As it was, the two men did not leave immediately but enjoyed the rest of Zartan's rum and traded in tales where both men stretched truths where even an honest account would have tested the credulity of most auditors. Bo (for that was the other pirate's name) at once ventured to tell of a sea beast, and credited himself with its slaying, forgetting that Zartan himself had been on the journey and seen with his own eyes the horrible creature dispatched by another. It did not matter. Friendship among pirates is always wary, for any man who would not slay his friend for a share of the treasure or betray him in a moment to save his own life is no pirate at all. Zartan thought thusly of Bo, but he was nonetheless as boon a companion as you might find among pirates.
"I myself am descended of Beowulf himself!" Zartan replied, trying to one-up Bo, and persisted in giving a careful account of a lineage that was nearly a comprehensive history of every Viking and cut-throat who had ever terrorized the North Sea.
"Ah, it's a lot of half-remembered rubbish and folklore ye be spewing," Bo responded in good, though drunken, humor. "Ye Danes be nothing more than the bastards of we Kosars, and half yer tales are Kosar tales."
"I've never heard of these Kosars," Zartan said dismissively. "Are you some no-account island people with legends bigger than lies?"
"If you were any other man I'd have yer head for that!" Bo said, the good humor fading from his voice. He was half out of his chair, and might have thrown a fist if the effects of drink didn't make themselves felt. He slumped back down, and drained his cup. "Have ye another bottle?
"Those three were all," Zartan admitted sadly. "Though there may yet be a half-jug of something somewhere...."
"Ay, there's no use," said Bo. "I have a tale that will shock ye sober anyway. It's a tale of we Kosars, and where we come from, and it'll chill your blood and whiten your hair, for there's truth about the world that is beyond anything ye ever imagined. Or should I say beneath?" He laughed uproariously at his private joke, and then set down an account that was as peculiar and outrageous as anything Zartan had ever heard.