by Roger Taylor
Lorac looked at him enigmatically. ‘Yes, I know. It's what we're trained to do.’ He clenched his teeth. ‘It's just ... I never thought it could be so hard. All I keep thinking of is what I'd like to do to whoever did this.'
Hawklan's voice became harsh. ‘It's not as hard for us as it was for these.’ He waved his hand over the scene. ‘But we and others will end the same way if we don't put our every resource into finding out what's happened. You'll take no easy vengeance on whoever wrought this. Direct your rage towards that, Goraidin.'
Lorac's eyes blazed angrily and his fist tightened. Hawklan knew that if the man hit him now, he would be unable to defend himself. But Lorac's rage faded almost immediately. Nothing could flare bright in the stultifying aura of death that hung over the field.
He bowed his head. ‘You're right,’ he said. ‘Our training's all we've got left. We can't do anything for these except learn from them and hope we'll be more fortunate when our time comes.'
A cry interrupted their uneasy conversation. It was Ordan, standing in the shattered gateway of the castle and beckoning them. As they approached he turned and passed through a doorway, again gesturing that they should follow. Reaching the door, Hawklan peered into the gloomy interior until his eyes adjusted. A little way ahead, through a mist of smoke and fine floating ash, he could see Ordan cautiously working his way through a maze of fallen and burnt beams. He moved after him, followed by the others.
For several minutes they moved slowly through the remains of a decorated corridor, treading underfoot the charred remains of its ornate ceiling and its fallen wall carvings. The air became increasingly unpleasant, heavy with smoke from the still smouldering debris, and clingingly warm from its stored heat.
Hawklan looked at the others in some concern. ‘This is dangerous,’ he said. ‘These fumes will overcome us if we stay too long.'
When they reached Ordan, he was standing in front of a closed door. His eyes were still wide with shock, but his voice was steady, if hoarse. ‘The Lord Evison said he had captives,’ he said. ‘If they're anywhere, they're here.’ Then, drawing his sword, he touched two of the ornamental bosses that studded the door. There was the sound of bolts being drawn and, unaided, the door swung open.
Drawing his own sword, Hawklan moved to Ordan's side, but all that could be seen through the doorway was a flight of stairs leading down into darkness.
Slowly, Ordan lowered his sword and bowed his head. ‘I'd hoped to see torchlight and trouble,’ he said sadly. ‘But there's no one alive here. No light, no life.’ Sheathing his sword he stepped forward and started down the stairs. Torches flared gently into life as he entered, to reveal a large, stone-arched cellar. The air was cool and strangely pleasant after the stench outside and the choking air in the corridor, but lying sprawled headlong at the foot of the stairs was a body.
Hesitantly, Ordan knelt down by it. When Hawklan reached him, he looked up, his face distraught. ‘It's Lord Evison,’ he said. ‘He's dead.'
Hawklan bent down and examined the body. The Lord's wounds showed that he had obviously died in combat, but he had not been mutilated like the others outside. His hand was clenched tightly around a heavy fighting axe.
'Look, there's someone else.’ Tel-Odrel's voice interrupted Hawklan's thoughts. The Goraidin pushed past and ran over to a second body lying some way away. When he reached it, he stopped suddenly. ‘Hawklan,’ he said softly, beckoning without taking his eyes from the body at his feet.
Hawklan and the others joined him around the second body. It was a large Mandroc, its huge canine teeth gleaming in the torchlight in a malevolent death rictus. It wore battledress: an iron cap with curved cheek pieces and a heavy leather jerkin reinforced with metal plates secured about its muscular body by heavy buckled straps. All this, however, had proved ineffective against the axe blow that had hacked a great wound from the creature's neck to its stomach.
'Only small, but Lord Evison was a powerful man,’ said Tel-Odrel. ‘Not one to face in extremity.'
No one spoke.
'Mandrocs armed and armoured,’ said Lorac softly at last. His voice a mixture of awe and disbelief. He took refuge in his training, ‘We'll have to strip its armour. It should tell us a lot.'
Back outside in the sunlight, Ordan's grief abruptly overwhelmed him. Rather to Hawklan's surprise, the two Goraidin were sensitive and sympathetic with the man. He found it reassuring that for all their harsh and brutal skills, they still kept some contact with those qualities that they had sworn to protect. Something in their training leavened its own brutalizing effect. Truth, perhaps? And yet the very existence of this caring betokened an even greater ruthlessness. They were not allowed the numbing that brutalization brought with it. And the greater the caring, the harder—the more brutally—they would fight when it was threatened, either in themselves or others. Hawklan's thoughts started to circle mockingly as he began to see images of himself within himself. Lorac's voice broke into his thoughts. He was talking to Ordan.
'We all knew some of your friends, Ordan,’ he was saying. He put his hands on the man's shoulders and looked at him earnestly. ‘But there was nothing you could have done. You obeyed your Lord faithfully and well. You know that. This happened days ago, probably within hours of your leaving, and your being here would have made no difference. It's not much consolation, but...’ He left his sentence unfinished.
Turning round, he looked at the gutted castle and spoke to the others. ‘They must have been overwhelmed before they were ready. From what Ordan's told us, Evison's force must have been spread out for miles. Either that or he completely underestimated the speed at which his enemy could move. It looks as if they fought their way in to release the captives but Evison locked himself in with that one.'
Hawklan looked around the battlefield, still alive with flies and now slowly being repopulated by the scavengers that Gavor had frightened away. No weapons, he thought suddenly. Not a dagger, not a sword, not even a broken spear shaft. And no Mandroc dead. All had been removed.
Lorac seemed to read his thoughts. ‘Apart from that one body, they've left no sign of who or what they were. They just came after him to make sure that no one who had seen them would survive to spread the news.’ He wrapped his arms tightly around himself. ‘I'm frightened,’ he said, unexpectedly.
'You're wise to be,’ said Hawklan. ‘Soldiers that would do this are not lightly defeated. Evison found that to his cost, and we'll pay the same price if we don't learn.'
'What can we do?’ Lorac said.
Hawklan looked at Gavor.
'Whoever did this is long away,’ said the raven. ‘There's no one about for miles. No one alive, that is,’ he added.
Hawklan nodded then spoke without hesitation. ‘Ordan, you go to Eldric's mountain stronghold with that Mandroc's armour. Tell them what you've seen. The rest of us will go north, to see what Evison saw.'
* * * *
As the four men rode steadily northwards, none of them spoke a great deal and at night they made a dark and silent camp, each taking turns to stand guard.
Hawklan opened his eyes as Tel-Odrel approached to wake him for his watch period. The Goraidin crouched down beside him as he sat up. ‘Something's wrong with Isloman, Hawklan,’ he said softly. ‘He's restless and he's been muttering to himself on and off all night.'
Hawklan frowned. He had never known Isloman suffer any illness. Moving over to him he laid a hand gently on his forehead. There was no sign of fever, but he could feel a turmoil rising in the man. He frowned again. ‘It's probably shock. And grief,’ he said quietly. ‘We'll all be suffering from it to some degree. I can hardly close my own eyes without seeing those hacked bodies fringing that black castle.'
Tel-Odrel nodded, but there was an uncertainty in Hawklan which worried him.
The following day, Isloman seemed well enough, though he was uncharacteristically quiet, and took no food when he woke. Hawklan watched him anxiously, but he saddled up and mounted without demur, and mai
ntained the pace that was set without complaint.
Even after passing the destroyed remains of Evison's troop, it needed no tracking skills to follow the trail of the departed attackers.
'This is how the Mandrocs left Orthlund,’ said Gavor. ‘As if they were crushing something to death with every footstep.'
Gradually the countryside yielded to the mountains proper and soon they found themselves moving between dark lowering crags. The two Goraidin were uneasy about their vulnerability in such terrain, but Gavor's high-flying vigil enabled them to maintain their pace without any real fear of ambush.
Eventually the route they were following became too rocky and awkward for rapid progress and, feeling that time was against them, Hawklan sent Gavor ahead to see if they were near to any kind of settlement or encampment, or anything else that might be worth examining.
It was dusk when he returned, a shadow sweeping out of the shadows. ‘Leave your horses and climb that peak there,’ he said, and was gone.
Without speaking Isloman stood up wearily, and began walking in the direction Gavor had indicated. Hawklan ran after him. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked anxiously. ‘Where are you going? We can't walk up there now, it'll be pitch dark soon.'
But Isloman kept on walking.
Hawklan moved in front of him and held out a hand to stop the carver. ‘Isloman, what's the matter with you?’ he demanded.
Isloman stopped and looked at Hawklan as if puzzled by this inquiry. ‘I have to see, Hawklan,’ he said. ‘Stay with me, you'll be all right.'
Hawklan still sensed the great turmoil in his friend, but no sickness. He gave a resigned sigh and, stepping aside, signalled the others to follow.
The peak, however, was no easy walk, especially in the meagre light offered by the stars and a thin moon. Isloman seemed to have little trouble, but several times the others had to call out softly to him to slow down a little as they carefully negotiated areas of shattered rock and steep rubble-strewn slopes. At last, after several hours of leg-aching trudging they reached the summit.
Unusually it was not the rounded grass dome that characterized most of the smaller mountains, but a jumbled mass of jagged rock. This, however, did not deter Hawklan and the two Goraidin from flopping down gratefully when they reached it.
Isloman had not seemed to be hurrying, but he had set a relentless pace. As they rested, he wandered fitfully over the summit, turning round and round repeatedly, like a weather vane in a gusting breeze. Finally he stopped and stared straight ahead. Then slowly he raised his hand and pointed out into the night. ‘There,’ he whispered, as if fearful of being overheard.
Hawklan stood up and carefully walked over to him across the uneven rocks. ‘What?’ he asked, following Isloman's gaze. ‘What is it?'
But Isloman did not reply. Instead, he wrapped his arms around himself and slowly sat down.
Hawklan bent down to him. ‘Isloman, what's the matter?’ he said. ‘What's happened? What's out there?'
'Leave me alone,’ came the faint reply through the darkness. ‘Leave me alone.'
Instinctively Hawklan reached out to his friend, but he felt the man's agony before he touched him. Abruptly, Isloman ‘s powerful arms swept up as if to dash Hawklan aside but, just as suddenly, they slowed and gently pushed him away. Hawklan stood up and looked down at him, puzzled and uncertain.
'Is he sick?’ It was Lorac at his elbow. ‘He could have picked something up around those bodies. They'd been there some time...’ His inquiry tailed off.
Hawklan shook his head. ‘No. It's nothing like that. It's something deeper. Don't worry. I'll stay with him.’ He turned round and looked out into the night in the direction Isloman was staring. ‘You rest. We'll see what the daylight shows us.'
Isloman did not move all night but, long before Hawklan noticed a change in the light, he said, ‘Dawn,’ and stood up. The slow softening of the darkness that followed this announcement reminded Hawklan of the many times he had stood on one of the high towers of Anderras Darion and watched the dawn break over the mountains. It was like a reaffirmation, and he felt an inner ease which he realized he had not known for some time. For a while his mind left the bewildering cascade of events that had occurred since the day Tirilen had led him down the steep road from the Castle to look at the strange tinker on the village green.
He stood up and joined Isloman. ‘Show me now, shadow sage,’ he said, hoping that a touch of humour might help his friend, but Isloman just pointed. ‘There,’ he said.
As the light grew, Hawklan found he was looking between two mountains into a far-distant valley. He could make out what looked like white scars and gashes running down the sides of the valley, and a longer, more even line that twisted and turned sinuously before it disappeared from sight.
'A road?’ he said, after a moment. ‘And quarries?’ The scene meant nothing to him. Before he could question Isloman, Gavor fluttered down to join them. His manner was agitated. ‘You've seen it, then?’ he said.
'The road? Yes. And are those quarries?’ Hawklan asked. ‘But I don't understand what I'm looking at, Gavor.'
Gavor's tone was strained. ‘You're looking at a new, very large road, heading north into ... there. And yes, they are quarries. And there are more on the other side. And mines. The road's for taking ... I don't know ... whatever's coming out of them.'
No one spoke. Gavor continued. ‘Those streaks that you can see are great mounds of waste that have been spewed down into the valley. It's unbelievably foul. And there's worse.’ He paused. ‘The work's being done by slaves.’ All three men turned and looked at him. ‘Men, women, even children ... and Mandrocs,’ he said slowly. ‘And all under the none-too-tender supervision of those cockroaches.'
There was an uneasy silence.
'That's not possible,’ Lorac burst out suddenly. ‘You've made a mistake, bird.’ His voice was vicious and angry, but layered with fear and uncertainty.
Gavor's eyes blazed and he spread his wings menacingly. ‘Don't doubt me, human,’ he hissed, his black mouth gaping wide. ‘I tell what I see. Your brothers are torturing your brothers over there. They've poisoned the land with their filth. And the rivers. Even the air I flew through was tainted.’ He craned forward and beat his wings savagely. ‘It's not for nothing that above all the other creatures in this world, He's assumed your shape for His work here.'
Lorac quailed under Gavor's appalling assault and lifted his hands as if expecting to be physically attacked as well.
Hawklan held out his hand to Gavor. ‘Gently, Gavor, gently,’ he said. Then to the chastened Lorac, ‘You can trust Gavor totally, Goraidin, totally. We mustn't take our pains out on one another. We've got real enemies to fight. Gavor, can we come any closer?'
'No,’ said the bird, still eyeing Lorac. ‘That valley's two days away for you, and half a day will bring you in sight of their look-outs. You won't even reach the remains of Lord Evison's troop.'
Hawklan nodded and thought for a moment. ‘Well, if we've seen all we can see, then we must take the knowledge back to the others as quickly as we can.'
'Hawklan.’ It was Isloman. ‘Help me. Get me away from here...’ His voice was hoarse and distant, and it tailed off into a long failing breath as his knees bent and he fell to the ground.
* * *
Chapter 46
Hawklan bent over his fallen friend and examined him urgently. But his hands and his healing told him nothing. Whatever had brought Isloman low was beyond his knowledge. All that remained was Isloman's own judgement: ‘Get me away from here.'
The journey back to the horses, however, was a waking nightmare as the three of them struggled desperately with Isloman's limp bulk, while the brightening summer sun and the splendour of the emerging mountain scenery seemed to mock them.
Driven by his concern for his friend and his own feeling of impotence, Hawklan found the inevitable slowness of the descent unbearable. Twice he slipped in his haste. Once slithering incongruously down a damp gras
sy slope and, another time, more seriously, missing his footing on moss-slimed rock.
Tel-Odrel caught him and with a friendly grin supported him while he recovered his balance, but Lorac rounded on him furiously. ‘In Ethriss's name, Hawklan, look what you're doing. You could have injured yourself and Tel-Odrel, and how long would it have taken us to get back to the others then?'
Part of Hawklan rose up in anger at this rebuke, but another quieted him. The Goraidin's right, healer. Concern yourself with your friend. He deserves better than your self-indulgence.
It took them several hours to reach the horses, and they were exhausted when they did. Hawklan examined Isloman again but his condition was unchanged.
'Let me carry him,’ said Serian and, with an effort, they lifted him into the great horse's saddle and tied him there firmly.
The journey back to Eldric's mountain stronghold was no less arduous and unpleasant, and Hawklan, unused to his new mount and unable fully to relax because of his concern for his friend, felt as if he had been in the saddle for his entire life.
However, he had repeated cause to be grateful for Yatsu's insistence that Lorac and Tel-Odrel accompany him. Their knowledge of the country and the mountains shortened the journey considerably and, amongst other things, spared them the need to pass by the carnage around Lord Evison's castle.
Isloman improved a little as they moved further away from the blighted valleys. He regained consciousness for increasingly longer periods but still did not speak, and Hawklan felt that the carver was fighting to hold something at bay rather than recovering from it.
On the night before they were due to reach their destination, Hawklan, as usual, spent some time in making Isloman comfortable and in easing the aches of Lorac and Tel-Odrel that Serian's unrelenting pace had brought about. But there was a restlessness in himself that he could not still and eventually he wandered away from the camp, sensing that, while sleep might restore his body, something else was needed to quieten his mind.