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than Torrie had thought of Neanderthals as being; erect, even standing
straight, the top of his head would have barely reached the middle of
Torrie's chest.
Finally, he noticed them, and turned expressionlessly, setting his tools down
before touching born index fingers to his brow. "Can
I be of some help, Honored Ones?" he said, just a trace of the lisp that was
common among his kind.
"I do seek thy help, Son of Vestri," Dad said, in the guttural Vestri
language.
Perhaps Dad had learned vestri when he had lived in the Middle Dominions, but
more likely his fluency in it, like Torrie's, was yet another example of Uncle
Hosea's gift.
The vestri's eyes widened. The vestri, whose status ranged from slaves to
serfs to lowborn freemen, depending on where in Tir Na
Nog you found yourself, weren't used to humans knowing their language, much
less addressing them formally in it.
"Of course, Honored One, of course," he answered in slow, careful Bersmal,
"this one will do all he can to be of assistance, but..."
he spread his hands and gestured at the wall, "the day grows no younger and my
work goes no faster while I talk with you. May I?"
"Of course." Dad gave a quick gesture of permission. "Please."
"Son of Man," the vestri said in his own language, as he resumed his work with
hammer and chisel, "why doest thou ask of me? I
am but Valin, a stonecutter by trade, and surely I know nothing that would be
of interest to important ones such as thyselves."
Dad squatted beside him and lowered his voice. "I have no time for this,
Valin, Son of Vestri. I need knowledge, and I may well need assistance. Look
at me," he said, his voice low, but with a ring to it that Torrie couldn't
remember having heard before. "I am
Thorian, Thorian's Son, known to some as Thorian the Traitor, but that is not
how I am known to the Folk."
The hammer fell from Valin's fingers. "You are...? But it's said that he has
long been dead."
Dad just looked at him, his face impassive.
The vestri weren't, by and large, the cleverest folk that ever were, although
certainly some were reasonably bright. It took Valin a few moments to decide
that such an admission out in public was an awful risk even for somebody who
really was Thorian del
Thorian, and unlikely to be false. Then again, perhaps Dad really was a phony
who wanted something, perfectly safe in pleading his innocence if Valin were
to raise cry.
The stonecutter's eyes narrowed.
Dad leaned forward and whispered something in Valin's thick ear.
It was as though he had thrown a switch: the vestri immediately gathered all
of his tools together, and quickly, neatly, stowed them away in a large canvas
bag that he slung, Santa-like, over his shoulder. "Please, Friends of the
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Father of Vestri, Father of the
Folk, do thou come with me," he said, immediately taking off in a quick stride
that Torrie had difficulty matching.
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The vestri led the three of them down winding streets, past the wall that
separated the village proper from the surrounding unchartered settlement,
where the cobbled streets were replaced by dirt, and the carefully inset
gutters by, well, nothing. Where houses in the village proper were usually
wattle and daub set on chest-high stone walls that gave them a solid
foundation and kept the base of the walls free from rot, here the houses were
only of wattle-and-daubed-over timber frames that tended to rot from the
ground up.
At the end of a long row of such houses, Valin stopped, knocked twice on the
door, and beckoned them all inside.
Torrie leading, they pushed through a series of damp musty curtains, into an
almost total darkness that smelled of old sweat and worse. Maggie gasped, and
her slim but strong fingers gripped his hand tightly.
He didn't blame her. At first, all he saw were dozens of eyes, seeming to glow
red, glaring unblinkingly.
It took Torrie a few moments for his eyes to adjust; when they did, he saw
that they were in a small room, illuminated only by an inch-wide hole in the
wall, filled with easily a dozen vestri men lying in stacked hammocks
supported by the house's beams. In one corner of the room, a small hearth held
an even smaller fire, where two unbathed vestri were stirring a pot of some
burbling liquid, and eyeing Torrie, Maggie, and Dad with barely concealed
hostility.
It was, Torrie decided, a vestri flophouse.
Dozens of eyes were trained on the three humans, but for a long time, nobody
said a word.
Valin dropped his bag to the floor. "I am Valin Stoneworker, son of Burin the
Broken, himself the son of Valin One-Ear," he said.
"Yes, yes, yes," an old, gray-bearded vestri said, peering out from under his
thin blanket. "You are of sure lineage, and we are but filthy vestri bastards,
ones who should count ourselves lucky to know our mothers' names, fortunate
beyond wishing if we could so much as guess at our fathers'." A thick hand
made a come-on gesture. "And you have some reason to wave rank under our
noses, no doubt " He raised his hand, stopping himself. "No. I forget myself;
I do humbly beg thy pardon. Please forgive this one, and remember me as
saying: and thou has some reason to wave thy rank under our humble noses, no
doubt... and perhaps that has something to do with these Honored Ones," his
tone made the polite term a curse, "standing here looking at us as though we
were a bunch of ill-washed vestri mongrels." He chuckled thinly. "Which we
are, of course."
He gave a push against the wall, setting his hammock rocking, and tumbled
clumsily out of it, nevertheless managing to land squarely on his thick, hairy
feet.
He spat a huge, disgusting gobbet onto the liver-spotted back of his hand,
then wiped it on his blanket. His face was lined with age, and his beard was a
dirty gray. He was old, and probably not going to live much longer; vestri
didn't tend to show their age until near the end.
"I am called Durin of the Dung," the dwarf said, "of no known lineage or
skills; I make my living, such as it is, emptying the chamberpots and
excavating the outhouses of the rich and poor alike, conveying their precious
contents to dungheaps outside of the village walls." He made a broad bow. "And
I am, of course, at thy service, Honored Ones."
"Be still, Durin," another one said. "Valin brought them here for a purpose;
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would you not care to hear it?"
"I, for one," yet another said, "have labored long and hard until but a few
moments ago, and I shall get some sleep." He rolled over in his hammock,
gathering his ragged blanket about him, and immediately began to snore
quietly.
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Valin drew himself up almost straight. "I say to all of you that this Honored
One is a friend "
"Yesyesyes, we all know how friendly the Honored Ones are," Durin said.
"Daily, they do me the great favor of permitting me the privilege of carrying
away their "
" a friend of the Father of Vestri!" Valin shouted.
Nobody spoke for a moment. It was so quiet that
Torrie could hear the bubbling of the pot of stew.
"Well," Durin said, "that would be a different matter, would it not." He
shuffled over to Dad and eyed him up and down. "There is a story that some [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]