the main gates out Meer stood waiting beside his huge white horse. With his staff in one hand he turned his sightless eyes their way and boomed out a greeting as the procession made its way up. The honours evaporated like summer mist from the lake.
‘Well, Jahdo lad, are you ready for our journey?’
‘Not truly.’ The words leapt from his mouth. ‘Meer, I be scared.’
The councilmen winced and looked this way and that, but the Gel da’Thae laughed.
‘Good. So am I. We’ve every right to be. Neither of us are warriors, are we?’
‘So we’re not,’ Jahdo said. ‘I wish we were.’
Meer laughed again and swung his head round.
‘Councilman Verrarc? Where are you?’
‘Here, good sir.’ Verrarc stepped forward. ‘My men tell me you don’t want the lad to have a pony.’
‘Just so. The pack mule and supplies will do us, and very generous you townsmen are, I must say. Jahdo and I will walk, because warriors we are not, only a blind man and a lad, and much more fitting it will be for us to stay on our two feet. And safer, as well. All during my long journey from the trading stations of the east, I’ve been studying to be humble, and Jahdo my friend, I recommend the same to you. When a man runs the risk of meeting his ancestral enemies, humility becomes him.’
No one seemed to be able to think of fine words to answer those.
‘Let us address the gods,’ Meer went on, ‘and beg them for a safe journey as we go about our business. All our doings lie in the hands of the gods, after all.’ He flung himself to his knees, bowed his head, and stretched out his arms like a suppliant. ‘O you gods who dwell beyond the sky, all-powerful and all-seeing, and especially the gods of roads, O you, Tanbala of the North, O you, Rinbala of the South, Thunderers and Shakers, hear our prayer!’
Meer prayed for a long while, both in his language and that of the Rhiddaer, while the men looked this way and that and Jahdo watched fascinated. The folk of the Rhiddaer prayed, when they prayed at all, standing on their feet and facing the home of whatever god they were invoking, whether it was a tree or a hot spring or a fire mountain. He’d never seen anyone grovel in front of the gods before, and the sight embarrassed him. At last, however, Meer finished and rose, dusting off the knees of his leather trousers as if he’d done something perfectly ordinary. The men standing round all sighed in relief.
Verrarc handed Jahdo the lead rope of a fine brown mule, laden with canvas panniers.
‘Farewell, lad, and may we meet again soon.’
Jahdo had never heard anything less sincere in his life.
As the gates swung open, he took the lead, urging the mule along with little clucking noises such as he’d make to encourage a ferret. One of the guards handed him a switch.
‘Beat the mule as much as it needs,’ he remarked. ‘Stubborn ugly things.’
‘Here!’ Meer bellowed. ‘What did he give you? A stick or suchlike? Throw it away, lad. I’ll teach you how to handle a mule, and beatings have no part in it.’
Secure in Meer’s blindness the guard grinned and rolled his eyes, but Jahdo tossed the switch away.
All that morning they followed a hard-packed dirt road east through reasonably familiar country. Although Jahdo had never been more than a mile or two away from Cerr Cawnen, the farmers round about were still his people. Their wooden longhouses, all painted white and roofed with split planks, stood in the midst of fields of volcanic earth so rich some thought it magical. Often, as they walked past a fenced field or a pasture, a well-dressed man or a couple of plump children would leave their ploughing or cattle to run to the side of the road and stare at them. For the first few miles, Meer strode along in silence, swinging his stick back and forth on the road with one massive hand as he led his horse with the other. Wrapped in his instant homesickness, Jahdo was glad to be left alone at first, but the farther they went, the harder it became to keep back his tears.
Since he’d never eaten that morning, as the sun rose high in the sky his stomach began to growl. He could imagine his family coming back home for their noon meal, gathering at the long table and watching while Mam dipped soup from the kettle and cut bread into chunks. He caught his breath with a sob.
‘What’s this?’ Meer bellowed. ‘What do I hear?’
‘Naught, good bard.’
‘Hah! You can’t fool my ears, lad. Don’t even try. Huh. The sun feels hot on my back. Is it near midday?’
‘It is, truly.’
‘Time for us to stop and see what kind of provisions your councilmen gave us, then. Look round. Do you see a stream nearby? We should be watering our animals, anyway.’
About a quarter-mile down the road Jahdo found them a shallow stream with a grassy bank. Working under Meer’s direction, he unbuckled the pack saddles, but Meer himself had to heft them down. Despite his affliction the Gel da’Thae moved remarkably surely when it came to tending his horses. Watching him rub down the white horse, Baki, with a twist of grass, with the bard talking under his breath all the while, or seeing him patting the horse and leading him to the stream, it was hard, in fact, to remember that Meer was blind. The mule received the same attention.
‘We’ll name you Gidro,’ Meer announced. ‘That means strong in my people’s talk, and a fine strong mule you are.’
Gidro leaned its forehead against the bard’s chest and snorted.
‘Mules are one of the thirteen clever beasts, young Jahdo. Your people abuse them and call them stubborn, but by every demon among us, who can blame the mule? Here, he thinks to himself, why should I be sweating and straining my back all for the benefit of some bald two-legged thing that smells of meat and piss? All I get out of it is sour hay and a draughty shed. A pox on them all, thinks the mule.’
Jahdo found himself laughing.
‘That’s better, lad,’ Meer said. ‘I know it’s a hard thing I’ve asked you to do. Now go through those packs, there, and find us a bite to eat.’
Much to his delight, Jahdo found a lot of food wrapped and cached in various cloth bags, including some chewy honey cakes. Meer had him bring out some dark bread and cheese, which Jahdo sliced up with his grandfather’s knife. Before they ate, however, Meer recited yet another prayer, though mercifully it was a good bit shorter than his effort back at Cerr Cawnen, to thank the god Elmandrel for the food.
‘The gods do matter a fair bit to you, don’t they, Meer?’ Jahdo said.
‘They do, and so they should to all the Gel da’Thae, for we are sinners in their sight, more loathsome than worms.’ Meer held out his hand for lunch. ‘Thanks, lad. That cheese smells good, I must say. At any rate, we all sinned mightily against the three hundred sixty-five gods and the thousands upon thousands of the Children of the Gods, back in the old days, when the Red Reivers fell upon us. Your people, now, they suffered much at the hands of the Lijik Ganda, but as victims they did not sin.’
‘Er well, that be splendid, then.’
Meer merely grunted and bit into his bread and cheese.
