people. We could see red, yellow and orange crests of feathers, shining swords lifting and hacking, and long shields painted with lurid designs. There were yells, hoots and groans. Every so often a pair of fighters would come loose from the rest and rush across the nearby fields, plunging into ditches and through ponds, and screaming insults as they whacked at one another’s shields. Meanwhile, the battle heaved and walloped away across all the tracks but the one on the extreme left.
Aunt Beck pulled Moe up in disgust. Ivar, rather nervously, half drew his sword. Ogo made as if to pull his dirk out and then thought better of it. There were a lot of people there. Finn made religious signs.
“Do we wait?” I asked Aunt Beck. “They must have been going for a day and a night by now.”
“I suppose so,” my aunt replied sourly. “They have to stop soon.”
“No, no!” squawked Green Greet.
“Oh no, Wisdom,” Finn said. “You see, they will have prayed each man to his chosen god for strength to fight for a week. And poured whisky out to seal the bargain.”
“What a waste of good liquor,” said my aunt. “But I see that they have.”
So did I see, now I thought. There was an invisible cloud hanging over the tussling men which was strong enough to feel. “So what do we do?” I asked.
“We take the only free road,” Aunt Beck said, sighing, “and hope that it leads us to a king sometime soon.” She clucked to Moe and we set off again, slowly and cautiously, along the left-hand track. I felt nervous sweat break out all over me as we came closer and closer to the war. I was ready to scream as we came level with it. The red faces, the grunts and the banging were simply appalling. Once the battle was a little way behind us, it was almost worse. We all went with our heads turned over our right shoulders, in case someone broke away and came after us, and none of us spoke until we had put a low hill between us and the fighting.
Then Finn took off his frayed green cap and mopped his face with it. “Praise the Goddess!” he said. Then he laughed. “You spoke of a king, Wisdom,” he said, “but in this part of the country we are quite as likely to find a queen. Queens are very frequent here. Does this worry you, Wisdom?”
“Not at all,” said my aunt. “Women have far more sense than men.”
Ivar snorted at this, but at least he had the sense not to say anything.
We went along the track for some way until, about the time the noise from the fighting died out of hearing, the path suddenly divided into three. Aunt Beck pulled Moe up again.
“Now this is very annoying,” she said. “Finn, have you any idea which is our way to go?”
Finn looked absolutely nonplussed. “No, Wisdom. Can you not divine?”
“Oh!” cried my aunt, quite exasperated. “I thought you were our native guide! Very well. Aileen, unpack my divining bowl from the green bag, will you?”
We moved the cart over beside a convenient flat stone, while I dug in the bag – which still smelt strongly of seawater – and disentangled the bowl from Aunt Beck’s underclothes. Everyone gathered around to watch except Ivar, who sat loftily facing the other way, trying not to yawn. Ogo leant over my shoulder. Green Greet sat on the edge of the cart, bending over to look, with Finn beside him in exactly the same attitude. I felt Plug-Ugly’s soft coat brushing my legs as he came to watch too.
“Now—” said my aunt.
She was interrupted by a little red-haired man who had evidently been dozing with his back against the stone. “What’s all this?” he said. “Clattering bowls about. Can’t a man sleep?”
“I beg your pardon,” my aunt said icily. “I was merely trying to divine the right way to go.”
“Oh, I can tell you that,” the man retorted. “No need at all to clatter. Take the middle way. That will bring you to your queen.” And he settled down to sleep again with his pointed chin on his chest.
“Thank you,” said Aunt Beck. “I think,” she added when the fellow just snored. Nevertheless, she got back into the cart. I put the bowl away again and we went on down the central road of the three.
Finn and Green Greet seemed mightily disappointed. Finn said, “And here was I hoping to see a Wisdom at work!”
Ivar muttered that he couldn’t see what difference it made which road we took. “It’s all the same in this beastly flat country,” he told Ogo.
Ogo said, “Funny, I feel the same way about Skarr.”
“What do you mean?” Ivar demanded. “Skarr’s not flat.”
“No, but there’s always just another mountain,” Ogo said.
“Oh, you’re such a fool!” Ivar said and went stalking angrily ahead along the turfy track.
“Do you mean that?” I asked Ogo. “Can’t you really tell one mountain from another?”
“Well, they have different shapes,” Ogo conceded, “but they’re all high and steep and rocky and – well – the same colours.”
I supposed he had a point.
After that, we trudged along for miles, through several more showers of rain and rainbows as the sun came out again, until I for one was both tired and hungry.
“Hold up,” Finn said to me kindly. “Here we come into the town.”
“What town?” Ivar said. There was nothing around us except green humps. They were the sort of humps you get when people have been mining years ago and then gone away and let grass grow over the spoil heaps. These heaps grew taller and taller as we went along.
Aunt Beck gave Finn an irritable, puzzled look. “This doesn’t look like any town I know.”
Finn beamed. He almost glowed, he was so happy. On his shoulder, Green Greet stretched his neck and gave out a most unparrot-like warbling sound. But I had been thinking for some time now that Green Greet was not exactly a parrot. He was more something along the lines of Plug-Ugly really. Finn lifted his beaming face up to my aunt and said, “No more should you know, Wisdom. This is my Lady’s town.”
I saw what he meant. If I screwed my eyes up, and sort of peered at the green humps, I saw them as house-shaped, with green thatched roofs and high arched doorways. At length, Aunt Beck was driving Moe down a wide turf avenue with mansion-sized green houses on either side and ahead a tall, tall hill that managed to be both rounded and castle-shaped at once. She looked down at Finn, trotting beside the cart. “Would you say,” she asked, “that the person beside that stone happened to be a leprechaun?”
“Oh certainly, Wisdom,” he said joyfully. “No doubt of it.”
“Then are we to be wary of tricks?” asked my aunt.
“Only if you invite them, Wisdom,” Finn said.
“Hm,” she said.
We reached the castle-mound then and we were suddenly surrounded by little red-haired men, who flooded in from nowhere
