sorcerers’ duel fifty miles away. I had troubles of my own.
“What?” I grumbled, knowing he wanted a response.
“It looked like a giant bird. I mean, like one with a twenty-mile wingspan. That you could see through.”
I looked up. Goblin nodded. He had seen it, too. I looked to the north. The lightning ended, but some pretty fierce fires had to be burning up there. “One-Eye. Your new buddies there got any idea what’s going on?”
The little black man shook his head. He had the brim of his hat pulled forward, cutting his line of sight. That business up there-whatever it was-had him rattled. By his own admission he is the greatest wizard ever produced by his part of the world. With the possible exception of his dead brother, Tom-Tom. Whatever that was out there, it was alien. It did not belong.
“Times change,” I suggested.
“Not around here, they don’t. And if they did, these guys would know about it.” Wheezer nodded vigorous agreement although he could not have understood a word. He hawked and spat a brown glob into the fire.
I had a feeling I was going to have as much fun with him as I did with One-Eye. “What is that crap he’s all the time chewing? It’s disgusting.”
“Qat,” One-Eye said. “A mild narcotic. Doesn’t do his lungs any good, but when he’s chewing it he doesn’t care how much they hurt him.” He said it lightly, but he meant it.
I nodded uncomfortably, looked away. “Quieting down up there.”
No one had anything to say to that.
“We’re all awake,” I said. “So get packing. I want to move out as soon as we can see to walk.”
I did not get a bit of argument. Wheezer nodded and spat. Goblin grunted and started getting his things together. The others followed his example, Murgen putting the book away with a care that I approved. The boy might make an Annalist after all. We all kept sneaking looks at the north when we thought our uneasiness would go unnoticed.
When I was not looking that way, or tormenting myself with glances at Lady, I tried to get an estimate of the reactions of the newer men. We had encountered no sorcery directly yet, but the Company has a way of stumbling into its path. They seemed no more uncomfortable than the old hands.
Glances at Lady. I wondered if what seemed inevitable on the one hand and foredoomed on the other would ever cease crackling between us. So long as it did it would distort everything else in our relationship. Hell. I liked her fine as a friend.
There is nothing so unreasonable and irrational and blind-and just plain silly-looking-as a man who works himself into an obsessive passion.
Women do not look as foolish. They are expected to be weak. But they are also expected to become savage bitches when they are frustrated.
Chapter Thirteen
Willow’s last night little
Willow, Cordy Mather, and Blade still had their tavern. Mainly because they had the countenance of the Prah-brindrah Drah. Business wasn’t good now. The priests found out they couldn’t control the foreigners. So they put them off limits. A lot of Taglians did what the priests told them.
“Shows you how much sense people have,” Blade said. “They had any, they would take the priests to the river and hold them under an hour to remind them they drone like termites.”
Willow said, “Man, you got to be the sourest son of a bitch I ever seen. I bet if we hadn’t dragged you out, those crocs would of thrown you back. Too rancid to eat.”
Blade just grinned as he went through the door to the back room.
Willow asked Cordy, “You reckon it was priests that throwed him in?”
“Yeah.”
“Good house tonight. For once.”
“Yeah.”
“Tomorrow’s the day.” Willow took a long drink. Cordy’s brew was getting better. Then he stood up and hammered the bar with his empty mug. In Taglian he said, “We who are about to die salute you. Drink and be merry, children. For tomorrow, and so forth. On the house.” He sat down.
Cordy said, “You know how to cheer a place up, don’t you?”
“You figure we got anything to be cheerful about? They’ll screw it up. You know they will. All those priests mucking about in it? I tell you right out, I get my chance there’s a couple accidentally ain’t going to come back from out there.”
Cordy nodded and kept his mouth shut. Willow Swan was a lot more bark than bite.
Swan grumbled, “Up the river if this works out. I’ll tell you something, Cordy. These feet get to moving that direction they’re just going to keep on shuffling.”
“Sure, Willow. Sure.”
“You don’t believe me, do you?”
“I believe everything you tell me, Willow. If I didn’t, would I be here, up to my neck, wallowing in rubies and pearls and gold doubloons?”
“Man, what do you expect of someplace nobody ever heard of six thousand miles past the edge of any map anybody ever seen?”
Blade came back. “Nerves getting you guys?”
“Nerves? What nerves? They didn’t put no nerves in when they made Willow Swan.”
Chapter Fourteen
Through D’loc-Aloc
We moved out as soon as there was a ghost of light. It was an easy downhill trail with only a few places where we had trouble with the coach and Lady’s wagon. By noon we reached the first trees. An hour later the first contingent were aboard a ferry raft. Before sundown we were inside the jungle of D’loc Aloc where only ten thousand kinds of bugs tormented our bodies. Worse on our nerves than their buzzing, though, was One-Eye’s suddenly inexhaustible store of praises and tales of his homeland.
From my first day in the Company I had been trying to get a fix on him and his country. Every lousy detail had had to be pried out. Now it was everything anyone ever wanted to know, and more. Except specifics of why he and his brother had run away from such a paradise.
From where I sat swatting myself the answer to that seemed self-evident. Only madmen and fools would subject themselves to such continuous torment.
So which was I?
For all there was a route through, we spent almost two months in that jungle. The jungle itself was the biggest problem. It was huge, and getting the coach through was, shall we say politely, a chore. But the people were a problem, too.
Not that they were unfriendly. Too much the opposite. Their ways were much easier than ours in the north.
Those sleek, delectable little brown beauties had never seen anything like Murgen and Otto and Hagop and their boys. They all wanted a taste of novelty. The guys were cooperative.
Even Goblin got lucky often enough to keep an ear-to-ear grin on his ugly clock.
Poor hapless, inhibited old Croaker planted himself firmly among the spectators and longed his heart out.
I do not have the hair it takes to pursue a little casual funtime bouncy-bouncy while a more serious proposition is watching from the wings.
My attitude caused no direct verbal comment-those guys have some tact, sometimes-but I caught enough
