"Then let us not keep them waiting." And he urged his mount into a gallop, as did the rest of the warband.
The clearing was dim from the ancient trees that sheltered it. Above the canopy it was raining and here and there a few rivulets of water splashed on the flattened grass. As Byrnak entered the clearing he took in the strangers in a single glance: four men in cloaks over leather armour, three of them seated on a log and wearing face-concealing helms. He dismounted swiftly and walked over to the fourth, a tall, helmetless grey-hair who stood apart from the others, head bowed.
"Who are you?" Byrnak demanded.
The tall man raised his head and Byrnak had to force himself to show no reaction: the man's eyes were completely white.
"I am Obax," he said in a deep, steady voice. "I was sent by your brothers to greet you in their name."
Nightmare images filled his mind's eye, masked riders, the horses whose eyes were chalk-white orbs...Without looking away from those narrow, lined features he stretched out one hand and pointed at the man's three companions.
"And these?"
"My servants and guards."
"Since you are now under my protection, you have no further need of them." He turned to one of the company sergeants. "Kill them."
The fight was short but brutal. When it was over one of Byrnak's men was dead and another had lost a hand, but the three guards were slain, their helms torn away to reveal snouted, bestial faces. And through it all, the man calling himself Obax displayed no emotion of any kind. Byrnak ordered his men to make camp, then detailled two of his best fighters to stay with him as he dragged the unresisting Obax off into the darkening wood. Once out of sight of the clearing he turned to Obax.
"What are you? Why are you here?"
"I am honoured to be an Acolyte, a Nightbrother of the Twilight Path." The pale, milky eyes seemed to stare through him. "My duty and pleasure is to become your thrall, to carry you across the Realm of Dusk, and to show you the Great Source."
Byrnak slowly licked dry lips. "How will you do this?"
"I can show you - " Obax raised a long-fingered hand between them, " - now."
He almost stepped back but held his ground, saying to his two men; "Draw your blades and stand either side of him - if I seem to be in danger, kill him."
When they were ready, he stared at Obax for a long moment then nodded.
"Begin."
* * *
By the time they returned to the clearing, night had fallen and most of the men were asleep, blanket-wrapped forms clustered around a couple of campfires. Byrnak dismissed his guards and told Obax to help himself to whatever food was available and find a place to sleep. The Acolyte wordlessly bowed his head, went over to the nearest fire, ignored the gently-steaming pot that rested among the coals and sat on a log, pulling his cloak tightly about himself.
Byrnak walked heavily across to his tent, the only tent, stumbled past the flaps into the lamplit interior and slumped down on the end of his fur-heaped pallet. There was movement beneath the furs and the woman sat up at the other end, startled gaze fixed on him. But his eyes were still seeing the hazy regions of the Realm of Dusk, the pale forest of skeletal trees whose brittle branch ends broke into twisted shards which scurried away into the undergrowth, the two immense towers whose pillars wept ghosts, the crumbling, hollow stone colossus with its half-mouth whispering rhymes in an unintelligible tongue. There, in the Realm of Dusk, Obax took the shape of one of the deathly steeds and had carried Byrnak past all these sights and more, finally bringing him to a shattered, peakless titanic mountain and to the awesome wonder that pulsed at its core - the Wellsource.
Now, when he tried to recall its form, only fragmentary images would come to mind - was it a heart pumping iridescent flame, or a fountaining column, or a moaning whirlwind veined with lightning, or a cloudy thing of levers and crystalline planes? He did remember how it called to him, to the cold fire that blazed in his head. It had known him, and his destiny.
Byrnak became aware of the woman's unwavering stare, moved up the pallet and pulled the furs aside. She was naked, her pale-skinned, rounded form sending lust rushing through him. Then he took her, sating himself, and she made no sound. Only when he was done did she say, in a voice desperate with need: "Who am I? Please tell me - who
am
I?"
Towards the glutted margins of battle they ride,
With their greying hair and rusting blades.
—Kovalti,
Ode To The Warrior
It was a cold, grey autumn morning in the Bachruz Mountains, cold without being icy, grey without the promise of an imminent downpour. Mist veiled the cruel crags and pinnacles and hid from view the few streams that wound along ravines and gorges worn deep by uncountable summers and winters. One of these streams, a river almost, came down from the highest snow-wrapped slopes, tumbling through mossy,boulder-strewn gullies till it reached the upper reaches of a high, sheltered valley called Krusivel. There, the waters slowed and widened towards the north of the valley where they fed a small lake and the town gathered around its banks. A runoff stream led away from the lake's northeast bank to a notch at the edge of a sheer drop, near the foot of a natural rock tower rooted in the cliffs themselves. The stream flung itself over the brink and into the air, falling from such a height that it bathed the barren rocks below in never-ending spray.
A philosophically-minded townsperson might have pondered that long journey and wondered why anything would travel so far only to leap into oblivion.
That morning, two men sat on a boulder near the edge of those falls. The taller and older of the two wore thick woollen breeches and a battered-looking black jerkin of quilted leather. His companion, a short, burly man in a trader's many-pocketed tunic, poured pale wine into a wooden beaker which he then handed over.
Ikarno Mazaret, Lord Commander of the Knights of the Order of the Fathertree, accepted the cup and took a mouthful. He let the pungent savour fill his head before swallowing, then whistled.
"What a vintage," he said. "That has to be the finest cup of Ebroan white I've ever tasted." He ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth. "What a difference from these Honjir ales, which are fine in their way, you understand. And as for asmirith, that distilled furnace-milk..."
His companion leaned forward with the bottle but Mazaret shook his head.
"One's enough this early, Gilly," he said. "Besides, you didn't come all this way just to bring me a flask of wine."
"Well, I also happen to have a piece of Cabringan cheese," said the man called Gilly, producing a wax-paper package from a pocket and unwrapping it. "But if you'd rather not..."
"Daemon in human form," Mazaret growled with a smile, reaching for the cheese and breaking off a piece. As he chewed, enjoying the sharp tang, he regarded his companion levelly.
"So the news is bad, then?"
Gilly shrugged, then poured himself a cup of wine. He was a round-faced, bearded man whose affable demeanour belied his lethal abilities with the broadsword.
"Depends on your definition of 'bad'. Our sympathisers in the east have all promised to keep sending supplies through our people in Scallow, but the Sejeend and Oumetra cabals have decided to reduce their contributions."
Mazaret's heart sank. "Why?"
"They're impatient, Ikarno. Damn it, everyone is impatient. They all seem to think that you're sitting up here in charge of ten, fifteen, twenty thousand hardened warriors, each ten feet tall and able to blow arrows from their nostrils!" He gave a lop-sided grin. "Of course, I couldn't confirm or deny such speculations, being a mere messenger."
Mazaret sighed and ran a hand through his bushy, greying hair. "What about the Mogaun troop strengths? Any reliable numbers?"
"Some, yes. In Cabringa the tribes can field about four and a half, five thousand, mostly light cavalry; in Kejana, about three and a half thousand split equally between cavalry and foot soldiers; and in Dalbar it comes to roughly nineteen hundred, again half cavalry, half on foot. The Ogucharn Isles scarcely matter - there's only a couple of minor tribes there, totalling maybe eight hundred."
"And Yasgur?"
The trader smiled and examined his fingernails for a moment before looking up. "At least fourteen thousand, of which two thousand are heavy cavalry, another four thousand light cavalry, and the rest foot troops."
Mazaret looked away, not wanting Gilly to see the dismay in his eyes. Instead he gazed at the nearby stream as it rushed away over the edge of the cliff and tried to make sense of the numbers and totals that filled his head. Since the invasion sixteen years ago, the military strength of the tribes had waned, some by nearly half. Except for Yasgur.
Son of Hegroun, the Warchief who led the Mogaun invasion seventeen years ago, Yasgur had held northern Khatris and all Mantinor during the chaos that followed his father's death just months after the fall of Besh-Darok. In the years since he had forged an alliance with several noble families, initially as a response to the incursions and raids by neighbouring warchiefs eager to grab Hegroun's prize. His army was now the largest of any warlord, its ranks filled with recruits drawn from the native Khatrisian and Mantinoren peoples as well as his own tribe.
"Can't be done, can it?"
"No such word as 'can't', Gilly," Mazaret said. "They may have the numbers but we have the strategy and the unity of purpose."
The trader gave him a piercing look. "As well as the numbers, they also have all the towns, forts and outposts, whereas we have, what, two thousand would-be knights - "
"Two and a half thousand, plus a thousand of the Hunter's Children."
"Ah yes, the Hunter's Children. What a unity of purpose that is!"
Gilly's face was stonelike and Mazaret glared at him, feeling a sudden resentment at the man for speaking aloud the very doubts and fears that clouded his every day. Then a ghost of a smile crept across the trader's features, and Mazaret shook his head ruefully.
"I seem to recall having a similar discussion about ten years ago," he said. "You were so scathing back then that I almost decided to give up any idea of resistance or rebellion, sail away to Keremenchool, perhaps. But I didn't."
"You should have," Gilly said softly. "It was a madman's dream then, and it still is." He drank off the last of his wine. "But what sort of madmen would we be to let things stay as they are?"
They were silent for several moments before Gilly spoke again.
"Earlier, while I was on my way here, I heard a rumour that Suviel returned last night, and not alone."
"And what else did you overhear?" Mazaret said testily.
"That one of her companions was none other than Korregan's bastard and thus heir to the Imperial throne." Gilly smiled widely. "Which could upset your agreement with the Hunter's Children, if it's true." He gave Mazaret a sidelong glance. "Is it?"
"Bardow and the other mages certainly seem to think so," Mazaret said. "They also think that he will lose an arm."
"How so?"
"Apparently the boy was tortured by his captor, one of the northern Honjir warlords, who sliced his left arm to ribbons," Mazaret said, keeping back what he'd been told about Byrnak and the mirrorchild. "Suviel tried to save it, but the damage is too great."
Gilly cursed. "Beasts, some of them. Worse than beasts." He looked thoughtful. "How would the people regard a crippled Emperor? Would they follow him, do you think?"
"They followed Orosiada," Mazaret said.
"That was nearly two thousand years ago."
Mazaret shrugged. "For the moment I am more concerned with what Volyn and the Hunter's Children are going to say at the War Council later."
"That's at noon, I believe..."
"Yes, and I would thank you to speak with Abbess Halimer before it starts," he said dryly. "I've no wish to have to send the procurals out to find you..."
Gilly glanced to one side. "We have company."
Mazaret turned to see a staff runner approaching, pale yellow overshirt and trews flapping as he ran. The boy came to a halt a few feet away and saluted, open hand against opposite shoulder.
"Yes, lad."
"My Lord Commander, there is a visitor to see you at the Temple."
"Who is it?"
"I do not know, my Lord. The Rul told me to say only that it was someone of importance."
What is Rul Dagash up to? Mazaret wondered as he stood. "Will you join me?" he asked Gilly. "Or are you going to stay and finish the wine?"
The trader grinned, put the bottle to his mouth and uncorked it with his teeth.
Mazaret shook his head. "There could be only one answer, eh? All right, lad - let's be on our way."
* * *
It was a short walk back round the lake. As he followed the runner Mazaret looked across at the town, remembering how it was when he and the ragged remnants of the Order arrived here sixteen years ago. Then there had been only a decrepit Skyhorse shrine by the small lake, along with the tumbled, mossy stones of a few abandoned huts. Now there were barracks, cabins, stables, barns, a forge, a tavern, a mill and a bakery. And the Temple.
The Temple of the Earthmother was a large, single-storey building situated on a slight rise overlooking the town. It had a flattened dome at its centre and a slender tower at each corner. Within its confines were cells, and chambers as well as a library, the main armoury, a school, the healer's chamber, and the chapel with the sacred Tabernacle of Ash. As well as the fighting yards, the temple grounds included an orchard, a vegetable plot, and a burial garden. Mazaret's regard lingered on the gravestones and plinths clustered around a nearby copse of aging trees. His wife and three children lay buried there, along with several close friends and scores of brave knights. Although many had perished during the long, desperate flight from the terrible defeat at Arengia sixteen years ago, it was not till they reached Krusivel that others began to die from a contagion loosed by the Mogaun shamen. Perfect recollection brought back to him how the ghastly fever had taken hold of his loved ones and burned them from within, melting their flesh away, filling their eyes and minds with horror, destroying their memory of him before finally freeing their souls from agony.