edgy.
It wasn’t a wolf; Althalus was sure of that. Wolves travel in packs, and this was a solitary creature. There was an almost despairing quality about its wailing. He eventually concluded that it was most probably the mating season for that particular creature, and that its mournful, hollow cries were nothing more than an announcement to others of its species that it would really like to have some company along about now. Whatever it was, Althalus began to fervently wish that it’d go look for companionship elsewhere, since those unearthly cries of absolute despair were beginning to get on his nerves.
Althalus was in a somber mood as he slogged north. along the ridge-lines of Arum. He’d had set-backs before, of course. Nobody wins every time, but always in the past his luck had returned in short order. This time had been somehow different. Everything he’d touched had gone sour. His luck had not just deserted him, she seemed to be going out of her way to ruin everything he attempted. Had he done something that’d turned her love to hate? That gloomy thought hounded him as he came down out of the mountains of Arum into the deep-forested land of Hule.
Hule is the refuge of choice for men who are the unfortunate victims of various misunderstandings in the surrounding lands. Helpful men who ‘just wanted to give your horse some exercise’ or were ‘just taking your silver coins out into the light so that I could polish them for you,’ found sanctuary in Hule, since there’s nothing resembling a government or laws of any kind in Hule, and in a land where there aren’t any laws, there’s no such thing as a law-breaker.
Althalus was in a foul humor when he reached Hule, and he felt a great need for the companionship of people of his own kind with whom he could be completely open, so he made his way directly through the forest to the more or less permanent encampment of a Hulish man named Nabjor who brewed good mead and sold it at a fair price. Nabjor also had several plump young ladies available for the convenience of customers who might be feeling lonely for conversation or consolation.
There’s a hushed quality about the vast forests of Hule. The trees of that land of the far north are giants, and a traveler can wander under the endless canopy of their outspread limbs for days on end without ever seeing the sun. The trees are evergreens for the most part, and their fallen needles blanket the ground in a deep, damp carpet that muffles the sound of a traveler’s footsteps. There are no trails in the land of Hule, since the trees continually shed their dead needles in a gentle sprinkle to cover all signs of the passage of man or beast.
Nabjor’s congenial camp lay in a small clearing on the banks of a cheerful little stream that giggled its way over brown rocks, and Althalus approached it with some caution, since a man reputed to be carrying two heavy bags of gold tends to be very careful before he enters any public establishment. After he’d lain behind a fallen tree watching the camp for a while, Althalus concluded that there were no Arums around, so he rose to his feet. ‘Ho, Nabjor,’ he called. ‘It’s me, Althalus. Don’t get excited; I’m coming in.’ Nabjor always kept a heavy-bladed bronze axe close at hand to maintain order and to deal with interlopers who might have some questions about his own indiscretions, so it was prudent not to surprise him.
‘Ho! Althalus!’ Nabjor bellowed. ‘Welcome! I was beginning to think that maybe the Equeros or the Treboreans had caught you and hung you up on a tree down there.’
‘No,’ Althalus replied with a rueful laugh. ‘I’ve managed to keep my feet on the ground so far, but only barely. Is your mead ripe yet? That batch you had the last time I passed through was just a trifle green.’
‘Come and try some,’ Nabjor invited. ‘This new batch came out rather well.’
Althalus walked into the clearing and looked at his old friend. Nabjor was a burly man with dun-colored hair and beard. He had a large, bulbous nose, shrewd eyes, and he was dressed in a shaggy bearskin tunic. Nabjor was a businessman who sold good mead and rented out ladies. He also bought things with no questions asked from men who stole for a living.
The two of them clasped hands warmly. ‘Sit you down, my friend,’ Nabjor said. ‘I’ll bring us some mead, and you can tell me all about the splendors of civilization.’
Althalus sank down on a log by the fire where a spitted haunch of forest bison sizzled and smoked while Nabjor filled two large earthenware cups with foaming mead. ‘How did things go down there?’ he asked, returning to the fire and handing Althalus one of the cups.
‘Awful,’ Althalus said glumly.
‘That bad?’ Nabjor asked, seating himself on the log on the other side of the fire.
‘Even worse, Nabjor. I don’t think anybody’s come up with a word yet that really describes how bad it was.’ Althalus took a long drink of his mead. ‘You got a good run on this batch, my friend.’
‘I thought you might like it.’
‘Are you still charging the same price?’
‘Don’t worry about the price today, Althalus. Today’s mead is out of friendship.’
Althalus lifted his cup. ‘Here’s to friendship then,’ he said and took another drink. ‘They don’t even make mead down in civilization. The only thing you can buy in the taverns is sour wine.’
‘They call that civilized?’ Nabjor shook his head in disbelief.
‘How’s business been?’ Althalus asked.
‘Not bad at all,’ Nabjor replied expansively. ‘Word’s getting around about my place. Just about everybody in Hule knows by now that if he wants a good cup of mead at a reasonable price, Nabjor’s camp is the place to go. If he wants the companionship of a pretty lady, this is the place. If he’s stumbled across something valuable that he wants to sell with no embarrassing questions about how he came by it, he knows that if he comes here, I’ll be glad to discuss it with him.’
‘You’re going to fool around and die rich, Nabjor.’
‘If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather live rich. All right, since that’s out of the way, tell me what happened down in the low-country. I haven’t seen you for more than a year, so we’ve got a lot of catching up to do.’
‘You’d better brace yourself, Nabjor,’ Althalus warned. ‘This isn’t going to be one of those happy stories.’ Then he went on to describe his misadventures in Equero, Treborea, and Perquaine at some length.
‘That’s awful!’ Nabjor said. ‘Didn’t anything turn out well?’
‘Not really. Things were so bad that I had to waylay men coming out of taverns to get enough money to pay for my next meal. My luck’s gone sour on me, Nabjor. Everything I’ve touched for the past year and a half’s turned to ashes on me. I thought for a while that it was because my luck hadn’t followed me when I went down into the low-country, but things didn’t get any better when I got to Arum.’ Then he told his friend about his misadventures in the hall of Gosti Big Belly.
‘You really do have a problem, don’t you, Althalus?’ Nabjor observed. ‘It’s your luck that’s always made you famous. You’d better see what you can do to get back on the good side of her.’
‘I’d be more than happy to, Nabjor, but I don’t know how. She’s always been so fond of me that I didn’t have to take any special pains to keep her in my pocket. If she had a temple someplace, I’d steal somebody’s goat and sacrifice it on her altar. But the way things have been going here lately, the goat would probably kick my brains out before I could cut his throat.’
‘Oh, cheer up, Althalus. Things have got to get better for you.’
‘I certainly hope so. I don’t see how they could get any worse.’
Just then Althalus heard that almost despairing wail again, far back in the trees. ‘Do you have any idea of what sort of animal makes that