“What about the ones who want to kill me who aren’t official?” he’d asked Vipond.

“That’s your problem. But if you get close to the boy and learn something useful and keep him out of trouble, I might have something for you.”

“It’s a little thin, my lord.”

“For a man in your position, which is to say no position at all, I think it’s very generous,” replied Vipond, waving him away. “If you have a better offer, my advice is that you take it.”

“What,” said Cale after another hour of silence, “are we going to do at wherever this place is we’re going to?”

“Stay out of trouble-put you straight about a few things.”

“Such as?”

“Wait till we get there.”

“Did you know,” said Cale, “we’re being followed?”

“The ugly-looking brute in the green jacket?”

“Yes,” said a disappointed Cale.

“A bit obvious, don’t you think?”

Cale turned to look, as if the obviousness of their follower was also clear to him. IdrisPukke laughed.

“Whoever’s behind this expects us to catch laughing boy and leave him in a ditch somewhere. The real tail is about two hundred yards back.”

“What’s he look like?”

“There’s your first lesson. See if you spot him before I deal with him.”

“You mean kill him?”

IdrisPukke looked at Cale.

“What a bloodthirsty little cutthroat you are. Vipond made it clear we should make ourselves invisible, and I don’t think leaving a trail of dead bodies behind us counts.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Watch and learn, sonny.”

Every five miles along the roads leading to Memphis there were small guardhouses manned by no more than half a dozen soldiers. It was at one of these that IdrisPukke, watched by an amused Cale, found himself in an argument with a corporal.

“For God’s sake, man, this is a warrant signed by Chancellor Vipond himself.”

The corporal was apologetic but firm.

“I’m sorry, sir. It looks official, but I’ve never seen one of these before. The C-in-C usually signs these kinds of warrants. I know what they look like and I know his signature. Try to see it from my point of view. I’ll send for Lieutenant Webster.”

“How long will that take?” said an exasperated IdrisPukke.

“Tomorrow, probably.”

IdrisPukke groaned with frustration, then walked over to the window. After a minute or so he signaled Cale to come to him. “Wait outside,” he whispered.

“I thought I was supposed to watch and learn?”

“Don’t bloody well argue-just do it. Go out the back and don’t let anybody see you.”

Smiling, Cale did as he was told. At the back of the guardhouse were four soldiers sitting on a wall, smoking and looking bored. Five minutes later IdrisPukke emerged and nodded to Cale to join him as he led the horses down a back alley away from the main road.

“So,” said Cale, “what’s going on?”

“He’s going to arrest them and keep them in the cells for a couple of days.”

“What changed his mind?”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking you.”

“I bribed him. Fifteen dollars for him and five for each of his men.”

Cale was genuinely shocked by this. Vicious, cruel and small-minded as the Redeemers might be, the idea that they would neglect their duty for money was unthinkable.

“We had a warrant,” he said, indignant. “Why should we have to bribe them?”

“There’s no point in getting bent out of shape about it,” said IdrisPukke irritably. “Just look on it as a part of your education-a new fact to take on board in getting to know what people are really like. Don’t imagine,” he continued crossly, “that just because the Redeemers treated you like a dog that you know everything about what a rotten, corrupt bunch of bastards the human race are.”

And on this bad-tempered note he walked on ahead and did not speak again for the rest of the day.

Perhaps it is easy to say why IdrisPukke was so annoyed, given that he was used to very much worse than being shaken down by a cynical grunt like the corporal. How many of us necessarily require a great disaster to put us in a fit of pique? To lose a key, step on a sharp stone or be contradicted in a matter of no importance is enough to send even a reasonable man or woman into a rage if they’re in the mood for it. That’s all there is to it-and whatever the limits to Cale’s grasp of human nature as it applied to people who were not vicious fanatics, he had enough sense to leave IdrisPukke to himself until such time as he calmed down.

Nevertheless, if IdrisPukke had realized who was behind their being followed he would have been perfectly justified in feeling enraged-and scared as well, because he would have known that Kitty the Hare would not have allowed his spies to have been so easily discovered. Despite the fact that the two men spotted by IdrisPukke were locked up in a cell within an hour, they were decoys expressly sent out in order to be caught. As Cale and IdrisPukke made their way back onto the main road, and a day later turned off it and headed toward the White Forest, there were two more pairs of eyes following them, and this time with a great deal more cunning.

As they moved up into the mountains, the sun shone and the air was as clear as good water. IdrisPukke’s temper of the day before was forgotten, and he returned to his more expansive ways, telling Cale all about his life and adventures and his opinions-of which he had a great many. You might have thought that Cale, capable as he was of grim rage and fearful violence, would have been irked by his companion setting himself up as a mentor and Cale as a disciple-but you must appreciate that Cale was still a young man, for all his iron qualities, and the range and nature of IdrisPukke’s experience, his rises and falls, his loves and his opponents, would have enthralled even the most jaded listener. Not the least of his skills was in the way that IdrisPukke mocked himself and took responsibility for the majority of his falls from grace. An adult who laughed at himself was something more than unfamiliar to Cale: it was almost incomprehensible. Laughter to the Redeemers was an occasion of sin-a babbling inspired by the devil himself.

It was not that IdrisPukke had a cheerful view of the world in any way, but that his pessimism was expressed with a knowing delight and a willingness to include himself in his witty cynicism, a willingness that Cale found oddly comforting as well as amusing. Cale was not of a mind to listen to anyone who had a happy view of human beings-such a temperament could never chime with his daily experience. But he found his anger was easier to bear and even soothed by listening to someone who laughed at human cruelty and stupidity.

“There are few ways,” IdrisPukke would proclaim, as if from nowhere, “of putting people in a good humor other than by telling them of some terrible misfortune that has recently befallen you.”

Or again: “Life’s a journey for people like you and me-one where we’re never sure where we’re going along the way. You see a new destination as you travel and a better one and so on until the place you had originally decided on is completely forgotten. We are like alchemists-starting out searching for gold-who along the way discover useful medicines, a sensible way of ordering things, and fireworks-the only thing they never discover is gold!”

Cale laughed. “Why should I listen to anything you say? The first time I met you, you fell over my feet, and both times after that you were a prisoner.”

An expression of mild disdain crossed IdrisPukke’s face, as if this were a familiar objection barely worth answering.

“Then learn from my mistakes, Master Wet-Behind-the-Ears-and then learn from the fact that while I’ve walked the corridors of power for forty years I’m still alive-which is a lot more than you can say about most of the people I’ve walked them with. And I daresay unless you show a good deal more sense than you have done until now-the same will be true of you.”