Castle In The Air Part 6

This flummoxed the woman. "I-well, I-it's, er-"

The man on the other bench roused himself and yawned. "Beer 74.is the only proper drink for a man," he said. "Wonderful stuff."

Abdullah turned to look at him again. He found himself staring into a pair of round limpid blue eyes, as honest as the day is long. There was not a trace of dishonesty in the brown face now it was awake. "Brewed from barley and hops," added the man. "While you're here, landlady, I'll have a pint of it myself."

The landlady's expression changed completely. "I've told you already,"

she said, "that I want to see the color of your money before I serve you with anything."

The man was not offended. His blue eyes met Abdullah's ruefully. Then he sighed and picked up a long white clay pipe from the settle beside him, which he proceeded to fill and light.

"Shall it be beer then, sir?" the landlady said, returning to her simper for Abdullah.

"If you would, lady of lavish hospitality," he said. "Bring me some, and also bring a fitting quant.i.ty for this gentleman here."

"Very well, sir," she said, and with a strongly disapproving look at the pigtailed man, she went back indoors.

"I call that very kind of you," the man said to Abdullah. "Come far,have you?"

"A fair way from the south, worshipful wanderer," Abdullah answered cautiously. He had not forgotten how dishonest the fellow had looked in his sleep.

"From foreign parts, eh? I thought you must be, to get a sunburn like that," the man observed. Abdullah was fairly sure the fellow was fishing for information, to see if he was worth robbing. He was therefore quite surprised when the man seemed to give up asking questions. "I'm not from these parts either, you know," he said, puffing large clouds of smoke from his barbarous pipe. "I'm from Strangia myself. Old soldier. Turned loose on the world with a bounty after Ingary beat us in the war. As you saw, there's still a lot of prejudice here in Ingary about this uniform of mine."

He said this into the face of the landlady as she came back with two gla.s.ses of frothing brownish liquid. She did not speak to him. She just banged one gla.s.s down in front of him before she put the 75.other carefully and politely in front of Abdullah. "Dinner in half an hour, sir," she said as she went away.

"Cheers," said the soldier, lifting his gla.s.s. He drank deeply.

Abdullah was grateful to this old soldier. Thanks to him, he now knew he was in a country called Ingary. So he said, "Cheers," in return as he dubiously lifted his own gla.s.s. It seemed to him likely that the stuff in it had come from the bladder of a camel. When he sniffed it, the smell did nothing to dispel that impression. Only the fact that he was still horribly thirsty led him to try it at all. He took a careful mouthful. Well, it was wet.

"Wonderful, isn't it?" said the old soldier.

"It is most interesting, O captain of warriors," Abdullah said, trying not to shudder.

"Funny you should call me captain," said the soldier. "I wasn't, of course. Never made it higher than corporal. Saw a lot of fighting, though, and I did have hopes of promotion, but the enemy were all over us before I got my chance. Terrible battle it was, you know. We were still on the march. No one expected the enemy to get there so soon. I mean, it's all over now, and there's no point in crying over spilled milk; but I'll tell you straight the Ingarians didn't fight fair. Had a couple of wizards making sure they won. I mean, what can an ordinary soldier like me do against magic? Nothing. Like me to show you a plan of how the battle went?"

Abdullah understood just where the genie's malice lay now. This man who was supposed to help him was quite obviously a thundering bore. "I know absolutely nothing of military matters, O most valiant strategist," he said firmly.

"No matter," the soldier said cheerfully. "You can take it from me we were absolutely routed. We ran. Ingary conquered us. Overran the whole country. Our royal family, bless them, had to run, too, so they put the King of Ingary's brother on the throne. There was some talk of makingthis prince legal by having him marry our Princess Beatrice; but she'd run with the rest of her family-long life to her!-and she couldn't be found. Mind you, the new prince 76.wasn't all bad. Gave all the Strangian army a bounty before he turned us loose. Like to know what I'm doing with my money?"

"If you wish to tell me, bravest of veterans," Abdullah said, smothering a yawn.

"I'm seeing Ingary," said the soldier. "Thought I'd take a walk through the country that conquered us. Find out what it's like before I settle down. It's a fair sum, my bounty. I can pay my way as long as I'm careful."

"My felicitations," Abdullah said.

"They paid half of it in gold," said the soldier.

"Indeed," said Abdullah.

It was a great relief to him that a few local customers arrived just then. They were farming people mostly, wearing mucky breeches and outlandish smocks that reminded Abdullah of his own nightshirt, along with great clumping boots. Very cheerful they were, talking loudly of the hay crop-which they said was doing nicely-and bashing on the tables for beer. The landlady and a little twinkling landlord, too, were kept very busy running in and out with trays of gla.s.ses because, from then on, more and more people kept arriving. And-Abdullah did not know whether to be more relieved, or annoyed, or amused-the soldier instantly lost interest in Abdullah and began to talk earnestly to the new arrivals. They did not seem to find him boring at all. Nor did it seem to worry them that he had been an enemy soldier. One of them bought him more beer at once. As more and more people arrived, he became ever more popular. Beer gla.s.ses lined up beside him. Dinner was ordered for him before long, while out of the crowd that surrounded the soldier, Abdullah kept hearing things like "Great battle. . . . Your wizards gave them the advantage, see . . . our cavalry . . . folded up our left wing . . . overran us on the hill . . . we infantry forced to run . . . went on running like rabbits . . . not a bad sort . . . rounded us up and paid us a bounty. ..."

Meanwhile, the landlady came to Abdullah with a steaming tray and more beer without being asked. He was still so thirsty he was almost glad of the beer. And the dinner struck him as quite as delicious as the Sultan's feast. For a while he was so busy attending to it 77.that he lost track of the soldier. When he next looked, the soldier was leaning forward over his own empty plate, blue eyes shining with earnest enthusiasm, while he moved gla.s.ses and plates about on the table to show his country listeners exactly where everything was in the Battle of Strangia. After a while he ran out of gla.s.ses, forks, and plates. Since he had already used the salt and the pepper for the King of Strangia and his general, he had nothing left to use for the King of Ingary and his brother or for their wizards. But the soldier did not let this bother him. He opened a pouch at his belt and took out two gold coins and a number of silver ones, which he rang down on the table to stand for theKing of Ingary, his wizards, and his generals.

Abdullah could not help thinking this was extraordinarily silly of him.

The two gold pieces caused quite a bit of comment. Four loutish-looking young men at a nearby table turned around on their settles and began to be extremely interested. But the soldier was deep into explaining the battle and quite unaware of it.

Finally, most of the folk around the soldier got up to go back to their work. The soldier got up with them, slung his pack on his shoulder, put on his head the dirty soldier's hat which was tucked into the top flap of his pack, and asked the way to the nearest town. While everyone was loudly explaining the way to the soldier, Abdullah tried to catch the landlady in order to pay his own bill. She was a little slow in coming.

By the time she was ready, the soldier was out of sight around the bend in the road. Abdullah was not sorry. Whatever help the genie thought this man could give, Abdullah felt he could do without it. He was glad that Fate and he seemed to see eye to eye for once.

Not being a fool like the soldier, Abdullah paid his bill with his smallest silver coin. Even that seemed to be big money in these parts.

The landlady took it indoors in order to get change. While he was waiting for her to come back, Abdullah could not help overhearing the four loutish young men. They were holding a swift and significant discussion.

"If we nip up the old bridle path," one said, "we can catch him in the wood at the top of the hill."

78."Hide in the bushes," agreed the second, "on both sides of the road, so we come at him two ways."

"Split the money four ways," insisted the third. "He's got more gold than he showed, that's certain."

"We make sure he's dead first," said the fourth. "We don't want him telling tales."

And "Right!" and "Right" and "Right then," the other three said, and they got up and left as the landlady came hurrying to Abdullah with a double handful of copper coins.

"I do hope this is the right change, sir. We don't get much southern silver here, and I had to ask my husband how much it was worth. He says it's one hundred of our coppers, and you owed us five, so-"

"Bless you, O cream of caterers and brewer of celestial beer," Abdullah said hurriedly, and gave her one handful of the coins back instead of the nice long chat she was obviously meaning to have with him. Leaving her staring, he set off as swiftly as he was able after the soldier. The man might be a barefaced sponger and a thundering bore, but this did not mean he deserved to be ambushed and murdered for his gold.

79.Which tells of violenceand bloodshed Abdullah found he could not go very fast. In the cooler climate of Ingary, he had stiffened abominably while he satstill, and his legs ached from walking all the day before. The money container in his left boot proved to have made a very severe blister on his left foot. He was limping before he had walked a hundred yards. Still, he was concerned enough about the soldier to keep up the best pace he could. He limped past a number of cottages with gra.s.s roofs and then out beyond the village, where the road was more open. There he could see the soldier in the distance ahead, sauntering along toward a point where the road climbed a hill covered with the dense leafy trees that seemed to grow in these parts. That would be where the loutish young men were setting their ambush. Abdullah tried to limp faster.

An irritable blue wisp came out of the bottle bouncing at his waist.

"Must you b.u.mp so?" it said.

"Yes," panted Abdullah. "The man you chose to help me needs my help instead."

"Huh!" said the genie. "I understand you now. Nothing will stop you taking a romantic view of life. You'll be wanting shining armor for your next wish."

80.The soldier was sauntering quite slowly. Abdullah closed the gap between them and entered the wood not far behind. But the road here wound back and forth among the trees to make an easier climb, so that Abdullah lost sight of the soldier from then on, until he limped around a final corner and saw him only a few yardsahead. That happened to be the very moment when the louts chose to make their attack.

Two of them sprang from one side of the road upon the soldier's back.

The two who jumped from the other side rushed him from in front. There was a moment or so of horrid drubbing and struggling. Abdullah hastened to help, though he hastened somewhat hesitantly because he had never hit anyone in his life.

While he approached, a whole set of miracles seemed to happen. The two fellows on the soldier's back went sailing away in opposite directions, to either side of the road, where one of them hit his head on a tree and did not trouble anyone again, while the other collapsed in a sprawl. Of the two facing the soldier, one received almost at once an interesting injury, which he doubled up to contemplate. The other, to Abdullah's considerable astonishment, rose into the air and actually, for a brief instant, became draped over the branch of a tree. From there he fell with a crash and went to sleep in the road.

At this point, the doubled-up young man undoubled himself and went for the soldier with a long, narrow knife. The soldier seized the wrist of the hand that held the knife. There was a moment of grunting deadlock, which Abdullah found he had every faith would soon be resolved in favor of the soldier. He was just thinking that his concern about this soldier had been completely unnecessary, when the fellow sprawled in the road behind the soldier suddenly unsprawled himself and lunged at the soldier's back with another long, thin knife.Quickly Abdullah did what was needful. He stepped up and clouted the young man over the head with the genie bottle. "Ouch!" cried the genie.

And the fellow dropped like a fallen oak tree.

At the sound the soldier swung around from apparently tying knots in the other young man. Abdullah stepped back hurriedly. He 81.did not like the speed with which the soldier turned or the way he held his hands, with the fingers tightly together, like two blunt but murderous weapons.

"I heard them planning to kill you, valiant veteran," he explained quickly, "and hurried to warn or help."

He found the soldier's eyes fixed on his, very blue but no longer at all innocent. In fact, they were eyes that would have counted as shrewd even in the Bazaar at Zanzib. They seemed to sum Abdullah up in every possible way. Luckily they seemed satisfied with what they saw. The soldier said, "Thanks, then," and turned to kick the head of the young man he had been tying into knots. He stopped moving, too, making the full set.

"Perhaps," suggested Abdullah, "we should report this to a constable."

"What for?" asked the soldier. He bent down and, to Abdullah's slight surprise, made a swift and expert search of the pockets of the young man whose head he had just kicked. The result of the search was quite a large handful of coppers, which the soldier stowed in his own pouch, looking satisfied. "Rotten knife, though," he said, snapping it in two.

"Since you're here, why don't you search the one you clobbered, while I do the other two? Yours looks worth a silver or so."

"You mean," Abdullah said doubtfully, "that the custom of this country permits us to rob the robbers?"

"It's no custom I ever heard of," the soldier said calmly, "but it's what I aim to do all the same. Why do you think I was so careful to flash my gold about at the inn? There's always a bad'un or so who thinks a stupid old soldier worth mugging. Nearly all of them carry cash."

He stepped across the road and began to search the young man who had fallen out of the tree. After hesitating a moment, Abdullah bent to the unpleasing task of searching the one he had felled with the bottle. He found himself revising his opinion of this soldier. Apart from anything else, a man who could confidently take on four attackers at once was someone who was better as a friend than an enemy. And the pockets of the unconscious youth did indeed con 82.tain three pieces of silver. There was also the knife. Abdullah tried breaking it on the road as the soldier had done with the other knife.

"Ah, no," said the soldier. "That one's a good knife. You hang on to it."

"Truthfully I have had no experience," Abdullah said, holding it out to the soldier. "I am a man of peace.""Then you won't get far in Ingary," said the soldier. "Keep it, and use it for cutting your meat if you'd rather. I've got six more knives better than that in my pack, all off different ruffians. Keep the silver, too-though from the way you didn't get interested when I talked of my gold, I guess you're quite well off, aren't you?"

Truly a shrewd and observant man, Abdullah thought, pocketing the silver. "I am not so well off that I could not do with more," he said prudently. Then, feeling that he was entering properly into the spirit of things, he removed the young man's bootlaces and used them to tie the genie bottle more securely to his belt. The young man stirred and groaned as he did so.

"Waking up. We'd best be off," said the soldier. "They'll twist it around to we attacked them when they wake up. And seeing this is their village and we're both foreigners, they're the ones who'll get believed.

I'm going to cut off across the hills. If you'll take my advice, you'll do likewise."

"I would, most gentle fighting man, feel honored if I could accompany you," Abdullah said.

"I don't mind," said the soldier. "It'll make a change to have company I don't have to lie to." He picked up his pack and his hat-both of which he seemed to have had time to stow tidily behind a tree before the fighting began-and led the way into the woods.

They climbed steadily among the trees for some time. The soldier made Abdullah feel woefully unfit. He strode as lightly and easily as if the way were downhill. Abdullah limped after. His left foot felt raw.

At length the soldier stopped and waited for him in an upland dell.

"That fancy boot hurting you?" he asked. "Sit on that rock and take it off." He unslung his pack as he spoke. "I've got some kind of 83.unusual first-aid kit in here," he said. "Picked it up on the battlefield, I think. Found it somewhere in Strangia, anyway."

Abdullah sat down and wrestled off his boot. The relief it gave him to have it off was quickly canceled when he looked at his foot. It was raw.

The soldier grunted and slapped some kind of white dressing on it, which clung without needing to be tied on. Abdullah yelped. Then blissful coolness spread from the dressing. "Is this some kind of magic?" he asked.

"Probably," the soldier said. "I think those Ingary wizards gave these packs to their whole army. Put the boot on. You'll be able to walk now.

We've got to be far away before those boys' dads start looking for us on horseback."

Abdullah trod cautiously into his boot. The dressing must have been magic. His foot seemed as good as new. He was almost able to keep up with the soldier-which was just as well, for the soldier marched onward and upward until Abdullah felt they had gone as far as he had walked in the desert yesterday. From time to time Abdullah could not help glancing nervously behind in case horses were now pursuing them. He told himself it made a change from camels, although it would be nice not to have someone chasing him for once. Thinking about it, he saw that even in the Bazaar his father's first wife's relatives had been pursuing him eversince his father died. He was annoyed with himself for not having seen this before.

Meanwhile, they had climbed so high that the wood was giving way to wiry shrubs among rocks. As evening drew on, they were walking simply among rocks, somewhere near the top of a range of mountains, where only a few small, strong-smelling bushes grew, clinging to crevices. This was another sort of desert, Abdullah thought, while the soldier led the way along a narrow sort of ravine between high rocks. It did not look like a place where there was any chance of finding supper.

Some way along the ravine the soldier stopped and took off his pack.

"Take care of this for a moment," he said. "There looks to be a cave of sorts up the cliff this side. I'll pop up and see if it's a good place to spend the night."

84.There did seem to be a dark opening in the rocks some way above their heads when Abdullah wearily looked up. He did not fancy sleeping in it.

It looked cold and hard. But it was probablybetter than just lying down on the rock, he thought, as he ruefully watched the soldier swing easily up the cliff and arrive at the hole.

There was a noise like a mad metal pulley wheel.

Abdullah saw the soldier reel back from the cave with one hand clapped to his face and almost fall backward down the cliff. He saved himself somehow and came sliding and cursing down the rocks in a storm of rubble.

"Wild animal in there!" he gasped. "Let's move on." He was bleeding quite badly from eight long scratches. Four of them started on his forehead, crossed his hand, and went on down his cheek to his chin. The other four had torn his sleeve open and scored his arm from wrist to elbow. It looked as if he had got his hand to his face only just in time to avoid losing an eye. He was so shaken that Abdullah had to pick up his hat and his pack and guide him on down the ravine-which he did rather hurriedly. Any animal that could get the better of this soldier was an animal Abdullah did not want to meet.

The ravine ended after another hundred yards. And it ended in the perfect camping place. They were now on the other side of themountains with a wide view over the lands beyond, all golden and green and hazy in the westering sun. The ravine stopped in a broad floor of rock sloping gently up to what was almost another cave, where the rocks above hung over the slanting floor. Better still, there was a small stony stream babbling down the mountain just beyond.

Perfect though this was, Abdullah had no wish to stop anywhere so near that wild animal in the cave. But the soldier insisted. The scratches were hurting him. He threw himself down on the sloping rock and fetched out some kind of salve from the wizardly first-aid kit. "Light a fire,"

he said as he smeared the stuff on his wounds. "Wild animals are scared of fire."

Abdullah gave in and scrambled about, tearing up strong-smelling shrubs to burn. An eagle or something had nested in the crags 85above long ago. The old nest gave Abdullah armloads of twigs and quite a few dry branches, so that he soon had quite a stack of firewood. When the soldier had finished smearing himself with the salve, he brought out a tinderbox and lit a small fire halfway down the sloping rock. It crackled and leaped most cheerfully. The smoke, smelling rather like the incense Abdullah used to burn in his booth, drifted out from the end of the ravine and spread against the beginnings of a glorious sunset. If this really scared the beast in the cave off, Abdullah thought, it would be almost perfect here. Only almost perfect, because of course, there was nothing to eat for miles. Abdullah sighed.

The soldier produced a metal can from his pack. "Like to fill that with water? Unless," he said, eyeing the genie bottle tied to Abdullah's belt, "you've got something stronger in that flask of yours."

"Alas, no," Abdullah said. "It is merely an heirloom-rare fogged gla.s.s from Singispat-which I carry for sentimental reasons." He had no intention of letting someone as dishonest as the soldier know about the genie.

"Pity," said the soldier. "Fetch us water then, and I'll get on with cooking us some supper."

This made the place almost nearly perfect. Abdullah went leaping down to the stream with a will. When he came back, he found the soldier had brought out a saucepan and was emptying packets of dried meat and dried peas into it. He added the water and a couple of mysterious cubes and set it to boil on the fire. In a remarkably short time it had turned into a thick stew. And smelled delicious.

"More wizard's stuff?" Abdullah asked as the soldier shared half the stew onto a tin plate and pa.s.sed it to him.

"I think so," said the soldier. "I picked it up off the battlefield." He took the saucepan to eat from himself and found a couple of spoons. They sat eating companionably with the fire crackling between them, while the sky turned slowly pink and crimson and gold, and the lands below became blue. "Not used to roughing it, are you?" the soldier remarked. "Good clothes, fancy boots, you 86.have, but they've seen a bit of wear and tear lately by the looks of them. And by your talk and your sunburn, you come from quite a way south of Ingary, don't you?"

"All that is true, O most acutely observant campaigner," Abdullah said cagily. "And of you all I know is that you come from Strangia and are most oddly proceeding through this land, encouraging persons to rob you by flourishing the coins of your bounty-"

"Bounty be d.a.m.ned!" the soldier interrupted angrily. "Not one penny did I get from either Strangia or Ingary! I sweated my guts out in those wars-we all did-and at the end of it they say, 'Right, lads, that's it, it's peacetime now!' and turn us all out to starve. So I say to myself, 'Right indeed! Someone owes me for all the work I've done, and I reckon it's the folk of Ingary! They were the ones who brought wizards in and cheated their way to victory!' So I set off to earn my bounty off them, the way you saw me doing it today. You may call it a scam if you like, but you saw me; you judge me. I only take money off those who up and tryto rob me!"

"Indeed, the word scam never crossed my lips, virtuous veteran,"

Abdullah said sincerely. "I call it most ingenious, and a plan that few but you could succeed in."

The soldier seemed soothed by this. He stared ruminatively out at the blue distance below. "All that down there," he said, "that's Kingsbury Plain. That should yield me a mort of gold. Do you know, when I started out from Strangia, all I had was a silver threepenny bit and a bra.s.s b.u.t.ton I used to pretend was a sovereign?"

"Then your profit has been great," said Abdullah.

"And it'll be greater yet," the soldier promised. He set the saucepan neatly aside and fished two apples out of his pack. He gave one to Abdullah and ate the other himself, lying stretched on his back, staring out at the slowly darkening land. Abdullah a.s.sumed he was calculating the gold he would earn from it. He was surprised when the soldier said, "I always did love the evening camp. Take a look at that sunset now.