Three Arched Bridge

20

FROST COVERED THE GROUND. Two wandering bards had stayed three consecutive nights at the Inn of the Two Roberts, entertaining the guests with new ballads. The ballads had been composed on the subject of the Ujana e Keqe and were inauspicious. What you might call their content was more or less as follows: The naiads and water nymphs would never forget the insult offered to the Ujana e Keqe, Revenge might be slow., but it would come.

Such ballads would be very much to the taste of the people from “Boats and Rafts*” Yet now that they had lost their battle and the bridge was being built, not one and not a thousand ballads could help them, because so far no one has heard of songs destroying a bridge or a building of any kind.

Since their final departure, defeated and despondent, the “Boats and Rafts’, people had been seen no more. They seemed no longer of this world, but now the ballads at the Inn of the Two Roberts reminded me of them again, Had they given up the fight, or were they biding their time?

Meanwhile the Ujana e Keqe looked more askance at us than ever, or perhaps so it seemed to us because we knew of the stone clasp placed over it.