The phosphorescent apparition did not flinch, diminish or withdraw. It was not an ilps. It might well be a ghost.
'Vara vinklet venvindaanaas telyauga zon makovara,' said the spirit-thing.
'Up yours too,' said Togura, recklessly.
The spirit-thing beckoned to him. He could see, quite clearly, the bones of its hand articulating within its spectral flesh.
'No,' said Togura. 'I'm not going with you. So cut it off and pickle it.'
The spirit-thing did not seem to understand his refusal, or his gratuitous obscenity. Its vocie became louder and more demanding. It took a step toward him.
'Okay, okay,' said Togura. 'I'm coming.'
He discarded the stone, chose a short stabbing spear from his meagre bundle of possessions, and followed the phantom out of the cottage and into the night.
The sky was pitchblende black, but for the light, as cold and pallid as the frigid starshine of glow-worms, which flickered around the horned cairn. That ancient burial mound, a barrow raised by forgotten peoples in the long ago – time out of mind! – seemed to be burning with cold, cold flames, which failed to consume its substance.
A door had opened in the nearest flank of that cold-burning tumulus. Togura could see down a curving gem- bright hallway, leading down into unknown depths. He caught a whiff of roasting rotch, heard the chimes of an uncanny music, and the shouts of bright brave voices glittering with laughter.
The phantom entered the hallway then paused and gestured with a hand now positively imperious.
'Come!' said that gesture.
And Togura Poulaan knew he was confronted with a challenge fit for a hero. To dare the unknown! To brave the perils of the land of death or faery! To rouse great warriors from their sleep!
Or, perhaps – and this was experience talking – to be slaughtered without warning, and eaten.
The phantom, growing impatient, advanced to claim Togura. He hurled his spear at it, saw it miss, then turned and fled to the night. He ran till exhaustion checked him, and then, unable to run any more, he walked. Dawn came, but he did not stop; he walked through the day to dusk, and into the night beyond.
During the course of his flight he lost his one and only coin. He was now penniless, but that, for the moment, was the least of his worries.
Chapter 17
Togura Poulaan was cold, wet and hungry, but his spirits were high, for he could see D'Waith in the distance. It was a small walled city set on a hill about half a league from the sea. He could not make a beeline for it, as swathes of barbarian thorn blocked the most direct route; instead, he was forced to follow the coastline.
The weather was the worst he had seen so far on his journey. He was astonished to see a boat on the sea, and was not surprised, shortly afterwards, not to see it. He stumbled forward through the wind, which hazed and harassed hyim. He was cold to his bone marrow.
'Civilization,' he said, promising himself a hot fire, a mug of ale and a meal of something good and nourishing.
Hope kept him going.
As he staggered on, buffeted by the wind, he passed an old herbalist who was gathering gypsywort, horehound, vetch, chickweed, bistort, bracken and sea-cranny. The old man bent to his work, regardless of the weather, ignorning him.
'He must be mad,' said Togura.
This clinical judgment, though made by a rank amateur, was entirely accurate.
The weather, if anything, was getting worse. The tumbled sea was wrought into great spumes and fraughts by the gale. The avalanching waters, afroth with yellowish foam, sent sleets of water spuming over Togura's shore path.
Ahead, Togura could see D'Waith's marginal harbour, where several ships were rocking at anchor, a beleaguered hebdomad which, until a disaster earlier in the day, had been an octet. The waves were roaring in over the mole which attempted to guard the anchorage: the tides were even threatening some of the low-slung buildings scattered around the foreshore. There would – surely – be a road from here to the city on the hill.
'If I'd built D'Waith, I'd have built it by the harbour,' muttered Togura.
This being so, it was fortunate that he had not built D'Waith, as the boggy ground would have swallowed it. He found out just how boggy it was as he sank to his waist in the marshy ground. He struggled to firmer ground and plugged on relentlessly until he came to the nearest building. A wave from the sea foamed around the building and tugged eagerly at his ankles.
Soaking wet, shivering, stung by the pelting rain and driven by the wind, Togura hobbled to the door. He opened it. The door swung inwards, opening to a roar of conversation, laughter and thumping tankards. Togura, peering into the gloom of beards, voices and storm lanterns, wondered if he was hallucinating. Three fires were blazing in three separate fireplaces, three rousing drinking songs were competing against each other; gusts of noise, heat and communal stench billowed out, together with smells of drink and food which set him reeling with giddy hunger.
'Come in!' roared the landlord, who had the head and the horns of a bull.
Embarrassed, Togura hesitated. He could imagine what he looked like, soaking wet from head to toe, mud from waist to foot, his hair in tangled dreadlocks, his body clad in mouldy old sealskins, an unkempt feathery moustache clinging to his upper lip just beneath his notched nose, and an unkempt straggly growth – a boy's excuse for a beard – sprouting from his chin.
'Come in before I break out in half,' bellowed the landlord. 'In boy, and shut the door.'
A wave, chasing round Togura's feet, swarmed through the door to join the waters inside, which were already knee-deep. He went in, closed the door with effort, descended a couple of steps to the floor level, and stood there in the knee-deep water, gawping.
'Here!' yelled the landlord, thumping the bar. 'You paralysed, boy?'
Togura waded to the bar, which was a vast slab of battle-scarred oak. Behind it stood the landlord, a towering figure who really did have the body of a man but the head of a bull. His eyes were fierce, burning, red. His horns, their ivory polished to the brightness of the moon, grazed the ceiling. There was a heavy gold ring in his nose. Ranked up behind him were casks, barrels, stone jars, stone bottles, wineskins and tobacco holders. Helping the landlord at the bar was a motherly woman of middle age who looked perfectly normal except that her hands were the paws of a cat.
As Togura reached the bar, a drunk, bleeding badly from a recent knife fight, embraced him and gave him a kiss. Togura shook him off. The drunk fell backwards to the water, where he floated with a seraphic smile on his face, singing incoherently.
'Here we have us a hungry little man,' said the landlord to Togura. 'Hungry. Pinched, even. Yet honest, all the same. I pick you for an honest man.'
'How can you tell?' said Togura.
'I can't,' said the landlord. 'But I was born and raised politely.' This, apparently, was a joke, for he laughed uproariously, his merriment deafening the storm. The patrons took no notice; they were used to it. 'Come on now, boy. Will you eat? Answer me!'
'I won't deny my hunger,' said togura. 'But I have no money. Have you any work that needs doing?'
'None, but there's plenty in town. Here, have a bowl of polenta,' said the landlord, shovelling great gollops of steaming porridge into a huge wooden bowl.
'At what obligation?'
'None.'
'What do you mean, none?'
'I mean this is free, gratis, given for nothing. Come on, boy, don't look so startled! Eat! Eat! It's hot. It's good. Oatmeal, maize, chestnuts, barley. Here, have some hot milk with it. Now eat. No, not with your fingers! Were you born in a barn?'
