Hugh Cook: The wizards and the warriors

News, rumour, gossip and slander also, of course, travel the Salt Road.

'Phyphor, it's too much for me,' said Garash. 'Can't we rest? Can't we stop?'

Phyphor trudged on, in silence, his eyes downcast. His walk was little more than a survival stagger. The long days spent labouring over the mountains then navigating across open country to regain the Salt Road had worn him to his bones.

'Slave driver,' muttered Garash.

That was about the worst insult one wizard could offer another. When Phyphor did not respond, Miphon took his hand. It was cold, like a bit of dead wood. 'Phyphor…"

The old wizard did not resist as Miphon drew him to the shelter of a clump of roadside trees.

'What's his problem?' said Garash.

'Too much wet, wind and road,' said Miphon.

Acutely aware that there would be nobody to help them if Phyphor began to slip into a death-stupor, Miphon gathered wood, lit a fire, heated a little gruel then fed it to Phyphor, who mumbled it down without resistance. It was the last of their food. They had eaten scarcely enough to warm their skeletons over the last few days.

Phyphor recovered quickly with the help of campfire warmth and gruel. Wizards had resources not given to ordinary men; though he had reached the edge of death, he was soon insisting that they press on. As they tramped north, Miphon engaged him in conversation from time to time to gauge his condition.

Phyphor was still holding up well when late afternoon brought them to the hamlet of Delve – a collection of squatdwellings crouching in the wetrot shadows of trees that choked a narrow gully. No dragon could have seen the hamlet from the air; it was almost invisible from the road.

The wizards knew what they would find: doors that stooped as low as the aching curve of rheumatism, rooves of sodden thatch, dark interiors cluttered with animals, floors of septic mud and manure, and people with the similar squinting eyes and chinless faces that come from generations of drunken fathers ramming their daughters against the walls.

First to greet them was a small black dog which raced through the mud so full of teeth and fury that Miphon at first thought it was rabid. It flung itself at them. Phyphor caught it with his staff, knocking it sideways into a tree. It lay in the rain as if stunned, then slowly crawled away, dragging its hindquarters.

People began to appear in doorways: old women with faces like those of smoke-shrivelled shrunken heads, young men picking at their teeth in a meditative way, a young woman with the bulging belly of a pregnancy near term. None of them said anything. They stood in the doorways as if they had been there all their lives staring out into the rain.

Finally a girl-child came splashing through the mud.

'Galish?' she said.

'No,' said Miphon, in the Trading Tongue. 'Not Galish, what?' said the girl. 'Wizards,' said Miphon.

The girl laughed. She flicked mud at them with one of her small bare feet. Garash growled; Phyphor hushed him.

'Where can we get a bed for the night?' said Miphon. 'Where?'

'A bed? For the night? Where?' 'Where what?'

'Where sleep,' said Miphon hopefully. 'Where sleep.' 'Sleep. Oh, sleep!'

The girl rocked up and down on her toes in the mud, which had splashed up her legs to her knees. She stuck the tip of her tongue between her teeth and waited. Miphon brought out a small coin, a bronze bisque from the Rice Empire, with the crescent moon on one side and the disc of the sun on the other. He held it out. The girl snatched it, quick as a frog whipping a fly from the sky. She smuggled it through layers of rags till it lay in some secret hiding place next to her skin.

'Sleep,' she said, and led them to one of the houses, stamping occasionally so that mud and water flew through the air around her. 'Sleep.'

Peering into the house, the wizards saw a smoking fire and a big wooden table in which hollows had been gouged into which soup could be ladled – this household was too poor to afford food bowls. A man lumbered out of the interior gloom and placed himself in the doorway. 'Galish?' he said.

'No,' said Miphon. 'Are you an innkeeper?' 'Certain, yes.'

'We'd like to stay here for the night if we may.'

'Who might you be then?' said the man, checking the size of his nose with his thumb.

'We're from the south,' said Miphon.

'South is where you're from, but who are you?'

'My style is Phyphor, master wizard of the order of Arl, which has rank among the highest of the eight orders,' said Phyphor.

Phyphor had learnt the Galish Trading Tongue from a wizard who had learnt it from a book; he had let Miphon do most of the talking on their journey north.

'Are we in understanding?' said Phyphor.

'I understand,' said the innkeeper, 'And you?'

He pointed at Garash.

'My style is Garash. Have a care, lest my wrath breed toward destruction. Stand ajar to let us in; spread straw overhead the mud.'

A woman inside the house, who was tending the smoking fire, cackled. Garash swung his head toward her. His protuberant eyes peered suspiciously at her gloomy corner.

'Why is that wet crack laughing?' he said.

'It's a joke to think we've got straw to throw on the floor at this end of a hard winter and a wet spring,' said the innkeeper. 'You now, young one. Who are you?'

'E'parg Miphon,' said Miphon, naming himself with the immaculate Galish of a constant traveller. 'We'd be grateful to have the pleasure of your fireside.'

'Gratitude is all my soul, as the crel said to the egg,' quoth the innkeeper. The word 'crel' was unknown to the Galish Trading Tongue, but Miphon did not ask for a translation, for the innkeeper made his meaning clear enough: 'You, my pretties, must pay with a pretty, for what costs a pretty isn't bought with a word.'

'We've got money enough,' said Garash belligerently, thus compromising their position for the subsequent bargaining.

The innkeeper, standing dry inside the doorway, got the better of the haggling; the wizards, outside in the rain, were eager to get under cover. With money paid, they went in and pulled up stools by the fire. Phyphor pulled off his boots, which were starting to tear apart, and stuck his wrinkled feet close to the fire. It burnt too low for his liking, but he knew the innkeeper would not want to burn more wood than he had to.

'We have more money,' said Miphon, 'If you can get us bread and wine.'

They settled the price: a small dorth, a coin with an ear of wheat on each side, which had travelled with the wizards all the way from Selzirk. The innkeeper spoke to the old woman in Estral, the native tongue of Estar -unintelligible to the wizards – and the two went out into the rain.

No sooner had they gone than Phyphor shoved his staff into the fire and muttered. Flames shot up. The chimney blazed briefly as soot caught fire, then Phyphor muttered again and the flames dampened down a little.

When the innkeeper and the old woman returned, the innkeeper grunted when he saw the fire, and looked suspiciously at the wizards.

'Your fires,' said Phyphor, 'It burns well.'

'Yes,' said the innkeeper. 'Here be food. Here be drink.'

The bread was hard and unleavened; the wine tasted like vinegar. Even so, the wizards ate ravenously and drank deep, sating their hollow hunger.

'You've had many fires along the Salt Road,' said Miphon casually.

'The hills are burnt, yes. The dragon ran amok – no man has asked it why. Hearsay tells the dragon breathed on the steamer to south to fire it up. A hunter gone south saw the steamer spit lightning at the dragon. Next thing, the steamer was all in flames. Blocks the road. Bad for trade, that. Did you venture the mountains?'

'Yes,' said Miphon. 'It was a long journey. But wizards are used to long journeys. We heard of another wizard who's been this way. Heenmor's his name.'