“I will be the judge of that,” said Cugel. He kicked the wheel to render it weightless, and heaved it spinning away through the sky while the boy watched in open-mouthed wonder. Cugel then took the pot of stew, the bread and the wine from the cart. “You now may proceed,” he told the boy. “If your brothers inquire for the wheel and the breakfast, you may mention the name ‘Cugel’ and the sum ‘five terces’.”
The boy trundled the cart away at a run. Cugel took the pot, bread and wine to his bed and, loosing the rope, drifted high into the air.
Along the road at a run came the three farmers, followed by the boy. They halted and shouted: “Cugel! Where are you? We want a word or two with you.” And one added ingenuously: “We wish to return your five terces!”
Cugel deigned no response. The boy, searching around the sky for the wheel, noticed the bed and pointed, and the farmers, red-faced with fury, shook their fists and bawled curses.
Cugel listened with impassive amusement for a few minutes, until the breeze, freshening, swept him off toward the hills and Port Perdusz.
Chapter IV
From Port Perdusz to Kaspara Vitatus
1
On the Docks
A favorable wind blew Cugel and his bed over the hills in comfort and convenience. As he drifted over the last ridge, the landscape dissolved into far distances, and before him, from east to west, spread the estuary of the River Chaing, in a great sweep of liquid gunmetal.
Westward along the shore Cugel noticed a scatter of mouldering gray structures: Port Perdusz. A half-dozen vessels were tied up at the docks; at so great a distance Cugel could not distinguish one from the other.
Cugel caused the bed to descend by dangling his sword and boots over either side, so that they were seized by the forces of gravity. Driven by capricious gusts of wind, the bed dropped in directions beyond Cugel’s control and eventually fell into a thicket of tulsifer reeds only a few yards inland from the river.
Reluctantly abandoning the bed, Cugel picked his way toward the river road, across soggy turf rampant with a dozen species of more or less noxious plants: russet and black burdock, blister-bush, brown-flowered hurse, sensitive vine which jumped back in distaste as Cugel approached. Blue lizards hissed angrily and Cugel, already in poor humour owing to contact with the blister-bush, reviled them in return: “Hiss away, vermin! I expect nothing better from such low-caste beasts!”
The lizards, divining the gist of Cugel’s rebuke, ran at him by jerks and bounds, hissing and spitting, until Cugel picked up a dead branch, and by beating at the ground kept them at bay.
Cugel finally gained the road. He brushed off his clothes, slapped his hat against his leg, taking care to avoid contact with ‘Spatterlight’. Then, shifting his sword so that it swung at its most jaunty angle, he set off toward Port Perdusz.
The time was middle afternoon. A line of tall deodars bordered the road; Cugel walked in and out of black shadow and red sunlight. He noticed an occasional hut halfway up the hillside and decaying barges along the river-bank. The road passed an ancient cemetery shaded under straggling rows of cypress, then swung toward the river to avoid a bluff on which perched a ruined palace.
Entering the town proper, the road swung around the back of a central plaza, where it passed in front of a large semi-circular building, at one time a theater or concert hall, but now an inn. The road then returned to the waterfront and led past those vessels which Cugel had noticed from the air. A question hung heavy in Cugel’s mind: might the Galante still lie in port?
Unlikely, but not impossible.
Cugel would find most embarrassing a chance confrontation with Captain Baunt, or Drofo, or Madame Soldinck, or even Soldinck himself.
Halting in the roadway, Cugel rehearsed a number of conversational gambits which might be used to ease the tensions. At length he admitted to himself that, realistically, none could be expected to succeed, and that a formal bow, or a simple and noncommittal nod of the head, would serve equally well.
Maintaining a watch in all directions, Cugel sauntered out on the decaying old wharf. He discovered three ships and two small coastwise vessels, as well as a ferry to the opposite shore.
None was the Galante, to Cugel’s great relief.
The first vessel, and farthest downstream from the plaza, was a heavy and nameless barge, evidently intended for the river trade. The second, a large carrack named Leucidion had been discharged of cargo and now appeared to be undergoing repairs. The third, and closest to the plaza, was the Avventura, a trim little ship, somewhat smaller than the others, and now in the process of taking on cargo and provisions for a voyage.
The docks were comparatively animated, with the passage of drays, the shouting and cursing of porters, the gay music of concertinas from aboard the barge.
A small man, portly and florid, wearing the uniform of a minor official, paused to inspect Cugel with a calculating eye, then turned away and entered one of the nearby warehouses.
Over the rail of the Leucidion leaned a burly man wearing a striped shirt of indigo blue and white, a conical black hat with a golden chain dangling beside his right ear, and a spigoted golden boss in his left cheek: the costume of the Castillion Shorelanders.*
Cugel confidently approached the Leucidion and, assuming a jovial expression, waved his hand in greeting.
The ship-master watched impassively, making no response.
Cugel called out: “A fine ship! I see that she has been somewhat disabled.”
The ship-master at last responded: “I already have been notified in this regard.”
“Where will you sail when the damage is repaired?”
“Our usual run.”
“Which is?”
“To Latticut and The Three Sisters, or to Woy if cargo offers.”
“I am looking for passage to Almery,” said Cugel.
“You will not find it here,” said the ship-master with a grim smile. “I am brave but not rash.”
In a somewhat peevish voice Cugel protested: “Surely someone must sail south out of Port Perdusz! It is only logical!”
The ship-master shrugged and looked toward the sky. “If this is your reasoned opinion, then no doubt it is so.”
Cugel pushed impatiently down at the pommel of his sword. “How do you suggest that I make my journey south?”
