"You're probably right," Althalus agreed. "It would have been fun to see the expression on his face, though."

As Althalus and Gher were returning to the bare room where they slept, Eliar spoke silently to Althalus. 'I just finished adding your concoction to the mead,' the young Arum advised.

'Not all the mead, I hope,' Althalus replied.

'No,' Eliar said. 'The only crocks I doctored were the ten at the very back of that storeroom. The crocks at the front are only holding ordinary mead. They'll drink those all down by evening. They won't get into your "special mead" until after supper tomorrow evening.'

'Perfect,' Althalus gloated, rubbing his hands together. 'I don't want them to get completely frazzled until evening. A man who drinks himself to sleep by noon could wake up before midnight. Did you taste any of the "special" mead?'

'Emmy wouldn't let me,' Eliar replied a bit disconsolately.

'I guess I'd better stop by the kitchen and find out if it's as strong as it's supposed to be.' He hesitated slightly. 'You don't necessarily have to tell Emmy about that, though,' he added.

'She's standing right beside me,' Althalus.

'Oh?' Althalus said. 'Hello, there, Em. How's your day gone so far?'

'Mine hasn't been too bad,' her voice replied. 'Yours might start going to pot if you get carried away with your sampling, though.'

'Is that a threat, Em?'

'No, Althalus. It's a promise.'

Althalus turned and went back to the kitchen with Gher close behind him. When they got there, Althalus dipped one drinking horn into one of the crocks near the front of the storage room and another into one from the back. The first horn of mead tasted fine; the second left him gasping and filled his eyes with tears.

"Did Eliar get it right?" Gher whispered.

"Oh, yes," Althalus wheezed, trying to catch his breath.

"Won't Gosti's men notice the difference?"

"I doubt it. They'll already be half drunk by the time they get to those last ten crocks. They'll be too fuzzy-headed to know what they're drinking." Althalus squinted toward the kitchen door. "When we start getting on toward the end of the day, you might want to take a few horns of mead to the guards standing in front of the door to the strong room," he suggested. "Start out with the ordinary stuff and switch to the strong stuff later on. Ghend's a little too quick with his knife sometimes, so I don't want those guards awake when the time for the robbery rolls around. I doubt that anybody in Gosti's hall's going to be sober enough to check on those guards, but let's stay on the safe side. If the guards have had their throats cut, even the drunkest Arum's likely to raise the alarm."

"Are there always so many details in a robbery?" Gher asked. "Here lately, it seems like you've even been counting the leaves on that tree just outside the gate."

"Well, I haven't gone quite that far," Althalus said, "but when you're planning a robbery, you should always try to cover every possibility. The thief who thinks ahead, stays ahead."

"I'll remember that."

"Good. Let's go mingle with the clansmen. Gosti should be waking up soon. He hasn't had anything to eat for six hours, and that's usually about as long as he can go."

"That's why he sleeps in his chair at the table, isn't it?"

"It's one of the reasons, yes. The more important one is probably that he can't walk anymore. He doesn't get much exercise, and he weighs as much as a horse. I don't think his legs would hold him anymore."

The birthday celebration was fairly formal at the outset. Galbak made a rather stuffy speech to start things moving, and he concluded by proposing a toast to their huge Chief.

The word "toast" was received with much enthusiasm.

Gosti beamed briefly, and then he fell ravenously upon his breakfast.

Althalus bided his time until the fat man had taken the edge off his hunger with about half a ham, and then he leaned back in his chair and began. "Ho, Gosti, did I ever tell you the story about the crazy man I met once up in northern Kagwher?"

"I don't think you ever did, Althalus," Gosti replied, munching thoughtfully. "How were you able to tell that he was crazy, though? I've never met a Kagwher who wasn't a little strange."

"This particular Kagwher was stranger than most, Gosti," Althalus told him. "He wandered around up there near the Edge of the World, and he spent most of his time talking to God. I've heard that a lot of people do that, but this fellow believed that God talked back to him."

"That's crazy, all right," Galbak agreed.

"Tell us the story, Althalus," another clansman urged.

"Well," Althalus began, "it was quite some time ago, and I'd gone up out of Hule into Kagwher on a business trip, you see, and one morning up there near the Edge of the World, I woke up when I heard somebody talking." He went on to describe the bent old crazy man at some length and then jumped off into a pure fantasy that was related to the truth only by implication.

The party grew increasingly rowdy through the morning and early afternoon, and then the fights began. Good humor returned at suppertime, when the first of the doctored crocks of mead were broached.

The singing began about an hour later, and the snoring not long after that.

"Go take some more of the strong mead to the guards in front of the strong room, Gher," Althalus instructed quietly. "Then go to the stables and saddle the horses."

"Right," Gher agreed.

"Do you know what you're going to do? You've got to distract Khnom for long enough to slip Ghend's Book to Emmy."

"I'll take care of it, Althalus," Gher assured him.

Khnom slipped out of Gosti's great hall shortly after Gher had left, and after a few moments, Althalus gestured curtly at Ghend.

The fire-eyed man rose, put on his bronze helmet, and quietly left the room.

Althalus slowly counted to one hundred, and then he also rose, looked around at the sodden Arums, and went to the door.

"Why the delay?" Ghend whispered.

"Just making sure that nobody was still awake," Althalus replied. "Let's get to work."

They went down the corridor to the three steps leading up to the strong-room door. The guards were sprawled on the floor just in front of the steps, and they were both snoring.

"Should we kill them?" Ghend asked.

"Absolutely not," Althalus said firmly. "Dead men attract attention, and that's the last thing we want. After we steal the gold, I'll lock the strong-room door again and leave it just the way we found it. With any luck at all, it'll be two or three days before anybody even looks inside, and that'll give us a long head start."

"Clever," Ghend said admiringly.

"I'm glad you liked it." Althalus went up the three steps to the strong-room door and examined the crude lock.

"Is it going to give you any trouble?" Ghend asked nervously.

Althalus snorted. "Gher could open this lock," he said derisively. He reached down and drew a long bronze needle out of his boot, probed at the lock for a moment, and was rewarded with a loud click. "We're in," he said tersely, opening the heavy door slightly. "Get inside. I'll pull the door mostly shut behind us."

Ghend nodded and slipped through the partially open doorway.

Althalus reached up, took the burning torch from the bronze ring beside the door, and followed Ghend into the room, carefully pulling the door closed behind him. Then he held the torch aloft, and the two of them looked around the strong room for the first time.

There were animal-skin bags piled along the wall, and there seemed to be quite a few of them. "This might take us a while," Ghend noted.

"I doubt it," Althalus disagreed. "Not even a man as messy as Gosti is would pile gold and copper together in the same stack." He set the butt of the torch into a bronze ring jutting from the wall behind the crudely built table, went to the pile of bags, picked one up, and shook it. "Copper," he said.

"How can you tell?"

"The sound. Copper pennies make a different sound. Gold's more musical." Althalus rummaged through the bags. "Here we go," he said triumphantly. "This one feels as if it's full of sand, and it's much heavier than those others."

"Sand?"

"Those miners up in the mountains don't have the equipment to melt their gold down to make bars, so they have to pay their toll in gold flakes when they cross Gosti's bridge. The ones who are going the other way are the ones who pay in coins." Althalus untied the top of the bag, poked his hand inside, and took out a handful of bright yellow flakes. Then he let the flakes spill back into the bag in a glittering golden shower. "Pretty, isn't it?"

Ghend seemed almost paralyzed, and his eyes were blazing.

"Help me sort these out," Althalus told him. "We don't want to carry off a bag of copper pennies by mistake."

"Right," Ghend agreed.

It took them about a quarter of an hour to sort through the bags, and they piled the ones containing gold on the crude table in the center of the room.

"I think that's all of it," Althalus said finally. Then he thoughtfully hefted one of the bags of golden sand. "About fifty pounds," he mused.

"So what?" Ghend demanded.

"We've got four horses, partner, and if Gosti's men happen to wake up early and start chasing us, we'll want our horses to be able to run like frightened deer. I don't think we'll want to put more than two bags on each horse maybe four on Gher's horse, but that might start some arguments later. Let's just take eight bags and let it go at that."

"But there are almost twenty bags here!" Ghend protested.

"Take as many as you want, Ghend, but if the extra weight slows your horse down and Gosti's men catch up to you, you'll never get a chance to spend any of your gold."

"There are lots of other horses in the stables."

"And missing horses attract almost as much attention as dead guards do. We've got a very good chance at having a three-day lead. If we start killing Gosti's people and stealing his horses, we can kiss that lead goodbye. I'd rather travel light and stay alive, but what you do is up to you."

Ghend sighed. "I guess you're right," he agreed mournfully.

"The gold coins are in separate bags," Althalus told his lank-haired accomplice. "Let's take those bags rather than the ones filled with sand. Coins are ready to spend, but we'd have to melt down the sand, and I've never been very good at that." Althalus went to the door and looked out into the corridor. "It's still clear," he announced. "Let's get started. We'll haul the ones we're stealing down to the end of the hall and stack them in the kitchen. As soon as we've got our gold out of here, I'll close the door and lock it again. Then we'll take our loot down through the sheds to the hay barn. I don't think anybody in the fort's awake, but let's stay in the shadows, just to be on the safe side."

"Right," Ghend agreed. "Let's get cracking."

They each took up two of the heavy bags, quickly lugged them down the corridor to the kitchen, and returned for two more. When they came out of the room, Althalus set his bags down on the top step. "Go on ahead," he instructed. "I'll catch up in a minute."

"What are you going to do?"

"I want to make that room look exactly the way it looked before we went in. If Galbak happens to glance in, I don't want anything to be out of place. If we're lucky, he might not even notice that Gosti's been robbed for a week or so."

"Very shrewd, Althalus," Ghend said admiringly. "Don't be too long, though." He turned and carried his bags of gold toward the kitchen as Althalus went back into the strong room, closing the door behind him. Then he quickly untied several bags of pennies and dumped them on the floor. He seasoned that pile with the contents of one of the bags of flakes and then tipped over the table. "That should do it," he muttered. Then he went back out, put the torch back into the bronze ring, and carefully relocked the door.

"That didn't take long," Ghend observed when Althalus joined him in the kitchen.

"I can move very fast when I have to," Althalus replied. "If Galbak opens that door tomorrow, he'll see exactly what I want him to see. Let's haul our loot to the hay barn. We want to be a long way from here by sunrise."

"You won't get any arguments from me on that score," Ghend agreed.

They each took up two of the heavy bags again and went out through the kitchen door. Then they moved carefully through the dense shadows in the open-fronted workshops along the east wall of the fort.

"What took you so long?" Gher demanded, his hoarse whisper sounding shrill. "I been going crazy in here!"

"Calm down, Gher," Althalus said. "What's got you all tied up in knots?"

"We've got trouble, Althalus!"

"Keep your voice down," Ghend hissed. "What's wrong?"

"That's what's wrong," Gher said in a strained voice. He pointed at a motionless figure lying near the stable door. "That's Khnom, in case you don't recognize him. We had the horses all saddled and ready, and we was waiting for you when this drunk Arum came stumbling in mumbling something about jumping out of the hayloft. Khnom was trying to come up with some story to explain why we was here, but the Arum was too drunk to listen. He seemed to think we wanted to jump before he did, so he banged Khnom on the head with that wooden bucket over there, and Khnom went down like somebody'd just cut the ground out from under him. Then the drunk Arum climbed up the ladder and jumped out of the hayloft. He didn't come down where he was supposed to, though, and he landed all wrong. I think he broke his neck, because he's not breathing anymore. I couldn't think of nothing else to do, so I just covered him up with hay. Khnom's still breathing, but I can't wake him up. What are we going to do?"

"Get that back door open," Althalus told him. "Ghend and I'll go get the rest of our gold. We'll decide what to do about Khnom when we get back."

Ghend was muttering curses as he and Althalus retraced their steps to the kitchen door. "What a stupid thing to have happen!" he flared hoarsely.

"Maybe we can wake Khnom if we throw water on him," Althalus said. "If that doesn't bring him around, we might have to tie him to his saddle and you'll have to lead his horse. We don't dare leave him behind. Galbak could probably squeeze the truth out of him in about half a minute. Let's get the rest of our gold first. Then we'll decide what to do about Khnom."

They picked up the other four bags of gold and returned to the hay barn. "Is he moving at all yet?" Ghend demanded of Gher.

"Not even a twitch," Gher replied. "I dumped cold water in his face, but he didn't come around. That Arum banged him real good with that bucket."

Ghend knelt beside his friend and began pinching his nose and slapping him across the cheeks.

"What really happened here, Gher?" Althalus whispered.

"It was me who hit Khnom with that bucket, Althalus," Gher admitted. "Khnom's real sneaky, and I got to thinking that he'd probably expect me to be sneaky, too-like maybe tiptoe up behind him and stab him in the back, or something like that. I sort of figured that the best way to be sneaky was to not be sneaky, so I just walked up to him carrying that bucket like I didn't even remember that it was still in my hand. He was looking right straight at me when I came up to him, and he was even smiling at me. I didn't even blink or nothing. I just swung that bucket at his head as hard as I could. He looked awful surprised when he fell down. Then I hit him on the head some more until Emmy told me to stop. She must have thought it was funny, because she was laughing. Then she told me that she'd fix it so that Khnom won't remember that I hit him." Gher looked just a bit ashamed. "It wasn't a very fancy cheat, Althalus," he apologized. "I didn't sneak or tiptoe or nothing like that the way I guess I was supposed to. I just walked right straight up to Khnom and whacked him on the head with that bucket, is all."

Althalus was trying very hard to keep from laughing out loud. "You done good, Gher," he said, fighting back his laughter. "You done real good."

"Eliar took Ghend's Book to Emmy, and then he came right back with it in the blink of an eye," Gher reported. "I guess she done what she needed to do, and the Book's right back where it was before I hit Khnom with the bucket."

"We did what we were supposed to do, then, and that's all that really matters. Let's get our gold tied to our saddles and get ready to leave."

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE.