“Where is the key?”
“No good.” The great hairy skull shook slowly from side to side. “Village teacher got.”
Ehomba chewed his lower lip as he considered the situation. “It does not matter. I have something with me that I think can open the lock.”
The creature that called itself Hunkapa Aub did not dare to show any enthusiasm, but he could not keep it entirely out of his voice. “A tool?” When the herdsman nodded once, the hulking arthropoid rose slightly and approached the bars. “Ehomba go get tool!”
By way of reply the herdsman turned and made his way back out of the tavern as silently as he had entered. In the ensuing interval, the caged creature sat unmoving, its eyes never leaving the doorway through which the visiting human had vanished.
Hope was high beneath all that thick gray hair when Ehomba returned. He was not alone. A muscular jet-black shape was with him, gliding wraithlike across the floor despite its bulk. Together, they approached the rear of the cage. Hunkapa turned to scrutinize the herdsman’s companion. Dark eyes met yellow ones. Silent understanding was exchanged.
With a comradely hand Ehomba brushed the bushy black mane. “My tool. Ahlitah, meet Hunkapa Aub.”
The big cat’s growl was barely audible. “Charmed. Can we get out of here now?”
Extending an arm, the herdsman pointed. “Lock.”
Padding forward, the litah contemplated the heavy clasp. It was made of ironwood, umber with black streaks. Opening its massive jaws, the cat bit down hard and chewed. The crunching sound of wood being pulverized resounded through the room. It was not a particularly alarming sound. Nevertheless, Ehomba wished there was less of it.
A few querulous grunts rose from the scattered bodies, but none rose to seek the source of the gnawing. Several moments of concerted feline orthodontic activity resulted in a pile of sawdust and splinters accumulating on the floor. Stepping back, Ahlitah spat out bits and pieces of ironwood. All that was left of the lock was a curved section of latch that Ehomba promptly removed. Lifting the arm that barred the cage door, he retreated to stand alongside the impatient Ahlitah.
Tentatively, Hunkapa Aub reached out with one huge hand and pushed. The barred wooden door swung wide. Lumbering silently forward, he checked first to the right and then to the left, his hands holding on to either side of the opening. Then he stepped down onto the tavern floor. His arms were proportionately longer than his legs, but his knuckles did not quite scrape the ground. How much of him was ape, how much man, and how much something else, Ehomba was not prepared to say. But there was no mistaking the meaning of the tears that welled up in the erstwhile nightmare’s eyes.
“No time for that.” With a soft snarl, Ahlitah started back toward the entrance. “I’ll take him to the stable and we’ll wait for you there. You’ll be wanting to go upstairs and drag those two worthless humans you insist on calling your friends out of bed.”
“I will be quick,” Ehomba assured the big cat.
Marking the room numbers as he made his way down the narrow passage, Ehomba halted outside number five. As was customary in Netherbrae, the door was not locked. Lifting the latch as quietly as he could, he pushed open the door and stepped inside. The room was in total darkness, the curtains having been pulled across the window.
A sharp blade nicked his throat and a hand clutched at his left wrist, pulling it back behind him.
“It’s too late for maid service and too early for breakfast, so what the Gojorworn are . . . ?” The fingers around his unresisting wrist relaxed and the knife blade was withdrawn. “Etjole?”
Turning in the darkness, Ehomba saw the subdued glint of moonlight on metal as the swordsman resheathed his knife. “Having trouble sleeping, Simna?”
“I always sleep light, long bruther. Especially in a strange bed. That way I feel more confident about waking up in the morning.” Weapon secured, the shorter man stepped away from the wall. “You jested that I might be having trouble sleeping. I might ask you the same question.”
“Get your clothes on and your things together. We are leaving.”
“What, now? In the middle of the night? After that meal?” To underline his feelings the swordsman belched meaningfully. The sound echoed around the room.
“Yes, now. After that meal. Ahlitah is waiting for us in the stables—with another. His name is Hunkapa Aub.”
Grumbling pointedly, Simna began slipping into his clothes. “You pick up companions in the oddest times and places, bruther. Where’s this one from?”
“From a cage.”
“Hoy, from a—” In the darkness of the room the swordsman’s voice came to a halt as sharply as his movements. When he spoke again, it was with a measure of uncertainty as well as disbelief. “You broke that oversized lump of animated fur out of its box?”
“He is more than that. Hunkapa Aub is intelligent. Not very intelligent, perhaps, but no mindless animal, either.”
“Bruther, no matter where we go you seem to have this wonderful knack for endearing yourself to the locals. I wish you’d learn to repress it.” Darkness blocked the faint light from the single curtained window as the swordsman slipped upraised arms through a shirt. “When they discover their favorite subject for culinary target practice has gone missing they’re very likely to connect it to this late-night leave-taking of ours.”
“Let them,” Ehomba replied curtly. “I have little use for people like this, who would treat any animal the way they have, much less an intelligent creature like Hunkapa Aub.”
Simna stepped into his pants. “Maybe they don’t know that he’s intelligent.”
“He talks.” Anger boiled in the herdsman’s tone as he looked past his friend. “Where is Knucker?”
“Knucker?” In the dusky predawn Simna quickly assembled his belongings. “You know, bruther, I don’t believe the little fella ever came upstairs. Near as I can recall, when I left the townsparty traveling two steps forward, one step back, he was still drinking and carousing with the locals.”
“Are you ready yet?”
“Coming, coming!” the swordsman hissed as he struggled to don his pack. “Ghobrone knows you’re an impatient man. You’d think it was this Visioness Themaryl who was waiting for you downstairs.”
“If only she was.” Ehomba’s tone turned from curt to wistful. “I could make an end to this, and start back home.”
They found Knucker not far from where the three of them had originally been seated, sprawled on the floor with limbs flopped loosely about him. The stench of alcohol rose from his gaping, open mouth and his once clean attire was soiled with food, liquor, and coagulated vomit. His face was thick with grime, as if he had done some serious forehead-first pushing along the floor.
“Giela,” Simna muttered. “What a mess!”
Kneeling by the little man’s side, Ehomba searched until he found a wooden serving bowl. Tossing out the last of its rapidly hardening contents, he inverted it and placed it beneath Knucker’s greasy hair. It was not a soft pillow, but it would have to do. This accomplished, he set about trying to rouse the other man from his stupor.
Simna looked on for a while before disappearing, only to return moments later with a jug three-quarters full. Watering Knucker’s face as if it were a particularly parched houseplant, he kept tilting the jug until the contents were entirely gone. The last splashes did the trick, and the little man came around, sputtering slightly.
“What—who’s there?” Espying the basics of a friendly face in the darkness, he smiled beatifically. “Oh, it’s you, Etjole Ehomba. Welcome back to the party.” Frowning abruptly, he tried to sit up and failed. “Why is it so quiet?”
Disgust permeated the herdsman’s whispered reply. “You are drunk again, Knucker.”
“What, me? No, Ehomba, not me! I had a little to drink, surely. It was a party. But I am not drunk.”
The herdsman was implacable. “You told us many times that if we helped you, you would not let this happen to you again.”
/> “Nothing’s happened to me. I’m still me.”
“Are you?” Staring down at the prostrate, flaccid form, Ehomba chose his next words carefully. “What are the names of my children?”
“Daki and Nelecha.” A wan smile creased the grubby face. “I know everything, remember?”
“Only when you are drunk.” Rising, the herdsman turned and started past Simna. “Paradox is the fool at the court of Fate.”
Simna reached out to restrain him. “Hoy, Etjole, we can’t just leave him here like this.”
In the dark room, hard green eyes gazed unblinkingly back at the swordsman’s. “Everyone chooses what to do with their life, Simna. I chose to honor a dying man’s request. You chose to accompany me.” He glanced down at the frail figure on the floor. Knucker had begun to sing softly to himself. “He chooses this. It is time to go.”
“No, wait. Wait just a second.” Bending anxiously over the chanting intoxicant, Simna grabbed one unwashed hand and tugged firmly. “Come on, Knucker. You’ve got to get up. We’re leaving.”
Watery eyes tried to focus on the swordsman’s. “Your father abandoned your mother when you were nine. You have no sisters or brothers and you have always held this against your mother, who died six years ago. You have one false tooth.” Raising his head from the floor, the little man turned to grin at the silent, stolid Ehomba. “There are 1,865,466,345,993,429 grains of sand on the beach directly below your village. That’s to the waterline with the tide in. Tomorrow it will be different.” Letting go of the dirty hand, Simna straightened slowly.
“The axis of the universe is tilted fourteen point three-seven degrees to the plane of its ecliptic. Matter has twenty-eight basic component parts, which cannot be further subdivided. A horkle is a grank. Three pretty women in a room together suck up more energy than they give off.” He began to giggle softly. “Why a bee when it stings? If you mix sugar cane and roses with the right seeds, you get raspberries that smell as good as they taste. King Ephour of Noul-ud-Sheraym will die at eight-twenty in the evening of a moa bone stuck in his throat. I know everything.”
A grim-faced Simna was watching Ehomba carefully. Finally the herdsman bent low over the prone body and forestalled the little man’s litany of answers with an actual question.
“Tell me one thing, Knucker.”
“One thing?” The giggling grew louder, until it turned into a cough. “I’ll tell you anything!”
Eyes that could pick out a potential herd predator lurking at a great distance bored into the other man’s. “Can you stop drinking whenever you want to?”
Several choking coughs brought up the answer. “Yes. Whenever I want to.”
Ehomba straightened. “That is what I needed to know.” Without another word, he stepped around the querulous Simna and started for the door. With a last glance down at the giggling, coughing Knucker, the swordsman hurried to catch up to his friend.
“Ahlitah and Hunkapa will be growing anxious. We will pick up my pack and leave this place.” As they reached the open entrance to the inn, Ehomba nodded in the direction of the still dusky horizon. “With luck and effort we will put good distance between ourselves and Netherbrae before its citizens connect Hunkapa’s disappearance with our departure.”
A troubled Simna kept looking back in the direction of the tavern. “But he answered your question! You said yourself that he told you what he needed to know.”
“That is so.” Exiting the inn, they started down the entryway steps. “You were right all along, Simna ibn Sind. When he is drunk he believes that he knows everything. And it is true that when he is drunk he knows a great deal. Perhaps more than anyone else who has ever lived. But he does not know everything.” Exiting the building, they turned rightward and strode briskly toward the stables. “His answer to my question proves that there is at least one thing he does not know.”
Anxiously watching the shadows for signs of early-rising Netherbraeans, the swordsman wondered aloud, “What’s that, bruther?”
Ehomba’s tone never varied. “Himself.”
XIX
Simna quickly recovered from the shock of hearing their new companion hold up his end of a conversation, albeit with a severely limited vocabulary. As Ehomba had hoped, they succeeded in putting many miles between themselves and the picture-perfect village of Netherbrae before the sun began to show over the surrounding treetops. Exhausted from what had become a predawn run, they settled down in the shade of a towering gingko tree. Even Ahlitah was tired from having not only to hurry, but also to spend much of the time scrambling uphill.
While his companions rested down and had something to eat, Ehomba stood looking back the way they had come. It was impossible to see very far in the dense deciduous forest, so closely packed were the big trees, but as near as was able to tell, there was no sign of pursuit from Netherbrae. Nor could he hear any rustling of leaf litter or the breaking of more than the occasional branch.
“How’s it look, bruther?” Simna ibn Sind glanced up from his unappetizing but nourishing breakfast of dried meat and fruit.
“Nothing. No noise, either. And the forest creatures are chattering and chirping normally. That says to me that nothing is disturbing their morning activities, as would be the case if there was even a small party of pursuers nearby.” He turned back to his friends. “Perhaps they do not think Hunkapa worth pursuing.”
“Or too dangerous,” Simna suggested. “Or maybe there’s a convenient proscription in the teachings of Tragg against hunting down and trying to recapture a prisoner who’s already escaped.” After gulping from his water bag, he splashed a little on his face. In these high mountains, with sparkling streams all around, there was no need to conserve. “There’s just one problem.”
“What is that?” Ehomba asked patiently.
The swordsman gestured toward the lofty peaks that broke the northern horizon. “Knucker was our guide. How the Garamam are we going to find our way through to this Hamacassar? Without a guide we could wander around in these forests and mountains for years.”
Ehomba did not appear to be overly concerned. “Knucker needs to find himself before he goes looking for someplace like Hamacassar. Easier to find a city than oneself.” He nodded at the beckoning peaks. “All we have to do is continue on a northward track and eventually we will come out of these mountains. Then we can ask directions of local people to the city.”
“That’s all well and good, bruther. But scrambling over a couple of snow-capped peaks takes a lot more time than walking along a well-known trail. We could try following a river, but first we have to find one that flows northward instead of south, and then hope it doesn’t turn away to west or east, or loop back on itself. A guide would probably cut weeks or months off our walking and save us from having to negotiate some rough country.” He stoppered his water bag. “I’ve been lost in mountains like these before and, let me tell you, I’d rather take a whipping from a dozen amazons.”
“You would rather take a whipping from a dozen amazons even if you were not lost,” the herdsman retorted. “All we can do is do our best. Between the two of us I am confident we will not find ourselves wandering about aimlessly for very long.”
“Hunkapa see Hamacassar.”
“What’s that?” Startled, Simna looked up from the last of his dried biscuit. Ehomba too had turned to stare at the newest member of the group. Dozing against a great arching root, the black litah ignored them all.
Ehomba proceeded to question their hulking companion. Seated, Hunkapa Aub was nearly at eye level with the tall southerner. “Hunkapa see Hamacassar,” he repeated convincingly.
“You mean you’ve been in the port city?” Simna didn’t know whether to laugh or sneer. Though the shaggy brute was slow, he was not entirely dumb. The swordsman decided to do neither. “How did you find it? Accommodations to your liking?”
“Not visit Hamacassar.” Hunkapa Aub spoke slowly and carefully so as to keep both his simple words and even simpler thoughts straig
ht, in his own mind as well as in those of his new friends. “I see.” An enormous hairy arm rose and pointed. “From slopes of Scathe Mountain. First mountains go down. Then flat places where men grow foods. Beyond that, way beyond, is river Eynharrmawk—Eynharrowk. On this side Eynharrowk is city Hamacassar.” Reaching up, he touched one thick finger to an ear almost entirely obscured by dark gray hair. “See river, go Hamacassar.”
Ehomba pondered the creature’s words silently. Simna was not as reticent to comment. “Hoy, that were quite a speech, Aub. Why should we believe the least of it?”
“Why would he lie?” Tapping a finger against his lips, Ehomba studied the guileless, open-hearted brute.
“He’s not lying.” Both men turned to look at the supine Ahlitah. The big cat had rolled over and was lying on its spine with all four feet in the air, scratching itself against the rough-edged woody debris that littered the forest floor.
“How do you know?” Simna’s disdain was plain to see.
Concluding its scratching, the litah tumbled contentedly onto its side. “I can smell it. Certain things have strong smells. Females in heat, fresh scat, week-old kills, false promises, and outright lies.” He sneezed resoundingly. “The new beast may be slow and ignorant, but he is not a liar. Not in this matter, at least.”
Dropping his hand from his lips, Ehomba tried to see into the depths of Hunkapa Aub’s being. He was unable to penetrate very far. There was a veil over the creature’s soul. Aware that Simna was watching the both of them expectantly, he tried to reassure them all with another question.
“You say that you have seen Hamacassar but have not been there. Have you ever been out of the Hrugar Mountains?”
“No. But been to edge. Stop there.” He shook his head and shag went flying in all directions. “Don’t like. Humans say and do bad things to Hunkapa Aub.”
“But you know the way through the high mountains and down into the foothills on the other side?”