Read Online The Iron Ship by K. M. McKinley - Free Book Online Page B

one aspect, of wine, indulged them. A full firkin of ale was to his lips, small as a dainty bucket in his giant grasp. Foaming beer cascaded from the sides of his mouth, running down his long red moustaches, in amber falls, over his beard, his ample belly, and thereafter the floor. As much as he spilt, he drank more, the gurgle audible in his gut.
    “Drink drink drink!” the patrons chanted with glee. As often as they watched Eliturion’s party piece, it still delighted them. “Drink drink drink!”
    The god upended the barrel. The cries of the crowd became raucous. He stood, tipping the firkin right back. He held it away from him, slopping what little remained all over those nearest him. They shrieked with delight as he let out an almighty belch at the ceiling. Arms out, he turned slowly to let every handclap caress him. Then he cast the firkin toward the bar like a man at skittles, scattering drinkers. He sat down heavily. His ale throne creaked alarmingly.
    The god was as big as gods were expected to be. In those years of the glimmer, that was larger than life. In recent centuries he had run to fat.
    “Oi! Eli!” shouted the landlady. “Don’t roll your bleeding ale barrels about in here. How many times?”
    Eliturion gave a raffish grin and another belch. “Sorry Nell,” he called back.
    “Nell was my great-great-grandmother, you arse!” As the god was too large to admonish physically, she took her annoyance out on others, slapping customers out of the way, so that the barrel could be rolled out of the room and back to the cellars.
    “Well, that should answer your question as to how many times I have been told that!” he crowed. The crowd laughed.
    Nelly’s great-great-granddaughter, whose name was in actual fact Ellany, shook her head and stalked off back behind the Nelly Bold’s ornately carved bar. She had said it all before a hundred, a thousand times. As had her mother, and her father, and so on back to the beginning of the inn. Eliturion came and went, sometimes favouring some other drinking spot for a season or a decade, but he always came back to the Nelly Bold; crook-grinned and irrepressible as a pup. He was a fixture, part of her inheritance, so to speak, and damn good for business. So she left it at that. The crowd cheered her as she resumed her station.
    “Give us a story, your divinity!” someone shouted.
    “Yes, yes! A story!” someone else joined in. The request was taken up by many. Eliturion raised his mighty hands and smiled a smile, outwardly benevolent, forcefully demanding of calm.
    “Really now?” he said indulgently.
    “Yes!” the crowd shouted. “A story!”
    Eliturion would give them a story, he always did. But even for a god as diminished as he the ritual question had to be asked, and ritual, minor objections raised, before he made a great show of giving in.
    “Oh, I don’t know,” said Eliturion.
    “A story!” they roared.
    “Well,” he said, signalling to Ellany for another drink. He scratched under his nose, a merchant’s gesture. “Drama is my second domain, drinking being my first.”
    “Hooray!” the crowd shouted.
    “Quieten down now,” he said. Ellany wheeled his drink over on a barrow, a more modest one-gallon pot. He nodded gratefully, lifted it, and took a long pull. The crowd waited. And then he began.
    “The question you’ve got to ask yourself is,” he said, “where does a story start? I’m sure you have your ideas; with a great event, perhaps. A battle, or a catastrophe; with fiery rains and titanic waves, the gnashing of teeth and the end of an empire. Or if you are of gentler humour, something less dramatic: a conversation, or a conversion. Or a bet! Yes, a wager!” he said, his face lifting as if he had hit upon the very thing. But it fell again. “No, no. That will not do. Maybe you would consider the fundamentals of life. A marriage, a birth... A death, although that is more of an ending.”
    “Give us a battle!” shouted