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‘To the ramparts, friend!’ Dathenar cried, laughing.
‘No,’ his companion said in a growl. ‘I’m for the nearest tavern, and bedamned this wretched privilege. Run the wine down my throat until I slur like a swineherd!’
‘Simplicity is a powerful thirst. Words softened to wet clay, like paste squeezed out between our fingers.’ Dathenar’s nod was eager. ‘This is mud we can swim in.’
‘Abandon the poet then?’
‘Abandon him!’
‘And the dread historian?’ Prazek asked, smiling.
‘He’ll show no shock at our faithlessness. We are but guards huddled beneath the millstone of the world. This post will s
ee us crushed and spat out like chaff, and you know it.’
‘Have we had our moment, then?’
‘I see our future, friend, and it is black and depthless.’
The two men set out, quitting their posts. Unguarded behind them stretched the bridge, making its sloped shoulder an embrace of the river’s rushing water – with its impenetrable surface of curling smiles.
The war, after all, was elsewhere.
* * *
‘It can be said in no other way,’ Grizzin Farl sighed, as he ran a massive, blunt fingertip through the puddle of ale on the tabletop: ‘she was profoundly attractive in a plain sort of way.’
The tavern’s denizens were quiet at their tables, and the air in the room was thick as water, gloomy despite the candles, the oil lamps, and the fiercely burning fire in the hearth. Conversations rose on occasion, cautious as minnows beneath an overhanging branch, only to quickly sink back down.
Hearing his companion’s faint snort, the Azathanai straightened in his seat, in the pose of a man taking affront. The wooden legs beneath him groaned and creaked. ‘What do I mean by that, you ask?’
‘If I—’
‘Well, my pallid friend, I will tell you. Her beauty only arrived at second, or even third, glance. Was a poet to set eyes upon her, that poet’s talent could be measured, as if on a scale, by the nature of his or her declamation. Would frenzied birdsong not sound mocking? And so impugn that poet as shallow and stupid. But heed the other’s song, at the scale’s weighty end, and hear the music and verse of a soul’s moaning sigh.’ Grizzin reached for his tankard, found it empty. Scowling, he thumped it sharply on the table and then held it out.
‘You are drunk, Azathanai,’ observed his companion as a server rushed over with a new, foam-crowned tankard.
‘And for such women,’ Grizzin resumed, ‘it is no shock that they do not consider themselves beautiful, and would take the mocking chirps as deserved, while disbelieving the other’s anguished cry. So, they carry none of the vanity that rides haughty as a naked whore on a white horse, the woman who knows her own beauty as immediate, as stunning and breathtaking. But do not think me unappreciative, I assure you! Even if my admiration bears a touch of pity.’
‘A naked whore on a white horse? No, friend, I would never query your admiration.’
‘Good.’ Grizzin Farl nodded, drinking down a mouthful of ale.
His companion continued. ‘But if you tell a woman her beauty emerges only after considerable contemplation, why, I think she would not sweetly meet the lips of your compliment.’
The Azathanai frowned. ‘You highborn have a way with words. In any case, do you take me for a fool? No, I will tell her the truth as I see it. I will tell her that her beauty entrances me, as it surely does.’
‘And so she wonders at your sanity.’
‘To begin with,’ the Azathanai said, belching and nodding. Then he raised a finger. ‘Until, at last, my words deliver to her the greatest gift I can hope to give her – that she comes to believe in her own beauty.’
‘What happens then? Seduced, swallowed in your embrace, another mysterious maiden conquered?’
The huge Azathanai waved a hand. ‘Why, no. She leaves me, of course. Knowing she can do much better.’
‘If you deem this worthy advice on the ways of love, friend, you will forgive the renewal of my search for wisdom … elsewhere.’
Grizzin Farl shrugged. ‘Bleed to your own lessons, then.’
