Chapter Three
Mynowelechw Tralis
Kereth Chufire the Partisan
Kerethas Chyfyor lla Mochwwnma Æiæydil
Hinfane closed all the shutters and lit the fire, for a strong, chill wind had sprung up outside, and though it was still midsummer black storm clouds had darkened the world. Dim shadows flickered to and fro across the stone walls like strange portents, and portents they were.
Portents. For I’m going to tell you how Hinfane worked out what she had to do.
Well, I suppose that’s when it started, on that Friday night, when the miners and merchants were drinking their pints and a small crowd had gathered around the newcomer Kereth. The men had paid for his mead and a plate of stew in return for a story, for who had not heard of the famous partisan Kereth Chufire?
But on seeing Kereth sit down one of the men, Huch, had moved to another table. A scrawny, scraggly bearded fellow, ruled over by his wife, he squinted at them fawning over him and sputtered, “I, for one, will not be associated with a partisan!”
Now Kereth had three pints before him and an empty plate, having already eaten his stew. The miners were gathered around with baited breath.
“Well, before I start, I ought to know yer names. After all, you know mine, and aint we all partisans here?”
A huge, pale, red-haired northerner covered in runic tattoos, came forward first and shook Kereth’s hand so vigourously that Kereth’s eye-patch quivered, and boomed, “Aye, we’re right pleased to make yer acquaintance, Kereth. I’m Cam, this is Viv,” he said, pointing to a graceful, muscular, dark-skinned man from the south, “and this tall fellow is Galt,” a bearded, eagle-eyed, aquiline-nosed, fellow, “He’s the only one that grew up in the local borough.”
Then the two merchants, one tall, dark and handsome (in Hinfane’s estimation) and one shorter, bald and plump, introduced themselves as well and shook Kereth’s hand with a firm grip, saying, “Zhallad! Tesed! Pleased to meet you. Good to be meeting you.” Zhallad, the taller one pointed to Huch: “And that stick-in-the-mud over there is named Uchwotfyrd, but we call him Huch. His wife-”
Huch blinked and croaked out, “Me wife Uz says, ‘Don’t you have anythin’ to do with them partisans, Huch!’ That’s what she says! She says, ‘The Nomoi Elves is our lawful rulers, and none needs to fear but he that does wrong by them.’ And I’d keep out of it too if I was you. No good can come of it, mark my words! No good at all! Doom will come upon ye all, when you’re least expectin’ it. That’s what me wife Uz says!”
Smiling charmingly, Zhallad said, “Pay no heed to Huch’s dire prognostications. If everything his wife Uz says was correct, the town would have been overrun last year by one-eyed giants from the south, the year before by dragons from the north! She takes great pleasure in seeing the worst in everything.”
Huch said, “No she don’t. She don’t take no pleasure in it at all. It be her duty to give forth the truth. She sees things - she has the eye, the second sight. She don’t take no pleasure in it at all.”
“Aye,” said Cam, his voice descending into ribald depths, “I would warrant your wife takes little pleasure in anything, does she Huch?” Huch said nothing, but his squint blinked, and blinked, and then he was squinting and blinking so much that he looked as if he had eaten a lemon. The men burst into bawdy, vulgar laughter and Hinfane rolled her eyes and went back to washing mead mugs.
And just as suddenly, they fell silent, for Kereth Chufire’s one-eyed gaze had turned strange by the flickering firelight, and they all remembered that they were waiting for a story.
Galt pushed his aquiline nose forwards and forced a conspiratorial whisper out through his bushy beard, “They say you – er, Kereth – pulled the very bars off the window!”
“Aye, ‘tis so – ” said Kereth, adjusting his eye-patch, “ – although it weren’t that remarkable - you see, the bars were a bit rusty! Then Kereth killed ten guards wit’ ‘is bare hands; I heard men say it were fifteen but that be an exaggeration, it were only ten, starved though he was!...
“Then Kereth runs through the sewer tunnels and into the marketplace! Indeed, ye should have seen those leeches…”
Viv, his huge dark hand holding onto Galt’s shoulder with a gentle, graceful grip, like a musician’s hand cradling his harp, whispered loudly in Galt’s ear, “Is that really Kereth?” Galt’s hooked nose nodded, “It surely be.”
“Why does he talk of himself in the third person?”
“He be modest, extraordinarily modest. An’ perhaps he don’t want the Nomoi to know who he is. The walls have ears, or so they say, where Nomoi elves are concerned.”
Elucidating for the others, a young, pale, scrawny, unbearded merchant whose name nobody knew, though everyone knew his gaunt, rawboned look when he was in the mine looking for gold, said, “Indeed, the leaches in the tunnels, tell us of the leeches, Kereth! Huge leeches, hanging from the ceiling. That’s how the story goes!”
Forward Kereth leaned, his enshadowed brow darkening his scar and the black eye-patch beneath. Drawing them in like moths to a candle, he said softly, “I would not be exaggerating if I said the leeches was twenty inches long, as you say. Though Kereth had stolen a torch from the dungeon and these foul dark-worms aren’t amenable to fire. But the elf-soldiers was waitin’ for Kereth at the other end of the tunnel! He only escaped them by usin’ ‘is wits – ”
Hinfane had heard of Kereth’s escape from another traveller once and Kereth himself was expanding greatly upon the version she had heard – in Kereth’s version a skirmish became a great battle, five soldiers became ten. Typical boasting man. Lying about his own exploits.
The miners and merchants swallowed Kereth’s story whole. After all, with their throats that lubricated with mead no doubt they’d swallow anything else too were it put in front of ‘em.
Still, there’s something funny about that one, she thought, watching him.
Kereth’s scar seemed to glint in the firelight as he raised his voice above the wind. “The battle at the tunnel mouth were fierce, but single-handedly Kereth defeats ‘em, then sprints through the markets of Aros, upending carts! If it were not for the shopkeepers Kereth would nae have escaped, for they put their carts in the way of the guards chasin’ ‘im to slow them down. At the temple he reaches a dead end, but he climbs the wall and throws an idol down behind ‘im! Smashes twelve of the elf-collaborators into smithereens…”
The wind howled even louder outside, like a pack of wolves howling, and Hinfane shuddered. She was staring across the tavern at the scar on Kereth’s cheek. By the yellowish firelight the ugly side of his face looked... unnatural. Hinfane’s stomach twisted. And his manner was strange...
She chided herself, that’s not the way you was brought up, Hinfane! – to loathe a man for his looks, neither for his scars, nor his ugliness, nor even for his manner! How could I run the tavern if I let thoughts like that get the upper hand? When the miners are such a motley lot... She tried to stop herself from staring at Kereth but she couldn’t.
Now his voice was putting her on edge as well.
She collected the plates and went to the kitchen to begin washing up early, to avoid hearing him, to think of anything else – the troubles of the winter season, or whether the fermenting mead would sour, and how to keep the wolves and bears at bay that haunted all the rubbish piles at the edge of town – still, Kereth seemed to creep at the edge of her thoughts like that stray snow-ant wandering over her bar looking for a sweet drop of spilled mead. She squashed the snow-ant.
She wanted to quash all thought of Kereth.
Perhaps it was because Gothur had toyed with joining the partisans when he was younger – it had not gone well – the partisans had exploited his naiveté – he had become the scapegoat for their deeds. That is why they’d left their house in the city and moved to this far-flung place. Perhaps that might explain why she didn’t like this Kereth. I’m remembering that, the way they treated Gothur, and holding it against him.
I must not do that.