"Look!" Scandal said, "People are talking. Already they're calling this whole affair 'Scandal's Wondrous Blunder.' Why, when I told the town of my plan and asked for volunteers, men evacuated their seats so fast they left turds on their stools. We haven't even hooked the mastodon to the wagon yet, and already things are falling apart. So I need your help. I'm begging. When I'm lying cold in my grave, eating dirt and breathing worms, I don't want to lose my eternal sleep worrying that people are still laughing at me. If you won't do it for me, do it for the town. Get it through your thick heads: no fish, no money-and without the serpents to drive the fish in from the sea, we can't catch them! After last spring's failure, the town is doomed! You don't have to piss in the wind to see which way it blows."

"We don't know that the serpent hatch failed," Ayuvah protested. "The great mothers could have gone to the nesting grounds in the south this year."

"For two hundred years they've followed the currents north!" Scandal answered with a sigh. He'd voiced this same argument a dozen times in the last week, yet no one seemed to want to believe the danger. "I tell you, there are no serpents lying in the hatching grounds at the Haystack Islands. Not one! I went down last week, and I've seen with my own eyes--not only are the young serpents gone, but the old ones that patrol the oceans between here and Hotland are gone as well. The sea lanes are open."

Scandal let the pronouncement hang like a smokehouse ham in the hot air.

"Ayaah, I've heard," Tull said. "But you've gotten ahead of yourself. Even if you can bring some serpents back alive, will they do any good? You might put a hundred in the bay and let them grow to eighty feet over the winter, but we don't know why the old ones are dying. What if yours die, too? No, before you run into the wilderness you should wait for Chaa to return from his spirit walk."

That damned Pwi shaman again, Scandal thought. "Use a little common sense!" Scandal said. "He started his spirit walk five days ago. We've barely got ten weeks to make it to the Seven Ogre River in time for the hatch. We can't wait for him. As for the serpents-I'm sure it's only a local problem. Why, I've talked to a dozen captains, and all of them have seen serpents this spring down in South Port! You figure it-we've had four warm years in a row, and with each warm year, the dinosaurs in Hotland get a little more active, and you know as well as I that a serpent can't always take on a saur and come out alive. Maybe there's been an explosion in the number of sailfins over the last few years, and they've cut into the serpents. That would explain why the serpent hatch has been low. But I tell you, that this year, here in the East, the serpents are wiped out!"

Ayuvah said, "You have no proof. We can only hope that the serpents come back"

Scandal smiled. "That's just Pwi talk, not to be taken seriously by real men. We both know the world doesn't work that way. We must do more than hope."

At another table, a brawny trader with a high voice began swearing loudly, drunkenly. Everyone turned to watch him, and Scandal frowned at the disturbance. The young servant, Valis, brought in more dishes: meat pies and rolls, blueberries in cream. "Do you really want me to roast a hog?" he asked.

"No," Scandal sighed. "I really want you to get in the kitchen and wash the dishes." The servant left.

Scandal shook his head in wonder, "I have to leave that idiot in charge. He'll burn this place down to a heap of ashes while I'm gone. Here, try these blueberries." Scandal said with a sigh, urging bowls on Tull and Ayuvah. "I got these fresh this morning from a hermit up on Finger Mountain. He grows them special. They're marvelously piquant, almost tart I'd say-yet still deliciously sweet."

Tull and Ayuvah scooped some berries from the bowls with their wide fingers, and tasted them. "Aaah," Tull said. "They taste as blueberries should only taste in a dream."

"You'd never guess the secret of growing such flavorful berries!" Scandal said. "You'll never guess!"

Tull scooped some more and chewed them with obvious delight.

"It's the soil," Scandal said. "See, the farmer grows them in goat dung. It's what gives them that marvelous piquancy. They're grown in almost pure goat dung!"

Tull put the berries down, "Ayaah," he drawled. "You are what you eat." Then he smiled and leaned back in his chair and looked at Scandal. "So you want us to take a trip with you out into the Rough, help you drag a wagon nine hundred miles over mountains, fighting off the slavers from Craal with one hand and dire wolves with the other? All in the hope that we can catch some serpent hatchlings in a beer barrel and somehow keep them alive long enough to put them in the bay?"

Scandal nodded.

Tull pulled at his beard, and the bracelet of red and blue clamshells on his wrist rattled softly. "That sounds to me like Pwi talk, not to be taken seriously by real men. We both know the world doesn't work that way." He added with finality, "None of the Pwi will follow you to Seven Ogre River."

Scandal suspected that Tull was right. He nodded glumly, his gaze downcast at the table. "I know," he said. "But, Tull, you've got that look in your eye. My departed wife once put it succinctly. Even when you were just a child, she said you had 'Revolution in your eyes-twin fires of rage and idealism.' Now, if you could just put that idealism to some good use." He stared away. "But I don't blame you. It sounds like a fool's plan. It's all I could come up with. I'm no Spirit Walker . . . I can't see into the future with any degree of certainty, but if we don't do something, well then, we're in trouble. Even if there are still some serpents out there, we can't survive another year without the fish harvest. Men will keep leaving town. And if enough men keep leaving, you don't have to worry about the slavers living in Craal. They'll come here."

Tull reached out and grabbed Scandal's arm, startling him. "The men won't leave town, and the slavers won't come."

Scandal eyed him a moment. Realization dawned. The word slave frightened Tull, put him on the defensive. "Oh, they'll leave town when their families get hungry enough, if only to hunt up in the mountains. Just go out and let your eyes drift-they're already leaving. And as for the slavers, they're already here among us. Every shipping season someone disappears from the region-one or two people-not enough to rouse the city."

Tull said, "You've got fog between your ears! Some merchants who sail these waters have tentacles, and they may snag one or two a year-but you accuse friends of that?"

Ayuvah touched Tull's wrist. "Scandal didn't mean to offend," Ayuvah warned Tull. He turned to Scandal. "We were attacked by slavers on the trip. Denni and Tchar are dead."

Scandal sat back in his chair, grunting as if he'd been slugged. "I'm sorry," he said. "I had no idea. And here I have been talking about them as if it were a joke. Five kegs of honey for two good men. It's a bitter trade." Scandal sat a moment, looking off at nothing. He said gently, "Have a seat here a moment boys, I'll get your pay for the trip."

He went to his office, got the money, came back out and surveyed the guests quickly, making sure that the customers had plenty of food and drink on their tables. He stopped at a table, told a bawdy tale to a sailor and winked at one of the whores, signing for her to sit on the fellow's lap. When he got to Tull and Ayuvah, he held out a bag of coins to Tull, jingled them in his hands.

"Three steel eagles a day, as promised," Scandal said. "I put in a little extra for Denni and Tchar's families, all right?"

"Ayaah," Tull nodded.

"I made up your receipts," Scandal said. "Put your marks down here." Tull looked at the receipt and frowned, took the quill and signed his name. Ayuvah saw his concern, grabbed his arm, but Tull did not offer to read the human words on the receipt for him.

"I don't mean to push," Scandal said. "But a final word: You can look for work tomorrow and the next day, and with the harvest coming in, I'm sure you'll have work a-plenty. But if you come with me, you won't have to look for work. You'll get three steel eagles a day. If you can convince more Pwi to come, just remember it won't be a trip for boys, but there will be a bonus in it for each person you recruit."

Ayuvah spoke up in Pwi. "I have a final word for you: My grandfather sadly-knew a Pwi-Ayanavi the Wise."

Theron sensed a tale coming, and he scrunched his brow in concentration. Pwi tales often had a moral, but the morals were not always easy to understand.

"When Ayanavi was young and happy, the slavers took him to Craal. He tried to escape, so they put him to work in the mines and chained him to the wall. For three years, only the sweet memory of his wife and children kept him alive, and one day he finally chopped off his hand with a sharp stone and escaped his shackles. After hardships that gave him misery in the brain forever after, he found his way home."

The room quieted as patrons began to listen in.

"But when he got home, his dismay overpowered him, for he found that his wife and children had been captured only five days before, and taken as slaves into Craal. Remember Scandal: that though to you this tale may seem an unfortunate irony, such are the tales of all men who escape Craal. The land is ruled by Adjonai, the God of Terror, and those who enter will find every detail of their lives controlled by him forever after."

Theron didn't believe in evil gods made of shadows, and perhaps his easy stance alerted the young Pwi. So Ayuvah leaned forward and said and whispered, "You speak lightly of making this journey because you do not believe in Adjonai, but he is real. If you go to Craal, he will control you forever after. Even speaking his name, I can feel his hand stretching out from the West. I tell you as a friend-give up this foolish idea for a journey."

Scandal studied Ayuvah. The Neanderthal's face was pale with fear, a strange expression on such a powerful young man. Yet Scandal knew that for the Neanderthals, Craal was a place of tremendously evil kwea, filled with legendary terrors. Scandal looked into Ayuvah's face, and saw that he could not tempt the Pwi into Craal with three steel eagles a day. The only way he'd get them there would be to drag them in chains. Tull and Ayuvah were no cowards, but they wouldn't go to Craal.

A powerful cold whirlwind whipped through the room, making Scandal's hair stand on end. It was such a startling change from the sweltering summer heat that Scandal sat back in his chair, thinking that the wind might knock the plates from the table. But when he looked, even the feathers on Ayuvah's necklace hadn't stirred.

Scandal felt a pillar of cold off to his right. He reached out and touched it. It stood a few inches in front of him, and Scandal felt it as plainly as if it were the bole of a tree. A green nimbus, roughly shaped like a man, formed in the air beside Tull.

Scandal jutted his chin, pointing beside Tull. "Spirit Walker," he said, in equal parts surprise and wonder.

Tull turned to his left, looked at the green figure.

Scandal spoke to the Spirit Walker, "Chaa, get back to your body! You've been gone for days. For God's sake, the Pwi are getting scared!"

The green nimbus stretched out, touched Tull. The young man grabbed his stomach, and his eyes opened wide. For a second Tull seemed frozen, an expression of shock on his face.

"I can feel him, inside me," Tull said, holding his belly.

Scandal watched Tull. "In another five minutes he'll know more about you than you do," Scandal said. "He'll know the moment you're destined to die . . . how it will come . . . whether you'll ever marry."

Scandal could not hide the awe in his voice. The Pwi Spirit Walkers never walked the paths of tomorrow for humans. Scandal had never even heard of a Spirit Walker who'd walked the future for a halfbreed like Tull.

The Pwi had a word for halfbreeds: Tcho-Pwi, the un-family, the no-people. It was not a word used maliciously as an epithet; it was merely descriptive. Halfbreed Neanderthals did not belong-not with humans, not with Pwi. The biological differences between the descendants of the human Starfarers and the Neanderthals were too great to be bridged in a generation, and children born to such a marriage seldom survived through infancy.

Tull held his stomach, and Ayuvah said, "This is bad! This is bad! If my father has resorted to walking the future for no-people, he must not have seen a good future for the Pwi."

Scandal considered a moment. I'll never get them to come with me to Craal, he thought. But I have one chance-Chaa could send them. For the Spirit Walker, they'd ride a scimitar cat into hell.