‘Degrur, that doesn’t make any sense at all.’
‘I just woke up, my Chief. You don’t expect me to make sense when I first get up, do you?’
Althalus stepped forward and bowed elegantly. ‘I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Chief Albron,’ he said. Then he looked around the hall. ‘I see that you’ve made some improvements since my last visit.’
‘You’ve been here before?’ Albron asked with one quizzically raised eyebrow.
‘Yes – quite some time ago. The chief in those days used to keep pigs in this hall. Pigs are nice enough animals, I suppose – good to their mothers and all – but they don’t make very good house-pets. And the dining hall isn’t really the place to keep them – unless you like your bacon very fresh.’
Albron laughed. ‘Is your name really Althalus?’
Althalus sighed with feigned regret. ‘I’m afraid so, Chief Albron,’ he replied theatrically. ‘I was positive that your clan had forgotten me by now. Fame can be so inconvenient sometimes, can’t it, my Lord? Anyway, since my dreadful secret’s out in the open, and if you’re not too busy, maybe we can get right down to cases here. Has your clan managed to amass enough gold since my last visit to make it worth my while to rob you again?’
Chief Albron blinked, and then he burst into laughter.
Althalus pushed on. ‘Since you already know my dreadful secret, there’s no point in beating about the bush, now is there? When would it be most convenient for you to have me rob you? There’ll be all that shouting and running around and organizing pursuits, and the like. You know how disruptive a robbery can be sometimes.’
‘You carry your age very well, Master Althalus’, Chief Albron noted with a grin. ‘According to that story we all heard when we were children, you robbed Gosti Big Belly several thousand years ago.’
‘Has it been that long? My goodness, where does the time go?’
‘Why don’t you join us for breakfast, Master Althalus?’ Albron invited. ‘Since you plan to rob me of all my gold, you’re going to need a few dozen horses to carry off all your loot. We could discuss that over breakfast. I’ve got a few spare horses, and some of them even have all four of their legs. I’m sure we can strike a bargain on them. Just because you’re planning to rob me, it shouldn’t get in the way of our doing business together, should it?’
Althalus laughed and joined the group of men at the table. They bantered back and forth over breakfast, and after they’d eaten, the young Chief Albron offered Althalus a tankard of something he called ale.
‘Never mind’, Emmy’s voice murmured.
‘It wouldn’t be polite to refuse, Em,’ he sent back his silent reply. Then he lifted the tankard and drank.
It took all of the self-control he could bring to bear to keep from spitting the awful stuff onto the floor. Good rich mead was one thing, but Albron’s ale was so bitter that Althalus almost choked on it.
‘Told you.’ Emmy’s voice sounded smug.
Althalus carefully set the tankard down. ‘This has all been very entertaining, Chief Albron,’ he said, ‘but there’s a question I need to ask you.’
‘The best escape route to take after you’ve robbed me?’
Althalus laughed. ‘No, my Lord. If I really were that other Althalus, I’d have planned my escape before I even came down here. As you’ve probably noticed from my clothes, I’m not an Arum.’
‘That had sort of crossed my mind, Master Althalus.’
‘Actually I come from over to the east in Ansu, and I’ve been trying to track something down for several years now.’
‘Something valuable?’
‘Well, not to anybody else, probably, but it’s something I need to have to lay claim to an inheritance. My father’s older brother is the Arkhein of our region.’
‘Arkhein?’
‘It’s a title of nobility, my Lord – sort of an equivalent to your own title. Anyway, my uncle’s only son – my cousin – had an argument with a bear a few years back, and not many men win those kinds of arguments, since the bears of Ansu are very big and very bad tempered. Anyway, my cousin lost the argument, and since his father, my uncle, only had the one son, his title’s going to be vacant after he dies.’
‘And you’ll succeed him? Congratulations, Master Althalus,’ Albron said.
‘It’s not quite that cut and dried, my Lord,’ Althalus said, making a sour face. ‘I’ve got another cousin, the son of my father’s younger brother, and he and I were both bom in the same summer. We Ansus don’t have a very precise calendar, so nobody can really be sure which one of us is the eldest.’
‘Wars tend to break out over things like that.’
‘My uncle, the Arkhein, realized that too, my Lord. That’s when he called my cousin and me to his castle and told us very firmly to stop recruiting armies and forming alliances. Then he told us a story. It seems that many years ago one of our ancestors had owned a very pretty dagger. There’d been one of those little wars that break out in Ansu from time to time, and our ancestor had gotten himself killed. Then, after the sun had gone down, the scoundrels who lurk like vultures around the edges of every battlefield came out to rob the dead.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Albron said, nodding grimly.
‘You’ve seen the same sort of thing yourself, I gather. Anyway, one of those scoundrels picked up our ancestor’s dagger. It didn’t have any jewels in the hilt or anything, but it was ornamental enough that the rascal thought he could probably sell it for enough to make it worth his while. Our uncle told my cousin and me that he was proposing a sort of contest. Whichever one of us could track down that dagger and bring it back to him would be the one who’d get his title.’ Althalus sighed dramatically. ‘I’ve been running hard ever since that day. You would not believe how interesting life can be when you’re looking for an antique with one eye and watching for assassins with the other.’
‘Assassins?’
‘My other cousin’s a bit lazy, my Lord, so the idea of wandering around the world looking for an ancient knife doesn’t light any warm fires in his heart. He seems to feel that it’d be much easier to have me murdered than it’d be to try to win a race with me. Anyway, to get to the point here, I happened across a fellow who told me that he’d been in your arms-room once, and he said that he was almost certain that he’d seen a knife there that fit the description of the one I’d just told him about’ Althalus cast a covert look at Chief Albron. The story he’d just conjured up out of whole cloth seemed to have fired the Clan-Chief’s imagination. Althalus was quite pleased to discover that he hadn’t lost his touch.
Chief Albron rose to his feet. ‘Why don’t we go have a look, Arkhein Althalus,’ he suggested.
‘I’m not the Arkhein yet, my Lord,’ Althalus amended.
‘You will be if that dagger’s in my armory. You’re a well-spoken man with a civilized sense of humor, Althalus. Those are noble qualities, and your cousin’s an absolute knave. I’ll do everything in my power to see to it that you inherit your uncle’s title.’
Althalus bowed. ‘You honor me, my Lord,’ he said.
‘Wasn’t that all just a little thick?’ Emmy’s voice suggested.
‘I know these Arums, Em, so I know exactly what kind of story to tell them. Actually, that was a very good one. It had a threat of civil war, a hero, a villain, and a quest fraught with danger. What more does a good story need?’
‘A little bit of truth might have added something.’
‘I don’t like to contaminate a good story with truth, Em. That’d be a violation of my artistic integrity, wouldn’t it?’
‘Oh, dear,’ she sighed.
‘Trust me, little kitten. That knife’s as good as in my hands already, and I won’t even have to buy it. Albron’s going to give it to me outright, along with his blessing.’
Albron’s armory was a stone-walled chamber at the back of his castle, and it was littered with all kinds of swords, axes, pikes, helmets, daggers, and shirts made of chain.
‘This is my armorer, Rheud.’ Albron introduced Althalus to a blocky, kilted fellow with a bristling red beard. ‘Describe this dagger you’re looking for to him.’
‘It’s about a foot and a half long, master armorer,’ Althalus told the red-bearded man, ‘and it’s got an odd-shaped blade – sort of like a laurel-leaf. There’s a design etched into the blade. From what I understand, the design’s actually writing in some ancient language that nobody understands any more.’
Rheud scratched his head. ‘Oh,’ he said then, ‘it’s that one. It’s very pretty, but it’s a little ornate for my taste. I prefer more business-like weapons.’
‘It’s here, then?’
‘Well, it was. Young Eliar came here to arm himself before he went off to that war down in Treborea. He took a fancy to that knife, so I let him take it.’
