The screened dining porch looked out over a neatly tended yard in the direction of large barns. In winter they housed registered livestock. It was a beautiful summer morning, fresh and cool after a hot and humid spell. A couple sat at a flower-decorated table, drinking midmorning joma that was not made of scorched grain. Physically the man was smaller than ordinary. His features, the gray eyes especially, suggested high intelligence and an even disposition. He was dressed in a gray riding suit of serviceable material, a white shirt and black ribbon tie. And boots suitable for both saddle and stable.
Their butler entered. "Sir, Mr. Chenly wishes to speak with you. When may I tell him you'll see him?"
Mild surprise registered. His chief forester had planned to check the thinning work on Compartment Four that morning. Fingas Marnsson Kelromak glanced at his wife, who nodded. "I'll speak with him now, Kinet."
The butler's nod was almost a bow, and he left. A minute later, Chenly stepped onto the porch. Kelromak sat back, his expression questioning.
"Good morning, sir. Bobbi and I were driving to Compartment Four this morning, and we found a man lying by the road, unconscious. A drifter by the look of him. A tree had broken in the wind, and the top had fallen on him."
"Badly injured, I suppose?"
"When we got him here, he was able to take his weight on one foot. The other knee is pretty swollen, and something's wrong with a shoulder. And he's got a knot on his head like an egg."
"And?" Kelromak knew there was more to it than that, or Chenly wouldn't be troubling him with the matter.
"The storm went through in the middle of the night, and I wondered what he'd been doing on the road at that hour. Also he's a rather large man, sir, and hard, and—"
Kelromak interrupted. "Hard?"
"His body, sir. When Bobbi and I raised him up, I was surprised how hard and heavy he felt. And supporting him under the arms— He's got muscles like Big Farly, or maybe harder. A man like that could be dangerous, sir, if he's inclined to be lawless. So—" He held something up: the magazine from a pistol. "I took his pack off to lay him on the back seat, and threw it in front. And looked in it on our way back; I found this."
Kelromak pursed his lips. The forest country had always been a refuge for felons and runaways. They'd hide there till they got too hungry, or sometimes till the sheriff asked for a company or two of soldiers to sweep the forest for them.
It was Lady Kelromak who spoke then. "But no gun, Chenly?"
"No, ma'am. Just the magazine. He could have found it on the ground somewhere. I've had a magazine fall out of my pistol butt when the catch didn't latch like it ought to."
"What else did he carry?" Kelromak asked.
"A match safe, better than you'd expect, given the clothes he wore. And a horse blanket, half a loaf of cabin bread, a bag of dried lumies, most of a cheese, and some snare wire, as if he might take a yansa now and then. And thirty dronas."
Thirty dronas! A great deal of money for a drifter. Most, if they had that much, would be in town drinking it up.
"And a folding knife," Chenly went on, "bigger than usual and razor sharp, but something anyone might carry, especially in the woods." He dug into a pocket, drew out the knife and opened it. The blade was nearly five inches long. "I took it and the matches, and left him with Frenis in the bachelors' quarters. He was pretty much in a daze yet."
Kelromak got to his feet. "I'll talk to this drifter, if that's what he is. See what I can find out."
"Well, that's another thing, sir. You see— I asked his name, even before I looked in his pack, and he said he didn't know! He could be faking, but that's quite a knot on his head. You can actually see it, what with his hair so short."
"Hmm. I'll see him anyway." He turned to his wife. "Excuse me, dear," he said, and left with Chenly. Kelromak limped, as if from some old injury grown used to, a limp sufficient to hamper him. "Have you called the outcamps to see if there's been thefts?"
"Bobbi's doing that, sir."
They crossed a broad lawn and went through a gate in a ten-foot privacy hedge. The bachelors' quarters were on the other side, a single-story frame dormitory, painted cream with white trim, and had a lawn of its own. Only two men were inside, one a burly middle-aged man with a fire-scarred face and vestigial right ear, seated in front of a window with a book open in his left hand. His curled right hand lay on a thigh, as if the elbow wouldn't bend far enough to help hold the book. The other man, young, lay on a bed with his eyes closed. His shirt had been removed, leaving a ragged undershirt, and his right arm had been immobilized—put in a sling and wrapped to his body with a bandage.
The older man lay his book on the sill and got stiffly to his feet. "Good morning, sir."
"Good morning, Frenis." Kelromak's attention went to the stranger; the young man's eyes had opened, but they didn't seem to focus. "How do you feel?" Kelromak asked.
The man looked at him blankly. "All right."
In the undershirt, his arms were large, and considering how relaxed they were, looked extremely muscular. Also, if he was feigning concussion, he did a convincing job of it. Kelromak knelt beside him, felt the lump on his head, then took the hand on the injured arm and examined the palm. "What have you been doing for a living?" he asked.
The man blinked. "Living? I don't rightly know, sir. Don't remember."
"Well." Kelromak straightened and turned. "Chenly, call Dr. Ammekor to come by and look at our visitor. He should check Dori-Ann, too, while he's here."
They left together then. "I'd judge he's no robber," Kelromak told the forester. "His hands are as callused as any I've ever seen. He's a laboring man, or I've missed my guess, probably come to the forest to find work. Now if he'd carried a gun— But as you said, he could well have found the magazine somewhere. And the money could have been earned; not every drifter drinks his up, I'm sure."
"You don't want me to call the sheriff to question him then?"
Kelromak grimaced. "No. Not unless Bobbi learns something suggestive from the out-camps. If Sheriff Geltro got hold of him, he might well try to beat some memory out of him. And possibly beat him to death in the process."
When the lord of the estate had left the dormitory, Varky Graymar closed his eyes again. His head ached and he didn't remember anything between the river and waking up by the road. But he knew who he was and why he was in Komars, and there was nothing seriously wrong with his thought processes. He'd functioned well enough to hide his stuff and even get his pack back on, damn difficult with a separated shoulder.
If they let me stay here, he thought, I'll be functional in a week or two.