‘Aren’t you ready yet?’ Alice, beyond the curtain, asked.
‘Almost.’ He dried his face, came out.
‘You’ve read some of the Malthassa books,’ he said. ‘What does Koschei look like – the Mage, the chief male character?’
‘Well, if you don’t know –’ she began.
‘I do. I just want you to describe him for me.’
‘OK. Um – he is very dark, hair I mean and skin. A bit Arabian, I suppose. His eyelids droop, to make him look really sinister – and he has a big scratchy beard. Yuck!’
‘You wouldn’t like to be in bed with him?’
‘No way! He’s a nasty piece of work.’
‘Is he? Is that how you read him? He began as a noble man, although a questioner. At first, he was a simple adventurer.’
Pleased by the manner in which my adventure away from the route between Tanter and the battle at Myrah Pits had ended, I sat beside the horse-butcher on his flat cart. It was our raft of oblivion and good will, both conditions induced by our astonishing sojourn in the village and by the stupendous quantities of alcohol administered to us at the end of the midsummer fest.
The cart belonged to the butcher. It had been commandeered by the villagers and used to transport the summer brides in their procession about the fields. An arch of withies had been nailed to it and this, still hung with wilted grasses and small field flowers, remained. The butcher said he might fix a tarpaulin to it, to keep off the sun. He was a slack fellow. He had promised to buy me a meal, but we never stopped at an inn.
In addition to the withered garlands and we two men, the cart carried two dead horses. These, a red and a red roan, lay quiet but nodded their heads – which hung over the tail of the cart – to the jolt of the ruts. The live horse which pulled them snorted and tossed his head to keep the flies in motion.
‘You’re a good horse,’ the butcher said and wrenched on the reins. When the cart stopped he leaped from it through the gathering cloud of flies and into the ditch, where he pissed copiously and plucked a large bunch of herbs. These, he carried to the horse’s head where, standing with legs akimbo and shirt and breeches gaping, he tucked the leafy stems into and under the straps of the bridle. He made a noise, Waahorhorhor! to the horse or in relief, scratched his belly, fastened his buttons and mounted to the driver’s seat.
‘Perhaps they would also like to be decorated,’ I dryly said.
‘Naw.’ The butcher was emphatic. ‘One bunch should do for the lot of us, dead and alive. Strong stuff.’
The flies which had made a sortie to examine the effect of the herbs rejoined their companions and helped them annoy me. But the butcher seemed impervious and soon began to sing in time with the jolting of the cart,
When I _____ was a lad
I __________ loved a lass
But she loved another
MAN
Oh
When I ______
I took off my hat and beat the air with it. The flies rose up like a whirlwind, and descended again. I, too, sang.
In this manner, we travelled some eight or ten miles. The Plains and their mean margins were behind us and I was cheered; but the forest lay before and this knowledge was death to the brief springtime of my heart. I looked at the butcher, whose flushed face was covered in beads of sweat and flies.
‘Do you not fear the forest?’ I said.
‘It is but trees. I have trees in my garden. In the forest there are many more, but they are the same things of trunks and branches.’
‘Then, do you not fear the Beautiful Ones?’
‘I have never seen a puvush.’
‘Hush! There may be one nearby. I think you are a city man who knows the stone street better then the forest track.’
‘All but a few leagues of the forest is trackless, so I have heard. But you are correct. I am a man of Pargur.’
‘Pargur!’
‘It is not quite as marvellous as they say; perhaps only half as much – perhaps half equal to your wildest dreams.’
The forest closed in as we talked. It seemed to me that puvushi might well be hiding under the forest’s canopy, green and brown as the shadows and, beside, that each rill and boggy place was the home of a nivasha. As well as these spirits, I feared the Om Ren, the Wild Man, which might lie in ambush awaiting unwary travellers; and the Duschma, she of plague and agony. I had seen her twice, once in a sleepy village where she watched our column pass and smiled horribly and, again, stalking the battlefield in search of fresh young men to feed on. My sword was blunt against such and, from past and recent experience, I knew I would not be proof against the allure (false though it is) of the earth and water spirits. Soon, I must leave this gross but, nevertheless, human horse-butcher. Ahead, the dwarf Erchon had told me, the ways parted in a wide Y and the left-hand fork went towards the town of Myrah, while the right-hand veered across a tract of forest fringe. Somewhere beyond this, the battle raged. A mighty chestnut tree grew in the cleft of the Y and under this Erchon had promised me he would wait. I should not be alone in the forest; but a dwarf is not a man. They keep their own customs. Erchon, disregarding the duty Nemione had impressed upon him, had left me for three weeks to meet his fellows at one of these arbitrary gatherings.
The chestnut trailed its leafy skirt upon the ground. Erchon was nowhere to be seen; in hiding, no doubt. He fears the forest folk as much as I, despite his boast that the nivashi cannot scent dwarves, I thought. I said goodbye to the butcher, his raggedy, weed-bedizened cart, his dead horses and the flies.
‘Goodbye, Master Wolf,’ he replied, screwing one of his eyes into a hideous wink and confounding me with his words. I had been careful to reveal neither identity nor allegiances; I wore an old shirt and jacket over my cuirass and, further, had tied a dirty length of cloth I’d bought for a farthing in Tanter slantwise about my body to suggest to any bold jack that I was a brigand. My beard was growing fast.
‘I see it in your eyes,’ the butcher explained. ‘A look of confidence – nay, arrogance – under the dirt.’
‘I suppose it’s useless to ask you to hold your tongue,’ I said.
‘I’m not such a gossip as you suppose, not even in my cups. I leave that to my wife.’
I gave him more than he deserved, a silver threepenny bit, and wondered what kind of woman would allow him to bed her. The butcher tested the coin on his teeth.
‘A good one,’ he said. ‘Thank ye. I’ll keep it in case I meet a werewolf.’
I watched him drive off, watched him till he was out of sight. Then I called softly,
‘Erchon, Master Scantling.’ He liked his nickname and usually answered it at once; but there was no response. I called again and, pushing the pendant branches of the chestnut tree aside, crept into its shadow. All I found was a dappled green shade, empty. I circumnavigated the tree. Nothing.
I cursed Erchon. The universal reputation dwarves have for carousing is fully justified. I supposed the wretch lay drunk in some alley or fleet. I wished he would awake with the father and mother of sore heads and a sick stomach as well.
I did not know what to do. Soon, it would be dusk; then, dark. I had planned to set up temporary home with his