Bemish looked at the guy's feet — he stood in a pool wiggling his bare toes. The Earthman walked around the car and unlocked the trunk — the case bristled there self-importantly. Bemish opened the case — underwear and clothing was there, only two shirts were wet — clearly, they had been washed and ironed. Bemish extracted leather boots out of the case.
"Hold it," Bemish said, "That's a gift for you. The guy gasped and took the boots. Bemish stuck his hand in his pocket, took three hundred local "unicorns" out and handed them to the guy.
"It's for your work."
"Mister," the guy said, "we just fixed the wheel. It costs twenty "unicorns."
"Where are you going now?" Bemish asked.
"I am going to the Blue Ravine, to the village's left end."
"Get in," Bemish said, "I'll give you a ride." The village stretched along the road, between the mountain and the canyon. It was rarely more than hundred meters wide and about eight kilometers long. The guy squeezed himself in a corner almost under the seat and kept silent. One could think that he sat in the car first time in his life. "Hmm," Bemish thought, "on the other hand, a master and an alien is giving him a ride for the first time… I hope I am not compromising White Falcon clan's honor."
"How long has Ashidan been living in the castle?" Bemish asked.
"It's been two months, master."
"Does he drink?"
"No, master," the guy said nervously.
Bemish dropped the guy off at a field where girls in blue and red skirts were already starting to dance and came closer to see what it was that they grew in this field. He was going to ask for how long the peasants had been growing this stuff but the bailiff rushed towards him. Bemish turned around and drove away.
It was just before the sunset — he drove down a forest till he found a nice lawn to the road's left. He drove into the lawn, turned the ignition off, lifted the hood and gazed at the engine.
The carburetor was assembled like a bird's nest from many different parts and the air filter was also taken from another car. The night thieves from the only auto repair shop in the village had installed everything else where they had taken it from.
Bemish turned around and drove back.
Kissur had already descended to the yard and they explored the castle together. It was huge, the walls rose one after another like cabbage leaves.
The castle sat on the very mountaintop and only one road led to it from the west. The outer wall hovered above an abyss on all the other sides and the abyss had been hewed off for better defense, forming a wall smooth like glass.
Kissur showed his guest a yard where Kanut the Falcon had been killed and a small castle garden where Kissur's great grandmother had sinned with a winged two-headed bull under an apple tree. Bemish told Kissur that tourists from the whole Galaxy could visit the castle.
"This castle is not fit for tourists," Kissur smirked, "It does not have disabled access." And he squeezed himself nimbly onto a narrow and incredibly steep staircase spiraling along one of the outside walls.
Merriness ruled the castle in the evening — the grooms braided the horses' tails, servants dragged out of the closets huge yew old bows, wrapped in old rotten cloth with silver inscriptions. Bemish glanced into a semi-dark stable and froze — Kissur, smiling coldly, was hiding a stubby black assault rifle in a saddlebag.
Bemish stepped inside. Kissur lowered the woven bag lid.
"What game," Bemish asked, "are we going to hunt tomorrow?"
"In this area," Kissur said, "people have been hunting big game — boars, bears — since old times."
A question hung on Bemish's tongue tip, "What kind of boar would you hunt with an assault rifle?" But Bemish licked his lips and swallowed the question.
They rode out before the crescent left the black sky, equipped the same way as eight or hundred years ago — Kissur wore grey suede tall boots, decorated with lilies, with high red heels but without spurs, green pants and a red jacket girdled with a heavy belt made out of gold plates — every plate depicted a beast or a fish. Kissur's overcoat was also green, with two wide lanes sewn with golden mesh. A bow hung on his shoulder and a leather quiver hung behind his back; arrow feathers, white like plastic foam, stuck out of the quiver. A throw-axe hung at his belt and two yew javelins and a sword hung at the saddle. The other nobles were dressed the same way. It would be wrong to call it carnival dress — Kissur, like the majority of Weians, dressed archaically even in the capital and he practically always wore a wide necklace, made out of jade plates set in woven gold and depicting falcons. As for Bemish, he clearly understood that his hunting bib layered with PVC would call the local gods' fury at his head and they would withhold the game that they guarded, from him. Now he felt like an impostor in leather pants embroidered with silver.
Before leaving, Kissur threw a piece of fresh meat on an altar next to the gate and tapped a bare sword over a rock to attract the god's attention.
Bemish looked at the sword with interest; it was very heavy and long, with a three edged blade and some engraving that looked like running horses along its edge. The handle had been made in the shape of intertwined snakes. Bemish asked why they needed a sword and Kissur replied that gods didn't grant fortune without a sword since the road to the other world went along its edge and they brought and took away beasts down this road.
They watched the sunrise from a mountaintop, aerial wind danced in their horses' tails — they said that this wind used to mount fillies in ancient times and black horses with white spots had been born of this wind — shells scrunched occasionally under the hooves reminding that a sea had been there millions of years ago. Then, Kissur espied a deer that also decided to enjoy the sunrise and they released the dogs and rode following them.
There were five nobles — Kissur, Ashidan, Khanadar the Dried Date, Aldon and Bemish, there were also eight dogs and three servants — they drove the deer at Kissur and he, having opened his eyes wide and screamed wildly, threw a spear handed to him by one of the servants. Painted yellow, with a green pinecone on the end, the spear almost pierced the deer all the way through easier than it pierced the old maple in Kissur's manor in the capital. Suddenly the forest buzzed and leaves flew. Either it entered Bemish's mind on its own or the gods gave him a hint, "Kissur will get in an accident. The mountain took the horse yesterday, today…"
By noon, Bemish was drunk with blood, the servants lagged somewhere behind, he, Kissur and Ashidan rode out to a lawn overgrown with red flowers. Kissur, having ridden to another side of the lawn, was making out moss on a tree, he was probably foretelling.
At this moment, a bear cub jumped out on the lawn and crazily rushed up the tree.
"Don't do it," Kissur told his brother, "It's a bad omen."
But Ashidan had already pulled his bow and shot — the cub let the tree go and fell. Ashidan jumped off the saddle and ran to the cub. The bushes were pulled apart, a roar issued forth and a huge black and brown she-bear barged in.
"Ashidan," Bemish screamed.
Ashidan turned around. The she-bear rose on her hind paws and the youth stood in front of her, bewildered with a broken arrow pulled out of her son.
Bemish snatched at his gun. Before he raised his hand, Kissur had rolled off his saddle with a sword in his hand and dived under the bear's belly. Ashidan with a squeal jumped aside. Bemish fired. The bear swung its paws heavily in the air and crashed on Kissur. She shuddered and froze like a pile of peat dumped off a truck.
Bemish and Ashidan rushed to the bear.
"Kissur are you alive?"
No answer issued.
Bemish approached the bear and started pulling it by its ear. At this moment the pile of seemingly dead meat moved and Kissur materialized.
"Damn," he bared his teeth, "sword…"
But the sword, after they had turned the bear over, appeared to be fine
— it had entered her belly almost all the way to the guard. They examined her snout — the bullet hit the bear right in her eye.
Yes, the hunt was excellent, even Dried Date who was not capable of smiling screamed and hooted. He sat at the fire next to Kissur's knees and started singing his songs that Bemish had heard so many times from boom boxes in the workers' barracks that he came to liking them.
They rode back in the dusk. The horses walked down the path two abreast, black oily earth crumbled under their hooves, a forested slope rose like a dark wall on the right, the fuzzy sun was rolling behind the faraway mountains covered with gleaming snow like a cake glazed with white. The birds fluttered up from under the hooves and life was wondrously good. "Oh, my God, it's such a great place for a hotel," a thought passed Bemish's mind. He was a practical man and he always sought for ways to adjust nature to money.
After the bear cub accident, Ashidan saddened and it happened somehow that Kissur and his retinue raced in front and Bemish lagged behind them and rode next to Ashidan. The latter was pale — either due to the weed that the peasants grew in a local field or because of Cambridge. Bemish leaned to Ashidan and asked quietly,
"Does Kissur know that you are a drug addict?"
"I am not a drug addict, I am just curious! I can stop this any moment."
Bemish sniggered involuntarily. The youth shuddered. Then he abruptly turned his grey eyes to the Earthman. His pupils were unnaturally contracted.