“Well, tell me about these men that are ugly and nice like donkeys.”
“Very well,” cried Deirdre, “I shall prove to you that I know them.
“You must know,” she narrated, “that each of these men is always at the same place outside the wall, but some of them are on guard during the daytime and others are on guard during the night. Every second week they change this order and the ones that have been on duty in the night take up day duty, and the day men replace them; and so they change and change about, year in and year out, under the charge of two captains and eight ancients. There are an hundred of these men altogether; twenty-five of them march from point to point all around the walls during the day, but in the night seventy-five men march to and from smaller points. In the day also, one captain and two ancients march around and overlook the twenty-five guards, but a captain and six ancients march about the men who are on duty at night.”
“Ah-ha,” cried Lavarcham, “you have been told all this by the women servants.”
“They only tell me tales of the men of Dana and of the Shí, and of how their children were born, and of the proper way to cure pimples.”
“Well, tell me more,” sighed Lavarcham, “until I see what it is that you do know.”
“The captain of the troop is named Daol, but the men call him Fat-face. He has fourteen children and is unhappily married, for he has told me many times that if he had a better wife he would be a better man. One day when his wife was baking him a cake she baked a spell into it, so that, although he had never felt ache or pain before, he was racked all that day with torments; and ever since, when the moon changes and the wind goes round, he gets pains in his bones, and he beats his wife when he gets home on the head of it.”
“You are certainly acquainted with this Fat-face.”
“I love him. He wears a great leathern belt with a sword hung from it, and, when he orders the men, he thrusts his two hands down through the belt, stretches his legs very wide apart, and roars at them—but how he roars! ‘Troop!’ he roars: ‘turn by the right hand: trot’; and all the dear old men trot with their heads down very thoughtfully, until he roars at them to stop trotting, and then they all sneeze, and talk about their feet.
“Sometimes he lets me drill the men.”