by Roger Taylor
Dan-Tor signalled to two men at random. ‘Take him and leave him in the valley somewhere,’ he said.
Wrinkling their noses, the two men hoisted Groniev into a standing position. He was unable to walk so they placed his arms roughly around their shoulders and hauled him hastily from the room. His feet dragged lifelessly.
Urssain stepped aside as they passed. Groniev's finger nails were torn and bloody. And he stank! Urssain's stomach heaved as the smell wafted past him, but he fought down the spasm. Worse than that was the slack-jawed mouth and the dreadful blankness in Groniev's eyes. Whatever he had been, he was that no more. The Ffyrst had weapons far worse than death ready to hand.
Dan-Tor watched the departure of the would-be usurper impassively and then turned his attention to the shocked officers, awaiting their own sentence in silence. Those who had sat down, stood again, as inconspicuously as they could.
'As for you, gentlemen,’ Dan-Tor began. ‘I own to a mistake.’ His voice, however, lacked the self-reproach of the words. ‘A mistake in trusting in your loyalty, a mistake in imagining that you knew where your best interests lay, a mis...'
'No, Ffyrst,’ began the cries before he could continue.
'We were lied to and misled—threatened—forgive us, Master,’ was the gist of the ensuing babble.
Dan-Tor watched impassively. Then he stepped forward and walked among them. Tall and straight, and the desperate focus of all there, he was like a hunter surrounded by his fawning dogs.
Abruptly, he was almost avuncular. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, smiling. ‘I think perhaps you persuade me. These ... misunderstandings ... are the inevitable consequence of our confinement here. Men such as yourselves—warriors—fretful at such inactivity when a treacherous enemy lies so near, can easily fall pray to the corrupting forces that pervade these times. But you are officers, leaders, you must be vigilant. Doubts and lies can be as deadly weapons as swords and spears.'
He looked around at his audience. ‘Sit down,’ he said, making a signal to Urssain and Aelang to remain standing. ‘I reproach myself a little for allowing this to arise. I've been too long away from you, occupied with matters of wider strategy. Tell me now your fears and concerns so that I can undo the work of those traitors.'
Despite his seeming warmth and charm, the stark images of the recent violence were still far too clear in the minds of all present for them to rush into sudden camaraderie with their enigmatic leader, but equally, a silence might be just as dangerous.
'Why are we here, Ffyrst?’ came a hesitant voice eventually. ‘Why did we flee when we could have held and defeated the High Guard?'
Urssain could hear his pulse throbbing in the silence that followed.
But there was no explosion. Dan-Tor's smiling reasonableness remained.
'You did not have my view, captain,’ he replied eventually. ‘Neither of the battlefield nor ... of the conflict on other planes.’ He paused as if searching for a simple explanation. ‘It's true, you could well have held the field, but the Fyordyn were aided in ways which I was unprepared for. Aided by powers that you know nothing of.’ He paused again briefly. ‘As you know, they had been inspired by the Orthlundyn, Hawklan, a strange fanatic who had already attempted to kill me at the very gates of my palace. What you could not know, and what I learned almost too late, was that he has dabbled in certain ancient arts and has somehow acquired a skill in them; a skill far beyond his understanding—a child wielding a great and powerful sword.’ He leaned forward confidentially. ‘Had I resisted him as he rode secretly amongst the High Guards then, in his flailing ignorance, he could have unleashed forces that might have destroyed us all. It was no easy decision for me to quit that field, but I had no choice. I had to let slip what we had won together to save my best men for another time.'
A long silence greeted him, this was the first coherent explanation of the retreat from Vakloss that had been offered to the Mathidrin. Very cautiously, the original questioner pursued his inquiry. ‘But what of Hawklan, Ffyrst? He lives still. Will his ... power ... be any the less in the future?'
Urssain, deeply sensitive to Dan-Tor's moods, felt the distant rumbling of the Uhriel and held his breath in anticipation. But it faded, or was restrained, and Dan-Tor smiled—almost laughed—again. ‘Hawklan offers us no threat now, captain,’ he said. ‘Nor in the future. His strength lay in surprise only. I have his measure, and should he choose to ride against us again I'll demonstrate to him what skill in his chosen art really means.'
There was just enough barrack-room bravado in his voice to set his listeners alight; he had caught their mood and their needs exactly. Clapping his hands together, he straightened up; his tall lank frame dominated the room.
'Don't let the narrowness of our confinement here make you forget that this is no small venture we're employed upon,’ he said. ‘You mustn't take to heart the loss of a few petty privileges in Vakloss, and a little ... sparseness ... here. One day, not too long away, you'll look back on this time and smile at yourselves for fools. The One that I follow, is bringing together the many threads of His intent. Soon, you will be leading our vast Mandroc army out of the interior. An army that will sweep through the waiting Lords like an icy winter wind through dead autumn leaves. An army that will move irresistibly down through Orthlund and Riddin and out into the world beyond, where all will fall before you and where His bounty will give you power and wealth such as you would hesitate to dream of now.'
Urssain recognized the rhythms and inflections he had heard echoing across the torchlit crowds in front of the palace at Vakloss and he felt the thrill of the other listeners as Dan-Tor's words reaffirmed his own ambitious intent.
However, Dan-Tor finished this harangue with a dark and, for some of those present, familiar warning. ‘Remember this day above all others, and the fate that has befallen those who defied me. The choice is yours; be you my faithful servants and you will be rewarded as my power grows. But recall. You are bound to me and by me. You can be expunged at my whim and others found. Serve me well.'
As they walked away from the now crushed rebellion, Urssain keeping a respectful pace behind his master, noted again that the Ffyrst was leaning slightly to his injured side.
It occurred to him briefly to make some sympathetic inquiry, but no sooner did the thought arise than others rose hastily to silence it; the demon in the Ffyrst was far too close to the surface for such a risk.
'Do you want the companies broken up, Ffyrst?’ Aelang said.
Without pausing in his long strides, Dan-Tor shook his head and replied, ‘No. They'll be no more trouble now. Besides, things will be happening shortly—we've no time for re-organizing our company structure. Promote Castarvi and Mendarran and put them in charge. Tell them it's a field commission—provisional—that'll encourage them to stamp out any lingering problems those men are having with their loyalty.'
The two Mathidrin exchanged a brief look. It was a good choice and also a small lesson or themselves; it told them that the Ffyrst had not distanced himself from his troops as far as he affected. Castarvi and Mendarran were both young, capable, and ruthlessly ambitious, and both had conducted themselves well on the field at Vakloss and in the subsequent retreat. Urssain and Aelang would be able to claim credit and thus loyalty for their promotion, but at the same time Dan-Tor had pointed up his warning—‘Others can be found.’ They would both need to be watched.
A salutary lesson, Urssain thought later, alone in his own quarters. In a few brief minutes Dan-Tor had not only quelled the incipient rebellion, he had fired the whole force occupying the tower with a new resolve; the tale of the destruction of Faron and Groniev and Dan-Tor's subsequent speech would have been retailed to everyone in the tower within the hour. The terrifying physical strength, hitherto never suspected, had been grim surprise enough, but his antics with the knife and the horrific destruction of Groniev had told everyone in the Mathidrin exactly who commanded them in terms they understood. And the promotion of Castarvi and Mendarran
would send ripples down through every rank as the jockeying to replace them began.
Yet above all this had come the mention of Him; and His plans. That had been more than a surprise. Urssain could not remember when he had last heard Dan-Tor refer to these world-spanning intentions, and certainly he had never heard them aired so freely.
He felt excitement, ambition and fear—terror, even—ring within him. Part of him wanted to flee; flee back to a life of petty thieving in the old unchanging Fyorlund of Rgoric and the Geadrol, of village Redes and their Pentadrols. But even had he not participated in the destruction of that order, he had been shown too much now for such thoughts to be ever more than fleeting distractions on his journey forward in the wake of his master.
Yet what kind of a man could it be to whom even Dan-Tor would bend his knee? And what kind of a place was Derras Ustramel, His great fortress, whose very name was whispered nervously, if it was mentioned at all? No one that Urssain knew of, save Dan-Tor himself, had ever been there, and even his visits were rare.
In front of Urssain glowed some of the genuine radiant stones he had had the foresight to ensure would be stored for him here in preference to those concocted in Dan-Tor's workshops. But even their sunlight could not reach the inner chill that possessed him when he thought about the dank mists that for most of the year pervaded the outer reaches of Lake Kedrieth and the great Mandroc barracks that lay there. And beyond the mists ...
Involuntarily, Urssain wrapped his arms about himself and gazed into the glowing stones.
* * * *
Mimicking his aide, Dan-Tor too sat still and silent in his eyrie, high in the mist-shrouded tower. The arrow in his side ached dully through his use of the Old Power in dealing with Groniev but he scarcely noticed it. The very triviality of the events had heightened his growing inner turmoil at the bleak impotence of his position.
Silence.
All was silence. Here, in Narsindal, His will could reach out and touch His servant, but ...
Silence.
And darkness too. The seeing stones of Narsindalvak saw the surrounding mountains and valleys, even, to some extent, through the mist, but what of Fyorlund and Orthlund and Riddin? Where was that silent, elusive demon, Hawklan? Had that horse witch Sylvriss truly reached Dremark and perhaps raised the Muster to seek vengeance for her husband's death?
These were matters of no small tactical importance.
Then, thoughts that had not come to him for eons. How fared his detested comrades, Creost and Dar Hastuin? Sent forth, as he had been, to seize the peoples of their old domains, had they returned in triumph while he languished in this prison, bound and blind, and contending yet with these feckless and inadequate humans? Was that why He sent no word? Was Oklar, first and greatest of the Uhriel to be the butt of their mockery because chance had wrenched Fyorlund from him? Was he to place his hand beneath the feet of Creost and Dar Hastuin? The thought was unsupportable.
He stood up and turned to the window; a circle of dark grey in the darkness of his room. No double mocked him here. Nor would any mock him ever, save Him ... until ...
Red glaring eyes blazed in at him from the mist.
It was his own gaze. He turned away from it suddenly as if, even at this great height, some unseen observer might read this last, dangerous, scarce-formed thought, in his face.
He must have his true sight again! The thought burned inside him as never before. The bird held by the Cadwanol must be torn free so that the Vrwystin a Goleg could see again!
But with this accursed arrow in his side he could not use the power, and if he could, there still lingered the fear that such use might inadvertently awaken Ethriss.
The thought of the Guardian, terrible and vengeful, rose before him. Yet even as it formed, other, quieter, thoughts came with it. The Cadwanol, alerted now to the wakening of Sumeral must surely be putting forth their greatest power to find and waken their erstwhile master. And their power was not trivial if it could bind the Vrwystin a Goleg.
Yet Ethriss slept still.
Wherever he was, he was beyond their reach! And beyond the reach of any casual disturbance.
New patterns formed in the Uhriel's dark mind. Calm resolve entwined itself around his mounting rage to form an unholy duo. The bird must surely lie at the heart of the Cadwanol's stronghold. Released, it would not only give Dan-Tor his eyes again, but it would show where that heart lay and, with that, the destruction of the Order could be assured. For destroyed they must be. At best they were an unknown factor in any impending conflict, while at the worst they might yet awaken the Guardian; their very survival through the ages betokened a patience and will not to be ignored lightly.
And with his eyes and his power restored, he would once again have the true vision of an Uhriel. He could tolerate the cloying masquerade that he was obliged to maintain to fire these creatures about him, and no enemy could stand against him; not the Muster, the Lords, that seeping, corrosive sprite, Hawklan, nor those upstarts for His favour, Creost and Dar Hastuin.
Dan-Tor nodded to himself. Several ends could be served here.
His surging passion burst through its restraint and he reached out his power deep and distant; under the cold mountains and across the plains of Fyorlund until, reluctantly, it shied away from the touch of the Great Harmony of Orthlund. For an instant he felt an almost overwhelming urge to shake this, his domain, and tumble these irksome creatures into oblivion, though it shatter his mortal frame utterly.
He would tolerate this impotence no longer.
He would wait His will no longer.
He would do that which had never been done.
He would go to Derras Ustramel. He would seek an audience.
* * *
Chapter 17
A great cheer spread through the waiting ranks of the Orthlundyn as Hawklan's message flickered from its last sender and was read directly by many of them.
The day had been chill and tedious; a day of foot stamping, arm beating, and endless last-minute checking of equipment and weapons as the Orthlundyn waited and watched, gaining relief only from the relayed messages detailing the successes of the companies assaulting the Morlider columns.
But now, the message had arrived and the myriad irritations of the long wait were ended. All doubts and fears dissolved, momentarily at least, in a wave of exhilaration as shouted orders penetrated the din, and the advance began.
Hawklan, Isloman and Andawyr together with their Helyadin bodyguard took station at the top of a small rise that lay in the army's path.
'A fine sight but a sad one,’ Isloman said, as they waited.
Hawklan looked at him. ‘Remember your mines, carver,’ he replied. Much of his face was hidden in his helm, but his voice bore a stern reproach and the will behind it struck Isloman almost like a physical blow. ‘We're here out of necessity and now we're committed totally. Sadness is for another time and will be the greater if we ponder it here. Now, there is only this moment, and victory. All else are traitors to our true need, old friend.'
Still the healer, warrior, Isloman thought, as he felt the last two words seal the small wound to his pride that the rebuke had offered. He bowed slightly in acknowledgement, then put on his own helm.
Hawklan turned to Andawyr and Atelon and looked at them both intently. Much rested on this strange couple, he knew. They it was who must resist the Old Power that Creost would inevitably send against them before the day was through. If they failed, then the Orthlundyn would fall like corn before a scythe at this terrible touch. It was an awesome burden for such seemingly frail creatures.
'You are prepared to oppose and destroy Creost,’ he said. It was not a question and for all its simplicity it carried the same will that would soon fire the entire Orthlundyn army.
Like Isloman, both inclined their heads in acknowledgement.
Loman galloped up. His face was flushed, and showed a grim satisfaction. ‘I threw two more companies in on your signal, and attacked. You should have seen
them scatter.’ He laughed. ‘They're running back in total disorder,’ he went on. ‘Athyr will pursue them as far as possible and then do what he can to lure out the rest of the camp.'
'Good,’ Hawklan said, smiling. ‘I think we've done enough to make them angry, and while they're angry, their training won't stick, and we have them.’ His mailed hand reached out and patted Loman's arm. ‘Come on, let's join our army, commander,’ he said. ‘We'll ride with you until we see the enemy's response.'
It took them only a few minutes to reach the advancing army and as they did so, another spate of cheering broke out. Spontaneously the front rows began lowering and raising their long pikes in salute, making waves ripple along the entire front, so that it looked like a field of tall grass ruffled by a summer wind.
Gavor and Serian caught and responded to the mood of the people immediately, Gavor letting out a cry of delight and rising up into the air, Serian prancing a little, and then shying and kicking out his forelegs to throw up great flurries of snow.
Hawklan too could do no other than respond. He drew the black sword and, holding it high above his head, trotted Serian along the rows of bobbing pikes. Gavor flew to and fro around his head.
The cheering echoed along the line as they passed.
Then Hawklan rode amongst the various companies, satisfying himself that all were prepared, and quietly ensuring that his implacable determination pervaded the whole army.
While Hawklan was being greeted by the advancing army, Athyr was walking to the top of the long slope down to the shore and the Morlider camp. As Loman had reported, the Morlider columns, having suffered heavy losses, were fleeing in complete disarray back to their camp. Had Athyr launched even his small cavalry units against them, their losses would have been magnified appallingly. Instead, however, he withdrew the riders, and dispatched them back to join the army. The Morlider had prepared themselves to face the Muster; if they saw cavalry cutting down their fleeing companions, there was a strong chance that they would either stay where they were, or form up into the disciplined phalanxes they had obviously rehearsed. Neither of these alternatives was desirable. If, on the other hand, they saw their comrades being pursued simply by the now superior numbers of foot-soldiers, it was probable they would continue to come out as a disordered and vengeful mass.