Gar roared as he surged up charging. He slammed into one soldier, knocking him into another, then both into a third. But the remaining two men swerved and fell on him with bellows of outrage, pulling daggers from their belts. Gar shook off his attackers and spun away from the fallen men to kick and punch with a most un-idiotic skill and grace. One soldier fell back clutching his stomach, mouth open to gasp; the other flew through the air, and so did his dagger.
It landed three feet from Alea. She plunged, snatched it up, and turned to find Arbaw’s blade hovering inches in front of her eyes. “Put it down, sweetmeat,” he grunted, “or I’ll give you another mouth.” Alea twisted to the side as she kicked him in the sweetbreads. Arbaw rolled away, clutching at himself and howling. Alea rolled the other way, pushed herself to her feet, caught up her staff, and swung it at the back of the head of one of Gar’s attackers. It cracked against his skull and the man fell. There were still two more worrying Gar like rats on a terrier; she jabbed one in the stomach with the butt of her staff. He folded as Gar slammed a huge fist into the other’s face.
“Run! ” Alea shouted, and turned to flee through the woods. She heard feet pounding right behind her and looked back in a panic, but it was only Gar.
Finally they slowed and stopped, leaning against trees and gasping. “They’re not … following…” Gar wheezed.
“How come … you missed … Arbaw?” Alea asked.
“Sloppy,” Gar said with a grimace of self-disgust. “Very sloppy. I was … too intent on … the others. ”
Alea could understand that; she had missed Arbaw, too, though she had the excuse of being a novice mind reader.
She finished catching her breath and straightened. “Two patrols is too many.”
“You’re right.” Gar nodded. “Scaring the daylights out of one and beating up the other means they’re going to remember us.”
“And be looking for us,” Alea agreed. “Not me,” he corrected. “They didn’t get close enough to realize how tall you were, but both patrols will remember the half-naked idiot who turned into an ogre. They’ll be looking for that idiot. If I change disguises, they won’t recognize either of us.”
“Well, I like that!” Alea said indignantly. “So I’m not worth noticing, am I?”
He stared at her, his gaze warming with admiration. “No man who’s alive and healthy could keep from noticing you—but saying that a woman is beautiful isn’t enough of a description for a patrol to recognize.”
“But they’ll recognize you, is that it? Because you’re the important one?”
“No, because I’m the obvious one,” Gar explained.
Alea reddened with increasing anger and snapped, “Are you really being as conceited as you sound?”
“Not a bit,” Gar assured her. “People remember ugliness more than beauty!”
“You’re not ugly!”
“Why, thank you,” Gar said softly, “though I suspect you’re the only one who would think so.”
This wasn’t going the way Alea wanted. “And I’m not beautiful.”
“You’re entitled to your own opinion,” Gar said politely. “I’m afraid I don’t share it, though.”
“All right, you might notice me—but what other man would?”
“Too many, if the patrols we’ve found are anything to go by.”
“Only because they’re starved for women! The villagers only see me as a storyteller.”
“How do you know,” Gar asked, “when they’re all noticing you?”
“You know very well how! A woman can tell the difference!”
“But she won’t listen,” Gar returned.
Alea’s lips thinned. “They can all see I’m too tall for them, way too tall! And that’s what the patrols will remember!”
“Not when they see you beside me,” Gar said. “They can only judge our heights by each other, after all, and when they see you coming down the road with me cringing beside you, they assume you’re of normal size.”
“Until they get close!”
“When they come that close, they’re more interested in making fun of the idiot.”
Alea stared, catching her breath, then said, “You really are an arrogant cuss, aren’t you?”
“It might seem that way,” Gar admitted, “but it’s really only camouflage.”
“Camo—what?”
“Camouflage,” Gar repeated, “fading into the background. Camouflage and misdirection, like songbirds.”
Alea stared, completely lost. She took a breath and said, in as reasonable a tone as she could manage, “Gar—what are you talking about?”
“It’s like birds,” Gar explained. “The male has bright colors so that the cats will attack him and not notice the female.”
Alea lifted her head slowly, bridling. “Surely because males don’t really matter!”
“That’s right, because males can’t lay eggs or bear offspring,” Gar said with a sardonic smile. “As far as evolution is concerned, we’re more expendable than you.”
“So that’s why you adopted such an odd disguise, is it?”
“One of the reasons,” Gar admitted, “but I think it’s time to change. I’m going to age remarkably, Alea.”
“Do you really think that will make a difference?” Alea snapped.
“Wait and see,” Gar told her. “Then you judge.”
The man was old and stooped, back bent under the weight of his pack, leaning heavily on his staff as he hobbled along the road. His snowy beard was long, his hair a white fringe around the felt cap that fitted his head like a helmet but his rough-hewn face really didn’t have all that many wrinkles. His limbs were probably gnarled and wasted, but no one could tell under the long dark blue robe he wore.
The woman who held his arm was a complete contrast, straight and tall, glowing with youth and health, her head a little higher than his.
The farmers looked up as they passed, saw the packs, and cried, “Peddlers!” The shout passed from one to another all across the fields. They came running with their hoes and mattocks, crying,
“Welcome, travelers!”
“What wares have you to trade?”
“What news have you? What happens in the wide world?”
The next morning, they left the village with cheery good-byes and waving hands—and several beautifully wrought little items of gold and silver in their packs. As they turned to the road ahead, Alea said, “I can see that being a peddler in this land could be very profitable, even if they don’t have money.”
“We haven’t had to pay for dinner or lodgings once,” Gar agreed, “but we’re not much richer in information than when we began. I still haven’t heard Anything about a government.”
“And every time we bring up the subject of banditry, all we hear about is General Malachi,” Alea sighed, “but never anything we don’t already know.”
“If he were as successful as his reputation,” Gar grumbled, “he would already be king!”
“He’d rule this whole world,” Alea agreed, “but is he really that bad, or is there just so little else to talk about?”
As they were leaving one village that lay within sight of the trees of a forest, though, the villagers were a bit more direct.
“Don’t go through that woodland by yourselves,” one woman warned them. “Wait for a larger party if you’ve an ounce of sense.”
“Sense?” Gar asked in his rusty approximation of an old man’s voice. He glanced up at Alea and asked again, “Sense?”
“I know, old fellow,” a man sympathized, “if you had any sense, you wouldn’t be walking the roads at your time of life anyway. But we have to make a living, don’t we?” He transferred his gaze to Alea. “You might think of settling down someplace, lass, so that he can rest in his old age.”