“Give up?”
“I’ll kill you. I swear it. I will kill you!”
“If you won’t give up, I am going to rub your face in the mud.”
“I will k—”
Gath rubbed his face in the mud, then pulled it out again. “I can keep this up for hours. I can rub all the skin off, so you’ll have a red beard to match your hair, and everyone will know how you got it—”
Vork squirmed helplessly, scrabbling with his free hand to find something to hurt. “I don’t care what you do to me, I’ll kill you afterward. I will kill you kill you kill you!”
Any wriggle he made, Gath could counter before he even tried, and yet the image of him winning grew stronger. The kid was about to lose his temper and then Gath lost the battle. More ruthless! He pushed Vork’s face hard in the mud and held it there. He bit his ear to get his attention.
“Listen to me! I’m bigger’n you, and I’m a seer. You never had a hope. I could probably beat your father, even, given enough time. He could never lay a boot on me, and I’d wear him out. D’ you hear me?” He let the kid take a breath.
“Kill you!”
Back in the mud. “I’m a seer. You can’t ever beat me. You are not going to Nintor. Your dad is not going to Nintor.” Gath gave him a moment to think about it, and the possibility that Vork would win suddenly faded away to nothing,
Gath let him breathe again.
He choked out a jugful of mud and said, “Truth?”
“Swear it by God of. I’m the better fighter?” Reluctantly Vork muttered, ”Yes.”
Gath stood up. He offered a hand. He was a mess, but when Vork scrambled to his feet also, he was an awesome apparition, and it was too soon to laugh.
Then came the strangest moment in the whole strange day, at least as far as Gath’s prescience reached. Vork grabbed his hand, squeezed it, pumped it. He grinned, showing white teeth in mud, and his green eyes were shining in mud. ”You won! Thought you would. Glad that’s over. Buddies?”
And that was when Gath said, “Buddies. This is what you wanted?”
And Vork would explain that of course he’d wanted to be buddies all along, but jotnar couldn’t be buddies until they’d found out which one was the better fighter.
Crazy! “Then let’s clean up and go have that beer.” Vork hesitated, impressed. “Serious?”
“Dead serious,” Gath said. “I want your help, kinsman-buddy.”
They found a pump and cleaned up. The water was even browner than the stuff in the streets, but it took most of the mud off. Then Gath set off as fast as he could stride, with Vork almost trotting to keep up and babbling questions by the score, as if he’d been bottling them up for weeks. He wanted to know all about Krasnegar and howcum the jotnar there would accept a queen ruling over them, or failing her a faun. He wanted to hear about the goblins. He was a different boy altogether. It was weird.
“There’s a place,” he said. “What’s wrong with that one? Where’re we going?”
“We’re going to the True Men and we haven’t got much time.”
“Where? Why? What’re you planning?”
“Just wait and see. Do what I tell you to do and you’re going to learn why you’re not going to go to Nintor.” Except he almost certainly was.
“What’s it like to have prescience, Gath?”
Now that was an impossible one! “It’s like memory, except it works forward, not backward.” It was harder to describe how sometimes he could see more than one future, and he couldn’t possibly explain that Vork’s witless chatter was welcome in the sense that he didn’t quite know what to expect because it was trivial. Important things he knew in advance but not trivial things, just as he remembered important things in the past and forgot unimportant things. How could he possibly put into words the fact that sometimes he had to go places and do things to learn things, even when he knew in advance what he was going to learn, because if he didn’t, he would set up a paradox that even he couldn’t handle? And he wasn’t going to explain how sometimes the really important things—
Then it happened, right there in the street. Prescience became present and suddenly he was lying under the table, looking at the boots. He staggered and said, “Where am I?”
“Gath! What’s wrong?”
“Where am I?” Gath whispered, in case the owner of those boots heard him.
“You’re in Urgaxox. In the street! What’s wrong?” Gath shuddered, and found his way back to the present, shaking and sweating. Yes, he was in the street, leaning against a door. A group of gnomes stood at the far side, staring at him with their beady black eyes. He hadn’t pulled that trick since the night he saved the imperor! And he remembered what the warlock had said in Gwurkiarg about foresight driving people mad. He wished Raspnex hadn’t said that, because he’d often wondered if he was going mad and it didn’t help much to know that it could happen.
All right! Concentrate. You’re still going to the True Men. You’re not there yet. Don’t think about the important things that are going to happen. Think about what’s happening now.
“Come on!” he said grimly, and began walking again. Vork was quieter after that. But soon he wanted to know why the True Men, and how Gath knew about the True Men, and what was so special . . .
“There it is,” Gath said.
There were no words on the sign, of course, just three crudely painted male faces, all heavily forested with golden beard and mustache. Any nonjotunn who walked in under a sign like that could expect to come out in pieces. Gath pushed open the door and marched in, wondering whether he would have had the courage to do that if he were by himself. He was showing off to his new friend. New follower, really—that was what Vork was. He said he wanted a buddy, but he really wanted a leader, even if he was a year older. He wanted a better fighter to follow.
Gath had been in saloons in Krasnegar a couple of times, so the scene was vaguely familiar. Once he’d been sent to fetch Krath, the smith. Twice he’d been tagging along with Dad when Dad was on business. Oh, Dad, Dada
Even so early in the morning, the big room was crowded and noisy. The air was thick enough to drink. There was not one dark head to be seen, and Gath felt small, suddenly. Along one side were three rows of plank tables, where men were eating fish soup. Along another was a bar. He headed for the bar. Getting close was tricky. One didn’t jostle jotnar, especially drunk jotnar. Eventually he squirmed his way through, though.
The bartender was massive and shirtless, all fat and hair and tattoos. His face had been taken apart and put back together so many times that it wasn’t quite a face anymore. He turned it sideways and inspected his two new customers out of the corner of one eye.
“Don’t serve milk,” he said.
Gath produced the ambassador’s coin and clinked it on the bar. “Two beers. The small beer.” His insides were dancing a gavotte with excitement.
The bartender turned away, dipped two mugs in a bucket, and slopped them down in front of the customers.
“The small beer, I said.” Gath knew what happened if he drank that stuff. Nintor didn’t happen, for one thing.
The bartender’s face twisted as if in pain, but it might have been a smile. He removed the mugs, tipped their contents back in the bucket, and filled them from another bucket. Then he reached for the coin, and Gath let him have it. He grabbed his drink and began edging back out through the knots of shouting men.
“He cheated you!” Vork squealed behind him. “You ought to get change. Or a meal. Or something.”
So go wrestle him for it? “Be quiet and follow me!” The center of the room was fairly empty. Gath hurried across to the tables and went round behind the first one, carefully not jostling any of the men on the stools. Some were slurping up the soup—it smelled good—and others had passed out. Some were red-faced and arguing. It was hard to think straight in so much noise. He found the stool he wanted, facing the door.
Vork flopped down beside him, green eyes big as eggs. “Kinsman!” Gath said, raising his tankard. “Kinsman!” Vork beamed. He drank. He choked.
It was awful stuff compared to Krasnegar beer, and Gath didn’t even like that. He forced himself. “Drink up,” he commanded, but his eyes were on the door. He could tell when it opened and closed, because of the light, but it was hard to see who was coming in because of all the men standing in the way.