Now that I have mentioned him, I realize I should have written about him before beginning this description of my trial, but it is too late. His name is Vent, and he is middle-aged, bald, and paunchy. I have appointed him a judge.

He rose to greet me, and Hoof and Hide stood too. Then Hamer entered, robed in black like an augur, and we all had to stand. It was only then, I believe, that I realized how full the courtroom was, and from the noise that penetrated its massive doors that there was a crowd outside clamoring to get in as well. Certainly it was then that Cijfer caught my eye, pointing to the red-faced man with her and mouthing words I did not understand. She looked very happy and almost beside herself with excitement, so that I assumed there was good news of some kind. I smiled at her and tried to look as confident as I could while puzzling over the identity of the red-faced man, whom I felt sure I should recognize.

Pig stopped whistling to say, "Nae sae far noo, bucky. Lookin' forward ter h'it?"

"To revisiting the city in which I was born?" (By an effort he had avoided the word seeing.) "To tell the truth, I dread it. It will have changed, and not for the better I'm afraid. It can scarcely be for the better. Hound, you said that Silk is no longer calde-"

"Good Silk!" Oreb, who had been riding atop the second packdonkey, flew to his shoulder, a sudden blossoming of black and scarlet in the bright sunshine.

"So who is?"

"Who's calde now?" From his seat on the lead donkey, Hound looked over his shoulder. "General Mint's husband. His name's Bison. Calde Bison."

"That's good. I know him slightly."

"You're going to talk to him?"

Oreb muttered, "Talk Silk."

"I'm going to try." He was silent after that, his mind occupied with the empty houses they had passed, and the houses (many empty too, presumably) they were approaching. Up this road Silk had ridden with Auk, and down it he had ridden in a flyer driven by Willet; but he had not said much about it. He tried to recall whether he himself had ever traveled it, concluded he had not, and then, at the sight of a narrow old house whose pink paint had faded to near invisibility and whose shiprock was crumbling, was inundated by a rush of memories. Nettle, and a slug gun on his shoulder, Maytera Marble and the ragged crowd of volunteers singing to keep their spirits up.

There had been other songs, many of them, but that was the only one he could remember. Nettle would know them all.

He turned to look back at the house, but it had vanished behind trees. How long had it stood empty? Twenty years, or fifteen, or ten. Its roof had leaked with no one to repair it, letting water into cracks in the shiprock. That water had frozen in winter, splitting the walls farther each year.

"Talk talk," Oreb suggested. "Talk good."

He smiled. "If you wish. You asked whether I was happy to be returning to my native city, Pig. I said I was saddened by the thought of what must have happened to it in my absence. We just passed a house that I recalled."

"Ken ther people?"

"No. But I marched past it once, when I was a boy, and we were singing a song about a house with an apple tree in the garden. I saw that one, and it did indeed have a small garden with an apple tree. I seem to remember that there were a few apples on the upper branches, though I can't be sure. It seemed a marvelous coincidence at the time, a magical coincidence and a good omen. We were hungry for good omens just then. We weren't even amateur troopers, though we thought we were."

"Ho, aye."

"Masons and carpenters with slug guns they scarcely knew how to fire, and mortar and sawdust on their knees. I had one, and a needler, and was immensely proud of both. You were a trooper, Pig. I hope you had more training than I did."

"Nae muckle."

"No talk." Oreb had caught something in Pig's tone.

"I've been wondering-I hope you won't think I'm prying, though perhaps I am-whether you weren't given some sort of ceremony of initiation. A sacrifice to Sphigx at some manteion to dedicate you and your comrades to the art of war."

Pig did not reply.

"In some ways you remind me of a man called Auk; and Auk was quite religious, in spite of all his violence and swagger."

"Would yer gods a' let 'em take me een, bucky? Prayed ter proper an' h'all?"

He shrugged. "I suppose they could have stepped in to prevent such cruelty, but it seems they rarely do. When was the last time you were in a manteion, Pig?"

To fill the silence that followed the question, Hound said, "Tansy and I almost never go anymore. We'll have to start if she's pregnant, otherwise there'll be all sorts of trouble about having the baby washed, won't there?"

"Gi'e somethin'. That'll fix h'it."

"I'm not a wealthy man." Hound sounded apologetic. "I wish I were."

And I wish there were a great mountain here, he thought. A great mountain along whose winding pass we had been traveling all morning, so that there could be a sudden turn around a stone outcrop. We would find ourselves looking down at Viron then, Viron spread like a carpet below us, streets running northeast and southwest, and southeast and northwest, with the broad slash of Sun Street cutting across them, east to west, right through the oldest part of the city. That part was built by Pas, like the old pink house, houses and shops built before there were people here to live in them, anyone here to buy or sell. We should have declared them sacred and kept them in repair; we found a hundred things to complain of instead, and let them go one by one, and built new ones we said were better even when they were not.

The apple tree was gone, too. Cut for firewood now that candles cost so much, now that lamp oil is hard to find. Had Pas planted it? He could not have, apple trees live no longer than a man. But now that it was gone, now that it had been cut down and sawn into onecubit logs and burned, would anyone ever plant another?

Aloud he said, "It was the first time I ever heard that song, I believe. It was a new song to me then, and I'm sure I never supposed it would be important to me."

Hound said, "Will you be going to the Juzgado, Horn? You said you wanted to talk to the calde."

"I know I did." A rush of new thoughts.

Hound cleared his throat. "I'm going to go to that inn I told you about. Since I'm going to get a room, I might as well eat there, and they have good food. If you and Pig would like to come, I'd be happy to treat you to a meal. Then you'd know where it was, in case you can't find another place tonight."

Having come to a decision, he shook his head. "That's very kind of you, but I know where it is. I want to go to the Sun Street Quarter first, where I used to live, not to the Juzgado. Unless Viron's changed even more than I anticipate, I'll probably have to wait most of a day before I can get in to see the calde; and if I were to come in the afternoon, I'd probably wait the rest of the day and not get in at all. So I won't go to the Juzgado until morning. What about you, Pig?"

"Wi' yer, bucky. Yer dinna mind me h'askin' h'about een?"

"Of course not. To the Sun Street Quarter?"

"Where yer gang."

"Bird go," Oreb announced. "Go Silk."