Nearer, five hundred yards downslope, a light beamed up, warm and friendly and beckoning. I headed for it, fell against the wooden door, and went on hitting the door until it opened.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“You are a strange man, Koter Prescot.”
“Many men have said that, Kov Furtway. And it is true.”
We sat around the plain wooden table in the neat cabin and drank the superlative Kregan tea and warmed ourselves by the fire that crackled and sparked in the hearth, while Bibi, the lady of the house, fussed around us, delighted and yet awed at entertaining a real live kov in her house.
“How were you in the mountains, then, Koter Prescot?” asked Jenbar.
“I was lost. Believe me, I was hoping you were going to rescue me.”
They laughed at that.
Warmth, a good sleep, and now a piping hot meal of roast rolled-vosk-loin and a vegetable-pot, together with chunks torn from a long Kregan loaf and that Kregan tea I had sampled with my clansmen, had revived the three of us.
Bibi’s husband, Genal, was out chopping more wood. They lived well up here in the mountains, with a great store of food put by in the shed protected from snow-leem and deep-frozen by the weather, and Genal could bring in enough ice to be packed and shipped down to the plain to keep him and Bibi in moderate affluence. Genal the Ice, they called him down there.
“More tea?” fussed Bibi. “It is still fresh, Kov Furtway.”
He held out his cup and watched as Bibi filled it and he drank. He did not say thank you. In everyday life he never had to say thank you to anyone, except. .
“We bring our ice from Drak’s Seat,” said Jenbar. “By Vox! I’ve seen enough to last me a lifetime. In Vondium ice is all the rage, but not for me, Oolie Opaz, not for me!”
Vondium!
I was in Vallia. I must be. Vallia. . Vallia!
‘Tell me, Tyr Jenbar. Just how far away is Vondium?”
He stretched and yawned and answered offhandedly: “Oh, I don’t know. Three hundred dwaburs perhaps, a bit more probably, something like that.”
“At least that, Jenbar,” said Furtway. “We had crossed most of these accursed Mountains of the North from Evir before we crashed. May the Invisible Twins smite those cramphs of Havilfar!”
I nodded. “One would think they did themselves a grave disservice by selling airboats that fail so often.”
Furtway grunted and reached for the palines that Bibi placed in a diced-wood bowl upon the table.
“They are arrogant in their power. Only they, as far as we know, possess the mines. One day, Opaz willing, one day. .”
Jenbar laughed and took up the palines.
“My uncle has an old dream, Koter Prescot.[1]We of Vallia are proud and strong; we produce all we require and may buy what we will all over the known world. But we cannot make an airboat.”
I nodded and the conversation drifted. The impatience to be gone sawed at my nerves. Vondium lay something like fifteen hundred miles due south. I had to get there — and I managed to retain wit enough to understand that through these two, Furtway and Jenbar, I might reach my objective faster than I could by traveling alone. They would provide transport.
Evir, across the mountains to the north, was the most northerly province on the island proper, although, as is common on Kregen, the coastal waters were peppered with small islands. One of those islands -
and not so small, at that — was Valka. If I said I was a Strom to these men now, they would not believe. But the name Dray Prescot was likely going to prove a handicap.
The clothes I wore, the black boots on my feet, the rapier and two daggers, were all from the corpse in the airboat. In addition, I had taken his money, as also the money from the others, for old mercenary habits die hard. The Kov and his nephew had not recognized either the clothes or the weapons, for they were of the plain and workmanlike cut common to the middle classes of Vallia. I suppose one might call that great mass of self-interested, self-centered, and intensely self-loyal people the gentry of Vallia. With this garb I fancied I could fend for myself in somewhat better style than I had when I had at last crossed the Klackadrin and reached Pa Mejab on the eastern coast of Turismond. In my view neither Furtway nor Jenbar were fit to travel yet, for we were still high in the mountains and the weather was bitterly cold. Since Genal the Ice had told us he would be taking an ice-load down the mountain in three days’ time, it was easy enough to persuade them to wait that long. I did not want to wait, but I already knew what Kov Furtway proposed.
Roads are not as good as they might be in Vallia, and no one, as far as I then knew, had shown the interest in zorca chariot racing that had caused the old Strom of Valka to pave a number of his roads across the island. The roads are, however, perfectly capable of speeding zorca couriers along their tracks which would not accept wheeled or sledged traffic. Heavy traffic goes by canal in Vallia. Furtway intended to dispatch a zorca courier from the post town below in a fold of the foothills with a message -
and a damned intemperate one it would be, too, I could guess — to his villa in Vondium to send a fresh airboat for him.
On that airboat I intended to enter Vondium.
All the great lords of the provinces of Vallia maintain splendid and sumptuous villas in the capital city, and use them whenever business or pleasure calls them to Vondium. When the lord is not in residence the villa is kept up, if on a reduced scale, for no chatelaine knows from one day to the next if the lord might arrive. And if all is not in apple-pie order and everything ready immediately for comfortable occupation
— exit one chatelaine and enter a sufficiently energetic and zealous new one. So we had three days to kill.
We sang songs and we told stories and we played Jikaida.
Kov Furtway was inordinately fond of Jikaida. This is the board game popular on Kregen involving an elongated form of chessboard — the actual number of squares may vary along with the numbers of men, and the different sizes are dignified by different degrees — which, together with chess, checkers, and Halma-like moves for the men, combine to form an engrossing game of mock war. Genal the Ice and Bibi had a board, for one is usually to be found in every house in Kregen, if sometimes a little rooting about in cupboards is necessary, and we settled down to a tournament. The men were blue and yellow.
“Blue,” said Furtway, not giving me the opportunity to guess his closed fists. “You take the damned blue.”
Jenbar chuckled, but the sound was such as I had heard Thelda utter — or my many friends of Pandahem. “Blue, the color of the Opaz-forsaken Pandaheem cramphs! My uncle, Kr. Prescot, never plays the blue.”