The stableyard was surprisingly quiet but a rising level of noise led me to a crowd gathering on the far side of the barns. I found the rails of an empty paddock lined with a mixture of locals and traveling men. Shiv saw me and waved, so I headed over to him.

“So, have you heard tell of any black-liveried travelers?” Shiv leaned on the fence rail and ran a hand through his hair.

I told him what I had learned and then looked around for the others. “Where’s Viltred?” I asked.

“Resting in his room.”

Shiv and I watched as two men climbed over the fence, one carrying two polished staffs over his shoulder, the other with a bundle of inflated bladders dangling from one hand.

“He’s not going to get much sleep with all this going on.” Fatigue betrayed me and I heard a slight sneer in my tone.

“He’s an old man, tired, stiff and sore,” said Shiv mildly. “Be fair, he’s only a handful of years off his third generation festival.”

I looked at Shiv in some surprise and tried to think if I’d ever known anyone that old before. We would have to make some allowance for Viltred if he was carrying seventy years or more in his purse. I supposed Messire D’Olbriot’s uncle, who had been Sieur before him, must be about that age and I had to allow he was hardly in any shape to go riding any distance, let alone day after day.

We watched as the men lashed together frames for hanging a bladder at each end of the field.

“This is spit-noggin, isn’t it? Is it as hard a game as I’ve heard?”

“It can be,” Shiv chuckled. “It depends if there’s anyone playing who has a score to settle with someone else on the field.”

Two teams were sorting themselves out by the paddock gate. After some toing and froing, the match resolved itself pretty much into local traders and a few farmers who’d been passing taking a line against the guards and wagoneers from the Duryea train; fourteen to each side was the figure finally agreed on.

“Is it only the man with the staff who can’t cross the throwing line, or does everyone have to stay clear of it?” I watched as the men setting the field scored a deep line in the uneven turf at either end of the playing area.

“Only the staff-holder. Don’t you play this in Formalin?” Shiv looked surprised.

“In the north, on the western borders, but don’t forget I’m from Zyoutessela. If you go any further south than that, you fall off the Cape of Winds,” I reminded him.

The first run of the game began. The wagon-train men were clearly used to playing together and soon had the staff passing smoothly between them as they ran through and around the local boys. A cheer went up as their man pitched the arm’s length of polished wood at the suspended bladder, but he missed by barely a finger’s breadth. Five men went down in the scramble for the staff but one of the grooms got it and the action came sweeping back down the field toward us.

“I’m going to see if I can find Livak.” Shiv stood up from the rail. “Are you coming?”

“I’ll hang on here.” I kept my eyes on the field. “This is quite something, isn’t it?”

Shiv laughed and slipped away through the crowd, and I concentrated on following the game. We don’t go in for these gang sports so much in Formalin; we tend to favor contests of individual skill instead. I started to wonder how my own spear-throwing talents would play in a game like this. The trick would be getting a chance to use them, I decided, wincing as a man poised to throw disappeared under a heap of dusty jerkins. One failed to get up as fast as the rest and limped off, clutching a hand to his chest. There was a short pause before another mule handler jumped the rails to take the injured man’s place.

“Do you fancy a turn in a team?”

I turned to find Nyle at my shoulder. What was it the man wanted with me?

“What about your friends?” he went on. “We could do with a decent runner.”

I shrugged. “You’ll have to ask them yourself.”

“You’re Formalin-born, aren’t you? Do they play spit-noggin in the east?”

“Not where I live. Will you be playing later?” I can do idle conversation as well as anyone else but I wondered if there was going to be any point to this.

“Oh, yes.” Nyle moved a little closer and leaned forward. “The thing is, I wanted to talk to you first. I do a little trading on the side for myself as well, weapons mainly. I noticed your sword—it’s Old Formalin work isn’t it? I wondered if you might be interested in selling?”

“Not really.” I shrugged again.

“I could do you a really good price, you know. I have a contact who is looking for just that kind of blade.”

A sudden yell from the field might have meant Nyle hadn’t heard my answer, I supposed, but the keenness in his steely gray eyes made me doubt that. Was this just a random encounter, I wondered, or did we have some hounds who’d picked up our own scent while we were nose down for another quarry?

“Sorry, friend, but it’s not mine to sell.”

I took care to color my words with boredom rather than betray any suspicion and turned back to the game. Things were starting to heat up as a dispute broke out over whether or not a muleteer had stepped over the throwing line before the staff had left his hand.

“You could make your patron a coffer full of gold. Think about it; there’d be a decent purse in it for yourself, best part of a season’s pay.”

“No thanks.”

There was a cry from the field as one of the locals threw a punch and a shout went up for Nyle. His broad nostrils flared briefly in ill-disguised irritation.

“I’ll see you later.” He tried for an affable smile but his eyes were still hard; clearly a man not about to take a refusal as final.

He vaulted over the rail and was drawn into the game, leaving me to ponder this odd conversation. A great roar went up and I saw Nyle had the staff and was running with it. He was surprisingly agile for such a big man and when some luckless turnip-herder tried to grab the wood he threw the man off with a twist of the staff that sent him spinning into the gathering crowd.

“Nicely done! That’s a Gidestan move; no wonder they haven’t seen it around here before.” Halice pushed her way through the increasingly dense crowd and leaned heavily on the rail beside me.

I wondered what Nyle had been doing in Gidesta; he didn’t look like a miner, a trapper or a logger, which is pretty much all there is to do in the northern mountains. His accent wasn’t Gidestan either. I shook it off as irrelevant.

“Where’s Livak?”

“Taking bets.” Halice pointed across the paddock and I saw Livak’s coppery head in the middle of an eager cluster of people waving purses.

“What’s she giving them?”

“Two wins five for the mule train, three wins seven for the locals,” said Halice, watching the game thoughtfully. “Better if they win by more than five heads.”

“Heads?” I was puzzled.

Halice pointed to one of the bladders swaying a little in the breeze.

“The Mountain Men are supposed to have used heads taken in battle when they invented the game. Sorgren says it’s the way they used to keep their fighting skills sharp. He swears his grandfather could remember seeing it played with the heads of some miners who’d pushed too far into the mountains, and I’ve seen pig’s heads used in western Gidesta.”

There was a suspicion of relish in Halice’s voice as she glanced sideways to see how I would react to this.

I laughed with a grimace. “Messy!”

A group of the farmers seemed to have got themselves in step at last and managed to bring the game down to our end of the paddock. Five of them concentrated on flattening any muleteer who came within grabbing range and so their man managed to send the staff curling through the air to split the bladder clean in half.

“Have you found anyone who’s come across the Elietimm on the road?”

Halice didn’t hear me so I had to nudge her in the ribs and repeat myself, trying not to speak too loudly despite the cover offered by the noise of the crowd all around.