After killing the sea dragon Qa, Alfric tramped along the coast until he came to an abandoned croft. By that time, the night was nearly at an end. He laid himself down inside the ruinous crofthouse and dropped off into an exhausted sleep.
When Alfric woke, it was still night. Was he at the end of his dragon-fighting night? Or had he slept right through the day to the start of a new night? He could not say, for clouds obscured the sky, denying him the timetelling stars. Regardless of how long he might have slept, he felt weary, his body aching like a resurrected carcass. Pain still dwelt in his dragon-scorched hands, and to this annoyance was added a pressing hunger which he had no means of satisfying.
Hunger-driven, Alfric resumed his journey, at length passing between the Stanch Gates and entering Galsh Ebrek. Then he stopped in the nightmud street, momentarily unsure of how to cope with his many conflicting priorities. He wanted to rest, to eat and to drink; he wanted, also, to signal his success to Saxo Pall; and he should by rights report his successful return to the Bank.
Very well.
He was a Yudonic Knight, was he not?
Of course he was!
With that settled, Alfric backtracked to the Stanch Gates and acted like the Knight he was. He ordered one of the guards to the Bank to deliver a message, and directed another man to take a despatch to Saxo Pall.
‘My lord,’ said one of the men so commanded, ‘where will we look for you if there is a reply to your messages?’
Alfric considered. He didn’t want common guardsmen tramping into his own house.
‘You can leave any reply to my messages at the Green Cricket,’ he said.
A good choice, this, since Anna Blaume was a reliable holder of messages, and since Alfric meant to call round to the inn in any case to check on the progress of the orks.
With duties of communication thus satisfactorily discharged, Alfric took himself off to his own house, where he hoped a meal would be waiting for him. But it was not. Nothing was waiting for him. Not even his wife. Alfric foraged for food, eventually finding and consuming two (cold) baked potatoes and a cup of (equally cold) half-cooked moon beans. Then he went in search of his missing spouse: but his enquiries were fruitless.
What now?
Why, he must go to the Green Cricket, of course, to see if there were any messages for him.
When Alfric entered that insalubrious inn, he found a great many people within. But the place was not lively, for most of the patrons were in a near-corpse-like state in the aftermath of a party. What had occasioned such celebrations? Alfric did not ask. He was near collapse: though he knew not whether the cause of his suffering was indigestion, fatigue or emotional stress.
‘Hello Alfric,’ said the ork Morgenstem, addressing him from behind the bar. ‘How are you?’
‘Not very well,’ said Alfric. ‘Where’s Anna?’
‘In bed,’ said Morgenstem.
Alfric had taste enough not to ask: who with? Instead, he said to Morgenstem:
‘What puts you behind the bar? A career change?’
‘No, no,’ said Morgenstem.’ ‘I like it here.’
‘Good,’ said Alfric, for the sake of politeness. ‘Has anyone been here tonight?’
‘All kinds of people,’ said Morgenstem. ‘Many of them yet remain.’
So saying, the ork gestured at the sleeping drunks. ‘That’s not wh at I meant,’ said Alfric. ‘I meant messengers.’
‘You didn’t say messengers,’ said Morgenstem.
‘I say it now,’ said Alfric, resisting an impulse to hit the soft and blubbery animal. ‘Has anyone been here tonight? With a message, I mean? A message for me? Or a letter, a scroll, a parchment, a despatch, or anything else for me for that matter?’
‘No,’ said Morgenstem.
So much for that.
Alfric wondered what the orks were still doing at the Green Cricket. Had Tromso Stavenger refused them lodgings in Saxo Pall? Or had they proved too timid to present their diplomatic credentials to the Wormlord? Or- Earlier, he had been most curious to discover the fate which had met the orkish Embassy; but his weariness had increased considerably since then. He decided it was best that he stay resolutely uninvolved. He had enough to cope with on his own account without getting involved in any actual or potential diplomatic disasters.
‘Give me a beer,’ said Alfric.
‘Certainly,’ said Morgenstem. ‘If you’ve got the cash.’ ‘Put it on the slate,’ said Alfric.
‘You have one?’
‘Of course,’ said Alfric. ‘I come here often.’
The ork hunted around among the slates, found Alfric’s, chalked up a beer. Alfric took it to a seat by the fire and drank slowly. He felt oddly deflated and depressed. Maybe it was just the result of so much nightliving.
‘How did your quest go?’ said Morgenstem, who was polishing the bar.
Alfric looked up.
‘So-so,’ he said.
‘Did you kill your dragon?’
‘Yes,’ said Alfric. ‘But I’d rather not talk about it, if it’s all the same with you.’
Thereafter Morgenstem left him alone. Alfric drank in silence, watching a band of untunchilamons making warfaring forays from the fireplace. Time and again the miniature dragons descended on slumbering drunks, raiding hair and clothing for whatever livestock they could find. Occasionally, in an excess of enthusiasm, a dragon singed human skin while crisping a hapless louse: which occasioned some sleepy swearing and ineffectual dragon-swatting.
In due course, Alfric started on a second beer. An unusual procedure, this, for he usually stopped at one. Alfric Danbrog valued self-control above all else, and feared ill consequences should he ever lose his grip on his will thanks to alcoholic intoxication.
The self-controlled banker was halfway through his second mug when a woman came down the stairs. Anna Blaume? No. Viola Vanaleta!
‘Viola!’ said Alfric, upsetting his mug as he started to his feet.
The woman momentarily looked startled, but recovered her poise almost immediately.
‘Why, Alfric,’ she said, coolly, ‘what a surprise. What are you doing here?’
‘Looking for you, as it happens,’ said Alfric.
‘Are you?’ said Vanaleta. She turned to Morgenstem and said: ‘Did he ask after me when he came in?’
The ork looked uneasy.
‘Well?’ said Vanaleta. ‘I take it we can say your silence means no. Alfric, you didn’t come here to look for me. You came to get drunk.’
‘If I did,’ said Alfric, ‘such is my privilege. Just as it is my privilege, or should be, to return to my own home in every confidence of finding my wife in residence within.’ ‘You have lost yourself that privilege,’ said Vanaleta. At this stage the appropriate question was: why?
But Alfric did not ask this question, hence remained unenlightened. Instead he said:
‘I don’t like the tone of your voice. Let’s go home and sort this out.’
‘Home?’ said Vanaleta. ‘I’m not going anywhere with you.’
‘Your abstraklous contumely ill befits you,’ said Alfric coldly. ‘You are my wife. My handmaiden.’
After that, things went from bad to worse.
Both Alfric Danbrog and Viola Vanaleta were in moods most unreasonable. Alfric because he was suffering from fatigue, and from a murderer’s guilt, and from fear of his uncertain future. Vanaleta because she believed Alfric to be in the process of divorcing her, and thought his intemperate attempt to command her to be most unreasonable. Finally, Alfric was roused to such an anger that he tried to use force on his woman.
All things being equal, Alfric would have overwhelmed Vanaleta and would have dragged her home in triumph. But things were not equal. Before Alfric knew it, two dwarves had joined the battle. Du Deiner had him by the ankle while Mich Dir was doing his best to apply a stranglehold.
‘Unhand me, you filthy ablach!’ said Alfric, trying to kick away Du and claw away Mich.
He was still trying when two more people came down the stairs: Anna Blaume and Cod the ork. Shortly, Alfric found himself being set upon by one ork, two women and a pair of dwarves: a state of affairs which left him with no option except to surrender.
‘Get up then,’ said Blaume, ‘and I’ll get you a drink.’
A drink she got him, and then a second; and of the drinks that came later there is no counting. At one stage Alfric heard her say:
‘One observes that the thumb is second cousin to the left foot.’
Then she laughed; but what the joke was, Alfric had no idea.
‘Did I imagine it,’ he said, ‘or did you just say-’
‘What?’ said Blaume.
For Alfric’s speech had become quite incomprehensible thanks to the prodigious importation of liquor into his system. While he thought himself quite lucid, his ears were garbaging what was said to them, and his tongue was rubbishing his every word to a mulching slather. Even his vision was starting to fritz, for the outlines of reality were blurring and bifurcating in a way which had nothing whatsoever to do with any optical deficiency.
Nevertheless, Alfric was sensible enough to recognize Pig Norn when that mix of brawn and flabber came crashing through the front door with Muscleman Wu close behind him.
‘Jabraljik!’ said Pig, or seemed to Alfric to say.
This Alfric took to be a distortion of his name: and, taking this distortion to be a challenge to battle, he got to his feet. His feet he tripped over. His face he recovered but his spectacles were missing, and by the time he had groped his way to his sight’s salvation, the battle was well underway.
Pig and Wu were trying to spear orkflesh with their swords, but close-clinging dwarves and battering women were making this feat of chivalry difficult. Skaps the Vogel was swooping overhead, screaming in shrillvoiced anger. Some of the drunks, woken by the brawl, were fighting among themselves, or trying to.
‘Stop!’ said Alfric.
But nobody did.
So Alfric picked up a chair, or tried to. But his balance was betrayed by a draught from the fireplace, and he had to lean on the chair to keep his balance. He tried again, was more successful, and broke the chair over Wu’s head. While the chair definitely suffered — it was asundered into woodwarp and wormdust, dowelling and splinters — Wu fought on, dauntless and dentless.
Alfric took off his spectacles, put them into a beer mug for safety, then threw himself into the battle. With Alfric deadweighting from his neck, Muscleman Wu began to tire. Then a couple of guardsmen entered, and, thanks to their intervention, both brothers Norn were overcome and were booted out into the street.
Full of the vigour of war, Alfric pursued them. He stood in the doorway of the Green Cricket and swore prodigiously at a much-battered Pig Norn who was even then picking himself out of the mud.
‘You want a fight?’ said Wu Norn. ‘A real fight?
Then come out here and we’ll settle things.’
‘I will,’ said Alfric.
But Anna Blaume and others grabbed him from behind and dragged him back to safety. Viola Vanaleta recovered the spectacles and shoved them on to Alfric’s face, and the guardsmen delivered their message.
‘Compliments of the Wormlord,’ said they. ‘Your presence is desire d at Saxo Pall. Tonight is the night. All the Yudonic Knights are bein g ingathered for your banquet, which starts as soon as you present you rself.’ ‘Impossible,’ said Alfric. ‘I’m drunk.’
But Anna Blaume gave him a drink which made him throw up, then fed him some revolting black stuff, then burnt some white powder and made him inhale the fumes, then marched him to his home to recover the ironsword Edda, then escorted him to Saxo Pall and handed him over to Guignol Grangalet, and very shortly (or so it seemed to Alfric, whose time sense had become grossly distorted ever since he had breathed the fumes of the white powder) the young banker was in the throne-room in audience with the Wormlord, with a mass of Yudonic Knights in attendance.
‘You have done well,’ said Tromso Stavenger.
‘Have I?’ said Alfric, too dazed to know whether he had or had not.
‘You have done very well,’ said Stavenger. ‘For you have brought us the ironsword Edda. Give it to me.’
In obedience to this command, Alfric presented the king with the saga sword. Some of the onlookers tittered when they saw what a rubbishy thing it was, but only Ciranoush Norn was bold enough to challenge the presentation.
‘My lord!’ said Ciranoush.
‘You wish to be heard?’ said the Wormlord.
‘I will be heard!’ said Ciranoush. ‘Edda was a hero’s weapon. But this? Some refuse-iron! The hilt intact, to be true, but the blade a stump of rotten rust. How know we this to be Edda?’
‘I know,’ said the Wormlord.
Then, to Alfric’s astonishment, the king unscrewed the top of the sword’s pommel; and from the hollow hilt the Wormlord poured a glitterment of diamonds, emeralds and rubies. One last thing rattled out. A single chip of lapis, incongruous against the glory of the jewels.
‘The sword,’ said the Wormlord, ‘has proved itself.’
As Ciranoush stared at the jewels in dumbfounded silence, Alfric steadied his head for long enough to add: ‘If further proof is demanded, seek it yourself on Island Thodrun. Qa lies dead, his body butchered, as other bodies will be before all differences in this kingdom are settled.’
‘Other bodies?’ said Ciranoush. ‘What mean you by that?’
‘You will not ask that question!’ said the king. Then he tossed the chip of lapis to Alfric, who surprised himself by catching it neatly. ‘A souvenir,’ said Tromso Stavenger. ‘I might give you another souvenir before the night is out. A head. A head for you to take home. The head of one of the brothers Norn.’
‘My lord,’ said Ciranoush, ‘how has the family Norn excited your displeasure?’
‘I am told,’ said the Wormlord, ‘that your brothers Pig and Wu have been brawling with the orks who happen to be ambassadors from the king of the Qinj oks. ’
‘Then I will see that apologies are made,’ said Ciranoush.
Without further ado, Ciranoush called his brothers forth from the mass of Yudonic Knights gathered in the throneroom. A sullen Pig and a slowvoiced Wu made formal apologies to the king.
‘I am not necessarily entirely satisfied by your apologies,’ said the king. ‘It may be that I will make an example of one of you. I do not say that this is necessarily so. Only that I reserve the right to so act. Any offence against any ambassador is a most serious matter, whatever the nature of that ambassador. What I need from you now is a peace. A peace between the brothers Norn and the family Danbrog. Is there a peace between you? Alfric?’
‘There is,’ said Alfric.
Pig hesitated, then said:
‘Yes, there is.’
And Wu:
‘My brother speaks for me as well.’
‘Good,’ said Stavenger. ‘Then you will all four of you sit together as a token of mutual trust and alliance. The three brothers Norn and Alfric Danbrog. Come, let us retire now to the banqueting hall.’
That they did, and soon a most uncomfortable Alfric Danbrog was seated at table with the three brothers Norn. Pig was seated to Alfric’s left and Ciranoush to his right, with Wu a further place to the right. A four person Trough of Friendship was brought forth and set in front of them, that they might all eat from the same dish in token of the truceship to which their king had bound them. A select portion of a gigantic river worm (a worm which was all of a horselength from nose to tail) was placed in that dish, and vegetables mounded on top of it.
A great heat rose from the river worm; and heat likewise flushed forth from the brothers Norn; and further heat assailed Alfric from the hall itself, a hall heated by a full half-dozen blazing fireplaces. It is scarcely surprising that he found himself sweating, and that his neighbours were similarly afflicted.
Certain formalities then took place; then the Wormlord took out his false teeth and wrapped them in a silken handkerchief, and all knew they were free to eat, which they did.
As the banquet got underway, Alfric did his best to ignore the brothers Norn. Easy enough to do, since Justina Thrug was seated opposite, and she was enough to take anyone’s mind off his neighbours. She was a phenomenon.
Justina Thrug was a meaty woman with the most abstraklous history of debauchery. On this occasion, she was rigged out in flame-coloured taffeta most unfitting as wear for one who was a daughter of Lonstantine Thrug. In a further offence against custom, she had brought her pet owl to banquet. The name of the creature was Aquitaine Varazchavardan, a fact which Alfric Danbrog could not help but learn, since Justina often addressed the feathered beast by this name.
(The owl, for its part, said precious little in return.)
It was said that Justina Thrug was truly her father’s daughter, and that nothing could abash her dauntless courage; but Alfric found such rumour hard to credit when he was confronted by this overloud and overweight female, a woman hardly overyoung.
Alfric was glad when the traditional banquet-time storytelling began, for it drowned out the Thrug. The tales that were told were all the usual, traditional stuff. Heroes venturing against those monsters which inhabit the wastelands. The glut of slaughter from the great battles of land and sea. The glory of the poets of the past who won deathless fame by fabling the heroes of such tales. The sacrifices made by those who, eager for fame, paid scant heed to the safety of the house of flesh. The plight of an outcast doomed by the betrayal of his king.
On and on went the storytelling, some in prose and some in verse, but all noble, heroic, inspired by visions of grandeur.
Listening, the Yudonic Knights indulged themselves in heroic ecstasies. They were no longer the inhabitants of a muddy little city in a minor province of the Izdimir Empire; they were not the denizens of an insignificant land half-engulfed by swamp; they were not the members of a bullyboy class dedicated to exploiting the labours of a subdued and sullen peasantry. Rather, they were lordly heroes in a land built for the accommodation of such men; their houses were palaces; their bad-tempered wives were compliant maidens who delighted in braiding broidered silk and looming fleeces for the comfort of their men; their estate was great, and their destiny to be greater yet.
At last, the Wormlord himself got to his feet, and (still without his teeth) began his tale of how he had marched against Her son, had met that monster, and had defeated him.
‘My making was not by way of words moth-eaten. Rather it was through deeds that I became the man you see before you.’
Thus began the Wormlord. And by like boast he continued, until at last his tale was done.
Other boasts followed. Recitals of ancestral sovereignties; of lordly deeds which had set the world aflame with admiration; of the splendour of gold and the open-handed kings who had oft won fame by their dispensing of the same; of savage foes who had marched against the kings, only to be broken and defeated and backdriven by the might of the righteous.
And, for a while, Alfric was buoyed up by this stuff. But after a while it all got too much, and he wished he could leave. But he could not. This was his banquet, put on especially for his honour. If he left before it was finished, he would be insulting his king and his fellows.
In the end, Alfric dared himself away from the table long enough to take a piss — this itself a breach of custom, but he was past caring — only to find another flatulent hero-belcher in action when he returned.
On went the night, full of the wind of words. Of ring-prowed ships; of men in bearskin gloves manning such ships, the masts and sails of the same sheeted with ice; of swords adorned with coiled gold; of steeds with plaited manes, brave beasts which outran the wind; fell monsters encountered and defeated on a murky moor; horns heartening heroes as men graced with deathless courage met their end in contest with onswarming hordes of heartless reptiles; war-arrows embedded in corpses strewn upon steep rocky screens, discarded at the foot of precipitous crags, lying derelict in waters bloody and disturbed.
Of this sang the song-singers; and they sang also of the undisturbed valour of men who died without complaint though they were pierced to the vitals by deadly-barbed boar-spears; and of the outlandish grief which doomed the hero Hroblar to an uncouth death when his hand-meshed battle-corslet animated itself and ate through his flesh to the bone.
Also they sang — there was no stopping it, though Alfric would have been content to see all of creation come to an end rather than endure any more of this stuff — of the weapon-smiths of old and the weapons of their making.
Ah, the weapons!
Iron agleam in moonlight. Deathblades tempered in the blood of warfare. Ripple-patterned damascene slicing through the flesh of alien creatures ravenous for blood. The fighting fangs of heroes. Twist-patterned steel which had dared the hearts of heroes. Swords which lopped hands, which chopped feet, which shortened legs at the knees, which gouged out hearts and vivisected horses, which dissected the aorta and tasted the filth of the lower bowel.
Of such the poets sang, much to the delight of this company of heroes.
Of swords they sang, and of armour.
Buckler’s proof against a basilisk’s breath. Meshed mail. Gaunt helms topped with boars and dragons.
And the journeying, the endless trekking and marching and climbing endured by the thousands of heroes of legend, all of it to be described a footstep at a time, complete with descriptions of the texture of the mud through which they walked, and the very length of the leeches which there battened upon their flesh.
Earth was their way. Mud was their way. Wind was their way. Fire was their way. Ice was their way. Toes and hamstrings. Shins and shoulders. Corpses stretched lifeless. Lordless men manning the bulwark battlements. Heroes doomed to perish from the fiercest of griefs, dying encumbered by battle-hamess, fighting in death in honour of their battle-vows, vaunting their boasts with the blood of their lungs on their lips.
Then at last the boast-telling was over, and serious drinking began. Alfric drank himself, in defiance of his custom. Heard but parts of the tabletalk, that talk rapidly mounting to uproar. Loud, over-loud, striving above all other voices, was that of Justina Thrug, asking a question.
‘What,’ asked Justina, ‘is a virgin?’
Someone volunteered an explanation.
‘Oh!’ said she. ‘Now I remember!’
Then she looked across at Alfric and said:
‘Well, sweet wag, are you happy eating with your friends at that great big blood-brother plate?’
‘Happy enough,’ said Alfric.
Though in fact he was most unhappy at being reminded of the existence of his meal companions. He had (somehow) almost managed to forget about them entirely. Remembering their existence was unpleasant, for they were disgusting. Ciranoush, just to his right, repeatedly regurgitated his food, chewed the mouthfuls then swallowed again. As for Pig, why, Pig had drenched his food with a most revolting sauce, which was supplemented by a steady drip-drop of sweat which oozed from the bulky face of that entity. Right now, Pig was eating a chicken’s arse, teasing away the delicate flesh, and, into the bargain, eating the yellow knobs of well-cooked yellow chickenshit.
‘More beer, young sir?’ said a waiter.
‘Please,’ said Alfric.
Then realized the waiter was no waiter, no, it was Nappy, Nappy was there, at his elbow, his side, and Alfric was near-paralysed with terror, for he had no help, no chance, no hope, he was doomed, he was done, he was dead, there was no getting away.
But nothing happened.
Nothing happened to Alfric.
Nappy filled Alfric’s mug from a big jug. Then put down the jug. Then Pig Norn was groping at Pig Norn’s throat, clutching and clawing, writhing and striving, but it was no good, no good at all. The garotte was of wire, thin wire deep-biting hard, and Nappy was hauling on the wooden toggles which were tightening the wire.
In desperation, Pig Norn began to thrash about in his chair, trying to overbalance it. But the chair was heavy, solid oak was its weight, and Nappy was strategically positioned, behind Pig and immune to Pig’s fistings and Sailings. And Pig’s feet were starting to drum, to drum, to drumbeat their death, and Pig’s eyes were bulging, swelling, swollen, horror-glazed, hands spasming And And the legs spasming also, the drumbeat a death-rattle, a nothing, with bowels and bladder giving way in the aftermath, and stench rising to an absolute silence, all and everyone transfixed, horrified, all but for one old man singing tum-ti-tum-ti until someone hit him on the head with something hard and he collapsed unconscious.
Nappy loosened the garotte.
Alfric looked (he could not help himself). The line, hard line of the wire, deep-bitten, a red line, red, inflamed, blood oozing actual red where the wire had cut the skin, strength sufficient and you could take off a man’s head, or could you? No, probably not, cutting through the actual spinal column would be too much, and anyway there’s much meat there, a lot of meat, meat stronger than you might expect, stronger Alfric looked away.
The Wormlord was swilling some water round his mouth.
The Wormlord spat into his empty soup bowl.
The Wormlord unwrapped his false teeth and inserted those oratorial aids into his mouth. He had not used them earlier when boasting of the exploits of his youth, but this was a more serious matter.
‘Ciranoush Norn,’ said Tromso Stavenger. ‘It is to you I speak. Wu Norn. It is to you I speak also. Earlier I reserved the right to make an example of a molester of ambassadors. Now I have made such an example. Let this be recorded. We do not permit ambassadors to be molested within our domain. We hope the point is made. Permanently.’
Ciranoush Norn replied:
‘It is.’
His voice was not steady. Even so, Alfric did not doubt the courage of the valorous Ciranoush. The present circumstances would have unsteadied anyone.
‘Good,’ said the Wormlord. ‘Let the banquet resume.’
Diffidently, talk began again. Waiters descended upon the corpse of Pig Norn, rolled it up in a spare tablecloth and dragged it away. The soiled chair was removed and a fresh one substituted; and Nappy seated himself in the fresh chair, and began to banquet himself.
Nappy picked up the chicken’s arse which Pig Norn had been eating. Nappy finished it off with every sign of enjoyment, and washed it down with ale from Pig’s half-empty mug. Nappy wiped his greasy fingers on the tablecloth and beamed in delight.
‘Well,’ said Nappy, ‘this has been an eventful evening, hasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said Alfric unsteadily, trying to remain polite.
And, to Alfric’s mounting horror, Nappy insisted on making further Smalltalk. And still the banquet continued, with Alfric a prisoner of the proceedings since those proceedings were in his honour.
At last, knightly carcasses began to slide beneath the table, the victims of an overconsumption of liquor. As uproar ended and talk lulled away, various untunchilamons came forth from the banquet hall fireplaces to plunder the remnants of the feast. Nappy persuaded one to perch on his finger, and showed it to Alfric.
‘It — it’s beautiful,’ said Alfric awkwardly.
True enough. The tiny dragon shone, glittered and forthblazed like a living gem.
‘It likes me,’ said Nappy simply.
Smiling, smiling.
He was so happy.
He was such a happy fellow.
‘Yes,’ said Alfric, trying to coax sincerity into his voice. ‘I’m sure it does like you.’
‘Most people do, you know,’ said Nappy, ‘once they get to know me.’
‘I’m sure they do,’ said Alfric. ‘And I’m glad I’m getting to know you now.’
This may not seem much of a speech, but it cost Alfric immense effort. He was glad when Nappy was diverted by the spectacle of half a dozen dragons lapping at dregs of spilt ale with their tiny tongues. Soon there were a great many drunken dragons blundering about the banquet table or tracing erratic flightpaths through the air. One maniacal monster started feuding with a candleflame, a sight which Nappy found so droll that he laughed until he cried.
The surviving Norn brothers, Ciranoush Zaxilian and Muscleman Wu, did not laugh.
Nor did they cry.
But Alfric could imagine what they were thinking.