'Muck eater! Flat foot! You mud-screwing hump of a scallion! Pig-stuffing whoreson scab! Go eat yourself! Gamos!'
The rock backed off, then charged at a tree. Axed down in an instant, the tree fell dead, chopping across the stream. The rock slammed down another tree, right next to it. And then it began to cross.
'No!' screamed Togura, his voice a high-pitched wail.
He fled.
The stone, lurching, swaying, smashing its way through branches, came after him. Togura doubled back and leapt across the stream. He ran a few paces further then stopped, panting violently, and turned, knowing that the stream would stop the stone.
Which was not what happened.
The stone charged straight through the stream. It screamed when it hit the water, but it kept on coming. Half- cripped by the water, its movements wild and erratic, it stumped toward him.
'No no no!' screamed Togura.
Then ran.
It was gaining on him.
Ahead, he saw something through the tress. The river! He charged toward it, summoning all his strength for one last sprint, hit the bank and jumped. With a crash, he hit the water. His pack promptly dragged him under. As he struggled to free himself from the pack, the obdurate leather seemed to grow arms and tentacles. It was hauling him down, holding him, clutching him, strangling him.
Then he was free.
Free!
He shot to the surface, swifer than a bubble, gasped for air then looked around. The current was swiftly carrying him downstream. Unpstream, he saw the rock. It was lying half-submerged in the water. He hoped it was dead.
His pack!
Togura struck out for the shore, gained the bank and hauled himself onto dry land. Just upstream, a little swirl of muddy water, swiftly dissipating, marked – he hoped – the place where he had discarded his pack. He made his way to the place on the bank closest to the muddy swirl – now a memory only, for the water was running clean again – and marked it with a broken stick.
Then he went to check on the rock.
It was really dead.
And Togura, giving vent to an outbreak of hysterical anger, hammered the rock with a stick, jumped on it, swore at it and threw mud at its corpse. Then, exhausted, sat down and wept. It was really all too much. He had been prepared to meet dragons in Argan, and bears, and hostile wizards, and Castle Vaunting's monster, but nobody had ever told him anything about walking stones.
It was intolerable.
'This is intolerable,' he said, later, at evening, after a lot of hard diving had allowed him to recover his pack.
His clothes were wet, his weapons were wet, his pack was soaked, his sleeping bag was completely sodden, his tinder box was saturated, and his salt beef had not been improved by being immersed in the river.
'I'll probably die in the night,' said Togura.
But he didn't, so, when morning came, he had to pull himself together, and decide what to do now.
'At least I've reached the river. That's something,' he told himself. 'A little southing will take me to Lorford.'
Unfortunately, his letters of introduction addressed to Prince Comedo of Estar were now, after their bath in the river, illegible. When he reached Lorford, he would have to go to Castle Vaunting and introduce himself without any assistance.
'I don't have much luck,' said Togura.
So many things had gone wrong. Was he unlucky? Was he cursed? Was there an inescapable doom upon him? Back in the old days, when he had lived on his father's estate in Sung, he had never paid any attention at all to signs, omens, portents or the traditional prognosticating indications – bad dreams, flecks of white in the fingernails, unexpected encounters with two cats keeping company and so forth – but in recent days he had found himself becoming increasingly superstitious.
'Give me the day,' said Togura, using a traditional formula for addressing the sun.
And, so saying, he bowed four times to that luminary, a practice which, or so he had heard, would bring good luck.
It didn't.
He had followed the riverbank south for scarcely half a day when he became aware that someone was following him. Stopping to listen, he realised there was someone in the trees alongside him. He hastened along the bank – and two men, armed and in armour, stepped out in front of him.
Togura drew his sword.
'Wah – Warguild!' shouted Togura, using one of his father's old battlecries.
The two men drew their own weapons.
'On the other hand,' muttered Togura, looking around and seeing that another two men had stepped out of the forest behind him, 'maybe we could negotiate…'
And, so saying, he threw his sword in the river – an action which may have saved his life, but did not save his dignity, for the armoured men promptly crowded in, looted him and made him prisoner.
'This is not my lucky day,' said Togura.
And, on that score, he was quite right.
– I could have jumped in the river.
So thought Togura, after he had finished lamenting his bad luck.
Then he had second thoughts.
– No. The river would only have carried me down to Lorford. These must be Prince Comedo's soldiers. They would have taken me in Lorford if they hadn't taken me here.
A little later he had third thoughts.
– If these are Comedo's soldiers, their behavior's very odd.
But, even though he later had fourth and fifth thoughts, he was unable to work out who or what the soldiers were. They had no permanent camp, but slept rough. They risked small, bright, smokeless fires by day, but would not have a fire by night. As they moved from place to place, they sometimes met other groups of soldiers carrying the same weapons and wearing the same armour, occasions which would lead to long, earnest, low-voiced conferences. Every one of these soldiers wore, slung round his neck on a cord, a strangely decorated oval ceramic tile.
Togura, their captive, was made to carry a great weight of gear like a beast of burden, to scrape out primitive latrine pits, to gather firewood, light fires and tend fires. This he endured; there was no point in complaining, as he had no language in common with these strange foreigners. But what he really resented, more than anything else, was that they refused to share their rations with him, making him eat his own salt beef.
And Togura made one solemn resolution:
– If I ever get out of this again, I'll never eat salt beef again in all my life.
That was for certain.
Chapter 24
Togura woke from unpleasant dreams about salt beef to find that it was night. Without surprise, he noted that it was cold and wet. The night was full of shadows and pattering rain. His clothes were damp; his knees were aching; his flesh felt thin. Cold rainwater – very wet rainwater, by the feel of it – was dripping down his neck.
Perhaps this was the night he would escape. Yes! He would run away into the forest. He would make for the north, for home. Home! Warm beds, warm honey, friendly voices. Once he got home, he would stay there, and
