“Such as cakes and sweets made with milk out of cans.”
“As you say, Harilek. All the same, you liked the things I made with stuff out of metal boxes, even though the milk tasted funny, not really like milk that grows in proper cows. Well, I’m going to vanish for the afternoon now and get rid of the desert, which seems to have blown right through my skin.”
Then we went out and found a score of men awaiting us outside. Some carried ropes, others sacks of grain and bundles of forage. Four of them were armed: evidently the guard Kyrlos had promised us.
As we walked up toward the cave in the woods, I remarked how tall they were—the average height must have been well over five feet, nine inches—and I asked Kyrlos if all his people were as tall, or if these were a picked lot. He looked round at them, and said that they were quite ordinary men. Then he asked me if they were taller than our people, and I had to admit that, if they were average samples, then they were distinctly so.
Again we noted the remarkable fairness of their skins and hair, and their blue and grey eyes. Yet these were clearly ordinary serving-men or soldiers, not like the men who had breakfasted with us, who were obviously persons of quality.
We followed them down the long dark passage, Stephnos and Forsyth leading, and finally came out in the pillared cave. I could hear the men behind us talking in low tones, and looking from side to side with curious and rather awed glances.
On looking out, we saw Payindah and Wrexham sitting on the far side of the arch. Kyrlos looked over and remarked that we must be like birds to climb that without the rope, and asked who was the first to come up.
Seeing us in the cave mouth, they crossed the arch. We dropped another rope, and Wrexham, tying it round him, came clambering up the thin projecting seam amid exclamations from the watching men. We introduced him to Kyrlos and Stephnos, and he said a few words in reply to their thanks for helping Aryenis. Then he turned to me.
“They are white folk, all right, then.” He was looking round at the men in the cave. “Upstanding-looking fellows, too. Wonder who they are? Not much like what I’ve seen of the modern Greek, by long chalks.” He came back to the point. “What have you arranged?”
“My proposal is that we get up all the kit and just leave Sadiq down with the camels. Aryenis’s father is giving us a guard to look after them, and also to see that Sadiq doesn’t try to do a bolt into the blue—not that he’s likely to.”