“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.”