“All for one and one for all‌—‌I have’t!” the giant shouted. “All for one and one for all, united we stand, divided we fall.” He kicked his horse and started on again.

An arrow squealed out of the dark, sliced a wedge from his ear, nicked the horse of the man riding behind him, and skittered away like a bat. The outlaws scattered to the safety of the trees, and Jack Jingly yelled with rage, “Damn your eyes, I gave the password ten times over! Let me only get my hands on ’ee—”

“We changed the password while you were gone, Jack,” came the voice of the sentry. “It was too hard to remember.”

“Ah, you changed the password, did ye?” Jack Jingly dabbed at his bleeding ear with a fold of Schmendrick’s cloak. “And how was I to know that, ye brainless, tripeless, liverless get?”

“Don’t get mad, Jack,” the sentry answered soothingly. “You see, it doesn’t really matter if you don’t know the new password, because it’s so simple. You just call like a giraffe. The captain thought of it himself.”

“Call like a giraffe.” The giant swore till even the horses fidgeted with embarrassment. “Ye ninny, a giraffe makes no sound at all. The captain might as well have us call like a fish or a butterfly.”

“I know. That way, nobody can forget the password, even you. Isn’t the captain clever?”

“There’s no limit to the man,” Jack Jingly said wonderingly. “But see here, what’s to keep a ranger or one of the king’s men from calling like a giraffe when ye hail him?”

“Aha,” the sentry chuckled. “That’s where the cleverness of it is. You have to give the call three times. Two long and one short.”

Jack Jingly sat silent on his horse, rubbing his ear. “Two long and one short,” he sighed presently. “Awell, ’tis no more foolish than the time he’d have no password at all, and shot any who answered the challenge. Two long and one short, right.” He rode on through the trees, and his men trailed after him.

Voices murmured somewhere ahead, sullen as robbed bees. As they drew nearer, Schmendrick thought he could make out a woman’s tone among them. Then his cheek felt firelight, and he looked up. They had halted in a small clearing where another ten or twelve men sat around a campfire, fretting and grumbling. The air smelled of burned beans.

A freckled, red-haired man, dressed in somewhat richer rags than the rest, strode forward to greet them. “Well, Jack,” he cried. “Who is’t you bring us, comrade or captive?” Over his shoulder he called to someone, “Add some more water to the soup, love; there’s company.”

“I don’t know what he is maself,” Jack Jingly rumbled. He began to tell the story of the Mayor and the hat, but he had hardly reached the roaring descent upon the town when he was interrupted by a thin thorn of a woman who came pushing through the ring of men to shrill, “I’ll not have it, Cully, the soup’s no thicker than sweat as it is!” She had a pale, bony face with fierce, tawny eyes, and hair the color of dead grass.