CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

The town stands on a main trade route, and is visited by a constant stream of travellers.
At first light the six companions, with two donkeys and a horse between them, set off along the road to the north. It consists of three or four cart tracks, sometimes more, which lie across the forest like so many strands of wool.
Once again the River So was a constant companion, but nothing else was the same. Chaldez got the impression that the whole world was on the move as he and his companions negotiated their way between the horses and oxen, the men, women and children, and heavy, lumbering carts which passed in droves.
On the borders of the kingdom, where the road crosses a wide tributary of the So, stands a walled town. Here the king's bailiffs assessed and extracted taxes from the itinerant merchants; no one crossed the bridge without their consent.
Chaldez wanted to avoid the town and find somewhere else to cross, but Habre, who by now knew about his predicament, said he would be in no danger. Pau agreed, and Chaldez was overruled. He understood why when he saw how much money was to be made in the town. Pau said, as they settled down with their zarathas: "We'll let them see that you're just another minstrel. They'll have no reason to suspect you."
Chaldez hoped he was right, especially when a group of armed soldiers strolled up to listen.
They stayed four days in the town before attempting to cross the bridge, and in the event were not hindered. When an officer spoke to Dan and Chaldez they shrugged and replied in Theigan, a language he had never heard before. If later he had been told that he had allowed the wanted prince of Sair to escape, he would have disputed it with his sword.
Along the great trade route, rest houses and inns are frequent so there was no need to sleep out. Money for board and lodgings, and a sword a-piece for Dan and Chaldez - they had been without theirs since the raid on the fair - was never short because every town they came to provided opportunities to earn more than enough. Chaldez and Pau played and sang together, and Habre and Dan collaborated to trick the townsfolk and travellers. In the evenings they ate and drank, and then Tassin and Eonni usually went to their beds, leaving the men to talk. Sometimes as Tassin left she directed a meaningful glance at Chaldez, and after an interval he would find some excuse to leave his friends and go to her bed where she would be waiting for him, naked and hot.
During the day the mere sight of her was enough to arouse him. Once, Habre and Eonni had to return to a town that they had left that morning, and while they were gone Pau and Dan went to a near-by stream to tickle trout. Tassin and Chaldez were left together, Tassin mending one of Pau's stockings, and Chaldez working on a tune for his zaratha. He settled down with it at some distance from where she was occupied with her needle and thread, but the others had hardly gone before she came and sat down next to him, stealing his concentration. Unable any more to play the zaratha, there was nothing else for him to do but play with her. Their love-game was long-drawn out and so abandoned that it was only by chance that they heard the approach of Pau and Dan, and then hurriedly they scrambled from the long dry grass where they had been tumbling, and tried to appear quite composed.

Afterwards Chaldez sometimes thought their deception had worked, and at others he was sure it could not have done. But Tassin seemed unconcerned one way or the other, and he believed she must have been right when she had told him that her husband would not object to Chaldez being her lover.

* * * *

The vast territory of the Soans, as Chaldez discovered, is chopped up into numerous squabbling principalities. For travellers crossing these unsettled domains, war is a recognised peril, and news of it quickly saturates the cosmopolitan towns, inns and rest houses on the trade route. Occasionally, however, a conflagration is so sudden that there can be no warning of it.
Pau's party had just reached one border town when there was a panic; they gathered that an army was approaching. Pau was in favour of joining the general exodus, but Dan and Habre were determined to stay. "The women will be safe with us!" Dan declared. "We'll take a room and barricade ourselves in."
The town was practically deserted by now. They went into an empty house, chose a room at the back which could be barricaded with furniture, and then Dan, Chaldez and Habre went to an upstairs room at the front from where they could see the main thoroughfare.
The army, when it arrived, was not an impressive sight. There were a few horsemen, followed by some archers, and then came about 500 foot soldiers. Some were quite well armed and on their tunics wore the emblem of their commander, but the majority were irregulars, and they looked it.
The army marched in at one end of the town and out of the other, without pausing.
The three figures at the upstairs window laughed and clapped one another's shoulders, and then went to tell the others.
On his way out of the house Dan helped himself to a leather bottle of wine. "Well," he explained to Chaldez, "think how disappointed they'd be to come back and find the place hadn't been looted."
The townsfolk, however, had good reason to be nervous when soldiers were in the offing, as the companions discovered some days later in another border area. They came to a town which was intact, but dead. An army commanded by the local ruler had passed through it a few days earlier and the soldiery had gone on the rampage, raping, slaughtering and robbing in an orgy of wanton violence. At the inn they found a waxen-faced woman attempting to maintain the business; they learned that she and her daughter had been raped, her daughter murdered and her husband and son murdered too, before her eyes. Chaldez was sickened, and even Dan seemed to be momentarily shocked.
Over the following few days Chaldez composed a mournful song in memory of her.
A local war is one of the great hazards of travelling through Soa; attack by bandits is another. Their presence in an area, once known, invariably results in feverish activity as travellers organise themselves into convoys, and seek out mercenaries to hire for their protection.
The six friends experienced this for themselves shortly after leaving the So valley. Guided by Habre, they had begun to follow the course of a tributary of the So, a considerable river in its own right which fell in a series of foaming cataracts from a high plateau in the east. Coming to a town early in the afternoon, they thought they had blundered into the middle of a religious festival. The road through the town, and the alleys and lanes leading off it, were full of people; it was as though a huge procession were being assembled.
The true picture emerged gradually: bandits had attacked and massacred some merchants two days previously and since then no-one arriving at the town from the west had dared leave it.
Dan and his companions milled around. There was no accommodation in the town and food was running short and there was no immediate prospect of joining a convoy.
The confusion and pervasive fear made it an unpleasant place to be. Dan said: "Let's go on." Habre nodded and Chaldez, who was by now eager to get away, shrugged and said: "I think so," but at the edge of the town he noticed that Pau and Tassin had become separated. Dan said they would catch up, and watched by an uneasy crowd, the four of them set out into the countryside beyond.
After a while Chaldez said he thought they should wait for the others, but Habre shook his head.
Chaldez stared at him. "What do you mean?" he demanded.
"I don't think they'll be coming."
Chaldez objected: "Pau didn't say anything."
Habre said: "He didn't need to."
"I'm going back for them," said Chaldez, and hurried back.
There was a desultory cheer from the on-lookers as he re-entered the town.
He found Pau and Tassin with the donkeys close to where the decision had been taken to continue the journey. But as he approached them he could see that they had remained behind deliberately.
"What's going on?" he asked.
Pau had a hard, unfriendly expression. "I am taking Tassin back to Sair," he said. "This is too dangerous for her."
Chaldez looked at Tassin. "We said we would go with you as far as Soa," she said. "We've come farther than we intended. That's all."
"I don't understand . . . " Chaldez began.
"Habre knows the way," said Pau. And then he added: "He and Eonni will look after you."
Tassin looked at Chaldez directly in the eye, but her expression gave nothing away.
Chaldez said: "Pau, I can see that you have made up your mind and I would not ask you to put yourselves at any more risk on my behalf than you have done already. This is a dangerous journey, and I am grateful that you have come with me so far."
Pau's eyes did not meet his. Chaldez felt that there was no more to be said. He looked once more at Tassin, but she too avoided his eyes. Then he thought of something: he was carrying Pau's spare zaratha across his back. He unhitched it. "I nearly went with this!" he exclaimed.
Pau looked at him without smiling. "Keep it," he said. "You'll need it."
As he spoke, the gulf that had opened up between them yawned wider. "Very well," said Chaldez. Reluctantly he turned and walked back towards the edge of the town. Dan, Habre and Eonni were waiting where he had left them. When he reached them he said: "They're not coming," a statement that apparently needed no explanation.