Howl's Moving Castle (42 page)

A wisp of steam smoked from the bottle, looking much bluer in the light of this strange land. “Asleep on a bench in front of the Red Lion,” the wisp said irritably, and withdrew back into the bottle. The genie’s hollow voice came from inside it. “He appeals to me. He shines with dishonesty.”

Chapter 9
:
In which Abdullah encounters an old soldier

Abdullah walked toward the inn
. When he got closer, he saw that there was indeed a man dozing on one of the wooden settles that had been placed outside the inn. There were tables there, too, suggesting that the place also served food. Abdullah slid into a settle behind one of the tables and looked dubiously across at the sleeping man.

He looked like an outright ruffian. Even in Zanzib, or among the bandits, Abdullah had never seen such dishonest lines as there were on this man’s tanned face. A big pack on the ground beside him made Abdullah think at first that he might be a tinker—except that he was clean-shaven. The only other men Abdullah had seen without beards or mustaches were the Sultan’s northern mercenaries. It was possible this man was a mercenary soldier. His clothes did look like the broken-down remains of some kind of uniform, and he wore his hair in a single pigtail down his back in the way the Sultan’s men did. This was a fashion the men of Zanzib found quite disgusting, for it was rumored that the pigtail was never undone or washed. Looking at this man’s pigtail, draped over the back of the settle where he slept, Abdullah could believe this. Neither it nor anything else about the man was clean. All the same, he looked strong and healthy, although he was not young. His hair under its dirt seemed to be iron gray.

Abdullah hesitated to wake the fellow. He did not look trustworthy. And the genie had openly admitted that he granted wishes in a way that would cause havoc. This man may lead me to Flower-in-the-Night, Abdullah mused, but he will certainly rob me on the way.

While he hesitated, a woman in an apron came to the inn doorway, perhaps to see if there were customers outside. Her clothes made her into a plump hourglass shape which Abdullah found very foreign and displeasing. “Oh!” she
said,
when she saw Abdullah. “Were you waiting to be served, sir? You should have banged on the table. That’s what they all do around here. What’ll you have?”

She spoke in the same barbarous accent as the northern mercenaries. From it Abdullah concluded that he was now in whatever country those men came from. He smiled at her. “What are you offering, O jewel of the wayside?” he asked her.

Evidently no one had ever called the woman a jewel before. She blushed and simpered and twisted her apron. “Well, there’s bread and cheese now,” she said. “But dinner’s doing. If you care to wait half an hour, sir, you can have a good game pie with vegetables from our kitchen garden.”

Abdullah thought this sounded perfect, far better than he would have expected from any inn with a grass roof. “Then I would most gladly wait half an hour, O flower among hostesses,” he said.

She gave him another simper. “And perhaps a drink while you wait, sir?”

“Certainly,” said Abdullah, who was still very thirsty from the desert. “Could I trouble you for a glass of sherbet—or, failing that, the juice of any fruit?”

She looked worried. “Oh, sir, I—we don’t go in much for fruit juice, and I never heard of the other stuff.
How about a nice mug of beer?”

“What is beer?” Abdullah asked cautiously.

This flummoxed the woman. “I—well, I—it’s, er—”

The man on the other bench roused himself and yawned. “Beer is the only proper drink for a man,” he said.
“Wonderful stuff.”
Abdullah turned to look at him again. He found himself staring into a pair of round limpid blue eyes, as honest as the day is long. There was not a trace of dishonesty in the brown face now it was awake. “Brewed from barley and hops,” added the man. “While you’re here, landlady, I’ll have a pint of it myself.”

The landlady’s expression changed completely. “I’ve told you already,” she said, “that I want to see the color of your money before I serve you with anything.”

The man was not offended. His blue eyes met Abdullah’s ruefully. Then he sighed and picked up a long white clay pipe from the settle beside him, which he proceeded to fill and light.

“Shall it be beer then, sir?” the landlady said, returning to her simper for Abdullah.

“If you would, lady of lavish hospitality,” he said. “Bring me some, and also bring a fitting quantity for this gentleman here.”

“Very well, sir,” she said, and with a strongly disapproving look at the pigtailed man, she went back indoors.

“I call that very kind of you,” the man said to Abdullah. “Come far, have you?”

“A fair way from the south, worshipful wanderer,” Abdullah answered cautiously. He had not forgotten how dishonest the fellow had looked in his sleep.

“From foreign parts, eh?
I thought you must be, to get
a sunburn
like that,” the man observed. Abdullah was fairly sure the fellow was fishing for information, to see if he was worth robbing. He was therefore quite surprised when the man seemed to give up asking questions. “I’m not from these parts either, you know,” he said, puffing large clouds of smoke from his barbarous pipe. “I’m from Strangia myself.
Old soldier.
Turned loose on the world with a bounty after Ingary beat us in the war.
As you saw, there’s still a lot of prejudice here in Ingary about this uniform of mine.”

He said this into the face of the landlady as she came back with two glasses of frothing brownish liquid. She did not speak to him. She just banged one glass down in front of him before she put the other carefully and politely in front of Abdullah. “Dinner in half an hour, sir,” she said as she went away.

“Cheers,” said the soldier, lifting his glass. He drank deeply.

Abdullah was grateful to this old soldier. Thanks to him, he now knew he was in a country called Ingary. So he said, “Cheers,” in return as he dubiously lifted his own glass. It seemed to him likely that the stuff in it had come from the bladder of a camel. When he sniffed it, the smell did nothing to dispel that impression. Only the fact that he was still horribly thirsty led him to try it at all. He took a careful mouthful. Well, it was wet.

“Wonderful, isn’t it?” said the old soldier.

“It is most interesting, O captain of warriors,” Abdullah said, trying not to shudder.

“Funny you should call me captain,” said the soldier. “I wasn’t, of course. Never made it higher than corporal. Saw a lot of fighting, though, and I did have hopes of promotion, but the
enemy were
all over us before I got my chance. Terrible battle it was, you know. We were still on the march. No one expected the enemy to get there so soon. I mean, it’s all over now, and there’s no point in crying over spilled milk; but I’ll tell you straight the Ingarians didn’t fight fair. Had a couple of wizards making sure they won. I mean, what can an ordinary soldier like me do against magic?
Nothing.
Like me to show you a plan of how the battle went?”

Abdullah understood just where the genie’s malice lay now. This man who was supposed to help him was quite obviously a thundering bore. “I know absolutely nothing of military matters, O most valiant strategist,” he said firmly.

“No matter,” the soldier said cheerfully. “You can take it from me we were absolutely routed. We ran. Ingary conquered us.
Overran the whole country.
Our royal family, bless them, had to run, too, so they put the King of Ingary’s brother on the throne. There was some talk of making this prince legal by having him marry our Princess Beatrice; but she’d run with the rest of her family—long life to her
!—
and she couldn’t be found. Mind you, the new prince wasn’t all bad.
Gave all the Strangian army a bounty before he turned us loose.
Like to know what I’m doing with my money?”

“If you wish to tell me, bravest of veterans,” Abdullah said, smothering a yawn.

“I’m seeing Ingary,” said the soldier.
“Thought I’d take a walk through the country that conquered us.
Find out what it’s like before I settle down. It’s a fair sum, my bounty. I can pay my way as long as I’m careful.”

“My felicitations,” Abdullah said.

“They paid half of it in gold,” said the soldier.

“Indeed,” said Abdullah.

It was a great relief to him that a few local customers arrived just then. They were farming people mostly, wearing mucky breeches and outlandish smocks that reminded Abdullah of his own nightshirt, along with great clumping boots. Very cheerful they were, talking loudly of the hay crop—which they said was doing nicely—and bashing on the tables for beer. The landlady and a little twinkling landlord, too, were kept very busy running in and out with trays of glasses because, from then on, more and more people kept arriving. And—Abdullah did not know whether to be more relieved, or annoyed, or amused—the soldier instantly lost interest in Abdullah and began to talk earnestly to the new arrivals. They did not seem to find him boring at all. Nor did it seem to worry them that he had been an enemy soldier. One of them bought him more beer at once. As more and more people arrived, he became ever more popular. Beer glasses lined up beside him. Dinner was ordered for him before long, while out of the crowd that surrounded the soldier, Abdullah kept hearing things like “Great battle… Your wizards gave them the advantage, see… our cavalry… folded up our left wing… overran us on the hill… we infantry forced to run… went on running like rabbits… not a bad sort… rounded us up and paid us a bounty…”

Meanwhile, the landlady came to Abdullah with a steaming tray and more beer without being asked. He was still so thirsty he was almost glad of the beer. And the dinner struck him as quite as delicious as the Sultan’s feast. For a while he was so busy attending to it that he lost track of the soldier. When he next looked, the soldier was leaning forward over his own empty plate, blue eyes shining with earnest enthusiasm, while he moved glasses and plates about on the table to show his country listeners exactly where everything was in the Battle of Strangia. After a while he ran out of glasses, forks, and plates. Since he had already used the salt and the pepper for the King of Strangia and his general, he had nothing left to use for the King of Ingary and his brother or for their wizards. But the soldier did not let this bother him. He opened a pouch at his belt and took out two gold coins and a number of silver ones, which he rang down on the table to stand for the King of Ingary, his wizards, and his generals.

Abdullah could not help thinking this was extraordinarily silly of him. The two gold pieces caused quite a bit of comment. Four loutish-looking young men at a nearby table turned around on their settles and began to be extremely interested. But the soldier was deep into explaining the battle and quite unaware of it.

Finally, most of the folk around the soldier got up to go back to their work. The soldier got up with them, slung his pack on his shoulder, put on his head the dirty soldier’s hat which was tucked into the top flap of his pack, and asked the way to the nearest town. While everyone was loudly explaining the way to the soldier, Abdullah tried to catch the landlady in order to pay his own bill. She was a little slow in coming. By the time she was ready, the soldier was out of sight around the bend in the road. Abdullah was not sorry. Whatever
help
the genie thought this man could give, Abdullah felt he could do without it. He was glad that Fate and he seemed to see eye to eye for once.

Not being a fool like the soldier, Abdullah paid his bill with his smallest silver coin. Even that seemed to be big money in these parts. The landlady took it indoors in order to get change. While he was waiting for her to come back, Abdullah could not help overhearing the four loutish young men. They were holding a swift and significant discussion.

“If we nip up the old bridle path,” one said, “we can catch him in the wood at the top of the hill.”

“Hide in the bushes,” agreed the second, “on both sides of the road, so we come at him two ways.”

“Split the money four ways,” insisted the third. “He’s got more gold than he showed, that’s certain.”

“We make sure he’s dead first,” said the fourth. “We don’t want him telling tales.”

And “Right!” and “Right” and “Right then,” the other three said, and they got up and left as the landlady came hurrying to Abdullah with a double handful of copper coins.

“I do hope this is the right change, sir. We don’t get much southern silver here, and I had to ask my husband how much it was worth. He says it’s one hundred of our coppers, and you owed us five, so—”

“Bless you, O cream of caterers and brewer of celestial beer,” Abdullah said hurriedly, and gave her one handful of the coins back instead of the nice long chat she was obviously meaning to have with him. Leaving her staring, he set off as swiftly as he was able after the soldier. The man might be a barefaced sponger and a thundering bore, but this did not mean he deserved to be ambushed and murdered for his gold.

Chapter 10
:
Which tells of violence and bloodshed

Abdullah found he could not go very fast
. In the cooler climate of Ingary, he had stiffened abominably while he sat still, and his legs ached from walking all the day before. The money container in his left boot proved to have made a very severe blister on his left foot. He was limping before he had walked a hundred yards. Still, he was concerned enough about the soldier to keep up the best pace he could. He limped past a number of cottages with grass roofs and then out beyond the village, where the road was more open. There he could see the soldier in the distance ahead, sauntering along toward a point where the road climbed a hill covered with the dense leafy trees that seemed to grow in these parts. That would be where the loutish young men were setting their ambush. Abdullah tried to limp faster.