‘That’s a fine-looking garment you’ve got there, friend,’ the toll-taker noted, looking with a certain envy at the wolf-eared tunic Althalus wore.
‘It keeps the weather off,’ Althalus replied with a casual shrug.
‘Where did you come by it?’
‘Up in Hule,’ Althalus replied. ‘I happened across this wolf, you see, and he was about to jump on me and tear out my throat so that he could have me for supper. Now, I’ve always sort of liked wolves – they sing so prettily – but I don’t like them well enough to provide supper for them. Particularly when I’m going to be the main course. Well, I happened to have this pair of bone dice with me, and I persuaded the wolf that it might be more interesting if we played dice to decide the matter instead of rolling around on the ground trying to rip each other apart. So we put up the stakes on the game and started rolling the dice.’
‘What stakes?’ the bearded clansman asked.
‘My carcass and his skin, of course.’
The toll-taker started to laugh.
‘Well,’ Althalus began to expand the story, ‘I just happen to be the best dice-player in all the world – and we were playing with my dice, and I’ve spent a lot of time training those dice to do what I want them to do. Well, to cut this short, the wolf had a little run of bad luck, so I’m wearing his skin now, and he’s up there in the forest of Hule shivering in the cold because he’s running around naked.’
The tattooed man laughed even harder.
‘Have you ever seen a naked wolf with goose-bumps all over him?’ Althalus asked, feigning a sympathetic expression. ‘Pitiful! I felt terribly sorry for him, of course, but a bet is a bet, after all, and he did lose. It wouldn’t have been ethical for me to give his skin back to him after I’d fairly won it, now would it?’
The toll-taker doubled over, howling with laughter.
‘I felt sort of sorry for the poor beast, and maybe just a little bit guilty about the whole business. I’ll be honest about it right here and now, friend. I did cheat the wolf a few times during our game, and just to make up for that I let him keep his tail – for decency’s sake, of course.’
‘Oh, that’s a rare story, friend!’ the chortling toll-taker said, clapping Althalus on the back with one meaty hand. ‘Gosti’s got to hear this one!’ And he insisted on accompanying Althalus across the rickety bridge, through the shabby village of log-walled and thatch-roofed huts, and on up to the imposing log fort that overlooked the village and the bridge that crossed the foaming river.
They entered the fort and proceeded into the smoky main hall. Althalus had visited many of the clan halls in the highlands of Arum, so he was familiar with these people’s relaxed approach to nearness, but Gosti’s hall elevated untidiness to an art-form. Like most clan halls, this one had a dirt floor with a fire-pit in the center. The floor was covered with rushes, but the rushes appeared not to have been changed for a dozen years or so. Old bones and assorted other kinds of garbage rotted in the corners, and hounds – and pigs – dozed here and there. It was the first time Althalus had ever encountered pigs as house-pets. There was a rough-hewn table across the front of the hall, and seated at that table stuffing food into his mouth with both hands was the fattest man Althalus had ever seen. There could be no question about the man’s identity, since Gosti Big Belly came by his name honestly. He had pig-like little eyes and his pendulous lower lip hung down farther than his chin. A full haunch of roasted pork lay on the greasy table in front of him, and he was ripping great chunks of meat from that haunch and stuffing them into his mouth. Just behind him stood a huge man with hard, unfriendly eyes.
‘Are we disturbing him at lunchtime?’ Althalus murmured to his guide.
The tattooed clansman laughed. ‘Not really,’ he replied. ‘With Gosti, it’s a little hard to tell exactly which meal he’s eating, since they all sort of run together. Gosti eats all the time, Althalus. I’ve never actually seen him do it, but there are some here who swear that he even eats while he’s asleep. Come along. I’ll introduce you to him – and to his cousin Galbak, too.’
They approached the table. ‘Ho, Gosti!’ the tattooed man said loudly to get the fat man’s attention, ‘this is Althalus. Have him tell you the story of how he came by this fine wolf-eared tunic of his.’
‘All right,’ Gosti replied in a deep, rumbling voice, taking a gulp of mead from his drinking horn. He squinted at Althalus with his pig-like little eyes. ‘You don’t mind if I keep earing while you tell me the story, do you?’
‘Not at all, Gosti,’ Althalus said. ‘You do appear to have a little gaunt spot under your left thumbnail, and I certainly wouldn’t want you to start wasting away right in front of my eyes.’
Gosti blinked and then he roared with laughter, spewing greasy pork all over the table. Galbak, however, didn’t so much as crack a smile.
Althalus expanded the story of his dice game with the wolf into epic proportions, and by night-fall he was firmly ensconced in the chair beside the enormous fat man. After he’d told various versions of the story several times for the entertainment of all the fur-clad clansmen who drifted into the hall, he invented other stories to fill the hall of Gosti Big Belly with nearly continuous mirth. No matter how hard he tried, however, Althalus could never get so much as a smile out of the towering Galbak.
He wintered there, and he was more than welcome to sit at Gosti’s table, eating Big Belly’s food and drinking his mead, as long as he could come up with new stories and jokes to keep Gosti’s belly bouncing up and down with laughter. Gosti’s own occasional contributions obviously bored his clansmen, since they were largely limited to boasts about how much gold he had stored away in his strongroom. The clansmen had evidently heard those stories often enough to know them all by heart. Althalus found them moderately fascinating, however.
The winter plodded on until it was finally spring and by then Althalus knew every corner of Big Belly’s hall intimately.
The strongroom wasn’t too hard to locate, since it was usually guarded. It was at the far end of the corridor where the dining hall was located, and three steps led up to the heavy door. A massive bronze lock strongly suggested that things of value were kept inside.
Althalus noticed that the night-time guards didn’t take their jobs very seriously, and by midnight they were customarily fast asleep – a condition not uncommon among men who take large jugs of strong mead to work with them.
All that was left to do now was to wait for the snow to melt – and to stay on the good side of Gosti and his sour-faced giant cousin. If all went well, Althalus would be in a hurry when he left. Galbak had very long legs, so Althalus didn’t want deep snow in the passes to slow him down enough for Galbak to catch up with him.
Althalus took to frequently stepping out into the courtyard to check the progress of the spring thaw, and when the last snowdrift disappeared from a nearby pass, he decided that the time had come for him to take his leave.
As it turned out, the strongroom of Gosti Big Belly wasn’t nearly as strong as Gosti thought it was, and late one night when the fire in the pit in the center of the hall had burned down to embers and Gosti and his clansmen were filling the corners with drunken snores, Althalus went to that strongroom, stepped over the snoring guards, undid the simple latch, and slipped inside to transfer some ownership. There was a crude table and a sturdy bench in the center of the room and a pile of heavy-looking skin bags in one corner. Althalus took up one of the bags, carried it to the table, and sat down to count his new wealth.
The bag was about the size of a man’s head, and it was loosely tied shut. Althalus eagerly opened the bag, reached his hand inside, and drew out a fistful of coins.
He stared at the coins with a sinking feeling. They were all copper. He dug out another