“Probably,” the soldier said. “I think those Ingary wizards gave these packs to their whole army. Put the boot on. You’ll be able to walk now. We’ve got to be far away before those boys’ dads start looking for us on horseback.”
Abdullah trod cautiously into his boot. The dressing must have been magic. His foot seemed as good as new. He was almost able to keep up with the soldier—which was just as well, for the soldier marched onward and upward until Abdullah felt they had gone as far as he had walked in the desert yesterday. From time to time Abdullah could not help glancing nervously behind in case horses were now pursuing them. He told himself it made a change from camels, although it would be nice not to have someone chasing him for once.
Thinking about it, he saw that even in the Bazaar his father’s first wife’s relatives had been pursuing him ever since his father died. He was annoyed with himself for not having seen this before.
Meanwhile, they had climbed so high that the wood was giving way to wiry shrubs among rocks, As evening drew on, they were walking simply among rocks, somewhere near the top of a range of mountains, where only a few small, strong-smelling bushes grew, clinging to crevices. This was another sort of desert, Abdullah thought, while the soldier led the way along a narrow sort of ravine between high rocks. It did not look like a place where there was any chance of finding supper.
Some way along the ravine the soldier stopped and took off his pack. “Take care of this for a moment,” he said. “There looks to be a cave of sorts up the cliff this side. I’ll pop up and see if it’s a good place to spend the night.”
There did seem to be a dark opening in the rocks some way above their heads when Abdullah wearily looked up. He did not fancy sleeping in it. It looked cold and hard. But it was probably better than just lying down on the rock, he thought, as he ruefully watched the soldier swing easily up the cliff and arrive at the hole.
There was a noise like a mad metal pulley wheel.
Abdullah saw the soldier reel back from the cave with one hand clapped to his face and almost fall backward down the cliff. He saved himself somehow and came sliding and cursing down the rocks in a storm of rubble.
“Wild animal in there!” he gasped. “Let’s move on.” He was bleeding quite badly from eight long scratches. Four of them started on his forehead, crossed his hand, and went on down his cheek to his chin. The other four had torn his sleeve open and scored his arm from wrist to elbow. It looked as if he had got his hand to his face only just in time to avoid losing an eye. He was so shaken that Abdullah had to pick up his hat and his pack and guide him on down the ravine—which he did rather hurriedly. Any animal that could get the better of this soldier was an animal Abdullah did not want to meet.
The ravine ended after another hundred yards. And it ended in the perfect camping place. They were now on the other side of the mountains with a wide view over the lands beyond, all golden and green and hazy in the westering sun. The ravine stopped in a broad floor of rock sloping gently up to what was almost another cave, where the rocks above hung over the slanting floor. Better still, there was a small stony stream babbling down the mountain just beyond.
Perfect though this was, Abdullah had no wish to stop anywhere so near that wild animal in the cave. But the soldier insisted. The scratches were hurting him. He threw himself down on the sloping rock and fetched out some kind of salve from the wizardly first-aid kit. “Light a fire,” he said as he smeared the stuff on his wounds. “Wild animals are scared of fire.”
Abdullah gave in and scrambled about, tearing up strong-smelling shrubs to burn. An eagle or something had nested in the crags above long ago. The old nest gave Abdullah armloads of twigs and quite a few dry branches, so that he soon had quite a stack of firewood. When the soldier had finished smearing himself with the salve, he brought out a tinderbox and lit a small fire halfway down the sloping rock. It crackled and leaped most cheerfully. The smoke, smelling rather like the incense Abdullah used to burn in his booth, drifted out from the end of the ravine and spread against the beginnings of a glorious sunset. If this really scared the beast in the cave off, Abdullah thought, it would be almost perfect here. Only almost perfect, because of course, there was nothing to eat for miles. Abdullah sighed.
The soldier produced a metal can from his pack. “Like to fill that with water? Unless,” he said, eyeing the genie bottle tied to Abdullah’s belt, “you’ve got something stronger in that flask of yours.”
“Alas, no,” Abdullah said. “It is merely an heirloom—rare fogged glass from Singispat—which I carry for sentimental reasons.” He had no intention of letting someone as dishonest as the soldier know about the genie.
“Pity,” said the soldier. “Fetch us water then, and I’ll get on with cooking us some supper.”
This made the place almost nearly perfect. Abdullah went leaping down to the stream with a will. When he came back, he found the soldier had brought out a saucepan and was emptying packets of dried meat and dried peas into it. He added the water and a couple of mysterious cubes and set it to boil on the fire. In a remarkably short time it had turned into a thick stew. And smelled delicious.
“More wizard’s stuff?” Abdullah asked as the soldier shared half the stew onto a tin plate and passed it to him.
“I think so,” said the soldier. “I picked it up off the battlefield.” He took the saucepan to eat from himself and found a couple of spoons. They sat eating companionably with the fire crackling between them, while the sky turned slowly pink and crimson and gold, and the lands below became blue. “Not used to roughing it, are you?” the soldier remarked. “Good clothes, fancy boots, you have, but they’ve seen a bit of wear and tear lately by the looks of them. And by your talk and your sunburn, you come from quite a way south of Ingary, don’t you?”
“All that is true, O most acutely observant campaigner,” Abdullah said cagily. “And of you all I know is that you come from Strangia and are most oddly proceeding through this land, encouraging persons to rob you by flourishing the coins of your bounty—”
“Bounty be damned!” the soldier interrupted angrily. “Not one penny did I get from either Strangia or Ingary! I sweated my guts out in those wars—we all did—and at the end of it they say, ‘Right, lads, that’s it, it’s peacetime now!’ and turn us all out to starve. So I say to myself, ‘Right indeed! Someone owes me for all the work I’ve done, and I reckon it’s the folk of Ingary! They were the ones who brought wizards in and cheated their way to victory!’ So I set off to earn my bounty off them, the way you saw me doing it today. You may call it a scam if you like, but you saw me; you judge me. I only take money off those who up and try to rob me!”
“Indeed, the word scam never crossed my lips, virtuous veteran,” Abdullah said sincerely. “I call it most ingenious, and a plan that few but you could succeed in.”
The soldier seemed soothed by this. He stared ruminatively out at the blue distance below. “All that down there,” he said, “that’s Kingsbury Plain. That should yield me a mort of gold. Do you know, when I started out from Strangia, all I had was a silver three-penny bit and a brass button I used to pretend was a sovereign?”
“Then your profit has been great,” said Abdullah.
“And it’ll be greater yet,” the soldier promised. He set the saucepan neatly aside and fished two apples out of his pack. He gave one to Abdullah and ate the other himself, lying stretched on his back, staring out at the slowly darkening land. Abdullah assumed he was calculating the gold he would earn from it. He was surprised when the soldier said, “I always did love the evening camp. Take a look at that sunset now. Glorious!”