The Two of Swords: Part 14 Read Online Free PDF

home.”
    “We’ll make for a big city,” Folha said, “some place they’re used to strangers. My uncle used to go with the trade caravans, they were always doing deals with people they couldn’t talk to. You wave your hands and make faces. Usually works, in the end.”
    “I knew a man who went to Blemya,” Trahidour said. “Big cities, thousands of people crammed into tiny spaces lined with bricks. He said the smell took your head off.” He looked at Chanso. “You ever been to a city?”
    “Me? God, no. We’re all grasslanders where I come from.”
    “Same here,” Folha said. “Conselh was on about going to Blemya, when they had the trouble with the bad people, figured they’d be paying good wages. But all that fell through, of course. Probably just as well,” he added. “Those Blemyans didn’t have a clue about the bad people, it was only the Belots who could handle them.”
    Chanso asked, “Is it true the king of Blemya’s a woman?”
    “Queen,” Folha said gravely. “Young girl your age, so they say.”
    “That’s crazy.”
    “Never been there, so I wouldn’t know. One thing I’ve learned on this trip, different people do things different ways, but the mistakes are always the same. I reckon a woman can make a fuck-up of ruling people just as well as a man can. Or a kid, come to that.”
    “They say,” Clar said, “one of the emperors appointed his dog chief magistrate.”
    Folha nodded. “I had a dog like that once,” he said.
    They came to a cabin, so well hidden among the willow brakes that they didn’t realise it was there until they passed it. The windows were shuttered and the door had been boarded up. “Maybe they left something inside,” Trahidour said.
    They agreed it was worth a look. They stove in the door with the biggest rock that Folha and Clar could lift out of the riverbed. Inside, they found four blankets, two changes of clothes for a man significantly taller than any of them, a shovel, a pick, a sledgehammer, a knife, a side axe, a heavy-duty clay bottle (empty; faint lingering smell of beer) and a bucket of nails. Folha figured that the shed must’ve been there for men who worked on the river, maintaining the fords, that sort of thing. It hadn’t been used for a long time. Come to that, they hadn’t seen a ford yet.
    “Never mind,” Folha said. “We’ll sling it all on the spare horse. Who knows what might come in handy? Here, Clar, you could stand on my shoulders and we could wear the coat.”
    “A blanket each,” Trahidour said. “Now there’s luxury.”
    That evening they saw two riders, a man and a woman. Not for long; the riders must have seen them, because they turned round and went back the way they had come, at speed. Chanso didn’t like the look of that, but Folha said he wasn’t worried. “Maybe she wasn’t his wife,” he said. “I’d clear out, if someone saw me. They were a long way off, they couldn’t see who we were, so I don’t suppose they were scouts for the Ironshirts. Could be they’re just wary of strangers. In which case, they’ll be as keen to stay clear of us as we are of them.”
    But he wouldn’t let Clar light a fire, and Chanso noticed him sitting up late into the night, keeping watch, as Conselh had done. He had the bow and arrows with him, and the bow was strung.
    Folha must have fallen asleep sometime between midnight and dawn, because they came with the first light of the rising sun, and nobody heard them until it was too late.
    Chanso was jerked awake by a shout. He sat up, and a foot hit him in the face, accidentally or deliberately; there was a scuffle, three men were pulling a fourth to the ground, Chanso couldn’t see who it was. Then he heard the solid, chunky noise of something hard hitting bone, and more shouting in a language he didn’t understand. He jumped up, and something hit him in the small of the back; he spun round, and a man hit him on the forehead with a long stick. It wasn’t hard enough to