He came away from the window again and took up a large pitcher that stood on one of the low tables by the wall. He lifted the pitcher above his head and carefully up-ended it, his eyes closed, his face raised. There was no water in the pitcher, so nothing happened. The young man sighed, gazed briefly at the painting of a sailing ship on the side of the empty jug, and gently replaced it on the table, exactly where it had been.
He shook his head and turned away, striding up to one of the hall's two giant fireplaces. He hauled himself up onto the broad mantelpiece, where he stared intently at one of the ancient weapons mounted on the wall; a huge wide-mouthed gun with an ornamental stock and open firing mechanism. He started trying to prise the blunderbuss away from the stonework, but it was too firmly attached. He gave up after a while and jumped to the floor, staggering a little as he landed.
"See anything?" said the voice again, hopefully.
The young man walked carefully from the fireplace towards one corner of the hall, and a long, ornate sideboard. Its top was covered by a profusion of bottles, as was a considerable area of the nearby floor. He searched through the collection of mostly broken, mostly empty bottles until he found one that was intact and full. When he found it he sat carefully on the floor, broke the bottle open against the leg of a nearby chair, and emptied into his mouth the half of the bottle's contents that hadn't spilled over his clothes or splashed across the mosaic. He coughed and spluttered, put the bottle down, then kicked it away under the sideboard as he got up.
He made his way towards another corner of the hall, and a tall pile of clothes and guns. He picked up a gun, untangling it from a knot of straps, sleeves and ammunition belts. He inspected the weapon, then threw it down again. He swept several hundred small empty magazines aside to get at another gun, but then discarded that one too. He picked up two more, checked them and slung one round his shoulder while placing the other on a rug-covered chest. He went on through the weapons until he had three guns slung about him, and the chest was nearly covered with various bits and pieces of hardware. He swept the gear on the chest into a tough, oil-stained bag and dumped that on the floor.
"No," he said.
As he spoke, there was a deep rumble, unlocated and indeterminate, something more in the ground than in the air. The voice under the table muttered something.
The young man walked over to the windows, setting the guns down on the floor.
He stood there a while, looking out.
"Hey," said the voice under the table. "Help me up, will you? I'm under the table."
"What're you doing under the table, Cullis?" said the young man, kneeling to inspect the guns; tapping indicators, twisting dials, altering settings and squinting down sights.
"Oh, this and that; you know."
The young man smiled, and crossed to the table. He reached underneath and with one arm dragged out a large, red-faced man who wore a field-marshal's jacket a size too big for him, and who had very short grey hair and only one real eye. The large man was helped up; he stood carefully, then slowly brushed one or two bits of glass off the jacket. He thanked the young man by slowly nodding his head.
"What time is it, anyway?" he asked.
"What? You're mumbling."
"Time. What time is it?"
"It's day time."
"Ha." The large man nodded wisely. "Just as I thought." Cullis watched the young man go back to the window and the guns, then heaved himself away from the great table; he arrived, eventually, at the table holding the large water-pitcher which was decorated with a painting of an old sailing ship.
He lifted the pitcher up, swaying slightly, turned it upside down over his head, blinked his eyes, wiped his face with his hands and flapped the collar of his jacket.
"Ah," he said, "that's better'.
"You're drunk," said the young man, without turning away from the guns.
The older man considered this.
"You almost manage to make that sound like a criticism," he replied, with dignity, and the tapped his false eye and blinked over it a few times. He turned as deliberately as possible and faced the far wall, staring at a mural of a sea battle. He fixed on one particularly large warship portrayed there and seemed to clench his jaw slightly.
His head jerked back, there was a tiny cough and a whine that terminated in a miniature explosion; three metres away from the warship in the mural, a large floor-standing vase disintegrated in a cloud of dust.
The large grey-haired man shook his head sadly and tapped his false eye again. "Fair enough," he said, "Im drunk."
The young man stood up, holding the guns he had selected, and turned to look at the older man. "If you had two eyes you'd be seeing double. Here; catch."
So saying, he threw a gun towards the older man, who stretched out one hand to catch it at just the same time as the gun hit the wall behind him and clattered to the floor.
Cullis blinked. "I think," he said, "I would like to go back under the table."
The young man came over, picked up the gun, checked it again, and handed it to the older man, wrapping his large arms around it for him. Then he manoeuvred Cullis over to the pile of weapons and clothes.
The older man was taller than the young man, and his good eye and the false eye — which was in fact a light micro-pistol — stared down at the young man as he pulled a couple of ammunition belts from the floor and slung them over the older man's shoulders. The young man grimaced as Cullis looked at him; he reached up and turned the older man's face away, then from a breast pocket in the too-big field-marshal's jacket extracted what looked like — and was — an armoured eye-patch. He fitted the strap carefully over the taller man's grey, crew-cut head.
"My god!" Cullis gasped, "I've gone blind!"
The young man reached up and adjusted the eye patch. "Your pardon. Wrong eye."
"That's better." The older man drew himself up, taking a deep breath. "Where are the bastards?" his voice was still slurred; it made you want to clear your throat.
"I can't see them. They're probably still outside. The shower yesterday is keeping the dust down." The young man put another gun into Cullis" arms.
"The bastards."
"Yes, Cullis." A couple of ammunition boxes were added to the guns cradled in the older man's arms.
"The filthy bastards."
"That's right, Cullis."
"The… Hmm, you know, I could do with a drink." Cullis swayed. He looked down at the weapons cradled in his arms, apparently trying to puzzle out how they had appeared there.
The young man turned round to lift more guns from the pile, but changed his mind when he heard a large clattering, breaking noise behind him.
"Shit," Cullis muttered, from the floor.
The young man went over to the bottle-strewn sideboard. He loaded up with as many full bottles as he could find and returned to where Cullis was snoring peacefully under a pile of guns, boxes, ammunition belts and the dark-splintered remains of a formal banqueting chair. He cleared the debris off the older man and undid a couple of buttons on the too-large field-marshal's jacket, then stuffed the bottles inside, between jacket and shirt.
Cullis opened his eye and watched this for a moment. " Whattime did you say it was?"
He buttoned Cullis" jacket up halfway. "Time to go, I think."
"Hmm. Fair enough. You know best, Zakalwe." Cullis closed his eye again.
The young man Cullis had called Zakalwe walked quickly to one end of the great table, which was covered by a comparatively clean blanket. A large, impressive gun lay there; he picked it up and returned to the large, unimpressive form snoring on the floor. He took the old man by the collar and backed off towards the door at the end of the hall, dragging Cullis with him. He stopped to pick up the oil-stained bag full of weaponry he'd sorted out earlier, slinging that over one shoulder.