“The food — putrid!”
“Well,” I said over the hubbub. “Maybe it is just as well. That cramph of a Moder lord might have magicked the vittles in our insides. I do not care to contemplate that, by Krun!”
“You have the right of it, Jak,” observed Tyfar. “But we are hungry.”
“The Humped Land will not be so sere that we cannot find aught to eat.”
Tyfar made a face. He was a prince — admittedly, a prince of Hamal, which great empire was locked in deadly combat with my own land of Vallia — and the idea of chasing rodents and other lowly creatures for food did not appeal to him. Then he smiled.
“When you come to the fluttrell’s vane, Jak, one must do what one must. I shall not care for it, no, by Krun. But I will eat a green lizard when my guts rumble!”
“Nodgen,” I said, “do you go and see wh
