“They could have left the swine,” Stegoman grumbled. “The Moors will not eat pork.”
“Maybe we can find you a real boar.”
“Thank you, I have met too many of those.” Stegoman banked, coasting around the town, then cupped his wings, braking hard, and touched down on the main street.
Papa climbed down, looking about him with a shudder. “It is so empty! In the West, they might think it a ghost town!”
“I have to admit, Rinaldo did a great job getting his people out of here,” Matt agreed. He slid down off Stegoman’s shoulder and strode toward an inn. “Let’s see if anybody’s home… or if they left anything.”
“Why should they?” Papa asked. “The people in the last three towns didn’t.” He shook his head in amazement. “They were surprisingly efficient, these folk of Ibile. Fleeing an enemy, they would be expected to take only what was vital, or valuable… but we haven’t found a single plate or cup, not a stick of silverware or a spare sandal!”
“Maybe they have so little that even everyday things like that are very dear to them,” Matt suggested.
“Let’s see if these folk had any more in the way of priorities.”
One minute proved the building was empty of life above the cockroach level, and even the bugs were looking malnourished. Ten minutes’ searching, though, turned up a bonus. Matt came staggering back into the street under a double armload. “Hey, Stegoman! What do you think of this?”
The dragon scowled down. “As firewood, it is excellent. As carving, it lacks something… perhaps skill.”
“Yeah, but as meat, it should be delicious!” Matt dropped the two bulbous brown objects, careful to yank toes out of the way. “Whaddaya think?”
The dragon stared, then caught one of the things up in his mouth. He dropped it a second later. “I could chew it if I had to, but I might break a tooth… and quickly though I regrow them, it might not be worth the while.”
“Oh, they’ll be edible after we’ve soaked them overnight,” Matt told him. “Salty, but soft enough to eat.”
“What are they, wizard?”
“Hams,” Matt told him. “Salt-cured, smoked, and dried. Probably weighed too much to cart along. Just as you guessed, there was no worry about leaving them… the Moors won’t eat pig meat.”
There was, of course, the little problem of where to soak the hams.
“It does mean we’ll have to stay here overnight,” Matt pointed out. “You might be able to pack a dozen hams, but not a whole water tank.”
Papa dropped his load of hams and said, “Yes, we must stay the night.”
Matt frowned, looking about him. “I don’t like it. Not that I’m really worried about ghosts, mind you, but I’m not keen on staying in a place that’s so easy to infiltrate. No matter which house we choose, any good second-story man would have a dozen windows to choose from.”
“A point,” Papa admitted. “Therefore, let us sleep outside the town.”
“I don’t mind camping out,” Matt said, “and I suppose it’s an advantage to be able to see a mile in every direction… but it does feel a bit exposed, with the Mahdi’s army only three days behind us, and his scouting parties all around.”
Papa pointed at a structure poking up above the houses. “There. I noticed it as we came in. It is several hundred yards past the town.”
“A windmill?” Matt stared. “Hey, not a bad idea! The walls should be as thick as any in this country, and no windows on the ground floor! Shouldn’t be too hard to defend.”
“And being outside the town, it will probably have its own well,” Papa pointed out. “We shall find water for your hams.”
“Let’s go!” Matt said. “You climb up, Papa, and I’ll start tossing them up to you!”
They loaded the dozen hams as efficiently as experienced stevedores, then secured themselves for takeoff between Stegoman’s huge back plates. The dragon took a little run, a lot of flapping, and took off in time to clear the town wall by three feet. They soared out toward the windmill.
“Wait a minute!” Matt pointed down. “What’s that?”
They all looked down, in time to see Stegoman’s shadow glide over a man who labored along the roadway, leaning against the crossbar at the front of a wagon tongue. Behind him rolled a two-wheeled cart… but slowly, very slowly. The man was straining every muscle to keep it moving, for it was piled high with small pieces of furniture, wooden plates and spoons, pewter mugs and the occasional earthenware stein, feather beds, casks, and bottles. The stakes of the cart were hung with hams, sausages, and bulging wineskins.
“I think,” Papa said, “that we have found all the personal items that were so obvious by their absence in the three towns we visited.”
“Yes, and maybe half a dozen more! Either that, or he’s an innkeeper who can’t bear to leave his capital behind to be confiscated.”
“Would he truly rather risk death at the hands of the enemy?” Papa wondered.
“I don’t know, but I think we might want to ask him,” Matt said. “How about landing, Stegoman?”
“As you wish,” the dragon rumbled. His eye gleamed as he looked down at the hams. He banked into a tight curve. His shadow fell over the traveler again. The man looked up in alarm.
Stegoman circled back, coming lower, and the man dropped the wagon tongue in a panic. He sprinted away from his cart… then skidded to a halt. Face a mask of agony, torn between fear and avarice, he turned back, yanking a cudgel from his belt, and set himself between Stegoman and the cart as the dragon landed.
“Foolish man!” Stegoman rumbled. “Do you truly think that puny twig could halt me?”
The man flinched but held his ground. “If it doesn’t, I’d rather be dead!”
From the ground, Matt could see that the fellow wasn’t very large… maybe five feet tall and skinny as a rail. The wizard stared in disbelief at the man’s words. “You’d die rather than lose a cartful of junk that’s making you labor worse than a galley slave just to keep it with you?”
“I’ve never had anything before!” the man whined. “Not anything, except the shirt on my back and the lice in my hair! ‘No, Callio,’ they told me, ‘you can’t have this, and you can’t have that… unless you pay!’
And where was I supposed to get money to buy with? ‘We won’t hire you, Callio,’ they told me. ‘You’re too small to do any good.’ Now all of a sudden, here’s all these wonderful, useful things, in perfect condition, and they can’t really be very important to anybody, or no one would have left them behind!”
“On the contrary.” Papa slid down from the dragon’s back. “They are the little things that make a household comfortable and that bring delight to a wife’s heart. I think they were quite important indeed to the folk who left them.”
“They couldn’t be! Or they would have taken them with them somehow!”
“Important, but not so vital as spouses or children,” Papa corrected. “They took with them what they could easily carry or what was most important among their worldly goods. They left only the things that they wanted, but could do without.”
Matt nodded. “It was leave the extras, or travel so slowly that the Moors might catch them and sell them as slaves… or maybe even kill them in a battle frenzy. Only a fool would think possessions were worth his life.”
“All right, I’m a fool!” the little man screamed. “If the people who left all this thought they could do without them, then let them do without them now! It’s my turn to have some nice things!”
Matt slid down now, too. “That makes you just a common thief, you know.”
He was appalled when Callio burst into tears, sagging to his knees.