Chapter 3.

As twilight settled over Secamelan, Lyrec sat at the same table in the tavern, drinking and chatting with Grohd. His cheek was rosy and his gaze distant, but these were the only signs that the incredible amount of grynne he had drunk had affected him at all.

This imbibing of grynne impressed Grohd. He could have accepted anything about Lyrec, any dreadful truth, in light of this remarkable bibulous capacity. Secretly, he was pleased with the biographical information he had heard—that it tallied so closely with what he had guessed originally. He had no idea how many of the place names and notions he’d supplied Lyrec himself.

The story unfolded slowly: Lyrec had been abroad most of his life, in search of a long lost acquaintance who had struck out alone before him; passing through so many lands, he’d forgotten most of his native knowledge, customs, nuances. The blood of cultural veins all ran together. When asked, he informed Grohd that the minstrel of the previous day was not the person Lyrec sought. Their coincident accents were simply the result of common location rather than familiarity.

None of the details of the story surprised Grohd. He had heard many strange tales of men who had journeyed off in search of promised riches, and he had never met one who came back with anything to show for it save the skin on his bones, and sometimes not even that. He himself was no traveler, and he relished the tales of lands he’d encountered only in legend or myth, and in particular the one tale of a land he had never heard mentioned before, a land decimated by grim plague which Lyrec and the cat had barely survived.

Like two old sailors home from the seas, the two men dramatized and mythicized; Grohd matched every story with one of his own, and also matched the pilgrim for every drink. Lyrec insisted on paying for them all—and for the big cat’s as well, whenever the black beast seemed so inclined. Grohd put up an argument at having his own drinks bought; but not so strong an argument that he came anywhere near winning it. Lyrec was paying enough to supply drinks to a full tavern.

Being so much smaller than the two men, Borregad required little of the heady brew to reach his own plateau of insensibility. Within the first hour his blue eyes had glazed; by the second hour his eyelids had drooped almost shut; and after the third, his eyes had sprung wide open and thereafter remained crossed, even as he sprawled over on his back with his feet in the air. Now he lay with a hind foot dangling off the table, sleeping soundly, his head propped on both forepaws, a formidable stalactite of tooth protruding on each side of his mouth.

A handful of locals wandered in late in the afternoon, their field work done for awhile and left with a few hours to kill before drifting off to their evening meals. They needed no encouragement to join in the discussion, adding tall tales more often than solid knowledge to what Lyrec had already learned. He kept them supplied with grynne until they were in their cups, and probed each one as the opportunity arose. Finally, toward sundown, they stumbled off together in a single pack like a convoluted centipede going out the door.

Grohd looked after them. “Drunken fools,” he proclaimed amiably as the door closed. Then he belched with deep satisfaction. “Ahh. Time for me to make supper. Will you be staying awhile, Lyrec?”

“I’ll stay the night and another perhaps if you have the room.” He downed the last of his drink, then placed the cup in the center of the table to indicate he was finished and would have no more. He had learned this custom from the farmers.

Grohd said, “Never seen anyone drink so much and look as sober as you—except me.” He took the cup. “I have room, all right. The coach from Dolgellum is due in here tonight, though—not that they’ll fill the place. But you take a bedroll from that pile in the corner and carry it around back to the first hut. Go in and pick yourself a bed now.” Then, speaking slowly, with drunken difficulty, he added, “If you look, you’ll find a loft up the stairs—might suit you and the cat well enough.”

“The coach to Atlarma—it does go through day after tomorrow?”

“That’s so. There’s just the one, up out of Miria. You could’ve waited for it, saved yourself the walk. There’s no coaches to Ladoman, in case you hadn’t reasoned that from what the fellows said this evening. Only thing coming out of there is trouble.” One of his favorite sayings.

“Indeed, Why isn’t something done about it?”

“Oh, well, now, King Dekür’s not about to start a war over a few gadfly incidents like those. There’s maybe six or seven a year, not enough to justify a war. And it’s mostly them that house the Ladomantine fugitives that get involved. Dekür’s a good king and all, but he’s not out to champion every piddling cause or meddling fool. We know where we stand in Secamelan.” He paused thoughtfully for a moment, then said, “If you think of it, you might take time to set a fire in the hearth back there. Winter owns half the day now. Pretty soon, the old man’ll have it all. These people, they’ll be stiff and tired by the time they get here.” He waddled off into darkness.

Lyrec said softly, “Borregad,” and then gave a mental call: Borregad.

The cat’s eyes opened, then closed quickly. “Um, too bright.” 

“Never mind that, How much did you get?” 

Borregad put his paws over his head. “You won’t like it. Either they’re all dense with barely a thought between them, or these creatures can’t be probed.” Squinting, he opened one eye again.

“Then why was I able to pick so much from Grohd? Why were we able to probe the minstrel?”

The cat raised his head petulantly. “Who says we probed him? All we extracted from him was language—with the exception of a few memory images near the surface, like his magic tricks and my wonderful form. Didn’t even get a money concept. And can you play any of his songs? You said yourself he seemed blocked off or stupid. Besides, you doubt me, then why don’t you do some probing?”

“I was trying to,” Lyrec admitted. “I couldn’t get anything, either.”

Borregad smirked. “So. It works on some of them and not on others. Mostly, not. That won’t make things easier for us.”

“No, it won’t. Why should it be so?”

“Chemistry, quite probably. I’d be more precise about it if we’d had more races to experience—if most of them hadn’t been annihilated by the time we arrived. It may be like this on every one of these worlds. From what those farmers say there doesn’t seem to be much going on here out of the ordinary. Their biggest gripe seems to be that Ladomirus character.”

“He does come up in the conversation, doesn’t he? Still, he hardly sounds like more than, as Grohd said, a local gadfly. Borregad, you don’t suppose we’ve made a mistake, do you?”

“Do you mean do I think we’re sitting in the wrong sphere while he’s elsewhen? Sequestered in the wrong parallel?  ’pon my soul. I thought you were immune to doubt.” The cat stood and arched his back, stretching to his claws. “Just the same, no, I don’t believe so. At most we’ve arrived too soon. You worry too much, you know.”

“Do I?” He pushed back his chair and stood “If there were just some sign …”

Borregad moaned. “I’m going to suffer come morning.”

“That’s not quite the omen I meant.” He walked across the room and returned with a bedroll, “I’ll go pick out a space for us. You may just as well stay put.”

“Fine,” said the cat, slumping back down. “In that case, I’ll take another cup.”

“Idiot.” He withdrew a coin from his pocket and set it beside the cat.

“Grohd,” he called out. “When you have a minute, Borregad needs some help with his suicide attempt.” Then he walked out the door.

Outside, the air had a chill upon it and Lyrec’s arms turned to gooseflesh. Surprising, he thought, how quickly the cold had moved in. The gold and green trees rocked in a wind which, because it was blowing from the northwest, kept the sound of approaching horses from Lyrec’s ears.

He went casually around the tavern and into the first of the two conical huts.

*****

It took Grohd awhile to understand exactly what Lyrec had meant, but he and the big black cat finally reached a state of mutual understanding if not communication: The cat looked at him then at the empty cup on the table, then sharply back at Grohd again. The keeper brought him another full cup, then returned to the back room to chop up more vegetables for his stew.

Borregad embraced the wooden cup with the passion of a lover. He sat, hind legs around its base, his forepaws straddling its lip, bending farther and farther over as the quantity of the grynne diminished.

When the tavern door opened, he was bent almost double. 

His head was practically upside down, his muddled brain swimming as he lapped the last of his drink. He was too busy to look up and see who had come in. Besides, who else could it be but Lyrec?

Then the cup was snatched sharply away from him. Borregad reacted with a cat’s instincts rather than his own; he blindly slashed at the hand stealing his cup.

His claws dug into flesh and tore four deep gouges in the back of that hand.

The grynne thief screeched in pain. The hand jerked up in a spasm that sent the cup sailing over the bar, splashing a small stream of dark brown liquid across two tables.

Borregad realized he had probably just wounded his friend. With sudden sobriety, he lifted his head to apologize.

His head was immediately slammed flat against the table by the same hand he had cut. Borregad looked up and wished suddenly that it had been Lyrec.

The man holding him down growled, “You rotten little fekh. I’ll have your guts on a plate while you’re still breathing.” The man was tall and broad-shouldered. His thick beard grew high up on his cheeks, almost up to his bloodshot glaring blue eyes. He wore an orange and brown tunic, tied down by a wide belt that hung low under the weight of a sword, an axe, and two sheathed daggers. There was a second man behind him, but with his head trapped against the tabletop, Borregad could not make him out except for one arm and a leg that came within his range of view.

Borregad gulped, then tried forcefully to pull his head out from under the hand. The grip tightened on his throat, nearly choking him. He stopped fighting and lay on the table, his eyes bulging, his heart racing.

“Innkeeper!” the man bellowed.

Peripherally, Borregad saw Grohd emerge from the darkness of the back room. The taverner started to move toward the back of the bar, but the man said, “No. Come ’ere first. We’ll drink after we’ve dealt with your cat.” Grohd hesitated. Borregad wondered why he wanted so badly to get behind the bar. Probing, he saw an image of a double-bladed axe in Grohd’s thoughts, and he tried to think of a way to get the keeper to it. 

“Come here!” snarled the man in orange and brown. “Now.”

Reluctantly, Grohd came to the table.

“Good.” The man shifted, and dragged Borregad a little toward him. “Do you remember me, little man?”

“You’re called Fulpig,” answered Grohd. It was nearly a whisper.

“You have a good memory for a fekh of an Atlarman. If you know my name, then you remember what happened the last time I was here and you gave me trouble. So I know you won’t give me no trouble now.” He shook Borregad’s head, raised it, then slammed it against the table. “You see my hand, keeper? See what your cat did to it? Now, how’re you going to make up for that? Hmm?”

“You can—you can drink all you want for free. No charge for the whole evening.”

“And our meal?”

“That, too. Free.”

“What will we be drinking?”

Borregad heard a swallow click in Grohd’s throat. “Grynne.” 

The man snorted. “Grynne. How about that, Abo?” he said to his companion, who giggled in response. “Well, that’s not good enough, you see.” The pressure on Borregad’s neck vanished, but before he could react, he was picked up by his hind legs. The room swung around; then the soldier jerked him up at chest height. Borregad saw the man’s free hand reach down and withdraw a dagger from his wide belt. “This animal here is good enough to drink grynne. You serve it to stupid animals! I know you don’t think of us as animals, so I know you’ll offer us something better than what the cat drinks.” The edge of the dagger touched Borregad’s throat. Borregad closed his eyes in expectation of death. “Otherwise,” said Fulpig, “I’m going to open up this animal now.”

“Yah,” agreed Abo. “We don’t drink with dumb animals.”

Grohd said, “I have only grynne, sir. There isn’t anything else.”

“Then, I hope you weren’t too fond of your fat ugly cat, fekh.”

“Please. We won’t cause trouble. Please, put him down.”

Abo moved forward suddenly and backhanded him. Grohd fell back against a chair. “Don’t give us orders, foolish. Bring us drinks.”

“Shut up, Abo,” snapped Fulpig. This was his game.

Borregad panicked as he felt a terrible urge brought on by the pressure in his head and by the dizziness of hanging upside down. He fought it back, but could not stop it. His stomach lurched, then lurched again. His mouth opened and he vomited.

Grynne and bile poured onto Fulpig’s boots. As he heaved a second time, Borregad knew he was certainly dead—the man would kill him now.

The outer door suddenly swung back. A cold wind gusted through the room.

In that instant all heads except Borregad’s turned toward the door; the scene became a tableau, the figures frozen in place until the change in the situation had been identified. The background noises in the room, unnoticed before, seemed to grow and dominate: the crackling of dried-turf blocks in the hearth at the back and the one at the side, behind the scattered tables, where stew liquid in a pot bubbled and belched. Everyone heard but no one noticed. They watched the door and waited for someone to enter.

Finally, a tall figure, wrapped in a black cape, came stumbling in. He seemed unaware of them. He busied himself at trying to find the door so that he could close it. From the way he swung his arm and the way he lurched at the door, it was obvious he was drunk. Even so, no one moved as he shut the door and started across the room.

Lyrec kept his knees bent beneath the cape and let his shoulders shrug. He wandered into a table, then backed away, giving the table a look of reproach. In doing so, he bumped into Fulpig. Turning around, he looked up into the bearded face scant inches from his own. “M’gods! There’s a bear in the bar!” He stumbled back. Then squinting, he smiled loosely and said, “I am ever so sorry, sir.” He belched and continued on. The second man blocked his way, and Lyrec looked deeply into Abo’s brown eyes. Abo was much younger than Fulpig. His face was shaven clean, but the chin was covered with tiny scars. Lyrec reached up and touched the chin. He clucked his tongue. “You poor lad. I, too, have had hiccups, but never while I was shaving. It must have been agony.” He patted Abo on the shoulder. It was a thin shoulder, without much muscle. That one would give him less trouble. He let himself lurch back then, and sat down heavily in the chair beside Fulpig. Borregad hung within easy reach, and Lyrec smiled at his friend. Then he slapped the table and hollered, “Tavern keeper! Drinks fer ever’body!”

Grohd looked at him, then at the soldiers. Fulpig nodded, and he walked quickly around to the back of the bar.

Lyrec looked back at Borregad as if seeing him for the first time. “Ugly little beast,” he announced to no one in particular. He lowered his gaze to the floor and Fulpig’s boots. “And sick, too. What’re you going to do with him?” He raised his head and met Fulpig’s angry gaze for the first time. “Hmm?”

“We thought we’d eat him.” He glanced over at Abo; when he turned back, there was a vague smile on his lips. “Want to join us?”

Lyrec rubbed his beard, pulled his lower lip down, then let it snap back. “Oh, dunno. He looks a little tough.”

Fulpig laughed. “Probably. But we been camped on Mormey Marsh for a week—out on the tor. It’s been raining nearly every day and all we’ve had to eat is saddle grain. You know what happens to saddle grain when it gets wet? You spend your whole meal picking maggots off your plate. So we don’t care if he’s tough as a plank.”

“Mormey Marsh, eh? Ah, you’re from Ladoman.”

Fulpig snorted, then spat. “You’re not from around here or you’d know that just by our colors. Who else wears orange and brown?”

Lyrec pursed his lips. “Pumpkins do.”

“What?” Fulpig gaped. No one spoke to him that way.

“Put the cat down,” Lyrec said. The drunkenness was gone from his voice.

Fulpig moved the cat over so that it hung between himself and the insolent drunkard. Then he leaned over and twiddled his dagger around the cat’s head. “You got a reason?” He would have added “fekh,” his favorite insulting term, but this time the word died in his throat.

“Always. He’s mine. Besides, as if you haven’t noticed by now, he’s pickled—you’d get sick off him.”

“Is that right?” Fulpig twisted Borregad around and sneered into the large blue eyes, now almost completely black in fear and rage.

“I’m trying to do you a favor. Put him down now.” Lyrec waited. When Fulpig made no move or reply, Lyrec leaned one arm on the table and cupped his chin and said, “Well, I tried.”

Borregad snaked up suddenly. He swung out a splayed forepaw and stripped the skin from one side of Fulpig’s nose. Fulpig howled and flung the cat away. He clutched both hands to his nose, blood flooding between his fingers.

Abo had his dagger out, but seemed uncertain as to whom he should attack. He looked from the cat crouching under the table to Lyrec, then at his partner staring at him furiously, and bellowed, “Kill it, you bastard!” though the effect was somewhat lessened by the twang of his pinched nostrils.

“Where’d it go?” 

Borregad was no longer under the table.

Fulpig, still holding his nose with one hand, pointed his dagger at Lyrec. “Where’s your cat, damn you?”

Lyrec reached up and fiddled with the feather in his hat. “I did warn you. No one here wanted trouble except you two. No one at all.”

“Answer me!” Fulpig thrust the dagger at Lyrec’s eyes.

“All right. He’s on your” —Fulpig shrieked and twisted madly around— “back.”

Borregad leapt from Fulpig toward Abo, back arched, screeching fury, claws extended like tenterhooks. Abo fell back against a table. He stabbed uselessly at the cat; Borregad dodged the dagger and closed his jaws over Abo’s wrist. He dropped to the floor before the soldier could act and darted into the darkness of the back room.

Fulpig cursed. He turned back to Lyrec, this time to cut his throat. But Lyrec’s hand closed over his wrist.

“All right,” he said, as if admonishing children. “Borregad’s had his fun, now it’s time for everybody to go.”

The Ladomantine soldier tried to free his hand, then to stab Lyrec against the force of his grip. His eyes met Lyrec’s again. He saw a terrible promise there—and eyes that had gone silver, like pools of mercury. But his anger was beyond sanity or safety, and he fiercely tried to stab again.

Beneath Lyrec’s hand, Fulpig’s wrist made a quick sound like ice cracking on a pond. His face turned to chalk behind his black beard, his eyes bulged, then rolled, and he fell in a faint beside his dagger.

Abo began to edge toward the door.

Lyrec said, “Put your dagger away and see to your own wrist, Abo.” He stood with a great sigh and bent down, lifting Fulpig with ease. He set the body down on a table spattered by blood and grynne. “You came in on horses?”

Abo nodded. “Stabled.”

“Go get them and I’ll help you load your friend.”

“But we haven’t eaten. We’re hungry.”

“And you’ll stay hungry for the trouble you’ve caused. Try Tandragh or Llendid, soldier. Of course, you won’t reach them before morning …”

Abo scowled. He rubbed a finger up and down his long nose and stared sulkily at Lyrec. Finally, he turned and hurried out the door.

Grohd whooped in delight. “Where’s that cat of yours—I want to give him the biggest bowl of grynne he’s ever seen. I’ll give him a keg of it.”

Borregad came out from the shadows and leapt onto the bar. He sat expectantly, preening his paw. For the moment at least he was enjoying his new body.

“By Voed’s black beard, I’ve always wanted to see them bested. They were going to kill you, you poor fat pussycat—” he tugged at the cat’s ear “—d’you know that?” He glanced at Lyrec, noted the rueful inward look in those black eyes. “What’s the matter with you?”

Lyrec shook his head. “I’m sorry we had to do that. I was hoping to get them out of here somehow.”

“Well, you did get them out.”

“And in a day or two when we’re gone, this one will be back. I’m afraid of what he’ll do, even with a broken arm. At the very least he’ll burn down all of your buildings. I could see it in his mind—his eyes. He’s done it before. You must know that.”

Grohd stood mutely and considered this for a time. Softly, he said, “Well, we’ll see. We’re a tough people, we Secamelanes. No one comes around burning our homes without a fight.” He reached under the bar and brought out his small double-bladed throwing axe. Hefting it, he said, “I can take off his ear from across the room with this. We’ll see who gives and who gets.”

The door opened and Abo entered nervously. He had wrapped a piece of brown linen around his bleeding hand. He skirted Lyrec as he came up beside the table where Fulpig lay.

Lyrec said, “Here, I’ll help you load him.”

Abo took a step back. “Forget it,” he said. “I can carry him myself.” He rolled Fulpig over, placing a dangling arm around his neck then hoisting the body up. But Fulpig’s dead weight dragged him down, and both bodies disappeared beside the table. Grohd snickered.

Lyrec moved around the table and pulled the unconscious body off Abo. He waited for the youth to stand, then helped to drape the body over Abo’s shoulder. Lyrec held the door open while Abo lumbered out with his burden.

“They’ll be back,” Lyrec muttered. He had heard it in the boy’s mind, too. How long? he wondered, and how many? Silently, he addressed the cat: Borregad, you stupid drunken oaf. He sat down and removed his hat. “What happened to dinner, Grohd?”

The bald taverner replaced his axe and moved off to gather bowls and utensils.

Lyrec looked to Borregad. I’m sorry I blamed you. It wasn’t your fault, I’m sure. I just wish we could avoid trouble.

Noble sentiment. But we’re here to find trouble, remember?

It’s not the same.

It is.  They’re mortals. They’re more like Miradomon than they are like you or me. Furthermore, we didn’t come here to save lives, to save their world. We came here for revenge. And that makes us all the same.

No. It’s different.

Borregad’s blue eyes stared at him levelly. We’ll see.