‘There is no boar, either,’ Dathenar retorted. ‘No, we hold to this bridge, and turn eyes upon the Citadel. The historian looks on, after all. Let us discuss the nature of language and say this: that power thrives in complexity, and makes of language a secret harbour. And in this complexity the divide is asserted. We have important matters to discuss! No grunting boar is welcome!’

‘I understand what you say,’ Prazek said, with a wry smile. ‘And so reveal my privilege.’

‘Just so!’ Dathenar pounded a fist on the stone ledge. ‘But listen! Two languages are born from one, and as they grow, ever greater the divide, ever greater the lesson of power delivered, until the highborn who are surely highbred are able to give proof of this, in language solely their own, and the lowborn who can but grunt in the vernacular are daily reminded of their irrelevance.’

‘Swine are hardly fools, Dathenar. The hog knows the slaughter awaiting it.’

‘And squeals to no avail. But consider these two languages and ask yourself, which more resists change? Which clings so fiercely to its precious complexity?’

‘Troop in the lawmakers and the scribes—’

Dathenar’s nod was sharp, a flush deepening to midnight on his broad face. ‘The educated and the trained—’

‘The enlightened.’

‘This is the warring tug of language, friend! The clay of ignorance against the rock of exclusion and privilege.’

‘Privilege – I see the root of that word, in privacy.’

‘A fine point you make, Prazek. Kinship among words can indeed reveal hints of the secret code. But here, in this war, it is the conservative and the reactionary that stand under perpetual siege.’

‘As the ignorant are legion?’

‘They breed like vermin.’

Prazek straightened and spread wide his arms. ‘Yet see us here, on this bridge, with swords at our belts, and bolstered in spirit by the eagerness of honour and duty. See how it wins us the privilege of giving our lives in defence of complexity!’

‘To the ramparts, friend!’ Dathenar cried, laughing.

‘No,’ his companion said in a growl. ‘I’m for the nearest tavern, and bedamned this wretched privilege. Run the wine down my throat until I slur like a swineherd!’

‘Simplicity is a powerful thirst. Words softened to wet clay, like paste squeezed out between our fingers.’ Dathenar’s nod was eager. ‘This is mud we can swim in.’

‘Abandon the poet then?’

‘Abandon him!’

‘And the dread historian?’ Prazek asked, smiling.

‘He’ll show no shock at our faithlessness. We are but guards huddled beneath the millstone of the world. This post will see us crushed and spat out like chaff, and you know it.’

‘Have we had our moment, then?’

‘I see our future, friend, and it is black and depthless.’

The two men set out, quitting their posts. Unguarded behind them stretched the bridge, making its sloped shoulder an embrace of the river’s rushing water – with its impenetrable surface of curling smiles.