Arskane laughed. “Very well, we shall tell our tale. And we swear that it is a true one. But half of the tale belongs to each of us and so we tell it together.”
And as the oil lamp sputtered overhead, guards and prisoners sat on the round cushions and talked and listened. When Fors spoke the last word. Marphy stretched and shook himself as if he had been swimming in deep water.
“That is the truth, I think,” he commented quietly. “And it is a brave story, fit to make a song for the singing about night fires.”
“Tell me,” Fanyer rounded abruptly upon Fors, “you who were lessoned for knowledge seeking, what was the thing which amazed you most in this journey of yours?”
Fors did not even have to consider his answer. “That the Beast Things are venturing forth from their dens into the open country. For, by all our observations, they have not done so before in the memory of men. And this may mean danger to come—”
Marphy looked to Fanyer and their eyes locked. Then the man of medical knowledge got to his feet and went purposefully out into the night. It was Arskane who broke the short silence with a question of his own.
“Recorder of the past, why did your young men hunt us down? Why do you march to war against my people? What has passed between our tribes that this is so?”
Marphy cleared his throat, almost as if he wished for time.
“Why? Why? Even the Old Ones never answered that. As you can see in the tumbled stones of their cities. Your people march north seeking a home, mine march east and south for the same reason. We are different in custom, in speech, in bearing. And man seems to fear this difference. Young blood is hot, there is a quarrel, a killing, from the spilled blood springs war. But chiefly the reason is this, I think. My people are rovers and they do not understand those who would build and root in one place within the borders of a land they call their own. Now we hear that a town is rising in the river bend one day’s journey to the south. And that town is being settled by men of your blood. So now the tribe is uneasy and a little afraid of what they do not know. There are many among them who say that we must stamp out what may be a threat to us in time to come—”
Arskane wiped the palms of his hands across the tattered remnant of his garment, as if he had found those palms suddenly and betrayingly damp.