“I think so,” said the soldier. “I picked it up off the battlefield.” He took the saucepan to eat from himself and found a couple of spoons. They sat eating companionably with the fire crackling between them, while the sky turned slowly pink and crimson and gold, and the lands below became blue. “Not used to roughing it, are you?” the soldier remarked. “Good clothes, fancy boots, you have, but they’ve seen a bit of wear and tear lately by the looks of them. And by your talk and your sunburn, you come from quite a way south of Ingary, don’t you?”

“All that is true, O most acutely observant campaigner,” Abdullah said cagily. “And of you all I know is that you come from Strangia and are most oddly proceeding through this land, encouraging persons to rob you by flourishing the coins of your bounty—”

“Bounty be damned!” the soldier interrupted angrily. “Not one penny did I get from either Strangia or Ingary! I sweated my guts out in those wars—we all did—and at the end of it they say, ‘Right, lads, that’s it, it’s peacetime now!’ and turn us all out to starve. So I say to myself, ‘Right indeed! Someone owes me for all the work I’ve done, and I reckon it’s the folk of Ingary! They were the ones who brought wizards in and cheated their way to victory!’ So I set off to earn my bounty off them, the way you saw me doing it today. You may call it a scam if you like, but you saw me; you judge me. I only take money off those who up and try to rob me!”

“Indeed, the word scam never crossed my lips, virtuous veteran,” Abdullah said sincerely. “I call it most ingenious, and a plan that few but you could succeed in.”

The soldier seemed soothed by this. He stared ruminatively out at the blue distance below. “All that down there,” he said, “that’s Kingsbury Plain. That should yield me a mort of gold. Do you know, when I started out from Strangia, all I had was a silver three-penny bit and a brass button I used to pretend was a sovereign?”

“Then your profit has been great,” said Abdullah.

“And it’ll be greater yet,” the soldier promised. He set the saucepan neatly aside and fished two apples out of his pack. He gave one to Abdullah and ate the other himself, lying stretched on his back, staring out at the slowly darkening land. Abdullah assumed he was calculating the gold he would earn from it. He was surprised when the soldier said, “I always did love the evening camp. Take a look at that sunset now. Glorious!”