'Get in the trunk,' Ashidan added, looking in disgust at the guy's bare and dirty feet. 'Ah, well, you may change your clothing.'
The guy ran to the house. Bemish regained his speech.
'Why do you think,' Bemish asked, 'that he stripped the car? It could be anybody…'
'If,' Ashidan said in an even voice, 'a crime is committed in a village and the criminal is not apprehended, the lord should arrest several village inhabitants and keep them as hostages till they die or till the others deliver the guilty party.'
Bemish stared at Ashidan with wide opened eyes. The charming boy — and he was a very beautiful lad — looked very much like a successful manager. 'In this voice his ancestors spoke generation after generation,' Bemish thought, 'It looks like progress here is characterized by the lord putting a peasant in a car's trunk instead of tying him to a horse's tail.'
'This man,' Ashidan said, pointing at Bemish, 'is a named brother of my brother and a guest of my ancestors. My brother is coming today — the servants brought news that he got stuck at the Trekking Pass and took a detour via Lokh.'
The peasant dropped to his knees.
'Master!' it was unclear whether he addressed Ashidan or the alien.
The peasant's son walked out of the house in clean white clothing with a satchel in his hand. A ten-year-old boy accompanied him.
'Master,' the oldster continued, 'take the younger one, we have so much work now!'
Ashidan thoughtfully tapped the leather steering wheel.
'Our ancestor's guest,' he said, 'had a bad dream that somebody robbed his car. I had this dream, too, and I hurried here. But now it seems to me that it was a false dream and that the car, complete and unharmed, will return to the castle by the evening.'
Having said this, Ashinik floored the accelerator and the car sprayed the white peasant's dress with a load of mud and rushed away.
Kissur reached the castle only by noon. The rumors appeared to be correct — an avalanche had descended off the Trekking Pass and it had brushed by the people and the horses. Everybody was alive but Kissur's horse, Stargazer, with a white arrow on his forehead and wide hooves, was dragged down and only a red spot blinked in the snow for a moment. They took the same road that Bemish had used; Kissur's eyes swelled with blood like ripe cherries because of the horse. Kissur glanced at Bemish and snapped,
'You won the bet. We will hunt tomorrow.' And he ran upstairs.
Bemish didn't pursue him. Something scary suddenly hung in the air, the stone gods' masks grimaced with their mouths at the Earthman and clanged their teeth. Bemish turned around — pale Ashidan stood next to him rubbing his temples.
Kissur locked himself in a corner tower and didn't let anybody in. Khanadar explained that he was mourning the horse following the customs.
When Bemish's car drove into the castle's yard in the evening, Bemish was sitting on a guard tower looking at the dragon-like clouds. Bemish ran downstairs.
A well-built flaxen guy stepped out of the car and, bowing, handed the keys to him. Everything was fixed including the broken wheel. Bemish looked the guy over and said,
'Thanks. How many auto repair shops are in the village?'
'One,' the guy answered without blushing.
Bemish looked at the guy's feet — he stood in a pool wiggling his bare toes. The Earthman walked around the car and unlocked the trunk — the case bristled there self-importantly. Bemish opened the case — underwear and clothing was there, only two shirts were wet — clearly, they had been washed and ironed. Bemish extracted leather boots out of the case.
'Hold it,' Bemish said, 'That's a gift for you. The guy gasped and took the boots. Bemish stuck his hand in his pocket, took three hundred local 'unicorns' out and handed them to the guy.
'It's for your work.'
'Mister,' the guy said, 'we just fixed the wheel. It costs twenty 'unicorns.'
'Where are you going now?' Bemish asked.
'I am going to the Blue Ravine, to the village's left end.'
'Get in,' Bemish said, 'I'll give you a ride.' The village stretched along the road, between the mountain and the canyon. It was rarely more than hundred meters wide and about eight kilometers long. The guy squeezed himself in a corner almost under the seat and kept silent. One could think that he sat in the car first time in his life. 'Hmm,' Bemish thought, 'on the other hand, a master and an alien is giving him a ride for the first time… I hope I am not compromising White Falcon clan's honor.'
'How long has Ashidan been living in the castle?' Bemish asked.
'It's been two months, master.'
'Does he drink?'
'No, master,' the guy said nervously.
Bemish dropped the guy off at a field where girls in blue and red skirts were already starting to dance and came closer to see what it was that they grew in this field. He was going to ask for how long the peasants had been growing this stuff but the bailiff rushed towards him. Bemish turned around and drove away.
It was just before the sunset — he drove down a forest till he found a nice lawn to the road's left. He drove into the lawn, turned the ignition off, lifted the hood and gazed at the engine.
The carburetor was assembled like a bird's nest from many different parts and the air filter was also taken from another car. The night thieves from the only auto repair shop in the village had installed everything else where they had taken it from.
Bemish turned around and drove back.
Kissur had already descended to the yard and they explored the castle together. It was huge, the walls rose one after another like cabbage leaves.
The castle sat on the very mountaintop and only one road led to it from the west. The outer wall hovered above an abyss on all the other sides and the abyss had been hewed off for better defense, forming a wall smooth like glass.
Kissur showed his guest a yard where Kanut the Falcon had been killed and a small castle garden where Kissur's great grandmother had sinned with a winged two-headed bull under an apple tree. Bemish told Kissur that tourists from the whole Galaxy could visit the castle.
'This castle is not fit for tourists,' Kissur smirked, 'It does not have disabled access.' And he squeezed himself nimbly onto a narrow and incredibly steep staircase spiraling along one of the outside walls.
Merriness ruled the castle in the evening — the grooms braided the horses' tails, servants dragged out of the closets huge yew old bows, wrapped in old rotten cloth with silver inscriptions. Bemish glanced into a semi- dark stable and froze — Kissur, smiling coldly, was hiding a stubby black assault rifle in a saddlebag.
Bemish stepped inside. Kissur lowered the woven bag lid.
'What game,' Bemish asked, 'are we going to hunt tomorrow?'
'In this area,' Kissur said, 'people have been hunting big game — boars, bears — since old times.'
A question hung on Bemish's tongue tip, 'What kind of boar would you hunt with an assault rifle?' But Bemish licked his lips and swallowed the question.
They rode out before the crescent left the black sky, equipped the same way as eight or hundred years ago — Kissur wore grey suede tall boots, decorated with lilies, with high red heels but without spurs, green pants and a red jacket girdled with a heavy belt made out of gold plates — every plate depicted a beast or a fish. Kissur's overcoat was also green, with two wide lanes sewn with golden mesh. A bow hung on his shoulder and a leather quiver hung behind his back; arrow feathers, white like plastic foam, stuck out of the quiver. A throw-axe hung at his belt and two yew javelins and a sword hung at the saddle. The other nobles were dressed the same way. It would be wrong to call it carnival dress — Kissur, like the majority of Weians, dressed archaically even in the capital and he practically always wore a wide necklace, made out of jade plates set in woven gold and depicting falcons. As for Bemish, he clearly understood that his hunting bib layered with PVC would call the local gods' fury at his head and they would withhold the game that they guarded, from him. Now he felt like an impostor in leather
