The Last Ringbearer

launched into a genteel discussion of the coming maize harvest and the steel-hardening methods practiced by Iguatalpo and Irapuato blacksmiths; the baron, whose participation in the conversation was anyway limited to a polite smile, began giving its due to the local wine. It is unbelievably tart and thick, its amber depths harboring shimmering pink sparks exactly the color of the first sun rays on a wall of yellowish limestone still wet with dew.

Tangorn used not to understand the charm of this beverage, which is not surprising because it can not stand transportation, whether bottled or barreled, so everything sold down below is no more than an imitation. You can drink the local wine only in the first hours after it has been drawn from the pifos where it had fermented with a small jar on a bamboo handle – after that, it is only good for slaking one’s thirst. During their forced idleness on board the Flying Fish Sarrakesh had gladly educated the baron on the intricacies of mountain winemaking: how the grapes are crushed in a wooden screw together with the vine (hence the unusual tartness) and the juice poured through troughs into the pifoses buried throughout the gardens, how the cork is opened for the first time – you have to carefully snag it from the side with a long hook, looking away lest the escaping thick and unruly wine spirit (the genie) drive you crazy…

Actually, most of the old smuggler’s reminiscences of his rural life were not very warm. It was a very peculiar world, where men were always alert and never without weapons, where women, dressed head to toe in black, were silent shadows always gliding past you along the farthest wall; where the tiny windows in thick walls were nothing but crossbow firing holes and the chief product of the local economy was dead bodies produced by the senseless permanent vendettas; a world where time stood still and one’s every step was predestined for decades ahead. It was not surprising that the joyful adventurer Sarrakesh (whose name was very different back then) had always felt foreign there. Meanwhile, the sea that was open to everyone and treated everyone the same was right there… so now, when he steered his felucca across foamy storm waves with a steady hand, barking at the crew: “Move it, barnacles!” everyone could see a man in his element.

Which was exactly why the sea wolf allowed himself to categorically oppose Tangorn’s plan to return to the city by the twentieth: “No way, forget about it! It’s sure failure!”

“I must be in town tomorrow.”

“Listen, buddy, did you hire me as a gondolier for an evening sail around the Ring Canal? No, you needed a pro, right? Well, the pro says that we can’t get through today, and that’s how it is.”

“I must get into town,” the baron repeated, “no matter what!”

“Sure you’ll get into town – straight into a jail cell. Two days ago the Coast Guard went on high alert, get it? The entrance to the lagoon is shut tight, not even a dolphin can swim by without them noticing. They can’t keep this up for long; we gotta wait, at least until the next week, when the moon will start to wane.” Tangorn thought about it for some time.

“All right. If they catch us, what’s it to you? Six months in jail?”

“Who cares about jail? They’ll confiscate my boat.”

“What’s your Flying Fish worth?”

“No less than thirty dungans, that’s for sure.”

“Excellent. I’ll buy it for fifty. Deal?”

The smuggler gave up: “You’re a psycho.”

“Perhaps, but the coins I pay with weren’t minted in a madhouse.”

The venture turned out exactly as Sarrakesh predicted. When a warning catapult shot from a pursuing galley splashed in a moonlit fountain of water less than fifty yards across their bow, the skipper squinted to estimate the distance to the eddies boiling around reefs to starboard (that night the Flying Fish, taking advantage of its paltry draught, was attempting to slip by the very shore of the Peninsula, through reef-studded shallows off-limits to warships), turned to the baron and ordered: “Overboard with you! It’s less than a cable to the shore, you won’t melt. Find my cousin Botashaneanu’s house in Iguatalpa village, he’ll hide you. Give him my fifty dungans. Go!” So what did I gain by jumping into it headfirst? Tangorn thought. Truly it is said: shorter ain’t the same as faster; either way I lost a week. Whatever, hindsight never fails… Suddenly a new word – algvasils – surfaced in the table discussion of the mountain men, so he started listening intently.

Actually, those were city gendarmes, rather than algvasils, commanded by their own officer rather than a Corregidor. Nine men and one officer showed up in Irapuato the day before yesterday. Supposedly they’re looking for the famous bandit Uanako, but in a weird way: sending no patrols, instead they’re going house to house asking whether anyone has seen any strangers. Like anyone will tell those island jackals anything, even if he did see someone… On the other hand, one can understand these guys: the bosses want them to catch bandits, so they’re making a decent show of it; they’re not dumb enough to actually climb mountains, risking a crossbow bolt any minute for tiny pay, while their friends are safely milking caravans at the Long Dam…

When the guest has departed, Tangorn’s guide (whose name was Chekorello and whose relation to Sarrakesh was beyond the baron’s ken) remarked thoughtfully: “You know, it’s you they’re looking for.”

“Yep,” Tangorn nodded. “Are you by any chance figuring how to turn me in in Irapuato?”

“Are you crazy?! We shared bread!!” The mountain man cut himself short, figuring out Tangorn’s intention, but did not smile. “You know, the folks down below think we’re all dumb up here and don’t get jokes. Maybe so; the people here are intense and just might off you for such a joke… Besides,” he suddenly grinned just like a grandfather promising grandkids a magic trick, “nobody’s gonna pay fifty dungans you owe my family for your head. Better I should get you over to the city, like we agreed, and earn that money honestly, true?”

“Totally true. Have you considered the back paths?”

“Well, can’t go through Irapuato now, we’ll have to go around…”

“Around? This is more serious than it seems. There’re those strange peddlers in Uahapan – four of them and armed to the teeth, while the tax collector with his algvasils is in Koalkoman three weeks early. I strongly dislike this.”

“Yeah, tough… Uahapan, Koalkoman, Irapuato – we’re surrounded. Unless…”

The baron waved the implied suggestion aside: “If you mean the road to Tuanohato, forget it – bet you that it already has a presence. Most likely traveling circus men who show tricks like putting out candles with a crossbow bolt or slicing apricot pits in midair with a scimitar. But that’s all right; what bothers me is that we’re surrounded, yet there are no visitors in our village. Why?”

“Haven’t gotten around to us yet?”

“Nope – the only way to Uahapan is through Iguatalpa, right? Better tell me this: if such a team were to show up in our village, would they be able to take me?”

“No way! You’ve told us to watch out for strangers, and we have. Even if they came with a hundred gendarmes, I’d still have time to get you out of the village through backyards, and