Читать книгу: «The Redemption of Althalus», страница 3

The toll-taker started to laugh.

‘Well,’ Althalus began to expand the story, ‘I just happen to be the best dice-player in all the world – and we were playing with my dice, and I’ve spent a lot of time training those dice to do what I want them to do. Well, to cut this short, the wolf had a little run of bad luck, so I’m wearing his skin now, and he’s up there in the forest of Hule shivering in the cold because he’s running around naked.’

The tattooed man laughed even harder.

‘Have you ever seen a naked wolf with goose-bumps all over him?’ Althalus asked, feigning a sympathetic expression. ‘Pitiful! I felt terribly sorry for him, of course, but a bet is a bet, after all, and he did lose. It wouldn’t have been ethical for me to give his skin back to him after I’d fairly won it, now would it?’

The toll-taker doubled over, howling with laughter.

‘I felt sort of sorry for the poor beast, and maybe just a little bit guilty about the whole business. I’ll be honest about it right here and now, friend. I did cheat the wolf a few times during our game, and just to make up for that I let him keep his tail – for decency’s sake, of course.’

‘Oh, that’s a rare story, friend!’ the chortling toll-taker said, clapping Althalus on the back with one meaty hand. ‘Gosti’s got to hear this one!’ And he insisted on accompanying Althalus across the rickety bridge, through the shabby village of log-walled and thatch-roofed huts, and on up to the imposing log fort that overlooked the village and the bridge that crossed the foaming river.

They entered the fort and proceeded into the smoky main hall. Althalus had visited many of the clan halls in the highlands of Arum, so he was familiar with these people’s relaxed approach to neatness, but Gosti’s hall elevated untidiness to an art-form. Like most clan halls, this one had a dirt floor with a fire-pit in the center. The floor was covered with rushes, but the rushes appeared not to have been changed for a dozen years or so. Old bones and assorted other kinds of garbage rotted in the corners, and hounds – and pigs – dozed here and there. It was the first time Althalus had ever encountered pigs as house-pets. There was a rough-hewn table across the front of the hall, and seated at that table stuffing food into his mouth with both hands was the fattest man Althalus had ever seen. There could be no question about the man’s identity, since Gosti Big Belly came by his name honestly. He had pig-like little eyes and his pendulous lower lip hung down farther than his chin. A full haunch of roasted pork lay on the greasy table in front of him, and he was ripping great chunks of meat from that haunch and stuffing them into his mouth. Just behind him stood a huge man with hard, unfriendly eyes.

‘Are we disturbing him at lunchtime?’ Althalus murmured to his guide.

The tattooed clansman laughed. ‘Not really,’ he replied. ‘With Gosti, it’s a little hard to tell exactly which meal he’s eating, since they all sort of run together. Gosti eats all the time, Althalus. I’ve never actually seen him do it, but there are some here who swear that he even eats while he’s asleep. Come along. I’ll introduce you to him – and to his cousin Galbak, too.’

They approached the table. ‘Ho, Gosti!’ the tattooed man said loudly to get the fat man’s attention, ‘this is Althalus. Have him tell you the story of how he came by this fine wolf-eared tunic of his.’

‘All right,’ Gosti replied in a deep, rumbling voice, taking a gulp of mead from his drinking horn. He squinted at Althalus with his pig-like little eyes. ‘You don’t mind if I keep eating while you tell me the story, do you?’

‘Not at all, Gosti,’ Althalus said. ‘You do appear to have a little gaunt spot under your left thumbnail, and I certainly wouldn’t want you to start wasting away right in front of my eyes.’

Gosti blinked and then he roared with laughter, spewing greasy pork all over the table. Galbak, however, didn’t so much as crack a smile.

Althalus expanded the story of his dice game with the wolf into epic proportions, and by night-fall he was firmly ensconced in the chair beside the enormous fat man. After he’d told various versions of the story several times for the entertainment of all the fur-clad clansmen who drifted into the hall, he invented other stories to fill the hall of Gosti Big Belly with nearly continuous mirth. No matter how hard he tried, however, Althalus could never get so much as a smile out of the towering Galbak.

He wintered there, and he was more than welcome to sit at Gosti’s table, eating Big Belly’s food and drinking his mead, as long as he could come up with new stories and jokes to keep Gosti’s belly bouncing up and down with laughter. Gosti’s own occasional contributions obviously bored his clansmen, since they were largely limited to boasts about how much gold he had stored away in his strongroom. The clansmen had evidently heard those stories often enough to know them all by heart. Althalus found them moderately fascinating, however.

The winter plodded on until it was finally spring and by then Althalus knew every corner of Big Belly’s hall intimately.

The strongroom wasn’t too hard to locate, since it was usually guarded. It was at the far end of the corridor where the dining hall was located, and three steps led up to the heavy door. A massive bronze lock strongly suggested that things of value were kept inside.

Althalus noticed that the night-time guards didn’t take their jobs very seriously, and by midnight they were customarily fast asleep – a condition not uncommon among men who take large jugs of strong mead to work with them.

All that was left to do now was to wait for the snow to melt – and to stay on the good side of Gosti and his sour-faced giant cousin. If all went well, Althalus would be in a hurry when he left. Galbak had very long legs, so Althalus didn’t want deep snow in the passes to slow him down enough for Galbak to catch up with him.

Althalus took to frequently stepping out into the courtyard to check the progress of the spring thaw, and when the last snowdrift disappeared from a nearby pass, he decided that the time had come for him to take his leave.

As it turned out, the strongroom of Gosti Big Belly wasn’t nearly as strong as Gosti thought it was, and late one night when the fire in the pit in the center of the hall had burned down to embers and Gosti and his clansmen were filling the corners with drunken snores, Althalus went to that strongroom, stepped over the snoring guards, undid the simple latch, and slipped inside to transfer some ownership. There was a crude table and a sturdy bench in the center of the room and a pile of heavy-looking skin bags in one corner. Althalus took up one of the bags, carried it to the table, and sat down to count his new wealth.

The bag was about the size of a man’s head, and it was loosely tied shut. Althalus eagerly opened the bag, reached his hand inside, and drew out a fistful of coins.

He stared at the coins with a sinking feeling. They were all copper. He dug out another fistful. There were a few yellow coins this time, but they were brass, not gold. Then he emptied the bag out onto the table.

Still no gold.

Althalus raised the torch he’d brought with him to survey the room – maybe Gosti kept his gold in a different pile. There was only the one pile, however. Althalus picked up two more bags and poured their contents onto the table as well. More copper sprinkled with a little brass lay on the now-littered table.

He quickly emptied out all the bags, and there wasn’t a single gold coin in any of them. Gosti had hoodwinked him, and he’d evidently hoodwinked just about everybody in Arum as well.

Althalus began to swear. He’d just wasted an entire winter watching a fat man eat. Worse yet, he’d believed all the lies that slobbering fat man had told him. He resisted the strong temptation to return to the hall and to rip Gosti up the middle with his dagger. Instead he sat down to pick the brass coins out of the heaps of copper. He knew that he wouldn’t get enough to even begin to pay him for his time, but it’d be better than nothing at all.

After he’d leached all the brass out of the heaps of copper, he stood up and disdainfully tipped the table over to dump all the nearly worthless copper coins onto the floor, and left in disgust.

He went out of the hall, crossed the muddy courtyard, and walked on down through the shabby village, cursing his own gullibility and brooding darkly about his failure to take a look into the strongroom to verify the fat man’s boasting.

Fortune, that most fickle goddess, had tricked him again. His luck hadn’t changed after all.

Despite his bitter disappointment, he stepped right along. He hadn’t left Gosti’s strongroom in a very tidy condition, and it wouldn’t be long until the fat man realized that he’d been robbed. The theft hadn’t been very large, but it still might not be a bad idea to cross a few clan boundaries – just to be on the safe side. Galbak had the look of a man who wouldn’t shrug things off, and Althalus definitely wanted a long head-start on Gosti’s hard-faced cousin.

After a few days of hard travel, Althalus felt that it was safe enough to stop by a tavern to get a decent meal. Like just about everyone else on the frontiers, Althalus carried a sling, and he was quite skilled with it. He could get by on an occasional rabbit or squirrel, but he was definitely in the mood for a full meal.

He approached a shabby village tavern, but stopped just outside the doorway when he heard someone saying, ‘–a wolf-skin tunic with the ears still on.’ He stepped back from the door to listen.

‘Gosti Big Belly’s fit to be tied,’ the man who’d just mentioned the tunic went on. ‘It seems that this Althalus fellow’d just spent the whole winter eating Gosti’s food and drinking his mead, and he showed his gratitude by sneaking into Gosti’s strongroom and stealing two full bags of gold coins.’

‘Shocking!’ somebody else murmured. ‘What did you say this thief looked like?’

‘Well, as I understand it, he’s about medium sized and he’s got a black beard, but that description fits about half the men in Arum. It’s that wolf-eared tunic that gives him away. Gosti’s cousin Galbak is offering a huge reward for the fellow’s head, but for all of me, he can keep his reward. It’s those two bags of gold this Althalus fellow’s carrying that interest me. I’m going to track him down, believe me. I’d like to introduce him to the busy end of my spear, and I won’t even bother to cut off his head to sell to Galbak.’ The man gave a cynical laugh. ‘I’m not a greedy man, friends. Two bags of gold are more than enough to satisfy me.’

Althalus stepped around to the side of the tavern to swear. It was the irony of it all that stung so much. Gosti desperately wanted everybody in Arum to believe that he was rich. That absurd reward offer was nothing more than a way for the fat man to verify his boasts. Gosti, still eating with both hands, was probably laughing himself sick right now. Althalus had stolen no more than a handful of brass coins, and now he’d have to run for his life. Gosti would get the fame, and Althalus now had Galbak on his trail and every man in Arum looking for him – with a knife.

Obviously though, he was going to have to get rid of his splendid new tunic, and that really bit deep. He went back to the door and peeked inside to identify the man who’d just described him. What had happened had been Gosti’s doing, but Gosti wasn’t around to punish, so that loud-mouthed tavern loafer was going to have to fill in for him.

Althalus etched the man’s features in his mind, and then he went outside the village to wait and watch.

Dusk was settling over the mountains of Arum when the fellow lurched out of the tavern and came wobbling out to the main trail that passed the village. He was carrying a short spear with a broad-bladed bronze tip, and he was whistling tunelessly.

He stopped whistling when Althalus savagely clubbed him to the ground.

Then Althalus dragged him back into the bushes at the side of the trail. He turned the unconscious man over. ‘I understand you’ve been looking for me,’ he said sardonically. ‘Was there something you wanted to discuss?’

He peeled the man’s knitted smock off the limp body, removed his own splendid tunic, and regretfully dropped it on his would-be assassin’s face. Then he put on the shabby tunic, stole the man’s purse and spear, and left the vicinity.

Althalus didn’t have a very high opinion of the man he’d just robbed, so he was fairly certain that the idiot would actually wear that tunic, and that might help to muddy the waters. The description the fellow had been spreading around had mentioned a black beard, so when the sun rose the following morning, Althalus stopped by a forest pool where he could see his reflection in the surface of the water and painfully shaved with his bronze dagger.

Once that had been taken care of, he decided that it might be prudent to continue his northward journey along the ridge-lines rather than in the canyons. His shave and his change of clothing had probably disguised him enough to conceal his identity from people who were searching for somebody with a black beard and a wolf-eared tunic, but a fair number of men had stopped by Gosti’s hall during the preceding winter, and if some of those guests were among the searchers, they’d probably recognize him. And if they didn’t, Gosti’s cousin Galbak certainly would. Althalus knew the Arums well enough to be certain that they’d stay down in the canyons to conduct their search, since climbing the ridges would be terribly inconvenient, and there weren’t many taverns up on top where they could rest and refresh themselves. Althalus was positive that no real Arum could ever be found more than a mile away from the nearest tavern.

He climbed the ridge with a sense of bitterness dogging his heels. He’d make good his escape, of course. He was too clever to be caught. What really cankered at his soul was the fact that his escape would just reinforce Gosti’s boasts. Gosti’s reputation as the richest man in Arum would be confirmed by the fact that the greatest thief in the world had made a special trip to Arum just to rob him. Althalus mournfully concluded that his bad luck was still dogging his heels.

Up on the ridge-line, the sodden remains of last winter’s snowdrifts made for slow going, but Althalus doggedly slogged his way north. There wasn’t much game up here on the ridges, so he frequently went for days without eating.

As he sourly struggled north, he once again heard that peculiar wailing sound he’d first noticed back in the mountains on his way to Gosti’s fort the previous autumn. Evidently it was still out there, and he began to wonder if maybe it was following him for some reason. Whatever it was, it was noisy, and its wailing cries echoing back from the mountainsides began to make Althalus distinctly edgy.

It wasn’t a wolf; Althalus was sure of that. Wolves travel in packs, and this was a solitary creature. There was an almost despairing quality about its wailing. He eventually concluded that it was most probably the mating season for that particular creature, and that its mournful, hollow cries were nothing more than an announcement to others of its species that it would really like to have some company along about now. Whatever it was, Althalus began to fervently wish that it’d go look for companionship elsewhere, since those unearthly cries of absolute despair were beginning to get on his nerves.

CHAPTER THREE

Althalus was in a somber mood as he slogged north. along the ridge-lines of Arum. He’d had set-backs before, of course. Nobody wins every time, but always in the past his luck had returned in short order. This time had been somehow different. Everything he’d touched had gone sour. His luck had not just deserted him, she seemed to be going out of her way to ruin everything he attempted. Had he done something that’d turned her love to hate? That gloomy thought hounded him as he came down out of the mountains of Arum into the deep-forested land of Hule.

Hule is the refuge of choice for men who are the unfortunate victims of various misunderstandings in the surrounding lands. Helpful men who ‘just wanted to give your horse some exercise’ or were ‘just taking your silver coins out into the light so that I could polish them for you,’ found sanctuary in Hule, since there’s nothing resembling a government or laws of any kind in Hule, and in a land where there aren’t any laws, there’s no such thing as a law-breaker.

Althalus was in a foul humor when he reached Hule, and he felt a great need for the companionship of people of his own kind with whom he could be completely open, so he made his way directly through the forest to the more or less permanent encampment of a Hulish man named Nabjor who brewed good mead and sold it at a fair price. Nabjor also had several plump young ladies available for the convenience of customers who might be feeling lonely for conversation or consolation.

There’s a hushed quality about the vast forests of Hule. The trees of that land of the far north are giants, and a traveler can wander under the endless canopy of their outspread limbs for days on end without ever seeing the sun. The trees are evergreens for the most part, and their fallen needles blanket the ground in a deep, damp carpet that muffles the sound of a traveler’s footsteps. There are no trails in the land of Hule, since the trees continually shed their dead needles in a gentle sprinkle to cover all signs of the passage of man or beast.

Nabjor’s congenial camp lay in a small clearing on the banks of a cheerful little stream that giggled its way over brown rocks, and Althalus approached it with some caution, since a man reputed to be carrying two heavy bags of gold tends to be very careful before he enters any public establishment. After he’d lain behind a fallen tree watching the camp for a while, Althalus concluded that there were no Arums around, so he rose to his feet. ‘Ho, Nabjor,’ he called. ‘It’s me, Althalus. Don’t get excited; I’m coming in.’ Nabjor always kept a heavy-bladed bronze axe close at hand to maintain order and to deal with interlopers who might have some questions about his own indiscretions, so it was prudent not to surprise him.

‘Ho! Althalus!’ Nabjor bellowed. ‘Welcome! I was beginning to think that maybe the Equeros or the Treboreans had caught you and hung you up on a tree down there.’

‘No,’ Althalus replied with a rueful laugh. ‘I’ve managed to keep my feet on the ground so far, but only barely. Is your mead ripe yet? That batch you had the last time I passed through was just a trifle green.’

‘Come and try some,’ Nabjor invited. ‘This new batch came out rather well.’

Althalus walked into the clearing and looked at his old friend. Nabjor was a burly man with dun-colored hair and beard. He had a large, bulbous nose, shrewd eyes, and he was dressed in a shaggy bearskin tunic. Nabjor was a businessman who sold good mead and rented out ladies. He also bought things with no questions asked from men who stole for a living.

The two of them clasped hands warmly. ‘Sit you down, my friend,’ Nabjor said. ‘I’ll bring us some mead, and you can tell me all about the splendors of civilization.’

Althalus sank down on a log by the fire where a spitted haunch of forest bison sizzled and smoked while Nabjor filled two large earthenware cups with foaming mead. ‘How did things go down there?’ he asked, returning to the fire and handing Althalus one of the cups.

‘Awful,’ Althalus said glumly.

‘That bad?’ Nabjor asked, seating himself on the log on the other side of the fire.

‘Even worse, Nabjor. I don’t think anybody’s come up with a word yet that really describes how bad it was.’ Althalus took a long drink of his mead. ‘You got a good run on this batch, my friend.’

‘I thought you might like it.’

‘Are you still charging the same price?’

‘Don’t worry about the price today, Althalus. Today’s mead is out of friendship.’

Althalus lifted his cup. ‘Here’s to friendship then,’ he said and took another drink. ‘They don’t even make mead down in civilization. The only thing you can buy in the taverns is sour wine.’

‘They call that civilized?’ Nabjor shook his head in disbelief.

‘How’s business been?’ Althalus asked.

‘Not bad at all,’ Nabjor replied expansively. ‘Word’s getting around about my place. Just about everybody in Hule knows by now that if he wants a good cup of mead at a reasonable price, Nabjor’s camp is the place to go. If he wants the companionship of a pretty lady, this is the place. If he’s stumbled across something valuable that he wants to sell with no embarrassing questions about how he came by it, he knows that if he comes here, I’ll be glad to discuss it with him.’

‘You’re going to fool around and die rich, Nabjor.’

‘If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather live rich. All right, since that’s out of the way, tell me what happened down in the low-country. I haven’t seen you for more than a year, so we’ve got a lot of catching up to do.’

‘You’d better brace yourself, Nabjor,’ Althalus warned. ‘This isn’t going to be one of those happy stories.’ Then he went on to describe his misadventures in Equero, Treborea, and Perquaine at some length.

‘That’s awful!’ Nabjor said. ‘Didn’t anything turn out well?’

‘Not really. Things were so bad that I had to waylay men coming out of taverns to get enough money to pay for my next meal. My luck’s gone sour on me, Nabjor. Everything I’ve touched for the past year and a half’s turned to ashes on me. I thought for a while that it was because my luck hadn’t followed me when I went down into the low-country, but things didn’t get any better when I got to Arum.’ Then he told his friend about his misadventures in the hall of Gosti Big Belly.

‘You really do have a problem, don’t you, Althalus?’ Nabjor observed. ‘It’s your luck that’s always made you famous. You’d better see what you can do to get back on the good side of her.’

‘I’d be more than happy to, Nabjor, but I don’t know how. She’s always been so fond of me that I didn’t have to take any special pains to keep her in my pocket. If she had a temple someplace, I’d steal somebody’s goat and sacrifice it on her altar. But the way things have been going here lately, the goat would probably kick my brains out before I could cut his throat.’

‘Oh, cheer up, Althalus. Things have got to get better for you.’

‘I certainly hope so. I don’t see how they could get any worse.’

Just then Althalus heard that almost despairing wail again, far back in the trees. ‘Do you have any idea of what sort of animal makes that kind of noise?’ he asked.

Nabjor cocked his head to listen. ‘Can’t quite place it,’ he admitted. ‘It wouldn’t be a bear, would it?’

‘I don’t think so. Bears don’t go around singing in the woods that way. I heard that beast howling for days on end while I was up in Arum.’

‘Maybe it’s heard about Gosti’s lies and it’s following you to rob you of all your gold.’

‘Very funny, Nabjor,’ Althalus said sarcastically.

Nabjor smirked at him. Then he took their cups back to the crock to refill them. ‘Here,’ he said, coming back to the fire and holding one of the cups out to Althalus, ‘smother your laughter with this and quit worrying about animals. They’re afraid of fire, so whatever it is out there howling among the trees isn’t likely to come in here and sit down with us.’

Althalus and Nabjor had a few more cups of mead, and then the thief noticed that his friend had a new wench in his camp. The wench had wicked eyes and a provocative way of walking. He decided that it might be sort of nice if he and the wench got to know each other a little better. He was very much in need of friendship just now.

And so Althalus remained in Nabjor’s establishment for quite some time to enjoy the entertainments available there. Nabjor’s mead was plentiful, there was usually a haunch of forest bison on a spit near the fire in case anyone grew hungry, and the wench with wicked eyes was talented. Not only that, other thieves, almost all of them old friends and acquaintances, stopped by from time to time, and they could all spend happy hours together, bragging, talking shop, and engaging in friendly dice games. After this past year, Althalus really needed some relaxation to unwind his nerves and restore his good humor. His stock in trade was witty stories and jokes, and a grumpy man can’t tell jokes very well.

His meager supply of brass coins was not inexhaustible, however, and after a time his purse grew very slender, so he regretfully concluded that he’d probably better start thinking about going back to work.

And then along toward the end of summer on a blustery day when the racing clouds overhead were blotting out the sun, a man with deep-sunk eyes and lank, greasy black hair rode into Nabjor’s camp on a shaggy grey horse. He slid down from the back of his weary mount and came to the fire to warm his hands. ‘Mead!’ he called to Nabjor in a harsh voice.

‘I don’t know you, friend,’ Nabjor said suspiciously, fingering his heavy bronze axe. ‘I’ll have to see your money first.’

The stranger’s eyes hardened and then he wordlessly shook a heavy leather purse.

Althalus squinted speculatively at the stranger. The fellow was wearing a kind of bronze helmet on his head that reached down the back of his neck to his shoulders, and there were thick bronze plates sewn onto his black leather jerkin. He also wore a long, hooded black cloak which looked rather fine and which Althalus was sure would fit him, if the stranger happened to drink too much of Nabjor’s mead and drift off to sleep. The man also had a heavy-bladed sword tucked under his belt and a narrow bronze dagger as well.

There was an oddly archaic look about the stranger’s features that made his face appear to have been only half-finished. Althalus didn’t really pay too much attention to the stranger’s face, though. What he was really looking for were the characteristic clan-tattoos of the Arums. At this particular time Althalus thought it might be prudent to avoid Arums. The stranger, however, had unmarked hands and forearms, so our thief relaxed.

The black-haired stranger seated himself on a log across the fire-pit from where Althalus lounged and looked penetratingly at the thief. It might have been some trick of the light, but the dancing flames of the fire were reflected in the stranger’s eyes, and that made Althalus just a bit edgy. It’s not every day that a man comes across somebody whose eyes are on fire. ‘I see that I’ve finally found you,’ the stranger said in a peculiarly accented voice. It appeared that this man was not one to beat about the bush.

‘You’ve been looking for me?’ Althalus said as calmly as possible. The fellow was heavily armed, and as far as Althalus knew, there was still a price on his head back in Arum. He carefully shifted his own sword around on his belt so that the hilt was closer to his hand.

‘For quite some time now,’ the stranger replied. ‘I picked up your trail in Deika. Men down there are still talking about how fast you can run when dogs are chasing you. Then I tracked you to Kanthon in Treborea and on to Maghu in Perquaine. Druigor’s still trying to figure out why you just dumped all his money on the floor and didn’t steal any of it.’

Althalus winced.

‘You didn’t know that it was money, did you?’ the stranger said shrewdly. ‘Anyway, I followed you from Maghu up into Arum, and there’s a fat man up there who’s looking for you even harder than I am.’

‘I sort of doubt that,’ Althalus said. ‘Gosti wants people to think he’s rich, and I’m probably the only man around who knows that there was nothing in his strongroom but copper pennies.’

The stranger laughed. ‘I thought there was something that didn’t quite ring true about the way he kept going on about how you’d robbed him.’

‘And just why have you spent all this time looking for me?’ Althalus asked, getting to the point. ‘Your clothing says Nekweros, and I haven’t been there in years, so I’m sure I haven’t stolen anything from you recently.’

‘Set your mind at rest, Althalus, and slide your sword back around your belt so the hilt doesn’t keep poking you in the ribs. I haven’t come here to take your head back to Gosti. Would you be at all interested in a business proposition?’

‘That depends.’

‘My name’s Ghend, and I need a good thief who knows his way around. Are you at all familiar with the land of the Kagwhers?’

‘I’ve been there a few times,’ Althalus replied cautiously. ‘I don’t care very much for the Kagwhers. They have this habit of assuming that everyone who comes along is there to sneak into their gold mines and just help himself. What is it that you want me to steal for you? You look like the kind of man who can take care of things like that for himself. Why would you want to pay somebody else to do it for you?’

‘You’re not the only one with a price on his head, Althalus,’ Ghend replied with a pained expression. ‘I’m sure I wouldn’t care much for the reception I’d get if I happened to venture into Kagwher just now. Anyway, there’s someone in Nekweros who’s holding some obligations over my head, and he’s not the sort I’d want to disappoint. There’s something he really wants over in Kagwher, and he’s told me to go there and get it for him. That puts me in a very tight spot, you understand. You’d be in the same sort of situation if someone told you to go get something for him and it just happened to be in Arum, wouldn’t you?’

‘I can see your problem, yes. I should warn you that I don’t work cheap, though.’