The ground began to dry out under my feet and the reeds thinned until I was crossing great fields of long tufted grass. Turning around, I thought I could make out the dim silhouette of the crags behind me in the far distance. Large insects, beetles, and some evil-looking form of cricket leaped and blundered out of my path as I sped away from the mountains and the creatures which lived there. I was filthy, miserable, and exhausted, but I picked up the pace, hoping against hope to find something more in my milieu, if you know what I mean. A pub with a friendly barmaid would be nice, but I’d settle for a house. And a beer. I could murder a beer.
I rested on a fallen tree which had been lying in the grass donkeys’ years and was overgrown with moss and strange leathery fungi. Sitting on it, I wheezed heavily, sucking the air into my lungs like a man at a desert oasis gulping water. I had a stitch in my side from running, and I found myself wishing, ironically, that Orgos had made me exercise more in Stavis. But that was not the way to think now, for lots of reasons. I thought of one of the heroes I had played in those old Thrusian history plays and figured that if I could make two-and-a-half-thousand bitter Cresdonites believe that Will Hawthorne, scrawny and fat at the same time, was Lothar the Wanderer, scourge of the unchivalrous and iambic-pentametered all-round good egg, once a month for two years, I could do anything. I got to my feet and began to run again with new and grim determination.
Ten minutes later, clutching my aching side and gasping with weariness, Lothar the Wanderer was flagging. I squatted in the grass and parted one great tuft (if “tuft” isn’t the wrong word for a clump of leaves twelve feet high), looking desperately around. There, directly ahead of me, I saw smoke: not the smoke of carnage and destruction, amazingly enough, but chimney smoke, hanging like a smudge of steely blue in the dark sky. Rising till I was almost vertical, I began, once more, to run, but this time I could see the audience admiring me. Lothar was doing the epilogue; I could smell it in the woodsmoke.
At times the gray billow disappeared behind the matted stalks of grass, but soon the land cleared and I could make it out plainly. I was in a meadow or pasture of some kind and only a few hundred yards ahead I could see the outline of trees, black against the sky. I stumbled on, ignoring the way my legs buckled with pathetic exhaustion, crossing the field to a crudely fashioned wooden fence. I paused and inhaled through my nose, and the smoke was bitter and woody over the damp greenery. Gasping for air though I was, I sucked it into my lungs like life itself. The audience’s applause swelled in my ears, and suddenly I saw it, appearing through a thicket of hawthorn hedge: a gabled roof, a gray stone chimney, and a sign hanging on a bracket above the door: The Last Refuge Inn.
“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen!” I said aloud, bowing to the field. “Thank you! Thank you!”
But the door of The Last Refuge Inn was locked. This rather un-pub-like development dashed my spirits a little, but I beat heartily on the door and called in a commanding fashion such as the long dead and probably fictional Lothar would have been proud of.
“The Wand’ring Knight has come to taste your cheer,
Since he has ’scaped his journey’s fearful doom,
And longs for hearth and dinner and a beer,
And welcome given to your daughter’s room.”
Hardly great verse, but not bad for the spur of the moment. There was no answer, but a curtain in a bay window moved, so I waited.
Nothing happened.
I tried again, knocking loudly and grinning as I called out, “Come throw the latch and summon Lothar in, since he is weary and he seeks for rest.”
Still nothing.
“Open the bloody door!” I yelled, losing patience and good humor at a stroke. “What the hell kind of pub is this? Should I have made an appointment? Do I need references? Come on, open the damn door.”
And, with a heavy clang, the lock turned and the door creaked open. With it came the point of a fine silver rapier which came to rest about two inches from my windpipe. It was held by a tall, fair man. Others were behind him, weapons in hand and eyes fixed on me with undisguised hostility.
“Hello?” I tried, leaning slightly away from the sword point.
The others did not speak, but their eyes hardened and the sword moved steadily under my chin. Gasping wordlessly, I wondered if I had perhaps violated some sort of dress code.
Farcical though such an instinct undoubtedly was, it wasn’t altogether wide of the mark. There was fear behind the menace in their eyes, and recognizing this, I guessed that the principal reason for this rather unwelcoming behavior lay in my appearance, since I was still caked from head to foot in a dark brown slime and the light in the inn was low. The truth struck me with sudden and comic force: They thought I was some sort of goblin. Imagining how I must appear to these quiet, law-abiding folk already spooked by tales of bear-riding demon assaults to have me banging on their door like a ravaging swamp troll, I laughed with relief. This was apparently the wrong thing to do and seemed, momentarily, to convince them of my hellish origins.
“Strike!” hissed a young man peering round the doorjamb. He was addressing the rapier wielder and had one eye on me, the other on an axe he was raising.
“Wait!” I spluttered, specks of mud exploding from my cracked lips unhelpfully. “I am Will Hawthorne, a traveler and friend of. . of, what the hell is his name. .? You know!”
“Strike quickly,” advised the young man spitefully. “Heed not the words of the enemy, for his tongue is foul.”
Truer than you know, mate, I thought, spitting out more pond filth.
“It called itself Lothar. It is surely some devil from the waters beneath the mountains.”
“No,” I assured him. “That was just a bit of a joke. A sort of poem, you know. I was happy to see the tavern and. .” This no longer seemed plausible even to me, so I reverted to my previous tactic. “I’m a friend of that blond-haired chap. You know. . tall guy, pale, blond.” Since this brilliant description fit all four men I had glimpsed behind the door I added, “He’s got a spear with a kind of torch thing. . a light. And he killed a bear with it. You know. Whatsisname. Mr?. . Sorbet? Sor. . did? No. Sorrail. SORRAIL!”
There was a hesitant moment as the men exchanged glances. Clearly they recognized the name. That would keep my blood flowing internally for the moment. I grinned to myself, exultant, and then, unsure of what such a grin looked like through my new skin, scrapped it.
They watched me warily, then the young man leaned round the door. His glance was both cautious and menacing. “We’ll see about that, goblin,” he said, a remark which, if it hadn’t been accompanied with that just-give-me-an-excuse-to-kill-you kind of hatred, would have struck me as riotously funny. He drew a long knife from his belt, put the flat of the blade against my throat (causing a little pattering of dried clay at my feet) and said, “Get Sorrail.”
Someone inside moved away from the door. Then he caught hold of my arm and dragged me inside, never taking the pressure off the knife blade.
“He’s here?” I exclaimed with relief as I stumbled into the barroom.
“Silence, demon-vermin,” shouted the young man, pressing the knife a little harder. “You speak when you are spoken to and not before. Is that clear?”
I emitted a little trickle of bubbling filth from the corner of my mouth, along with a sound designed to show just how clear it was.
There were footsteps from the corridor outside, booted feet entering the room hastily. I tried to turn, but my captor demonstrated his dislike of this with the brilliant rhetorical strategy of pushing the blade against my windpipe till I coughed in nervous exasperation. The resulting spatter of brownish phlegm which caught him in the face might have ended my life right there and then if not for a familiar voice from my right.