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Cohen looked disdainfully at the small melon he had managed to skewer in his flight.
'This must be pretty tough here,' he said, biting through 159 the rind.
'Want some salt on it?' said the dwarf.
Cohen said nothing. He just stood holding the melon, with his mouth open.
Lackjaw looked around. The cul de sac they were in was empty, except for an old box someone had left against a wall.
Cohen was staring at it. He handed the melon to the dwarf without looking at him and walked out into the sunlight. Lackjaw watched him creep stealthily around the box, or as stealthily as is possible with joints that creaked like a ship under full sail, and prod it once or twice with his sword, but very gingerly, as if he half-expected it to explode.
'It's just a box,' the dwarf called out. 'What's so special about a box?'
Cohen said nothing. He squatted down painfully and peered closely at the lock on the lid.
'What's in it?' said Lackjaw.
'You wouldn't want to know,' said Cohen. 'Help me up, will you?'
'Yes, but this box —'
'This box,' said Cohen, 'this box is—'he waved his arms vaguely.
'Oblong?'
'Eldritch,' said Cohen mysteriously.
'Eldritch?'
'Yup.'
'Oh,' said the dwarf. They stood looking at the box for a moment.
'Cohen?'
'Yes?'
'What does eldritch mean?'
'Well, eldritch is—' Cohen paused and looked down irritably. 'Give it a kick and you'll see.'
Lockjaw's steel-capped dwarfboot whammed into the side of the box. Cohen flinched. Nothing else happened.
'I see,' said the dwarf. 'Eldritch means wooden?'
'No,' said Cohen. 'It – it oughtn't to have done that.'
'I see,' said Lackjaw, who didn't, and was beginning to wish Cohen hadn't gone out into all this hot sunlight. 'It ought to have run away, you think?'
'Yes. Or bitten your leg off.'
'Ah,' said the dwarf. He took Cohen gently by the arm. 'It's nice and shady over here,' he said. 'Why don't you just have a little —'
Cohen shook him off.
'It's watching that wall,' he said. 'Look, that's why it's not taking any notice of us. It's staring at the wall.'
'Yes, that's right,' said Lackjaw soothingly. 'Of course it's watching that wall with its little eyes —'
