The light in the restaurant had been strangely dull and yellow and the air had been hot. Outside however, in the darkness there were blues fading into rich purples. Bright stars in the dark night sky were aflame with preternatural brilliance and, on the water, the pale lights from the street lamps were seized by the oily surface below and then thrown back in rippling silver. As I moved beyond the buzzing and laughter coming from the restaurants behind me, I could hear the clinking of halyards on the many vessels tied up along the quayside. The air was warm and dry with just a hint of movement that felt wonderful and refreshing after the heated stuffiness of the restaurant. I closed my eyes for just a second to soak in the sounds and the sensations. I then walked into something hard and uncompromising.


I guess that I hadn't seen the lamp because it was not lit. Perhaps it was just that I had my eyes closed or maybe it was just something that was destined to happen. Fortunately, it had caught my shoulder as I walked past rather than walking straight into it full on. I still felt rather foolish and looked around to see if I had been noticed. Apart from a couple walking hand in hand a little ahead of me, I could see no one else in the immediate vicinity. Was there a significance to this tiny event? I have absolutely no idea. I stepped to one side and walked carefully and not too deliberately (for fear of looking drunk) towards the edge of the quay.


Here I leaned over the rails for a while to watch the dark water flowing past. Why is it that water at night always looks so viscous and thick that it almost seems to be a life in its own right? The effect seemed particularly pronounced tonight as the air movement was slow and made the surface undulate like the back of some leviathan. Here and there sea birds floated by, carried down by the flow. A couple of pelicans were struggling against the current and were making a wide arc as they moved in the direction of the quayside.


Further out, beyond the short reach of the lights I heard a large splash. It was probably a fish but I had heard that there were salt-water crocodiles in this part of the estuary. I pictured baleful eyes looking up at me from the dark distance and then slipping invisibly beneath the surface as a creature swam with laconic sweeps of its tail towards me and the lights. I had never seen one before in the flesh and I didn't see one that night. Whatever it was out in the dark splashed again but it was not repeated a third time.


It was still quite early and so, ignoring any warnings of my own and those of the marechati earlier that evening, I wandered for a while along the quayside towards some of the larger boats that were tied up alongside.


Most of the vessels were local ones used for transporting goods and people on the river or around the coastal areas. (The river was about a mile wide here at the estuary.) A few looked to be built for longer runs. There were a couple of junks from Chineve tied up alongside each other and on one of them I could see a small cooking fire burning in a heavy metal stove. As I looked, a head popped up above deck and was quickly followed by the rest of the body.


The man was carrying a basket of odd looking vegetables and a couple of eels that looked as though they were still alive, although they looked to be secured by way of a rope through their gill slits. He placed the basket on the deck and the two eels went into another lidded basket nearby, where he secured the lid with a weight. One of those large bowl-shaped cooking pans was put onto the fire and a generous helping of oil was poured in. At this point I was noticed by the chef and he smiled and grinned at me over the now smoking pan. He said something but I couldn't hear it so I just smiled back and nodded and carried on walking.

There were several fishing boats with their brightly painted hulls and the fearsome looking eyes painted each side of the bow that marked them clearly as Xandrian vessels. Although one of them was stacked with the wooden cages that were used for trapping various crustaceans, the others looked to be drifters from the shape of the nets that were hanging from the masts to dry. No one seemed to be about on any of these vessels but it is likely that the crew were already asleep below deck. The boats would be heading out to fish the shoals amongst the islands that lay off the Xandrian coast in the early hours of the morning. Somewhere in the dark shadows and shapes on deck there would be a watchman, probably armed to the teeth with all manner of weapons, fighting off the mother of a hangover.


One particular boat caught my attention partly because it looked out of place amongst all the others and partly because it was northern in design. It had a single mast below which, lying the length of the vessel, a coarse beige canvas sail was furled. It was a stark contrast to the lighter and brighter fabrics of the southern boats and when unfurled would be set transverse with a boom on the single mast rather than laterally on the one or two masts that both the Xandrian and the Chineve vessels usually carried. There was a figurehead carved into the wooden prow as it curved up and away from the sea and this was matched astern by another raised but otherwise unadorned wooden scroll. The figurehead was the Cor'moran, a mythical beast of curious and fearsome reputation.


This boat was slightly removed from the other vessels and was tied to a small pontoon that ran out into the river. On the pontoon there were several barrels and other containers that looked to be ready to be stowed aboard and two men nearby were hoisting one of these on to the vessel using a pulley that had been erected at the end nearest the boat. The boat was a larger than many of the others and looked to be a full ocean going vessel of about forty feet or so with the classic broad belly and presumably shallow draught. On board three other men were securing various other items and I could hear shouted instructions and curses in a familiar language.


I watched them for a while but decided to move on when one of them suddenly looked up from their tasks and yelled at me.


"And what yu'sa lookin at, ja'bas?" he yelled in a hoarse snarl.


Now I have to admit that some languages and customs can come in very useful indeed. I yelled back in the same tone (although I couldn't manage the hoarseness).


“Appen ah’s a lookin’ at summan as fawkin 'nd nebblin around wis'un barrels a fesh ah’s guessin’ from as stenk!"


"Why, es nebbut faw'kin Sandry, ‘appen as! ‘Es a brutaspeke, ne was!"


This last comment was to one of his colleagues.


"Ne ne! Es nebbut fesh. ‘Es ale ‘nd stuffa. ‘Appen as water too in case the ale runs out. Ne was!"


The speaker had left the other man struggling now with a barrel and the pulley and was walking along the pontoon towards me wiping his hands on his trousers as he went. With an agility that I would not have expected from one so large, he ran up a ladder and leapt over the railings onto the quayside to stand before me. He held out a hand for me to take as was customary and when I went to take it he slapped me lightly on each cheek with the same hand, as also was customary in certain quarters.


"Ha! Gotcha," he laughed.


It never fails to amaze me how certain cultures and societies manage to survive. I hadn't been certain of his origins when he approached me for the language was pretty standard for much of the northern world. Use of language and accent were not always enough to identify the geography. I had refrained from attempting to take the initiative on the greeting just in case I had got it wrong. What was polite in one society, was occasionally a serious insult in others. The man standing before me however just thought that I was a bit slow and had got in first with the decoy handshake and the slaps.


"Where’s yer fam’ly to then?" he asked.


I told him where I came from and for a moment he looked at me as if processing the information. I had visions of him breaking out into various renditions of "Wys a faw'kin farner sur ne was" once he had managed to locate my homeland in relation to his, in the vague store of imagery inside his head. Instead he grinned and shrugged his shoulders.


"Ne was,” he said affably, “that’s fam’ly nuff fer shore. En es nebbut these faw'kin Sandrys with their mincin’ and sniffin’ around us.”


At this he patted me on the shoulder in an affectionate, almost brotherly manner. I have to say that he was a strong lad and his affection was far more painful than his greeting. I tried not to wince in case he thought I was a 'ladybody' and in return more or less thumped him on the shoulder in return. I think that it had no more impression than the warm breeze but he grinned at me and then turned back to his colleagues.


"When’s a currish ‘appenin’?" he shouted.


"When as Mesta’s a commin’ up," came the reply.


"Appen yu'sa eaten as afor?" the man before me asked.


Well, I hadn't eaten much at the restaurant and so I was able to say that I hadn’t yet eaten. The idea of a northern-cooked curry was quite appealing. I didn't ask what type of meat, of course but sometimes ignorance is bliss. I find that amongst these people it is often best not to ask too many questions.


I have to say that I was quite touched that he had included me in the broad reach of family (not foreigner) based on my homeland. Of course, that was on the assumption that he knew where it was but acceptance was more important than accuracy and in custom, having accepted, there was no going back. It could also be that he simply recognised the style of clothing, the fact that I understood him and of course the smell. All of that told him at least that I wasn't Xandrian. For my own part, it felt good to meet some people whose world was a little closer to my own and where I knew that I would not be looked at with the same expression that you might to a stray dog that has wandered into your path. On this basis and with the rush of blood to my head that represented almost affection for the lad, I offered to help them with the loading.


That was a mistake.


"For shore," he grinned at me and with one more slap, this time on the top of my arm, he leapt back over the railing and plummeted the ten feet of more to the pontoon below. He went down heavy but I heard nothing snap and he didn't groan so I assumed he was all right. I peered over the edge to confirm and saw a grinning face looking back up at me with an expression similar in some respects to a dog waiting to go for a walk.


"Go on then!" he shouted up.


"Ne was," I replied. "Yu'sa youngblood. Je nebut old ass"


He laughed then shrugging his shoulders turned back towards the boat as I climbed cautiously and ungracefully over the railings and onto the top of the narrow ladder.


I like to think that I can work at a decent pace but quite honestly it was embarrassing being amongst the men on the Cor'moran as the ship was called. (Not that it wasn't obvious of course from the figurehead.) Once they got a barrel aboard they seemed to heave it about as if it were of no weight. I found myself more of a bystander for much of the time. On the other occasions I managed to hold onto some ropes, duck the barrels as they were hoisted from the pontoon and stand rather sadly in the way of a very heavy box of dried fish that I suddenly found was heading towards me at chest height. The sender was a rather large (even for these guys) chap with more muscle on his arms than I had on my thighs. He had simply caught the box in one swing from one of the men on the pontoon and continuing the swing he had launched it at me without realising who it was that was in line of fire. As the box went up in its arc I could see the look of concern even on his grim face.


"Faw'kin watch aht!" he yelled and for a split second before the box was due to hit me I thought that he had recognised me from my days in Trellsheim. Of course, I was wrong and it was simply the expletive and not a term of endearment but I had no time to think about it further because I was roughly knocked sideways. I tripped over a couple of eel pots before landing in a heap in the gunwales. Slightly put out, I turned to voice my anger to the ingrate beast that had bested me.


However, the words didn't come because I found myself looking at a smiling face of the third of the men on the boat as he held the heavy box over his head as if it were made of paper. He grinned a one-sided grin that stopped at a great scar that travelled up his face to the patch over the right eye. He wore a black scarf on his head and had several gold rings in his ears and through his nose.


"You should be careful old ’un." he said.


There wasn't a hint of mockery in his voice: in fact he looked quite worried.


"Faw'kin Scrytrek 'ere 'es not thinkin’ about ‘ee. Appen ‘es a not thinkin’ about any much at all!"


At this he scowled at the other man, who I took to go by the name of Scrytrek.


"Yu’sa been more careful ne was, ja'bas!” he continued, “Wer fore ‘en abbas killed ‘en, Eh? En a Bas'n ‘es a sayin’ abbas Scrytrek enas sharks meat 'nd nibblin 'im over a side!"


"For good as sake, Marfus, es nebbut actul avin 'im ne was."


Scrytrek came back in a close thing to an apology without setting himself up for a stabbing.


"Appen ‘es a standin’ 'nd swayin’ in a's ways en all."


He turned on me at this point.


"Appen es alright, ne was?" The tone was only slightly aggressive but he was recovering and managed to come in at the end with a bit more bite.


"E’s an old ‘un and they ishta shyte,” he continued, now ignoring me. “Ah’s a nebbut wet-nursin’ ‘em ne was!"


Things settled down a bit after that but I was still not much use to them. I think that it was either a form of kindness or simply curiosity that motivated them to keep me there. Or perhaps it was a vague sense of kinship. By the time they had got all the supplies on board and had stowed them securely (I couldn't even help them with that as my knot-tying skills were limited to the granny knot and the tangled mess) it felt pretty late.


It occurred to me at this point that I had made a bit of a mistake. I know that they had offered me a curry earlier on, but the subject hadn’t come up again and I assumed that it had died. That left my need to return to my lodgings. It was one thing to walk back through the alleys to the Via Andea in the early evening when the risk of attack was probably fair to middling but to walk back in what must surely be around midnight was essentially to proclaim myself as obvious victim. Once again on my travels I found myself berating my stupidity and lack of common sense but it was of course pointless: the die was cast and once more I had managed to stuff myself.


My internal arguments with both man and boy were interrupted by a shout from Scrytrek who was now waving to a small group of men walking along the quayside towards us. They were too far away for me to make out but these younger men clearly had better eyesight and some form of night vision, at least relative to my own night blindness.


"Why ‘es a Bas'n en sumat, ne was," Scrytrek called to the others.


Then he made fast a last barrel and jumped over the gunwales back onto the pontoon. The others also made fast their ropes and followed him almost as a pack. I watched them go and was wondering whether I should follow when Marfus yelled out, presumably to me although he didn't turn his head.


"Yu'sa commin’ 'en as fer currish ne was, old'en?"


As I knew that I would take a fair bit longer than the crew to get out of the boat, I yelled back that I was coming and started the ungainly attempt to climb over the various areas of stowage and over the gunwales. I guess that it was fortunate that the water was particularly calm here because even getting off a boat on a mill pond is a challenge for me. Partly this was the result of my aging knees and, as I was later to find out, other areas of ache and general hurt that I didn’t yet appreciate.


By the time that I had caught up with the others they had already met up with the new group and I could detect a strong smell of curry and spices in the air. In the middle of the group were four men carrying between them a couple of large cauldrons. One was lidded and clean looking. The other was open and had a rich looking yellow mixture in it that bubbled sluggishly occasionally and gave off a delicious aroma.
Where they had carried it from was a mystery to me and why it was still so hot was beyond my comprehension but these thoughts were pushed out of the way as I realised just exactly how hungry I really was. I reminded myself that I hadn't really eaten properly since the morning, as I didn't count the somewhat diminutive first course that I had eaten whilst talking to the others in the restaurant.


I didn't really have much more time to dwell on the prospect of a meal as I was somewhat unceremoniously barged out of the way by the small but enthusiastic crowd that accompanied the food bearers. There was the smell of alcohol in the air also and I could see that a number of the men were carrying stone jars and in some cases wine skins were slung over their shoulders. The only words being spoken, or rather shouted, were in Brutaspeke. Not a word of Latin nor Xandrian. I felt somehow more at home in all this, even as I was pushed to the outer extremities by the excited youngsters around me.


"Whoa there. Yu'sa mind'in thas old ‘un, je' basn."


This was Scrytrek.


"We'es a good ‘un, so yu’sa ne bas nebblin ‘im en aside. Es'a commin’ wis ‘en fer to munchin’ currish. Ye was. En'as hengreggish!"


This was Marfus, leaping to my defence. I was touched.


The central huddle of men moving behind the food party suddenly opened up alongside me and various shouts and calls were made.


"Welcome!"


"Come in, ja bas!"


"Why ‘es a good’un!"


I was grabbed by heavy muscled arms and hauled into the centre of this crowd. I had no choice and if I hadn't had the reassurance of my working companions of earlier that evening I think that I would have been a little afraid. A mixture of ugly and quite frankly brutal faces flashed past me all in varying stages of inebriation. I had little choice as I was almost bodily carried forward by the strength of movement but then I saw something that made me stop in my tracks.


An arm went up and at once all movement ceased around me. There was Welcome grinning from ear to ear his head wrapped in a dark turban and wearing a robe of immaculate fabric. I wasn't into fabrics so I had no idea what it was actually made of but it looked expensive enough. At his side we wore his tulwar and beneath the robe I could see something that looked vaguely like chain mail. His dark face looked into mine. He was still grinning and I could feel a smile creeping over my own expression.


"Welcome!" I said, rather obviously.


"Atcha, atcha, my friend," he replied, giving me a formal bow as I had once seen him do before.


He then seized me and embraced me as though I was family. I could see as well as sense all those about us watching. The noise had died down and all these big men were standing there waiting. In the face of Scrytrek opposite me I could see a growing sense of respect flowering.


Welcome stepped back and addressed the crowd around us in their own language. Somehow he made the language sound less harsh.


"This is my friend, The Collector of Tales. He is a great teller of stories and has travelled many lands. We first met in Trellsheim (there was some healthy muttering at this, presumably the Trellsheim contingent) and I have travelled far myself to find him."


He beamed at me and then continued.


"Now I have found him and here he is. Marfus, you were right to invite him to our meal and I trust that all of you have looked after him for me."


Here he scowled at Scrytrek, who for a big man, seemed to be trying to make himself look extremely small.


"Bas'n..."


This was Marfus about to confess to ill treatment, I suspected.


"They have all been very kind," I offered.


"Atcha. Atcha, my friend. Of course they have," he looked around again at all the faces as if considering his next words.


"This is my friend. You will treat him with the respect that he deserves. He is to be called "The Collector" when addressing him formally but I do know that he is happy to respond to the name "Faw'kin" in normal usage."


There was cautious laughter at this.


"But enough of the formality, let's get this meal started then! Marfus how much farther have we got to carry the food? These lads here are dropping with exhaustion."


The four men carrying the cauldrons were built like giants and looked more fit for a fight than fit to drop and I guess that all present saw the sense of this. Barriers went back down and the crowd started moving forward again and the volume went up to full.


"Come, my friend. Let us find this place to eat and I will get one of these barbarians to tell you a story."
Welcome slapped an arm around my shoulder and moved me forward at a pace behind the food bearers.