The Talisman

does not extend to assaults upon the person of the Captain of the Outer Guards. Do you understand me?’
    The chef moaned out a teary, defiant something-or-other. Jack couldn’t make it all out – the man’s accent seemed to be growing steadily thicker – but it had something to do with the Captain’s mother and the dump-dogs beyond the pavillion.
    ‘That may well be,’ the Captain said. ‘I never knew the lady. But it certainly doesn’t answer my question.’ He prodded the chef with one dusty, scuffed boot. It was a gentle enough prod, but the chef screeched as if the Captain had drawn his foot back and kicked him as hard as he could. The women twittered again.
    ‘Do we or do we not have an understanding on the subject of chefs and weapons and Captains? Because if we don’t, a little more instruction might be in order.’
    ‘We do!’ the chef gasped. ‘We do! We do! We—’
    ‘Good. Because I’ve had to give far too much instruction already today.’ He shook Jack by the scruff of the neck. ‘Haven’t I, boy?’ He shook him again, and Jack uttered a wail that was completely unfeigned. ‘Well . . . I suppose that’s all he can say. The boy’s a simpleton. Like his mother.’
    The Captain threw his dark, gleaming glance around the kitchen.
    ‘Good day, ladies. Queen’s blessings upon you.’
    ‘And you, good sir,’ the eldest among them managed, and dropped an awkward, ungraceful curtsey. The others followed suit.
    The Captain dragged Jack across the kitchen. Jack’s hip bumped the edge of the washing trough with excruciating force and he cried out again. Hot water flew. Smoking droplets hit the boards and ran, hissing between them. Those women had their hands in that , Jack thought. How do they stand it? Then the Captain, who was almost carrying him by now, shoved Jack through another burlap curtain and into the hallway beyond.
    ‘Phew!’ the Captain said in a low voice. ‘I don’t like this, not any of it, it all smells bad.’
    Left, right, then right again. Jack began to sense that they were approaching the outer walls of the pavillion, and he had time to wonder how the place could seem so much bigger on the inside than it looked from the outside. Then the Captain was pushing him through a flap and they were in daylight again – mid-afternoon daylight so bright after the shifting dimness of the pavillion that Jack had to wince his eyes shut against a burst of pain.
    The Captain never hesitated. Mud squelched and smooched underfoot. There was the smell of hay and horses and shit. Jack opened his eyes again and saw they were crossing what might have been a paddock or a corral or maybe just a barnyard. He saw an open canvas-sided hallway and heard chickens clucking somewhere beyond it. A scrawny man, naked except for a dirty kilt and thong sandals, was tossing hay into an open stall, using a pitchfork with wooden tines to do the job. Inside the stall, a horse not much bigger than a Shetland pony looked moodily out at them. They had already passed the stall when Jack’s mind was finally able to accept what his eyes had seen: the horse had two heads.
    ‘Hey!’ he said. ‘Can I look back in that stall? That—’
    ‘No time.’
    ‘But that horse had—’
    ‘No time, I said.’ He raised his voice and shouted:‘And if I ever catch you laying about again when there’s work to be done, you’ll get twice this!’
    ‘You won’t!’ Jack screamed (in truth he felt as if this scene were getting a bit old). ‘I swear you won’t! I told you I’d be good!’
    Just ahead of them, tall wooden gates loomed in a wall made of wooden posts with the bark still on them – it was like a stockade wall in an old Western (his mother had made a few of those, too). Heavy brackets were screwed into the gates, but the bar the brackets were meant to hold was not in place. It leaned against the woodpile to the left, thick as a railroad crosstie. The gates stood open almost six inches. Some muddled sense of direction in Jack’s head suggested that they had worked their way completely around the pavillion to its far side.
    ‘Thank God,’ the Captain said in a more normal voice. ‘Now—’
    ‘Captain,’ a voice called from behind them. The voice was low but carrying, deceptively casual. The Captain stopped in his tracks. It had called just as Jack’s scarred companion had been in the act of reaching for the left gate to push it open; it was as if the voice’s owner had watched and waited for