which are a tumult even here, almost a mile away! What? Has all the caution gone out of the world? Do they tempt fate? Don't they know the hour, and that soon it will be sundown?'
He glanced all about, at the ground mist and the shadowy forest, finally at Andrei, who gazed back at him in amazement. And: 'Where is the watch?' Lardis continued. 'We haven't even been challenged! We've seen neither man, youth nor wolf, despite that we crossed into Lidesci territory well over an hour ago!'
Andrei's astonishment, and his concern, were very genuine now. 'The watch?' he repeated. 'Man, you stood the watch down all of ten years ago! But the markers which define your boundaries are well maintained, and we haven't had a border dispute in… oh, I can't remember! So why now, after all this time, do we suddenly need a watch?'
Lardis blinked his fierce brown eyes and something of the passion went out of them. He blinked again, frowned and shook his head. 'I… I actually did that? I stood down the watch? Yes… yes, of course I did.' For a single moment he looked shaken, confused, lost -
— But in the next the passion was back, and with it all the grim determination of his youth. He glanced knowingly at the darkening sky, where the first stars glittered like blue ice chips over Starside beyond the barrier range, sniffed suspiciously at the evening air, stared piercingly at a ground mist rising out of the woods. And: 'Great fool that I've been,' he growled, as if he couldn't believe it, 'I stood the watch down!… And now must start it up again!'
Andrei Romani recognized it: that visionary fire in Lardis which had made him a great leader of the Szgany in a time when leaders were few and far between. But where once it had inspired men, now it caused a shiver to travel the length of Andrei's spine. 'What is it, Lardis?' he husked, gripping the other's arm. 'What did you see from that bluff in the great pass? I know you as well as any man, and you've not been the same since you climbed up there to watch the sun burning on Karenstack's face.'
Lardis felt Andrei's fingers digging into his arm, paused in his striding and turned to face him. His eyes held Andrei's as in a vice as he answered: 'I don't know what I saw, except that it frightened me and straightened out my addled senses. Or else addled them more yet.' He pulled himself free, turned and headed for Settlement as before.
Andrei frowned after him, then hurried to catch up. 'But you did see something?'
'Bats,' Lardis growled. 'Starside's great bats. That's what I took them for, what I've been telling myself they were ever since. Certainly they could have been, for I merely glimpsed them — a scattering of dots in the sky around Karenstack — which made no impression until after I'd started on my way down again. Well, and I know my eyes aren't all they used to be. But on the other hand, and if they weren't bats… then what were they?'
Andrei's shrug tried hard to be careless but didn't' quite make it. 'But they were,' he said. 'It's just that you've been letting the old times crowd too close in your memory. Perhaps it's a warning: that you should give it a rest and quit trekking into Starside every fifty sunups or so. After all, you're not as young as you used to be.'
'No, and neither are you!' Lardis snapped. 'If you're so sure of what I didn't see, then why is your voice so anxious, eh? Who are you trying to convince, Andrei, me or yourself? But I'll tell you this…' He broke his striding and rounded on the other. 'Since then it's like I've been asleep and I'm only now waking up. And my sleep had dulled senses which are only now coming alive. I can see, hear, feel, smell — I can remember — things! Things which I thought had gone forever.'
More stars had blinked into being. Again Lardis sniffed the night air, glared at the rising mist. 'Come on!' he said, striding harder yet for Settlement. 'And say no more. If I'm wrong — and I pray that I am wrong — then I'm nothing more than an old fool, frightened of my own shadow. Ah, but if I'm right… We have family and friends in the town, Andrei, and the long night is only just beginning!'
Together now, Lardis and Andrei, and breathlessly silent in the deepening shadows of the forest's fringe. And for all that they were tired where they followed sounds of laughter and music, smells of wood smoke and cooking fires, still they hurried. Hurried, yes; for as one man they were suddenly aware that those same sounds and smells were permeating the night air, rising through the wooded slopes into the peaks of the barrier range. And they were also aware that the campfires would be blazing like… like beacons.
But more than that, they were aware of all the life in Settlement. And of all the hot Szgany blood…
In the town, Jason Lidesci and Nestor Kiklu had gone one way, and Nathan Kiklu the other. The pair to the campfires, which burned through the night in the gathering places, and the one to his mother's house against the stockade wall.
In the central open space, a public place where the main fire and many lesser cooking-fires burned — where tables and chairs had already been laid out in preparation for Lardis's and the others' return, for the Szgany Lidesci rarely missed an opportunity to celebrate — Jason and Nestor had received a boisterous welcome from their friends, and then exchanged more sober greetings and information with the town's elder citizens and dignitaries.
The latter had wanted to know how the trip had gone? And where was Lardis now — and Andrei Romani? — how far behind the younger, fleeter members of the party? What news from the other towns and villages to the east? And so forth. Jason and Nestor had restricted their answers; everyone knew that Lardis and Andrei would want to tell everything in their own way, in their own good time. Indeed, the story-telling would form a major part of the celebrations.
Finding chairs in the quiet corner of an old stone wall, finally the two settled down with a jar of wine and a pair of small silver goblets between them. They weren't important now; Lardis Lidesci and Andrei Romani were the important ones, and their arrival imminent. Between times, Jason and Nestor could talk.
'My father sometimes worries me,' Jason admitted, having washed the trail's dust from his throat with a gulp of sweet wine.
And: 'Huh!' Nestor grunted. 'You should have my problems, for my brother worries me all the time!' His voice was at once sour, a sure sign that the conversation had returned to Nathan.
Jason was hardly taken aback. 'You're too hard on him,' he said.
'You think so?' Nestor raised an eyebrow. Eighteen months Jason's senior, he considered Lardis's son clever but naive; hardly the right kind of man to inherit the leadership of the clan when that time came, and never strong enough to hold it together and make it a power in the world. There was too much of the thinker in him, too little of the doer. 'But Nathan's not too hard on me, right?'
'Nathan, hard?' Now Jason was taken aback. 'But he's soft as a child!'
Nestor nodded. 'He is a child, in some things, aye. And in some ways he's an idiot, despite what your father thinks! But I'm his brother and so know him better than anyone, and there's another, weirder side to him.'
'Oh?'
'We're twins, as you know,' Nestor nodded. 'Not identical, no, but still our kinship goes deeper than ordinary flesh and blood. Far deeper.' He nodded again but angrily, even savagely. 'I mean, I wouldn't mind Nathan dreaming all the strange things he dreams, or blame him for living in his daydreams — just so long as he'd leave me out of them!'
'But how are you part of them?' Jason was puzzled. 'In what way do they concern you? Why, I've never met brothers more dissimilar than you two!'
'Huh!' Nestor grunted again. 'But up here,' he tapped his forehead, 'in our minds, we're not that dissimilar.' He leaned closer. 'Listen, and I'll tell you how it's been for as long as I can remember.' He got his thoughts in order, then:
'Among other things,' he began, 'my brother dreams of numbers. Great waves of numbers, all meaningless, swirling in his head like a river in flood! There's this — oh, I don't know — this fabulous 'secret' behind them, which he seeks to discover, except he hasn't a clue where to begin. And so in his sleep he goes through the numbers again and again, endlessly searching them for their secret meaning. All very well, and I'd have no complaint — if only he would keep his dreams to himself!'
'What?'
Nestor nodded. 'Don't ask me how, but I 'hear' his dreams! I can see him, feel him there in my head, lost in these damned numbers! Now to me, a number is the count of fish I've caught, division is the share-out after a day's hunting, and multiplication is what rabbits do. As for schooling: I got as much of that as I need — and all I can use — when I was a child. So, if I can't work something out on my fingers and toes, then I'm not interested in it. I'm not one of these so-called 'wise men' who tinker with runes and scratch on slates to keep records and histories, or work out the distance to the moon, which they say is another world. I won't be around when the things we do today are history, and as for the distance to the moon: what possible use in knowing that, except to the wolves who sing
