Tome of the Undergates - Sam Sykes

‘Monkeys lack a sense of business etiquette,’ Lenk replied. ‘Argaol isn’t the one who pays us.’ His eyes drifted down, along with his frown, to the dull iron fingers peeking over the edge of the Riptide’s hull. ‘Besides, no amount of screaming is going to smash that thing loose.’

Her eyes followed his, and so did her lips, at the sight of the massive metal claw. A ‘mother claw’, some sailors had shrieked upon seeing it: a massive bridge of links, each the size of a housecat, ending in six massive talons that clung to its victim ship like an overconfident drunkard.

‘Were slander but one key upon a ring of victory, good Captain, I dare suggest you’d not be in such delicate circumstance, ’ the Linkmaster’s helmsman called from across the gap. ‘Alas, a lack of manners more frequently begets sharp devices embedded in kidneys. If I might be so brash as to suggest surrender as a means of keeping your internal organs free of metallic intrusion?’

The mother claw had since lived up to its title, resisting any attempt to dislodge it. What swords could be cobbled together had been broken upon it. The sailors that might have been able to dislodge it when the Cragsmen attacked were also the first to be cut down or grievously wounded. All attempts to tear away from its embrace had proved useless.

Not that it seems to stop Argaol from trying, Lenk noted.

‘You might,’ the captain roared to his rival, ‘but only if I might suggest shoving said suggestion square up your-’

The vulgarity was lost in the wooden groan of the Riptide as Argaol pulled the wheel sharply, sending his ship cutting through salt like a scythe. The mother chain wailed in metal panic, going taut and pulling the Linkmaster back alongside its prey. A collective roar of surprise went up from the crew as they were sent sprawling. Lenk’s own was a muffled grunt, as Kataria’s modest weight was hurled against him.

His breath was struck from him and his senses with it. When they returned to him, he was conscious of many things at once: the sticky deck beneath him, the calls of angry gulls above him and the groan of sailors clambering to their feet.

And her.

His breath seeped into his nostrils slowly, carrying with it a new scent that overwhelmed the stench of decay. He tasted her sweat on his tongue, smelled blood that wept from the few scratches on her torso, and felt the warmth of her slick flesh pressed against him, seeping through his stained tunic and into his skin like a contagion.

He opened his eyes and found hers boring into his. He saw his own slack jaw reflected in their green depths, unable to look away.

‘Hardly worthy of praise, Captain,’ the Linkmaster’s helmsman called out, drawing their attentions. ‘Might one suggest even the faintest caress of Lady Reason would e’er do your plight well?’

‘So. .’ Kataria said, screwing up her face in befuddlement, ‘do they all talk like that?’

‘Cragsmen are lunatics,’ he muttered in reply. ‘Their mothers drink ink when they’re still in the womb, so every one of them comes out tattooed and out of his skull.’

‘What? Really?’

‘Khetashe, I don’t know,’ he grunted, shoving her off and clambering to his feet. ‘The point is that, in a few moments when they finally decide to board again, they’re going to run us over, cut us open and shove our intestines up our noses!’ He glanced her over. ‘Well, I mean, they’ll kill me, at least. You, they said they’d like to-’

‘Yeah,’ she snarled, ‘I heard them. But that’s only if they board.’

‘And what makes you think they’re not going to?’ He flailed in the general direction of the mother chain. ‘So long as that thing is there, they can just come over and visit whenever the fancy takes them!’

‘So we get rid of it!’

‘How? Nothing can move it!’

‘Gariath could move it.’

‘Gariath could do a lot of things,’ Lenk snarled, scowling across the deck to the companionway that led to the ship’s hold. ‘He could come out here and help us instead of waiting for us all to die, but since he hasn’t, he could just choke on his own vomit and I’d be perfectly happy.’

‘Well, I hope you won’t take offence if I’m not willing to sit around and wait with you to die.’

‘Good! No waiting required! Just jump up to the front and get it over quickly!’

‘Typical human,’ she said, sneering and showing a large canine. ‘You’re giving up before the bodies are even hung and feeding the trees.’

‘What does that even mean?’ he roared back at her. Before she could retort, he held up a hand and sighed. ‘One moment. Let’s. . let’s just pretend that death is slightly less imminent and think for a moment.’

‘Think about what?’ she asked, rolling her shoulders. ‘The situation seems pretty solved to you, at least. What are we supposed to do?’

Lenk’s eyes became blue flurries, darting about the ship. He looked from the chains and their massive mother to the men futilely trying to dislodge them. He looked from the companionway to Argaol shrieking at the helm. He looked from Kataria’s hard green stare to the Riptide’s rail. .

And to the lifeboat dangling from its riggings.

‘What, indeed-’

‘Well,’ a voice soft and sharp as a knife drawn from leather hissed, ‘you know my advice.’

Lenk turned and was immediately greeted by what resembled a bipedal cockroach. The man was crouched over a Cragsman’s corpse, studying it through dark eyes that suggested he might actually eat it if left alone. His leathers glistened like a dark carapace, his fingers twitched like feelers as they ran down the body’s leg.

Denaos’s smile, however, was wholly human, if a little unpleasant.

‘And what advice is that?’ Kataria asked, sneering at the man. ‘Run? Hide? Offer up various orifices in a desperate exchange for mercy?’

‘Oh, they won’t be patient enough to let you offer, I assure you.’ The rogue’s smile only grew broader at the insult. ‘Curb that savage organ you call a tongue, however, and I might be generous enough to share a notion of escape with you.’

‘You’ve been plotting an escape this whole time the rest of us have been fighting?’ Lenk didn’t bother to frown; Denaos’s lack of shame had rendered him immune to even the sharpest twist of lips. ‘Did you have so little faith in us?’

Denaos gave a cursory glance over the deck and shrugged. ‘I count exactly five dead Cragsmen, only one more than I had anticipated.’

‘We don’t get paid by the body,’ Lenk replied.

‘Perhaps you should negotiate a new contract,’ Kataria offered.

‘We have a contract?’ The rogue’s eyes lit up brightly.

‘She was being sarcastic,’ Lenk said.

Immediately, Denaos’s face darkened. ‘Sarcasm implies humour,’ he growled. ‘There’s not a damn thing funny about not having money.’ He levelled a finger at the shict. ‘What you were being was facetious, a quality of speech reserved only for the lowest and most cruel of jokes. Regardless,’ he turned back to the corpse, ‘it was clear you didn’t need me.’

‘Not need you in a fight?’ Lenk cracked a grin. ‘I’m quickly getting used to the idea.’

‘We should just use him as a shield next time,’ Kataria said, nodding, ‘see if we can’t get at least some benefit from him.’

‘I hate to agree with her,’ Lenk said with a sigh, ‘but. . well, I mean you make it so easy, Denaos. Where were you when the fighting began, anyway?’

‘Elsewhere,’ the rogue said with a shrug.

‘One of us could have been killed,’ Lenk replied sharply.

Denaos glanced from Lenk to Kataria, expression unchanging. ‘Well, that might have been a mild inconvenience or a cause for celebration, depending. As both of you are alive, however, I can only assume that my initial theory was correct. As to where I was-’

‘Hiding?’ Kataria interrupted. ‘Crying? Soiling yourself? ’

‘Correction.’ Denaos’s reply was as smooth and easy as the knife that leapt from his belt to his hand. ‘I was hiding and soiling myself, if you want to call it that. At the moment. .’ He slid the dagger into the leg-seam of the Cragsman’s trousers. ‘I’m looting.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Lenk got the vague sensation that continuing to watch the rogue work would be a mistake, but was unable to turn his head away as Denaos began to cut. ‘And. . out of curiosity, what would you call what you were doing?’

‘I believe the proper term is “reconnaissance”.’

‘Scouting is what I do,’ Kataria replied, making a show of her twitching ears.

‘Yes, you’re very good at sniffing faeces and hunting beasts. What I do is. .’ He looked up from his macabre activities, waving his weapon as he searched for the word. ‘Of a more philosophical nature.’

‘Go on,’ Lenk said, ignoring the glare Kataria shot him for indulging the man.

‘Given our circumstances, I’d say what I do is more along the lines of planning for the future,’ Denaos said, finishing the long cut up the trouser leg.

Heavy masks of shock settled over the young man and shict’s faces, neither of them able to muster the energy to cringe as Denaos slid a long arm into the slit and reached up the Cragsman’s leg. Quietly, Kataria cleared her throat and leaned over to Lenk.

‘Are. . are you going to ask him?’

‘I would,’ he muttered, ‘but I really don’t think I want to know.’

‘Now then, as I was saying,’ Denaos continued with all the nonchalance of a man who did not have his arm up another man’s trouser leg, ‘being reasonable men and insane pointy-eared savages alike, I assume we’re thinking the same thing.’

‘Somehow,’ Lenk said, watching with morbid fascination, ‘I sincerely doubt that.’

‘That is,’ Denaos continued, heedless, ‘we’re thinking of running, aren’t we?’

‘You are,’ Kataria growled. ‘And no one’s surprised. The rest of us already have a plan.’

‘Which would be?’ Denaos wore a look of deep contemplation. ‘Lenk and I have rather limited options: fight and die or run and live.’ He looked up and cast a disparaging glance at Kataria’s chest. ‘Yours are improved only by the chance that they might mistake you for a pointy-eared, pubescent boy instead of a woman.’ He shrugged. ‘Then again, they might prefer that.’

‘You stinking, cowardly round-ear,’ she snarled, baring her canines at him. ‘The plan is to neither run nor die, but to fight!’ She jabbed her elbow into Lenk’s side. ‘The leader says so!’

‘You do?’ Denaos asked, looking genuinely perplexed.

‘Well, I. . uh. .’ Lenk frowned, watching the movement of Denaos’s hand through the Cragsman’s trousers. ‘I think you might. .’ He finally shook his head. ‘Look, I don’t disapprove of looting, really, but I think I might have a problem with whatever it is you’re doing here.’