me out, heaving a box onto his shoulder and bidding me take the last bag. When only a couple of crates were left, Mithos led us into the corridor and spoke quickly. “Master Hawthorne, do as Orgos says. Speak only when you have to. I don’t want you being chased across rooftops again. There is an inn called the Wheatsheaf about a mile along the Stavis road. We will meet there, hopefully, for lunch. If we are not all together by nightfall, those who have arrived should head for Stavis at dawn tomorrow. Orgos, you take the wagon through the southwestern gate. And Will?” he said, bending down to my level and speaking carefully into my face. “Don’t even consider turning us in. If you do and they don’t have you up on the scaffold with us, burning your entrails in front of your dying eyes, I’ll make sure someone from our side does something similar. It may be less public, but it would probably feel about the same. Good luck.”
We left the tavern at a moderate pace and I kept my eyes turned down. With a flick of the reins Orgos set our four Cherrati mares walking out of the inn’s yard and into the streets. I fiddled with my crossbow and wondered if I should just shoot myself now and save them the trouble.
SCENE VI
The gatehouse
A light summer rain had begun to fall as we left the inn. The Cresdon streets were rapidly being churned to mud by cart wheels, horse hooves, and the shaggy, lumbering cattle they breed in these parts. Orgos steered the wagon expertly enough and, at first, said nothing, so I was free to take a last look at the city, as we hit potholes of reeking, stagnant water deep enough to drown a sheep. All in all I wasn’t going to miss this place too much, even if I knew absolutely sod-all about what lay outside it.
Frequently we slowed to a virtual stop to negotiate the wagon through streets so narrow that we scraped against houses and shops on both sides. Most of them were white plaster and timber-framed ruins that tier fractionally outwards like inverted pyramids. The thatched roofs on either side of the street almost meet in the middle, but at ground level you can drive a wagon through. Just. I lost count of the number of times the street was blocked by some imbecile taking his geese or chickens to market. It took us three-quarters of an hour to cover about a mile and a half, a good ten minutes of which was spent arguing with the red-faced driver of the hay cart that was coming from the opposite direction.
I was not used to handling weapons (other than wholly ineffectual stage swords, of course, and since I had played almost nothing but girls, I didn’t get to handle those much either), and the feel of the crossbow in my hands, though it was little more than a toy, excited me. As we passed the hay carter, I let him glimpse it and he stopped throwing insults at us. Orgos noticed and frowned at me.
“Sorry,” I said. “I wouldn’t have used it.”
“You got that right,” he remarked warningly. “And use your accent.”
“What? Why? There’s no one around.”
“Get used to it now,” he insisted, still using the nasal, singsong tones himself, “and you’ll be more comfortable should it become essential.”
“I’m shy,” I answered with a coy smile that was supposed to amuse him and make him sympathetic. It didn’t.
He leaned his face close to me and his black eyes fastened on to mine as he whispered, “This is not a game, boy, and there is more than just your scrawny neck on the chopping block. I am not requesting that you practice that accent, I am telling you to. Else get off my wagon.”
“Right,” I muttered, scared of his earnestness.
“What?” he demanded, making his point carefully.
“I mean, right you are, there, sir,” I replied in the best imitation of Cherrat as I could manage. He grinned, satisfied, and his white teeth glowed impossibly in his black face. His features seemed capable of slipping from death-threatening hostility into amiable good humor without so much as a pause for thought.
I hadn’t spent much time amongst black people for, in these parts, they tended to be wealthy merchants: hardly the types to frequent the Eagle. When you saw them it was usually in the marketplace, and I mean the traders’ market, not the bruised-fruit-and-rancid-meat places.