his jaw.
'Poor boy, sir, no harm, gentleman won't hurt a poor boy, no work, very hard times, be of service -' 'How long have you followed this life?' asked Elleroth sternly. The boy stammered with eyes averted.
'Don't know, sir, four years, sir, five years, done no wrong, sir, six years perhaps, whatever you say -'
Elleroth, with his free hand, pulled up the boy's sleeve. Bound round the forearm was a broad leather band and thrust beneath it by the blade was a handsome, silver-hiked knife. Elleroth pulled it out and handed it to Mollo.
'Didn't feel him take it, did you? That's the worst of wearing one's knife in a sheath on the hip. Now stop howling, my boy, or I'll see you flogged before the market warden -' 'I'll see him flogged, howling or no,' interrupted Mollo. 'I'll -'
'Wait a moment, my dear fellow.' Elleroth, still grasping the boy's chin, turned his head to one side and with his other hand thrust back his dirty hair. The lobe of the car was pierced by a round hole about as big as an orange pip. Elleroth touched it with his finger and the boy began to weep silently.
'Genshed u arkon lowt tha?' said Elleroth, speaking in Terekenalt, a tongue unknown to Mollo. The boy, who was unable to speak for his tears, nodded wretchedly. 'Genshed varon, shu varon il pekeronta?' The boy nodded again.
'Listen,' said Elleroth, reverting to Beklan. 'I am going to give you some money. As I do so I shall curse you and pretend to hit you, for otherwise a hundred wretches will come like vultures from every hole in the market. Say nothing, hide it and go, you understand? Curse you!' he shouted, gripping the boy's shoulder and pushing him away. 'Be off, get away from me! Filthy beggars -' He turned on his heel and walked away, with Mollo beside him.
'Now what the devil -?' began Mollo. He broke off. 'Whatever's the matter, Elleroth? You're surely not – not weeping, are you?'
'My dear Mollo, if you can't observe a knife vanishing from its sheath on your own hip, how can you possibly expect to observe accurately the expression on a face as foolish as mine? Let us turn in and have a drink – I feel I could do with one, and the sun's become rather warmer now. It will be pleasant to sit down.'
25 The Green Grove
The nearest tavern in the colonnade, whose sign proclaimed it to be 'The Green Grove', was out of the wind but warmed nevertheless, at this early time of the year, by a charcoal brazier, low enough to keep floor draughts from chilling the feet. The tables were still damp from their morning scrubbing and the settle, facing towards the square, was spread with brightly-coloured rugs which, though somewhat worn, were clean and well-brushed. The place appeared to be frequented chiefly by the better kind of men having work or business in the market – buyers, household stewards, caravan officers, merchants and one or two market officials, with their uniform green cloaks and round leather hats; There were pumpkins and dried tendrionas hanging in nets against the walls and pickled aubergines, cheeses, nuts and raisins set out in dishes. Through a door at the back could be caught a glimpse of the courtyard, with white doves and a fountain. Elleroth and Mollo sat down at one end of the settle, and waited without impatience.
'Well, Death, don't come along just yet,' cried a long-haired young caravaneer, flinging back his cloak to free his arm as he drank and looking over the top of his leather can as though half-expecting that unwelcome personage to make a sudden appearance round the corner. 'I've got a bit more profit to make down south and a few more jars to empty here – haven't I, Tarys?' he added to a pretty girl with a long black plait and a necklace of silver coins, who set down before him a plate of hard-boiled eggs in sour cream.
'Ay, likely,' she answered, 'without you get yourself killed int' south one trip. Profit, profit – happen you'd go to Zeray for profit.'
'Ay – happen!' he mimicked, teasing her and spreading out a row of foreign coins, one under each finger, for her to take whatever was due in payment. 'Help yourself. Why don't you take me now, instead of the money?'
'I'm not that hard up yet,' retorted the girl, taking three of the coins and coming across to the settle. Her eyelids were stained with indigo and she had pinned a bunch of red-flowering tectron in her bodice. She smiled at Mollo and Elleroth, a little unsure how to address them, since on the one hand they were strangers and clearly gentlemen, while on the other they had been an audience for her little flirtation with the caravaneer.
'Good morning, my dear lass,' said Elleroth, speaking as though he were her grandfather and at the same time looking her up and down with an air of open admiration which left her more confused than ever. 'I wonder whether you have any real wine, from the south – Yeldashay, perhaps, or even just Lapan? What we need to drink on a morning like this is sunshine.'
'There's none come in a long while, sir, more's t' pity,' answered the girl. 'T'is the war, y'see. We can't get it.'
'Now Pm sure you're underrating the resources of this splendid establishment,' replied Elleroth, putting two twenty-meld pieces quietly into her hand. 'And you can always pour it into a jug, so that no one else knows what it is. Ask your father. Just bring the best you've got, as long as it's – er – well, pre-bear, you know, prebear. We shall recognize it all right, if it's from the south.'
Two men came through the chain-curtained entrance and called to the girl in Chistol, smiling across at her.
'I suppose you have to learn a lot of languages, with so many admirers?' asked Mollo.
'Nay, they've to learn mine or I'm doon with them,' she smiled, nodding, as she left, to Elleroth, to show that she would do as he had asked.
'Ah, well, I suppose the world still takes a lot of stopping,' said Elleroth, leaning back on the settle, snapping a pickled aubergine and throwing half into his mouth. 'What a pity so many furious boys persist in trying! Will it suit you if we go on talking Yeldashay, by the way? Pm tired of speaking Beklan, and Deelguy is beyond me, I fear. One advantage of this place is that no one would think it unduly odd, I believe, if we were to converse by coughing down each other's necks or tapping the table with very large tooth-picks. A little Yeldashay will be all in the day's work to them.' 'That boy,' said Mollo, 'you gave him money, after he'd stolen my knife. And what was that hole in his ear? You seemed to know what you were looking for all right' 'You have no inkling, provincial governor?' 'None.'
'Long may you continue to have none. You met this man Lalloc, you told me, in Deelguy. I wonder, did you ever hear tell of one Genshed?' 'No.'
'Well, curse the war, then!' shouted a man who had just come in, evidently in reply to some remark of the landlord standing before him with compressed lips, shrugged shoulders and hands held out on cither side. 'Bring us any damn' thing, only be quick. I'm off south again in half an hour.' 'What's the news of the war?' called Elleroth across the room.
'Ah, it's going to get rough again now the spring's here, sir,' answered the man. 'There'll be nothing coming up from the south now – no, not for some months, I dare say. General Erketlis is on the'move – likely to drive up east of Lapan, so I've heard.'
Elleroth nodded. The girl returned with a plain earthenware jug, leather beakers and a plate of fresh radishes and watercress. Elleroth filled both cans, drank deeply and then looked up at her open-mouthed, with an exaggerated expression of astonishment and delight. The girl giggled and went away.
'Better than we might have expected,' said Elleroth. 'Well, never mind about the poor boy, Mollo. Put it down to eccentricity on my part. I'll tell you one day. Anyway, it's got nothing to do with what we were talking about on the lake.'
'How did they get their bear back?' asked Mollo, crunching a radish and spreading out his legs towards the brazier. 'What I heard – if it's true it frightens me, and no one's ever told me it's not – was that the bear smashed through the Beklan line and killed Gel-Ethlin as if it knew who he was. That's one thing they can all tell you in Deelguy, because there was a Deelguy contingent in the Beklan army and the bear killed their commander at the same time – tore his throat out You must admit it's all very strange' 'Well?'
'Well, then the bear disappeared as night was falling. But you know where it is now – there, up the hill.' He jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
'This man Crendrik – the king – he spent the whole of the following summer tracking it down,' replied Elleroth. 'As soon as the rains ended he went out with his priestesses or whatever they call them and worked over
