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again, louder this time, to be heard by his
mother’s spirit so that she might be there to welcome her husband. He stood by
the bonfire of his past for a long time, not flinching as the flesh within it popped
and shrank in the heat. He stood watching, dry-eyed, until the flames began to
sink. Then he lay down beside it with his truncheon of a spear to hand. And,
mercifully, he slept at last.
     

THREE
    THE
COMPANY OF THE ROAD
    Gasca hitched his
cloak higher about his shoulders and set one flap to cover his right ear so
that the snow might not find so easy a passage. It was a good cloak, goat’s
leather rimmed with dogskin, but it had been his older brother’s before this,
and that big bastard had given it much hard wear. Besides which, there was no
cloak made that would keep out the bitterness of this evening’s wind. But a
people who had made their home in the highland valleys of the Harukush had
grown up with it. So Gasca shrugged off the discomfort, as a man ought, and
kept his head up, using his spear as a staff to pick his way along the
treacherous gravelled slush that was the road, his left arm fighting to keep
his bronze-faced shield from flapping up like an old man’s hat.
    The Machran road
was not busy, but those who had need to travel it at this time of year tended
to draw together somewhat. In the evenings it made for an easier bivouac, and
there were informal arrangements. Men gathered firewood, women fetched water.
Children got under the feet of all, and were cuffed promiscuously by their
elders. It was safer to sleep as part of a large camp, for the footpads and
bandits in this part of the hills were renowned. As a fully armed soldier,
Gasca had at first been avoided, then courted, and now was welcomed in the
company of travellers. He had a fine voice, a pleasant manner, and if he was
not the most comely of fellows, he had still the good-natured forbearance of
youth to recommend him.
    All Machran bound,
the company was a varied lot. Two merchants led, with plodding donkeys laden
with all manner of sacks and bags. Haughty fellows, they refused to divulge the
contents, but it was easy enough to smell the juniper berries and half-cured
hides once the fire began to warm them. A pair of young couples followed, the
men as possessive as stags around their new wives, the girls flirtatious as
only married women can be. Then came a grey-haired matron with the bark of a
drillmaster, who herded round her skirts a half dozen ragged urchins, orphans
running from some war in the far north. She was taking them to sell in the
capital, and looked after them with the close attentiveness a man might show to
a good hunting dog. One of the girls, she had already offered to Gasca, but he
did not like his meat so tender, and besides, he had no money to spare for such
indulgences. The children seemed to sense the essential charity in his nature,
and when night fell one or two of them would invariably wriggle under his cloak
and sleep curled against him. He did not mind, for they were good warmth, and
if they were crawling with vermin, well, so was he.
    Five days, this
serried company had travelled in each other’s ambit, and they had become
comrades of the road, sharing food and stories and sometimes going so far as to
venture a little personal history about the campfires. The two merchants had
unbent somewhat, and over execrable wine had let slip brawny yarns of the
battles they had fought in their youth. The young husbands, once they had torn
themselves from their bedrolls and wiped the sweat from their brows, confided
to the company that they were brothers, married to sisters, and apprenticed to
a famous armourer in Machran, Ferrious of Afteni by name, who would teach them
his secrets and make of them rich men, artists as much as artisans.
    The pimping
matron, while picking lice from the hair of one of her charges, extolled the
virtues of a certain green-walled house in the Street of the Loom-Makers, where
a man might indulge