CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

Shortly after the fat man had gone, Chaldez felt hands gripping his shoulders. Twisting around he saw a stranger standing directly behind him. He grinned down at Chaldez, and then he shouted: "My friends - I have an important announcement. Silence please! We have a prince in our midst! A prince of Sair. And one guess who he is on his way to see . . . why, none other than our good King Gam! Gam the dead!" At this there was general hilarity, although there were one or two cries of "shame!"
Dan stood up, fighting angry. "Who said your king is dead?" he shouted.
"Dead these last two years," called the other derisively.
Dan retorted: "You lie!" and immediately his antagonist moved to confront him. He was shorter than Dan, but thick-set, and drunker.
Dan swung a wild punch, which missed, and a moment later was drenched in ale. Chaldez had picked up the jug from the table and slopped over him what was left in it. The tension broke, and the inn was full of laughter and cheering. Dan was so bewildered that he put up only token résistance when Chaldez hustled him out of the door, followed by Doo.
Outside, the sudden dark and the sting of cold air on his wet face had a sharply sobering effect. Chaldez shouted "You fool!" at him, and he lowered his head and shook it. The three of them were standing in silence when Doo gave a kind of gasp. "The pendant!" she exclaimed. "I haven't got it. It must have fallen!"
"It was wrapped up, wasn't it?" Chaldez asked. She said it was. Chaldez made as though to go back and get it, but she held his arm. "You're too well known in there," she said. "I'll slip in. I've a good idea where it'll be."
"If someone hasn't picked it up," said Dan, unaware in that dim light of the scowl she directed at him.
Chaldez was reluctant to let her go, but she was insistent.
He and Dan were still waiting for her when a group of men approached the tavern, some with torches, and all with staves and cudgels.
Dan and Chaldez shrank back instinctively, and with a shock Chaldez recognised the figure at their head; it was the same fat little man who had so recently left them. In his right hand he brandished a long sword which he thrust into the scabbard at his side as he pushed open the door of the tavern. He disappeared inside, and after a pause they heard his voice as he called out shrilly: "Is he here? Is Prince Chaldez here?"
Chaldez was trembling; he was on the verge of running. "Walk," Dan hissed. "Walk!"
They strode quickly towards the corner of the tavern, and rounding it, broke into a run. After a while they heard, in the distance behind them, raised voices. "Don't stop!" Chaldez urged Dan.
Only when they had left behind the last houses of the town did they dare slacken their pace. The road was now climbing steeply out of the gorge, while beside it an invisible stream rushed noisily downwards. They were very out of breath, and Dan stopped, holding his sides. "Hang on" he gasped.
Chaldez stopped too. "Doo!" he exclaimed, and immediately turned to go back.
Dan held his arm: "Are you mad?"
Chaldez stared at him in cold horror. "You don't understand," he said. "I'm going back for Doo."
"They'll kill you. You saw that mob! Doo will be all right."
"How can you say that?"

Dan shrugged. "I know this," he said. "Those people want to get their hands on just one person - you. Doo's nothing to them. We've got to get as far away as we can. In the morning they'll be looking for you, and they'll have horses. We've got to keep going."
His speech was still slightly slurred, but in every other respect he seemed to have sobered up completely.
Chaldez turned his back on the town and started walking again. He felt as though his insides had been wrenched out of him. He pictured Doo as he had last seen her, and tried to imagine what she would be thinking at that moment.
Dan might have been reading his thoughts. "She'll be glad you got away when you did," he said.
Chaldez supposed he was right. "But she'll expect us to come back, won't she?"
"How can we go back? She'll know we can't do that."
"So what will happen to her?"
"Look - she's all right! Doo can look after herself."
"How can she? She doesn't even speak the language here."
"She'll pick up what she needs to. She's not stupid."
"I wish I knew she was all right! If she's found the pendant at least she won't starve. How could she have dropped it?" He was irritated now, but Dan was thinking of something else.
"If she finds it, she's better off than we are."
His tone menacing, Chaldez said: "I hope you don't begrudge her that?" And he added: "Anyway, we've got the money from the jewels."
"That won't last long."
There was still a sharpness in Chaldez's tone when he said: "As long as it gets us to Sorrin it won't have to," but even as he spoke he knew that the Eujinni capital, without Gam on the throne there, could not be their ultimate destination. They both did, and they became silent, each wondering what was to become of them.
For the last few days, since leaving Budenrath in fact, Chaldez had put all his hopes in Gam, a powerful ruler who would surely help him destroy Sigmar. And now all those hopes were dead. His future was suddenly a blank. He trudged along in deepening gloom, and then the thought occurred to him that there was no reason why Gam's successor should not be sympathetic to his cause. He was presumably Gam's eldest son and would therefore know all about Sigmar's crimes. Chaldez resolved that if he proved to be an ally, he would send for Doo at once. The thought lifted his gloom. "Well," he said brightly, "we did get away. I don't know if they wanted to kill me back there or what but we've had a lucky escape."
Dan was morose. He only grunted. The effect of the ale was beginning to make his head ache. He had given up speculating upon what they would do when they reached the capital. He just wanted to find somewhere to sleep.
They walked on. The going was easier, now that the track had levelled off. On either side of them was thick woodland; the sound of the cascade had gone. A thin, pale moon provided enough light for them to see where they were going, and occasionally, at the top of a rise or an opening in the trees, it vouchsafed them a view of the wooded hills in front of them, their hummocky, uneven shapes silhouetted black against a sky streaked with skeins of high cloud.
Dan grumbled: "I could do with being on a horse," and as though in answer there came across the still night air a shrill whinny. He looked at Chaldez and grinned. "I do believe the gods heard me! Your god, Arwarnhi, eh?"

Arwarnhi, God of the Woods; Chaldez smiled. It would not have surprised him.
The track was following a long curve but presently it straightened out. On the right there was a clearing among the trees, and on it the red flicker of several small fires showed among the dark shapes of an encampment.
Without giving the matter a second thought, Dan and Chaldez made straight towards it.
The first shape they could clearly distinguish was that of a four-wheeled ox-cart. The thought that they might spend the night in it occurred to them both - it would be better than lying on the ground - but as they got near it a dog rushed at them, barking furiously.
They were backing away when several figures materialised out of the darkness.
"Who are you?" a voice shouted.
"What do you want?" called another.
"We're travellers," said Dan. "We're looking for somewhere to sleep. We can pay . . ."

* * * *

The camp, they were to discover, was that of a travelling fair. It had been to Reard, for the purchase of metalware from Kroya, and was now traversing Eujinni, setting down on the outskirts of every sizable town it happened upon.
It was a cosmopolitan community, with traders from Laifya, musicians from Sair, dark-skinned acrobats from Karandi, animal trainers from Fanya, and rogues and adventurers from all over.
Dan and Chaldez spent their first night bedded down among piles of cured hides on the back of the ox-cart. The smell was powerful but they soon became inured to it.
They awoke before dawn, their sleep broken by the barking of dogs and a welter of voices. Stiff-limbed and muddled, they clambered off the cart, and watched as fires were re-kindled and tents dismantled. Their presence was ignored, except by an occasional dog which came and sniffed them.
The smell of hot bread and cooking meat drew them to one of the near-by camp fires. Several women were squatting around it, cooking flat bread on broad iron griddles, or cutting up roots to put into the bubbling contents of blackened iron pots. One of the women turned and spoke sharply to them in a language they did not understand. The others looked up at them then, and shooed them away. Reluctantly they wandered off, feeling hungrier than ever, and cold despite their heavy travelling cloaks.
As they approached the next fire, Chaldez noticed one of the women glancing at him repeatedly. He gave her the frank, friendly smile which he had first discovered how to use when he was living at the royal stavista in Jeggan. She smiled back. He nudged Dan, and they advanced towards her. She continued to squat, looking up at them as they approached. She said something in a language that they did not understand. Chaldez, smiling still, shook his head. "We speak Eujinni," he said. "I understand some Sairish."
Lewvin had arranged for him to be taught it all those years ago when they had been guests of Gam; if he was to be king of Sair, she reasoned, he must speak his subjects’ language.