Comfrey got to his feet, coughing, then bent over to spit out a mouthful of blood. For the first time, he recognized Wintrow. “I nearly had him,” he panted. “Damn near had him. Lost everything I'd won earlier. Well, I'm broke now. Damn. If I had just been a bit faster.” He coughed again, then belched beerily. “I nearly won.”

“I don't think so,” Wintrow said quietly, more to himself than to Comfrey. But the man heard him.

“No, really, I almost had him, lad. If I'd a been a bit smaller, a bit quicker, we'd all have gone back to the ship with fat pockets.” He wiped blood from his face with the back of his hand.

“I don't think so,” Wintrow rejoined. To comfort him, he added, “I think it was rigged. I think the man that won was in league with the bear man. They show you something that seems to make the bear give up, only it's something he's been taught to do. And then when you try it, the bear has been taught to expect you to try it. So you get stopped. Don't feel bad, Comfrey, it wasn't your fault. It was a trick. Let's get you back to the ship now.” He put a helping arm around the man.

But Comfrey abruptly wheeled away from him. “Hey! Hey, you. Bear man! You cheated. You cheated me and my friends.” In the shocked silence that followed, Comfrey proclaimed, “I want my money back!”

The beast-tamer had been in the act of gathering his winnings preparatory to leaving. He made no reply but took up his animal's chain. Despite Comfrey's shout, he would have just walked off, if several sailors from another ship hadn't stepped in front of him. “That true?” one demanded. “Did you cheat? Is this rigged?”

The beast-tamer glanced about at the angry onlookers. “Of course not!” he scoffed. “How could it be rigged? You saw the man, you saw the bear! They were the only two in the square. He paid for a chance to wrestle the bear and he lost. It doesn't get any simpler than that!”

In a sense, what the man said was true, and Wintrow expected the sailors to grudgingly agree with it. He had not taken into account how much they had drunk, nor how much money they had lost. Once the accusation of cheating had been raised, a simple denial was not going to calm them. One, more quick witted than the others, suddenly said, “Hey. Where did that fellow go, the one who won earlier? Is he your friend? Does the bear know him?”

“How should I know?” the bear owner demanded. “He's probably off spending the money he won from me.” A brief shadow of unease had flickered across the beast-tamer's face, and he glanced about the crowd as if looking for someone.

“Well, I think the bear's been trained for this,” someone declared angrily. It seemed to Wintrow the most obvious and, in this context, the stupidest statement that he'd heard yet.

“It wasn't a fair contest. I want my money back,” another declared, and almost immediately this statement was taken up by the rest of the crowd. The bear's owner again seemed to seek someone in the crowd, but found no allies there.

“Hey. We said we want our money back!” Torg pointed out to him. He swaggered up to put his face close to the beast-tamer's. “Comfrey's my shipmate. You think we're going to stand by and see him beat up and us cheated out of our hard-earned money? You made our man look bad, and by Sa's balls, we don't stand still for that!” Like many a bully, he knew how to best rally men to their own self-interest. He glanced around at the men watching him and then turned back to the beast-tamer. He nodded significantly. “Think we can't just take it if you choose not to give it?” There was a rumbling of agreement from the others.

The beast-tamer was outnumbered and knew it. Wintrow could almost seem him cast about for compromises. “Tell you what,” he declared abruptly. “I didn't cheat and my bear didn't cheat, and I think most of you know that. But I can be fair and more than fair. Any one of you wants, I'll let him wrestle the bear for free. If he wins, I pay off all the bets same as if that man had won. He loses, I keep the money. Fair enough? I'm giving you a chance to win back your money for free.” After a brief pause, a muttering of agreement ran through the crowd. Wintrow wondered what fool would be the next to feel the bear's strength.

“Here, Win, you go against him,” Comfrey suggested. He gave the boy a shove forward. “You're little and quick. All you got to do is get past him and onto his back.”

“No. No, thank you.” As quickly as Comfrey had pushed him forward, Wintrow stepped back. But the sailor's words had been overheard, and another man from another ship took it up.