“I’ll bet it’s harder than it looks,” ’Gren protested.
We were watching a lad balancing one shaft of wood upright on the end of another. Given both pieces were about as long as my arm but barely thicker than the circle of my finger and thumb, I suppose it wasn’t that easy. The lad got the balance right and the circle of admiring youths around him rapidly broke away. The lad thrust upward, the top shaft soared high, fell back, and he hit it smack in the middle with the piece he still held, a full-blooded blow that sent it away in a soaring arc. A cheer went up and a little boy went scampering down the grassy strip that divided vegetable gardens from the wide muddy flow of the Pasfal. He retrieved the billet of wood and marked where it fell with a piece of stick. The youths were taking advantage of their noon break to practice for the forthcoming Solstice celebrations.
A gate opened in one fence and a woman looked out to see the cause of the commotion. She shouted, and after a few defiant responses the lads drifted away through the alleys that led up to the market square and the high road. A few yelled mocking insults, but only after the woman’s gate was safely closed. The sweet scent of roses floated on the breeze. Most of the fences were covered in pink-edged yellow blooms and we had left our landlady debating when would be the best time to cut hers for the mid-summer door garland. Early enough to steal a march on her neighbors, late enough that the blooms would not drop too soon, that was her dilemma.
“When is the Solstice?” I asked ’Gren as we continued to wander aimlessly upstream, chewing on rough bread and sharp yellow cheese. “I can’t recall when I last saw an almanac.”
“Yours or theirs?” He offered me a bite of his cold bacon.
I gave him a look. “Solstice is Solstice wherever you are, ’Gren. That’s the whole point of us being here.”
“Four days from now,” he told me after a moment’s thought, “and they get two days’ holiday.”
“We’d get five in Ensaimin,” I grumbled, “as well as a lot more exciting sport than peasants beating the sap out of defenseless bits of firewood.”
“There’s going to be bonfires,” ’Gren volunteered. “And a venison roast. Lord Pastiss gives the town some stags for the festival.”
As well he might, given he was so keen for them to break their backs earning their days of leisure. I looked up at the massive bulk of Castle Pastamar, the great keep distant and unassailable inside the ring of its walls. Tall towers were spaced to give warning of any assault and in particular to keep watch on the great span of the bridge. The stone arches rose above us as we wandered along the bank, marching away across the river low in the summer heat. Lord Pastiss’s device, the silver boar’s head on a blue ground, was on a carved and painted stone shield above the central span, on the pennants that fluttered from the guard posts at either end of the bridge and flying from just about every vantage point on the great gray fortress. It had to make him feel important to see his emblem everywhere, something to make up for his fiefdom being mostly made up of peasants grubbing a living from scrubby pasture, untamed woodland and rank marsh.
Wagons rattled across the bridge, halted to pay their dues and voices drifted down to us, arguing the rights and wrongs of Soluran duties levied by the wheel rather than by the axle. Understanding them was some reward for spending the endless walk back down the length of the Pasfal badgering Sorgrad to teach me what he knew of the Soluran tongue and extending my knowledge of the Mountain speech. It had given me something to concentrate on when my impatience with Usara threatened to boil clear over into rage.
’Gren looked at the muddy path beneath the nearest arch of the bridge with disfavor. We’d kept reminding each other to look to the long game but I wasn’t going to do that for much longer and nor was he. “So when did Usara say this mysterious person was due?”
In unspoken agreement we turned back up into the little town and I remembered again I needed to find someone hereabouts to resole my boots. “He said the Solstice holiday.” I paused at the edge of the street, hard-packed earth without so much as a cobblestone. That was no particular problem with the summer sun keeping it dry, but come the autumn rains it would be axle-deep in mud. Well, whichever way the runes fell, I would be long gone by then. Frustration surged up within me; this was like a bad dream I’d once had, being stuck in a game where for every winning throw I lost twice the coin on the next hand, but for some reason I’d never quite grasped I couldn’t just throw in the runes and walk away from the table. No, it was more like being stuck in one of those pointless mazes that were currently all the rage for the Tormalin nobility. Or had that fad passed? Fashions could change a great deal in the quarter-year I’d been on the road, couldn’t they? I suddenly found myself missing Ryshad horribly.
“This friend of your boy had better bring something useful to the party,” muttered ’Gren. “We’ve come a long way from the uplands for nothing, if he hasn’t.”
“He says this person will know how to contact Anyatimm in the mountains south of Mandarkin and make inquiries of the Sheltya up there.” My calm reply was a notable achievement given I’d argued the point with Usara all the way from the uppermost tributaries of the Pasfal down to this broad and barge-laden waterway.
“Who’s to say that Sheltya woman hasn’t warned every rekin, fess and soke against us from the Gap to the Wild-lands?” retorted ’Gren.
“You go and convince Sorgrad then,” I snapped. “As long as he’s backing the wizard, we either go along with him or strike out on our own.” Sorgrad had been adamant with all the authority of an elder brother that we retreat long enough for the echoes of our precipitous expulsion to die away.
I felt an odd qualm of fear, and not for the first time, as I contemplated going back to the mountains. Was I turning coward? Was it the lurking realization that if I found myself facing Saedrin’s questions at the door to the Otherworld Ryshad would be left on this side, grieving for me?
’Gren was muttering, hands shoved crossly in his pockets.
“Come on, maybe it won’t be so bad spending the festival here.” I turned down the broad street, the gables of cruck-framed and thickly thatched houses on either side. Shops and workrooms were set nearest the roadway, households living in the next room back, kitchens and the like beyond. A few of the long low buildings had clouded glass in their windows, but most simply had wooden shutters and none looked very secure; I doubted if anyone had anything worth stealing though. We skirted around a noisome heap of plaster being mixed with dung where some keen peasant was mending his mud and wicker walls.
Soluran notions haven’t progressed as far as inns. Anyone with money or influence stopping here stayed in the castle; the more important, the closer they lodged to the keep where Lord Pastiss and his family held court. Everyone else had their choice of the various houses that sold ale, offered food or let out rooms. Solurans patch together a living in many and varied ways.
I pushed open the door to our lodging. The stale and sweaty odor of the dim interior told me our hostess had acquired another lot of discarded clothing from somewhere. She made most of her coin begging worn-out garments from her neighbors, washing and mending them and then selling the shoddy goods back again. For all that, she reckoned herself comfortably off. She had proudly explained to me that what I had taken for oddly shaped cobbles underfoot were in fact the joint ends of cattle bones, split and driven into the earth. It was a hardwearing surface apparently, warmer to the touch than stone and for these parts reckoned luxury.
There was no sign of Sorgrad or Usara so I shut the door and looked at ’Gren. “Where do you suppose they are?”
“Getting some food?” he suggested hopefully.
“Livak!”
To be hailed by name so far from home instantly turned my head. A heavily built man rode up on a stubborn-nosed black horse. The man’s close cropped hair and full beard were much the same color as his steed’s and his neck about as thick. He wore a scarlet cloak over a chainmail hauberk, shoulders massive with the padding of his arming tunic, but the size of his hands on the reins showed most of his bulk was honest muscle. A few peasants glanced incuriously at him; men in mail, long swords at their belt were a common enough sight in and around the castle.