nonetheless. They loaded the black sticks of charcoal into it, added handfuls of wood bits and ends, and then plopped the chunk of hard cheese atop the lot.
While all this work was going on, Gord kept thinking about something that puzzled him. Just as the cheese went into the sack, he looked at Bru and asked, “Was that apple really magic?”
“Do you feel any different?”
Gord smiled and nodded. He felt far, far different. He even had a name now. “It was magic…”
“Magic is funny stuff, Gord. It isn’t anything to talk about, and what’s magical for one might be something different for another. Let’s you and I keep the secret of the apple magic to ourselves, and that way it will stay magic.” Then Bru picked up the sack, hefting it to determine how heavy it was. “I’d say you can just about carry this halfway to your place. I’ll tote the load that far for you, but then I’m heading off for a while.”
“Will you be off a long time?”
“Not a chance, Gord my friend, not a chance. In a day or two or three I’ll be bumping into you again. You keep a sharp eye out meanwhile for stuff you and old Leena need to stay alive-and for the dangers hereabouts too, right?”
“Right!”
Chapter 6
A double wall encircled the city. All of Greyhawk-Old City, the larger area called New Town, and the Citadel too-were within it. The outer curtain was some twenty-five feet high. This wall splayed out at the base where it met a ditch, or moat, or some other watercourse, and was topped with serried merlons and crenels to protect defenders in time of war.
Between the outer and inner walls was a relatively level sward a hundred or more feet broad! The outside edge of this strip of grass was level with the battlements that topped the outer wall. The crowning stone of the inner wall was much higher. The city had been built on a large hill-not especially high, but large in area. Those on the sward between the walls could look upward forty feet to where machicolated battlements stood topping the massively thick curtains of the inner wall. At intervals there were bastions on the outer wall, and matching them on the inside one were tall towers.
Wherever the walls were pierced by gates, the sward was broken. Every way that led into the city resembled a road at the bottom of a canyon. Travelers from the outside would pass through a gatehouse first, then a long passage, open above, but flanked by walls on either hand; then a tunnel that bored through another, bigger tower. Only then was one actually considered to be within the city of Greyhawk. The place was thus well protected. If a portion of the outer wall fell into enemy hands, the other segments could still be defended, and there was still, of course, the great inner wall as well.
The eastern curve of the metropolis followed the slope of the hill and the bank of the Grey Run. When Old City was the extent of Greyhawk, an island that stood opposite the stretch from Hillgate to Midgate was fortified as a first line of defense against attack. As the city expanded, the works of the island were strengthened. Eventually it became the Bastion, a fortress so strong that a major siege would have to be mounted to take it before the city could be assaulted. The Bastion was connected to Greyhawk by a pair of causeways, with appropriate bridges, and was both a garrison and a village in itself.
New Town was built to link the military fortress that overlooked the Selintan River to Old City, while in the process sufficient additional land was enclosed to provide for a larger population. There were villages there already, and eventually the engineers made the rambling walls follow the entire complex of ridges and hills that rolled from the northern tip of Old City to where the Grey Run and the Selintan flowed together. The walls that hemmed in the original city were left standing. They were not, of course, nearly so vast as the new outer wall that was built around both Old City and New Town, but they would serve to divide the place and help protect it too, just as the walls encompassing the Foreign Quarter were kept in place when it was the lower third of the entire city. The military fortress was strengthened and became the governmental heart of Greyhawk, the Citadel, while the old moat became a canal, with new ones added, for barge traffic up, down, and across the city.
As Hutsham and The Shacks huddled at the base of the outer wall along the broad Selintan, so too did buildings abut the inner works. The inner structures, however, were tall and substantial places of brick or masonry. The hovels outside Greyhawk were quite the opposite. Thus the whole place was defined and segregated. Old City from New Town, outside from in.
Each portion of Greyhawk was clearly defined and relatively ordered. This was especially true of the original part of the metropolis. There, because that part was made of older buildings crowded closely together, the less desirable elements of Greyhawk’s population were confined.
Old City’s southern third was, as it had long been, the Foreign Quarter of Greyhawk. This area was connected to the rest of the world by four gates, one going to the outside, two leading into New Town, one northward into the northern portion of Old City.
Two great gates led from the northern two-thirds of Old City to the outside, and two others gave access westward into New Town. Because Old City was quartered into sections for thieves, beggars, laborers, and brewers, and one portion known as the Slums, the whole place was shut up fast after dark. Walls can be used to keep enemies out, or undesirables in… at least in theory. Passages under the wall were numerous, from aqueducts and sewers that were part of common knowledge to those built for escape or more nefarious purposes. So too were there forgotten postern gates now masked by one building or another, and carefully made ways to allow a route between New Town and Old City after the gates were closed and barred. Yet if a thief or an adventurer could move about with relative freedom, not so the ordinary residents of Old City-especially not denizens of the Slum Quarter, and certainly not small urchins dwelling therein.
“What are all those horses doing here?” Gord’s eyes were big at the sight of a herd of about two score of the animals.
Bru explained. “Those are the mounts of a troop of the Greyhawk Guards, lad. There aren’t many cavalrymen in the city, of course, because mounted men aren’t very useful inside a crowded place.”
That made sense to Gord. He’d seen the carts and wagons typical of the place, vehicles drawn by massive draught horses or broken-down old nags. Mules and donkeys there were aplenty, as well as the occasional riding horse of some well-to-do visitor to the quarter. Someone on foot could easily elude a mounted man, thanks to narrow gangways, walls to scramble over, steep steps and narrow catwalks, and more. “Why have any… cavvary- men… at all?”
“Well, here on the Green they can be useful-no buildings. If an enemy got over the outer wall and up here, the cavalry would be used to drive them back. Every section of the Green has a troop or two of mounted men. If enemy troops ever actually got inside the city, all the cavalry would be withdrawn to defend the threatened part. See?”
They approached the big horses, and as the two did so Gord was pondering what he’d just been told. “Uncle Bru, if horses are not good inside the city, then why take them inside? That doesn’t make any sense to me.”
The big man laughed as he often did when Gord questioned him. The boy was used to it by now, and knew It was not meant as an insult. After all, he and the man he now called Uncle Bru had been good pals for a long time- about a year, he reckoned, although his childish mind didn’t keep track of time very closely. Bru helped to make sense of a lot of things for Gord. “There are places where the cavalry can be used. Along with men on foot, they can be a big help in defeating an invader.”
“When will we be attacked?”
“Never, I hope. Everyone should hope the same, because in wars there is a lot of suffering and people get killed.”
“But lots of people are pretty miserable now, Uncle Bru, and I’ve seen big fights where people get killed-like when the gangs fight each other,” the small boy explained.
“Those fights are like wars, Gord, but very little wars. Put ’em all together, every one you’ve ever seen, and that’s just a bit of what a real war is like.” Bru went on to explain why wars were fought, doing so in simple terms.
“Then we are free here in Greyhawk?”
