglu had failed to catch up with Yaniunulu, and the day became bleak indeed.
The funeral for Hrutnefdhu took place at sunset. They burned the body around sunset (so that it would not end up on some hungry citizen's dinner table in these hard times) and sang songs in Moonspeech to keep the evil ghosts away. Then, when the sun set and they assumed the night shape in the moonlight, they sang songs in Sunspeech to guide Hrutnefdhu's ghost to the place beyond the stars where the good ghosts dwell.
That was how the other werewolves explained it to Morlock afterward, anyway. Then they sat around outside Morlock's cave and reminisced about their dead friend until one by one they went asleep.
Morlock was the last one to drop off. His body was screaming for a drink, and he knew he had a jar or two of wine hidden around the cave. But he sat there in the hot blue moonlight, hating the wine and the thirst for it and the flesh that thirsted, until sleep drew him down into itself.
Another never-wolf was having trouble sleeping that night. His name had been Plackling when he was born, and then they called him Brumerlem when he was weaned, and plain, proud Brum at his man-crowning. Now he was Daytime Twenty-seven, a slave in the anchor-tower of the funicular way, pulling the spoke on the gears during the day that Nighttime Twenty-seven pulled during the night.
Brum, as he still rebelliously thought of himself, lay in the slave barracks not far from the anchor tower and stared at the ceiling and tried not to think about it.
Brum had seen him, though-the avenger. He had talked about it with the others on the meal break before the sleep time. Many of them had seen the avenger. They had seen the sword. Some didn't know about the avenger, and others did or thought they did. It was something to talk about, which wasn't nothing. Often they had nothing to talk about and ate their disgusting fodder as solemn and as wordless as cows.
But long after the others had stopped talking, Brum couldn't stop thinking about it. The pain had ended for many of their people on that terrible day and night of the raids. For some it had ended later. But for the people, it was not ended yet. It had not ended for Brum or the others. As long as they were alive, the pain went on. The vengeance was incomplete.
When Brum had been young, he had not believed in the vengeance, not really. But that was before the raids, before the destruction of his people, before he had seen the avenger with his own eyes. Now he was a grown man, nearly fourteen years old, and he knew that the vengeance was real, was needed, and he had seen today that the avenger was still nearby.
Brum silently prayed to his gods in the dark, the Strange Gods. It was the Coranians who had first spread their worship through the north. Brum's people in the old time had persecuted and tortured and robbed and murdered the Coranian prophets. But the Coranians worked certain miracles that impressed the people deeply and led them to believe in the Strange Gods, even as they continued to rob and murder Coranians. When the last Coranian was dead or fled, a shame came upon the people and they began to feel that they had done a great wrong that would be paid for in the fullness of the gods' slow anger. But they also began to believe prophecies of an avenger, who would come in the time of their pain to avenge their destruction.
This meant, as Brum understood the prophecy, that he and his fellow slaves would soon die. And this happy thought kept him awake deep into the watches of the night. It would be over soon. It would all be over soon.
Chapter Twenty-seven: Long Shots
The next day, and for many a day, Morlock went alone into the city to look for Yaniunulu. Hlupnafenglu protested at first, arguing that he should come along, but Morlock pointed out that the outliers needed a maker. Hlupnafenglu, or rather the Red Shadow, was also inconveniently infamous in the more dangerous quarters of Wuruyaaria. Even more important, Morlock needed to be alone. He wanted none of his friends around to watch in pity and amazement as he scratched at nonexistent insects, twitched and shook, and suffered diarrhea or the other panoply of indignities that came when he came off a binge.