Across from Rap, Gathmor sat beside the hamlet’s wise woman, an ancient half troll named Nagg. She was undoubtedly the ugliest person Rap had ever seen, a giantess of haggard skin and crooked bones, scanty of tooth and hair. Gathmor and Jalon had done a poor job of concealing their mirth at the idea of a wise troll, but Rap suspected that much cunning might lurk behind that nightmare parody of a face. On Stormdancer he had prized Ballast as a friend and one of the best men aboard; in Durthing he had concluded that the trolls were rarely as stupid as they often pretended. It had been Nagg alone who had chosen to admit Gathmor and his companions; the villagers had accepted her decision at once, as if her judgment could be trusted.
She nodded and clucked and drooled while Gathmor explained how he must hasten on to Puldarn to warn the Imperial navy of the raider, but in his efforts to seem friendly, he became pompous. “We shall not tell of meeting you,” he said. “We shall not report this village.”
Nagg screeched with merriment even as she stuffed her mouth full of fish. ”Tell all you want, jotunn,” she mumbled. “You’ve seen the marks here. Some have been here long enough.” She pulled her rags aside to show her own shoulder. “Was only a child when I left the Impire: Long, long ago, sailor. Legions don’t chase runaways into Dragon Reach—right?” she appealed to the others, and they hooted and laughed. “Lots more like us along the coast, too. Here and there.”
Gathmor flinched as she patted his thigh.
“Gold tastes best,” she said, “but bronze near as good, they say. Nothing hots up a dragon more’n a well-armored warrior. It’ll waste half a country partying after.” She cackled and chewed some more.
And so the talk inevitably turned to the dragons, and metal. The villagers themselves possessed no metal at all; they scraped their narrow living from the miserous land with tools of wood and stone. Knives of fractured dragon glass were sharp enough to shave with, although they soon lost their edge. To raise crops the women turned the sod with wooden plows pulled by men or other women. Men speared or netted fish, children scrounged roots and berries from the woodlands. To Rap it was the life of a brute, worse than anything any sane slaveowner would inflict on his stock, but the fisherfolk seemed to think freedom alone worth something, and themselves better off for it. He could not visualize a past bad enough to be worse than their present.
Yes, dragons came over once in a while, Nagg admitted placidly, but rarely threatened unless they sensed metal. In her life she could recall only two attacks. You could see them dance in the dawn sky almost any morning if you looked—oftentimes one or two, rarely a whole blaze of them. They would not fly over water, not usually.
“Gold is what draws them most?” Rap asked his neighbor, an elderly, crooked-tooth faun named something like Shyo S’sinap.
The old man nodded so vigorously that his scraggy neck and straggly beard flapped. “Wonn’ll find a gold ring at ten leagues, so’s said.”
Gathmor described Blood Wave’s cargo, and his audience reacted with stark disbelief. That much gold should have fetched worms from all over Dragon Reach. The drakes did fly over water sometimes, and a shipful of gold would be ample excuse. Kalkor’s luck was apparently effective even against dragons, Rap thought.
Just a couple of good handfuls might do it, Shyo opined solemnly.
Rap chuckled around the chunk of coconut he was gnawing. “You don’t have any handfuls handy, though?”
The old man screwed up his wrinkles in a smile, letting firelight scroll shadows on his leathery brown face. “Did once. ‘Bout thirty years ago, I expect.” He noted Rap’s doubt with satisfaction and snickered. “Used to work in the gold mines!”
Rap glanced at the faded numbers burned into the bony shoulder. Then he looked at the old faun’s protruding ribs, his furry faun legs, thin as a spider’s. He glanced around the dilapidated hovels at the edge of the dark. ”And this is better?”
“Freedom, lad!”
“You can’t eat freedom. Freedom doesn’t keep you warm of a night, or heal your children’s—”
“Ever seen a man worked to death as an example to his mates?” the old man asked, wheezing softly. “Ever watched your best friend die of shock after he’d been gelded?”
Rap shook his head. He’d spoken rashly.
The faun bared the skewed yellow pegs in his mouth. “Or get Nagg to tell you how it feels to be kept as breeding stock, raising mongrel quarry boys. Harkor, there . . . The bones in his back are fused. See the slope of his shoulders? That’s what slave work does.”
“How about the others, then? Not all of you were slaves.”
“No. Srapa, there? Killed a man who raped her. He was of a good family. Hers wasn’t, so she had to run. Real beauty, she was, when she got here.” The old man sighed, shaking his head. He stopped his pointing and just stared at the fire for a moment.
“Gave me a son once. Was going to look like me when . . . He died. We got thieves here, o’course. Honesty’s easier when you’re not hungry, for some reason. Widows. Unwanted concubines and embarrassing bastards. Mutineers? We have several mutineers. A spiteful centurion’s worse than a bad slave boss, lad, ’cause he needn’t worry about what you cost his master. “
Rap wiped his forehead and wished he could ease back from the heat of the fire; but that would seem as if he were moving away from the smelly old man. “You’ve got a merwoman here, too?”
“Evil rend me! How’s you know that? You planning on staying?”
“No.”
Shyo scowled. “That’s the only way you’ll get a share.”
“I didn’t mean that! “ Rap shouted, louder than he meant. ”Sure you didn’t?” The old man looked angry and suspicious.
“All I meant was why would a merwoman be here?”
“Same reason as any of us, of course! She stays because the outside’s worse. She came by chance, but she stays ‘cause it’s better. “
“What sort of chance?” Rap’s mouth asked the question before he could stop it. It was none of his business. He had never seen a mermaid before and he was naturally curious. This one wasn’t young, but the way she was cavorting with her guards in the most distant shack suggested that the old stories had a lot of truth in them.
“She was shipwrecked. She and her man.”
“Merman?”
“Course.”
“And what—”
“Couple o’ husbands knifed him the first night.”
“It’s true, then?”
“Course.” Suddenly Shyo cackled. “Did you never hear about the legions’ last try at invading the Keriths, back in Emthar’s reign? Not the first time, of course, but some bright tribune dreamed up the idea that they might make it stick if they took along enough camp followers, but o’ course what happened was exactly the opposite, and. . .”
Rap had heard versions of the story in Durthing, and didn’t care to hear any more. It was a standard tale whenever the conversation turned to the irresistible attractions of merfolk. Then he realized that Gathmor was again questioning old Nagg, and arguing at her answers. Growing steadily sleepier and sleepier, he struggled to follow the conversation. The castaways could walk to Puldarn easy, she said. Three days maybe; far enough to get hungry, not far enough to starve. Gathmor inquired cautiously about the sea route. Very dangerous, Nagg assured him. The tides of the Dragon Sea were notorious. Very rocky coast. No, he and his friends should walk.
Of course they were going to walk, Rap thought drowsily. The casement had said so.
Can’t walk on bare feet, Gathmor insisted. Three days in the sun with no food and little water . . . and eventually Nagg promised to provide clothes.
Robes, Rap thought, yawning. Black, green, and brown. They would be plain wear, Nagg said, just gowns of the coarse stuff the women made, but they’d keep out sun and wind and thorns.
Rap wondered if the robes, when they appeared, would trigger Jalon’s memories of the casement—Jalon’s memories of Sagom’s memories. He wished Gathmor could sound a little more grateful. These poor fisherfolk had no need to give the strangers as much as a smile. The jotnar would have meant little to them, for they had nothing to lose except their lives, and Rap wasn’t sure he would care very much about life if he had to spend it here. Yawn! His mind wandered away to the merwoman and her two fortunate guards. Still at it! . . . He scolded himself for prying and forced his attention back to the negotiations.
At long last Gathmor solemnly thanked Nagg for her offer of the shoes and clothes, and promised that he and his companions would set off at first light, so as not to waste any of the cool hours. And the weather was so fine, they would sleep outdoors here.