The room was not large, and it was dark, with a single fish-oil lamp on a rough table. The walls were of turves and the roof of reeds.
Dann said, ‘I’ll pay you for some food for me and the animal.’
‘Then you must leave,’ said the old woman, who showed that she was afraid of Ruff.
‘I’ll pay you for letting us sleep here, on the floor.’
At this moment there were shouts and knocks on the door, which would give way in another instant. The old woman swore and shouted abuse. The old man was peering out through cracks in the shutter.
‘Bark, Ruff,’ said Dann. Ruff understood and barked loudly. The people outside ran off.
‘He’s a guard dog,’ said Dann.
‘Very well,’ said the old woman. She said something to the old man, and Dann didn’t recognise the language.
‘Where are you from?’ asked Dann. Their faces, under the dirt, were pallid, and their hair pale too. ‘Are you Albs?’
‘What’s that to you?’ demanded the old man, afraid.
‘I have friends who are Albs,’ said Dann.
‘We are half Albs,’ said the old woman. ‘And that half is enough to make us enemies, so they think.’
‘I know the trouble Albs have,’ said Dann.
‘Do you? That’s nice for you, then.’
‘I am from Rustam,’ said Dann casually, to see what they would say.
‘Rustam, where’s that?’
‘A long, long way south, beyond Charad, beyond the river towns, beyond Chelops.’
‘We hear a lot of travellers’ tales – thieves and liars, that’s what they are,’ said the old woman.
Outside, moonlight showed that some refugees had found this higher drier track and were lying on it, sleeping.
‘There are quite a few children out there,’ Dann said – to see what they would say.
‘Children grow up to be thieves and rascals.’
Dann was given a bowl of marsh fish, muddy and grey, with a porridge of vegetables thickened with meal. Ruff got the same: well, he didn’t have much better at Kass’s house.
Then the old woman said, ‘Now, you and that animal sit near the door and if there’s knocking, make him bark.’
Dann settled near the door, the dog beside him. He thought that there would probably not be disturbances now it was late. But once knocks did rouse them all, and the dog barked and the intruder left.
‘We don’t like snow dogs,’ said the old woman, from her ragged bed on the floor. ‘We kill them if we can.’
‘Why don’t you make one into a guard dog?’
But in the corner she muttered and gloomed and the old man, who clearly did what he was told, said that snow dogs were dangerous, everyone knew that.
Dann slept sitting, with the snow dog lying close, both glad of the warmth. They must be very cold out there, those poor people … Dann surprised himself with this thought. He did not see the use of sympathising with people in trouble, if he could not make cause with them, in some way. But he was thinking that once he and Mara had been – often enough – two frightened youngsters among refugees and outcasts, just like those out there in the cold moonlight that sifted over them from wet cloud.
In the very early morning, as the light came, he woke and looked at the mud floor, the turf walls, the low reed roof that leaked in places, and thought that this was called a house. It was worse by far than Kass’s. Under the marshes were the marvellous great cities that had sunk through the mud. Why was it such cities were not built now? He remembered the towns he and Mara had travelled through, fine towns, but far from the drowned cities around him – and such a longing gripped him for the glories of that lost time that he groaned. Ruff woke and licked his hands. ‘Why?’ he was muttering. ‘Why, Ruff? I don’t understand how it could happen. That – and then this.’
He coughed, and Ruff barked softly, and the two old ones woke.
‘So, you’re off, then?’ said the old woman.
‘Not without our breakfast.’
Again they got a kind of porridge, with vegetables.
‘Where are you going?’ the woman wanted to know.
‘To the Centre.’
‘Then what are you doing in a poor place like this?’
Dann said he had come from the east, had been down in the islands, but the old people were uneasy, and did not want to know any more.
‘We hear the islands do well enough,’ said the old man angrily.
Dann asked, as casually as he could, what was heard about the Centre these days.
‘There are ruffians there now, they say. I don’t know what the old Mahondis would say.’
‘I am a Mahondi,’ said Dann, remembering what it had once meant to say that.
‘Then you’ll know about the young prince. Everyone is waiting for him to put things right.’
Dann was going to say, Hasn’t the time gone past for princes? – but decided not to. They were so old: in the cold morning light they were like old ghosts.
A banging at the door. Ruff barked; again the sound of running feet.
‘It seems to me we’ve done well enough by you, keeping them all away,’ said Dann.
‘He’s right,’ said the old man. ‘Let him stay. He and that animal can keep watch and we can get some sleep.’
‘Thanks,’ said Dann, ‘but we’ll be off. And thanks for your hospitality.’ He had meant this last to be sarcastic, but those two old things were making him feel as if he were hitting babies.
‘Perhaps you could ask your Alb friends to visit us?’ said the old woman.
‘There’s an Alb settlement not too far from here,’ he said, and she said, ‘They don’t want to know us, because of the half of us not Alb.’
These two old toddlers could not get much further than the clifftop track, if as far as that.
