Caz brushed daintily at his lace cuffs and silk stockings. "I for one could certainly use a bath. Not to mention something more elaborate than camp cuisine. Ah, for an epinard and haricot salad with spiced legume dressing!"
"A gourmet." Major Ortrum looked with new interest at the rabbit. "You will pardon my saying so, sir, but I do not understand you falling in with this kind of company."
"I find my present company quite satisfactory, thank you." Caz smiled thinly.
Ortrum shrugged. "Life often places us in the most unexpected situations." It was clear he fancied himself something of a philosopher. "We will find you your bath, sir, and lodgings for you all."
The beaver leaned close, still stiffly at attention, and jerked his head toward the dragon. "Lodgings, thir? Even for that?"
"Yes, what about Falameezar?" Jon-Tom asked. "Comrades are not to be separated." The dragon beamed.
"No trouble whatsoever," the raccoon assured him. He pointed behind them. "That third large structure there, behind you and to your left, is a military barracks and storehouse. At present it is occupied only by a small maintenance crew, who will be moved. Should your substantial reptilian friend desire to return to his natural aquatic habitat, whether permanently or merely for a washup, he will find the river close at hand. And there is ample room inside for all of you, so you will be able to stay together.
"If you will please follow me?" He returned to his chair. Curses and urgings came from the driver. Though high-pitched and squeaky, they were notable for their exceptional vileness.
Divide and promote a selected few, Jon-Tom thought angrily. That's how to keep the oppressed in line. The treatment of the smaller rodents was a source of continuing unease to him.
They followed the chair to the entrance of a huge wooden building. A pair of towering sliding doors were more than large enough to admit Falameezar.
"This building is often used to house large engines," Ortrum explained. "Hence the need for the oversized portal.
"I will leave you here now. I must return to make my report and set in motion the requests you have made. If you need anything, do not hesitate to ask any of the staff inside for assistance. I welcome you as guests of the city."
He turned, and the chair shuffled off under the straining muscles of the mice....
XIX
Their quarters were Spartan but satisfactory. Falameezar declared himself content with the straw carried in from the stables, the consistency being drier but otherwise akin to the familiar mud of his favorite riverbottom.
"There are some ramifications of communal government I would like to discuss with you, comrade," he said to Jon-Tom as the youth was walking toward his own quarters.
"Later, Falameezar." He yawned, nearly exhausted by the hectic day. It had turned dark outside. The windows of Polastrindu had come alive like a swarm of fireflies.
Also, he was plain tired of keeping the dragon's insatiable curiosity sated. His limited store of knowledge about the workings of Marxism was beginning to get a little threadbare, and he was growing increasingly worried about making a dangerous philosophical mistake. Falameezar's friendship was predicated on a supposedly mutual affinity for a particular socioeconomic system. A devastating temper lay just beneath those iridescent scales.
A hand clutched his arm and he jumped. It was only Mudge.
"Take 'er a mite easier, mate. Yer more knotted up than a virgin's girdle. We've made it 'ere, an' that were the important thing, wot? Tonight we'll go out an' find ourselves a couple of less argumentative ladies than the pair we're travelin' with and 'ave ourselves a time of it, right?"
Jon-Tom firmly disengaged his arm. "Oh no. I remember the last tavern you took me into. You nearly got my belly opened. Not to mention abandoning me in Thieves' Hall."
"Now that were Talea's doin', not mine."
"What was my doing?" The redhead had appeared in the doorway ahead.
"Why nothin', luv," said Mudge innocently.
She eyed him a moment longer, then decided to ignore him. "Anybody noticed that there are dormitories at each end of this mausoleum? They're full of soldiers. We've been given the officer's quarters, but I don't like being surrounded by the others."
"Afraid of being murdered in your sleep?" Flor had joined the discussion.
Talea glared at her. "It's been known to happen, usually to those who think their beds safe. Besides, that Major Maskface said there was normally only a 'maintenance crew' living here. Then where'd all the bully-boys come from, and why?"
"How many are there?" inquired Caz.
"At least fifty at each end. Possums, weasels, humans; a nice mix. They looked awfully alert for a bunch of broom-pushers. Well armed, too."
"It's only natural for the city to be nervous at our presence," Jon-Tom argued. "A few guards are understandable."
"A few yes, a hundred I'm not so sure."
"Are you saying we're prisoners?" said Flor.
"I'm saying I don't sleep well knowing that over a hundred 'nervous' and well-armed soldiers are sleeping on either side of me."
"Wouldn't be the first time," Mudge murmured.
She looked at him sharply. "What? What did you say, you fuzz-faced little prick?"
"That it wouldn't be the first time we've been surrounded, luv."
"Oh."
"There's one way to find out." Caz moved to the small door set in one of the huge sliding panels hung from the west wall. He opened it and conversed with someone unseen. Presently the beaver officer they'd first encountered outside the city appeared. He looked unhappy, tried to avoid their stares.
"I underthand you would like an evening meal."
"That's right," said Caz.
"They will be brought in immediately. The betht the city can offer." He started to leave. Caz restrained him.
"Just a moment. That's a very kind offer, but some of us would prefer to find our own dinery." He picked absently at his tail, whiskers twitching. "That's all right, isn't it?" He took a step toward the open door.
The officer reluctantly moved to block his path. "I'm truly thorry, thir." He sounded as if he meant it. "But Major Ortrum gave thrict inthructions on how you were to be quartered and fed. Your thafety ith of much conthern to the authoritieth. They are worried that thertain radical foolth among the population might try to attack you."
"Their concern for our health is most kind," replied Caz, "but they needn't worry. We can take care of ourselves."
"I know that, thir," admitted the officer, "but my thuperiorth think otherwithe. Ith for your own protecthion." He backed out, closing the door tightly behind him.
"That's it, then," snapped an angry Talea. "We're under house arrest. I knew they were up to something."
Flor was playing with her knife, cleaning her long nails and looking quite ravishing as she leaned against a wall, legs crossed and her black cape framing her figure.
"That's easily fixed. Un poco sangre and we'll go where we please, ¿no es verdad? Or we could wake up Jonny-Tom's fire-breathing compadre and make charcoal of that door." She gestured at the huge sliding panels with the knife.
"These aren't the enemy, Flor. Now is a time for diplomacy," he told her. "In any case, I can't risk leaving Falameezar."
Black eyes flashed at him and she stood away from the wall, jabbed the knife into the wood. "Maybe so, but I'm like Talea in this. I don't like being told where I can and can't go even if it supposedly is for my own 'protection'! I had twenty years of older brothers and sisters telling me that. I'll be damned if I'm going to let some oversized stuffy coon dictate the same thing to me now."
"Tch, tch... children, children."
They all turned. The squat figure of Clothahump was watching them, clucking his tongue in disapproval.
"You will all be valuable on the battlefield in the war to come, but that war is not yet, nor here. The fleshpots of the city do not interest me in the least, so," and he smiled up at Jon-Tom, "I will remain here to satisfy our large companion's desire f
or conversation."
"Are you sure... ?" Jon-Tom began.
"I have listened closely to much of your chatter, and you have instructed me well. The underlying principles to which this dragon adheres so fanatically are simple enough to manipulate. I can handle him. Besides, it is the nature of wizards and dragons to get along with one another. There are other things we can talk about.
"But you should all go, if you so desire. You have done all I have asked of you so far and deserve some relaxation. So I will occupy the attention of the dragon when required, and will aid you in slipping away."
"I don't know." Jon-Tom studied the snoring figure of the dragon. "He has a pretty probing, one-track mind."
"I will endeavor to steer our talk away from eeonomics. That seems to be his main interest. After you have departed I shall bar the door from the outside... a simple bit of levitation. With the bars in place and the sounds of conversation inside, the other guards will assume all are still here.
"That shouldn't be too 'ard to do, wot?"
Mudge jumped. The wizard had mimicked his voice perfectly.
A dark form descended from the rafters. "What about me, Master?" Pog looked imploringly at him.
"Go with them if you will. I will have no need of you here tonight. But stay away from the brothels. That's what got you into this in the first place, remember. You will end up indenturing yourself to a second master."
"Not ta worry, boss. And thanks!" He bowed in the air, dipping like a diving plane.
"I don't believe you, but I will not hold you back and let the others go. Moral desiccation," he muttered disgustedly. Pog simply winked at Jon-Tom.
"You said you'd help us get out. What are you going to do," Flor wondered, "dissolve the wall?"
Clothahump frowned at her as much as his hard face would allow. "You underestimate the resources available to a sophisticated worker of miracles such as myself. If I were to do as you suggest, it would be immediately evident to those watching us what had taken place. Your temporary departure must go unnoticed.
"When it is but a little darker I will allow you to pass safely and unseen into the city."
So it was that several hours later the little group of sightseers stood clustered in a narrow side street. Oil lamps flickered in the night mist. Light struggled to escape from behind closed shutters. Around them drifted the faint sounds of a city too big and bustling to go to sleep at night.
Behind them, across the deserted square, bulked the shadowy, barnlike barracks in which they'd been confined only moments earlier.
Jon-Tom had expected Clothahump to do something extraordinary, such as materializing them inside another building.
Instead, the wizard had moved to another small side door. His gift for mimicry, magical or otherwise, had been used to throw the studied voice of one snoozing guard. Through the use of ventriloquism he had cast rude aspersions on the ancestry of the other guard. Violently waking up his supposedly insulting companion, this victim and his associate soon fell to more physical discussion.
At that point it was a simple matter for Caz and Talea to slip up behind them and via the judicious application of some loose cobblestones, settle the argument for the duration of the evening.
It was not quite the miraculous manipulation of magic Jon-Tom had expected from Clothahump, but he had to admit it was efficient.
No one troubled them or challenged them as they walked down the deserted thoroughfare. Citizens were voluntarily or else by directive giving the barracks area a wide berth.
Soon they began encountering evening pedestrian traffic, however, and despite the size of Jon-Tom and Flor, they attracted little attention. Talea and Mudge had never been inside a city the size of Polastrindu. They were trying hard to act blasé, but their actual feeling was awe.
Jon-Tom and Flor were equally ignorant of the city's customs, though not of its size, and so was Pog. So it was left unspoken that Caz would lead them. After a while Jon-Tom felt almost comfortable walking the rain-soaked streets, his cape up over his head. With its overhanging balconies and flickering oil lamps it was not unlike Lynchbany. The principal difference was the increased volume of bickering and fighting, of the sounds of loving and playing and cursing and crying cubs that issued from behind doors and windows.
As in Lynchbany the uppermost garret levels were inhabited by the various arboreal citizens. Bats like Pog, or kilt-clad birds. Night-fliers filled the sky and danced or fought in silhouette against the cloud-shrouded moon.
A group of drunken raccoons and coatis ambled past them. Their capes and vests were liquor-stained. One inebriated bobcat tottered in their midst. She was magnificently dressed in a long flowing skirt and broad-rimmed hat. With short tail switching and cat-eyes piercing the night she looked as if she might just have emerged from a stage version of Puss n' Boots, though the way her companion coati was pawing her was anything but fairytalish.
They encountered a group of voles and opossums on their way to work. Having just arisen from a long day's sleep, the workers were anxious to reach their jobs. The revelers would not let them pass. There was shoving and pushing, much of it good-natured, as the workers made their way at last up the street.
"Down this way," Caz directed them. They turned down a narrow, winding road. The lighting was more garish, the noise from busy establishments more raucous. Heavily made-up faces boasting extreme coloration of fur and skin only partly due to cosmetics beckoned to them from various windows. By no means were all of them of a female cast. Flor in particular studied them with as much interest as ever she'd devoted to a class in the sociology of nineteenth-century theater.
Occasionally these faces would regard them with more than usual intent. These stares were reserved primarily for the giants Flor and Jon-Tom. Some of the comments that accompanied these looks were as appreciative as they were ribald.
"My feet are beginning to hurt," Jon-Tom told Caz. "How much farther? You know where you're taking us?"
"In a nonspecific way, yes, my friend. We are searching for an establishment that combines the best of all possible worlds. Not every tavern offers sport. Not every gaming house supplies refreshment. And of the few that offer all, not many are reputable enough to set foot in."
Still another corner they turned. To his surprise Jon-Tom noted that Talea had sidled close to him.
"It's nice to be out," he said conversationally. "Not that I was so uncomfortable back there in the barracks, but it's the principle of the thing. If they think they can get away with restricting our movements, then they'll be more inclined to do so, and less respeetful of Clothahump's information."
"That's so," she said huskily. "But that's not what concerns me now."
"No?" He put his arm around her experimentally. She didn't resist. He thought back to that morning in the forest when he'd awakened to find her curled up against his shoulder. That warmth communicated itself now through her shirt and cape. It traveled through his fingers right up his arm and down toward nether regions.
"What does concern you, then?" he asked affectionately.
"That for the past several minutes we've been followed." Startled, Jon-Tom started to look back over his shoulder when a hand jabbed painfully into his ribs.
"Don't look at them, you idiot!" He forced his eyes resolutely ahead. "There are six or seven of them, I think."
"Maybe it's just another group of party-goers," he said hopefully.
"I don't think so. They've neither fallen behind us, turned off on a different street, nor come any nearer. They've kept too consistent a gap between us to mean well."
"Then what should we do?" he asked her.
"Probably turn into the next tavern. If they mean us any harm, they'll be more reluctant to try anything in front of a room full of witnesses."
"We can't be sure of that. Why not send Pog back to check 'em out," he suggested brightly, "before we jump to any conclusions? At the least he can tell us exactly how many of them there are and how heavily armed they are."
/>
She looked up at him approvingly. "That's more like it. The more suspicious you become, Jon-Tom, the longer you'll live. Pog! Pog?" The others looked back at her curiously.
"Pog! Good-for-nothing parasitic airborne piece of shit, where the hell--?"
"Stow it, sister!" The bat was abruptly fluttering in front of them. "I've got some bad news for ya."
"We already know," Talea informed him.
He looked puzzled, remained hovering a couple of feet in front of them as they walked. "You do? But how could you? I flew on ahead because I was getting bored, and surely ya can't see...?"
"Wait... wait a second," muttered Jon-Tom. "Ahead? But," and he jerked a thumb back over his left shoulder, "we were talking about the group that's be--"
"That's far enough!" declaimed a strange voice.
"Whup... see yas." Pog suddenly rocketed straight up into the darkness formed by garrets and overhanging beams.
Jon-Tom hastily searched the street. The nearest open doorway from which music and laughter emerged was at least half a block ahead of them on the left. At the moment there was nothing flanking them save a couple of dark portals. One led into a close that pierced a labyrinth of stairways. The other was heavily barred with iron-studded shutters.
There was no one else in sight. Not a single stray celebrant, or better still, any of the city's night patrol.
In front of them waited perhaps a dozen heavily armed humans. Most boasted long scraggly hair and longer faces. They hefted clubs, maces, quarterstaffs, and bolas. It was an impressive assortment of armament. Not until much later did he have time to reflect on the fact that there was not a single serious killing weapon, not one knife or spear or sword, among them.
The humans had spread themselves into a semicircle across the street, blocking it completely. Jon-Tom considered the narrow close a last time. It had more the look of a trap than a means of escape.
Two-thirds of the humans were male, the rest female. None wore decent clothes or pleasant looks. All were roughly Talea's height. Even Caz was taller than most of them. Their attention was on Jon-Tom and Flor, whom they regarded with unconcealed interest.