Chasers of the Wind Read Free Page A

problem boxing you on the ears. And then he’d laugh.
    “Is there an inn in the village?”
    “In the middle of nowhere? What kind of inn would they have not ten leagues from the mountains?” snapped the youth, who had blue eyes.
    “We have an inn,” replied the cowherd, offended. “It’s right by the road after you go through the village. It’s quite large. With a red chimney. They have tasty meat pies. And shaf. My father gave me some to try once. But why have you come here? And are your swords real? Will you let me hold one? And your horses, they are Rudessian stock, right? Are they yours? They are like knights’ horses. I’ll soon be a knight, too. They’re fast, aren’t they? You aren’t knights, by any chance, are you?”
    “Hold on, hold on!” laughed the lean rider cheerfully. “Not all at once. You’re in quite a hurry there, friend. Let’s start at the beginning, I beg you. Are those cows yours?”
    “No. I look after them. Yeah.”
    “Do you enjoy it?”
    The cowherd pouted and looked at the man, offended.
    He was mocking him. But he had called him his friend. He thought they were friends.
    The man laughed once more. The other three riders remained silent and didn’t even smile. They seemed completely uninterested in the conversation.
    “And how many households are there in the village?”
    “A lot.” Pork showed all the fingers on his hands. “Six times as many.”
    “And you’re literate. You can count,” the man said respectfully.
    “No,” sniveled the half-wit. “My father showed me. I can’t count on my own.”
    “Tell me, friend, do you have any new people in the village?”
    “Are you talking about the Viceroy’s people?”
    “Well, maybe. Tell me about them.”
    “They came here at the beginning of spring. They were handsome. Important. And they had horses. Now we’re just waiting until the end of fall. There haven’t been any others. It’s just us. Only the loggers come.”
    “The loggers?” asked the man with the pockmarked face.
    “Yeah,” sad Pork, nodding hastily, pleased that he could carry on such an important conversation. “They chop down our trees and then float them down the river to Al’sgara. They say they make really great boats from our trees. Oh, yeah! The best of all boats. They float. Yes.”
    “And what about these loggers?”
    “I don’t really know, sir. They come here in the summer. They live in mud huts beyond Strawberry Stream. They’re mean. Once they beat me up and ruined my new shirt. Then I caught it again from my father, because of the shirt. Yeah. But they leave in the fall. They don’t want to stay here for the winter. They say that the roads get blocked with snow. You can’t get out until the end of spring.”
    “I told you, it’s a swamp,” spat the young one.
    “No. The mountains aren’t far from here. And they say that there are the Gates of Six Towers, though I’ve never seen them. And to get to the swamp, you have to go through the forest for several days. There’s a bog there, you know. You go there, you’ll fall right in.”
    “It’s unlikely our friend would be found in the company of loggers,” said the short man who looked like a ferret and had kept silent so far.
    “I’d have to agree with you. But tell me, friend, do you know everyone in the village?”
    Pork screwed up his eyes in suspicion. These men were strange. They’d asked him about the mean loggers, and then again about the village. And about the Viceroy’s soldiers.
    “Don’t be afraid.” The lean man tried to appease him with a smile. “We’re just looking for our friend. He’s about this old.” He pointed to the man afflicted with pox. “He has light hair, gray eyes; he rarely smiles and can shoot better than anyone from the saddle. Do you know such a man?”
    “Gnut shoots better than anyone from the saddle, but he has black hair and one of his eyes isn’t even there at all.”
    “He has a woman with him, too. She’s tall