“Any lament,” said Dagner. “You played your own treble over the grave, didn’t you?”
Moril tried it. He began singing the “Lament for the Earl of Dropwater,” and brought the cwidder in as softly as he could after the first line. The discord was horrible. Brid shuddered. But Dagner took up the song, too, and the cwidder seemed almost to follow his lead. The notes came right as Dagner sang them. To Moril’s astonishment and secret terror, the cwidder was in tune by the end of the first verse. He sang the chorus, and first Brid, then Kialan, joined in.
“This was a man above all other,
Kanart the Earl, Kanart the Earl!
You’ll never find his equal, brother.
He was a man above all other.”
The cwidder sang on, as sweetly as it had for Clennen. Tears poured down Brid’s face. Moril felt tearful, too. They sang lustily through the whole song, and sad though it made them, they felt heartened, too. The oddest effect was on Olob. His pace dropped to a slow, rhythmic walk, and he went for all the world as if the cart was a hearse.
“Put it away,” said Dagner, “or we’ll never get to Neathdale.”
Moril put the alarming cwidder carefully back, and they made better progress. As before, Dagner would not let Olob stop at the usual time or in the usual kind of place. A little before sunset he took Olob right off the road into a high, lonely field full of big stones, where they could see a good way in most directions.
“There hasn’t been a sign of Ganner!” Moril protested.
“Well, there won’t be, until we see him arriving, will there?” said Kialan.
They demolished the sausage and held their practice. To Moril’s relief, the big cwidder now behaved perfectly. But there were other difficulties. Without Clennen or Lenina, they found they could not do half the songs in the way they were used to. They had to work everything out afresh. And Dagner did not in any way take Clennen’s place. He refused to do more than a third of the singing, and that was the only thing he was firm about. Otherwise, he simply made suggestions, and he was quite ready to be overruled by Brid or Moril. The younger two felt lost. They were used to Clennen’s kind but entirely firm way of telling them exactly what to do. Sometimes they were annoyed, and several times they were tempted to get very silly. It was only the grim thought that their next meal depended on this practice that kept them from breaking into loud arguments or louder laughter. Moril felt he had never truly missed Clennen till then.
Yet, in the middle of thinking that, he remembered what Dagner had said about Clennen’s always having his own way. It occurred to him to wonder if Clennen had not, in fact, kept them all a little too dependent on him. Maybe this was why it seemed so hard to manage without him.
While they practiced, Kialan lay full length on a rock above them, listening and also, Moril suspected, acting as lookout. This elaborate caution began to irritate Moril. After all, it was Moril and Brid who stood to lose if Ganner found them, not Dagner and Kialan. In the morning he was exasperated to see that they had been on watch again. Both of them looked tired out.
Brid was furious. “How on earth do you think you’re going to give a performance, Dagner, if you can hardly keep your eyes open? I’ve never known you so silly! We depend on you!”
“All right,” Dagner said wearily. “You drive and I’ll have a sleep in the cart. But wake me if—if—”
“If what?” snapped Brid.
“If anything happens,” said Dagner, and lay down beside the wine jar with a groan. Kialan flopped down on the other side of the jar, and both of them fell asleep before Olob had the cart in motion.
It was left to Brid and Moril to find the way to Neathdale. They did it, too, half cross and half proud of themselves. The map did not help much. They were forced to follow their noses across country, turning into any road that seemed to go northwest and hoping for the best. Once they arrived in a farmyard and had to back out of it, pursued by the barking of dogs and the squalling of hens and roosters. Kialan and Dagner did not even stir. “Stupid fools,” said Brid. They were still asleep when the cart came out on a rise above Neathdale.
“We did it!” said Moril.
“Unless Olob knew the way,” Brid said, trying to be fair. “But I don’t think even he can have come to it this way before.”
Neathdale was a big cheerful-looking town lying across the main road north to Flennpass, in the last level ground before the Uplands. They could look across even its tallest buildings from where they were to where the South Dales mounted like stairs to the Mark Wood plateau.
“Say four days, and we’ll be in the North,” Moril said yearningly.
“Four days,” said Brid promptly.
The scuffle that followed on the driving seat woke Dagner and Kialan at last. “What’s the matter? What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Only Neathdale,” said Brid. Dagner’s sleepy face at once became pinched and tense and mauvish. Brid set herself to soothe him. “We always used to get good takings here,” she said. “There must be hundreds of people who remember us and know Father. I’m going to do the talking, mind, and I shall talk about Father and say who we are—though they can read that on the cart anyway.”
“The cart ought to be repainted with Dagner’s name,” Moril observed. He did not think Brid was soothing Dagner in the slightest, but he did not mind helping.
“You’d hardly get the name on,” Brid said brightly. “Dastgandlen down one side and Handagner up the other, I suppose.”
“Isn’t Neathdale the seat of Earl Tholian?” Kialan asked, tactlessly cutting through the soothing.
“Not really. His place is outside a bit, over to the east,” Dagner said. He pointed with a hand that shook noticeably. A great white house was just visible, among trees, on the other side of Neathdale.