Dream Finder Page 29

  He crouched down by Tarrian and placed a comforting arm around his hackled shoulders. The wolf’s responses quietened a little at his touch.

  ‘Carry my words to Estaan, while we try to reach Nyriall’s Companion,’ Antyr said to him, still authoritative. ‘I want no misunderstandings and sudden movements.’

  As Tarrian’s wolf reactions began to withdraw however, so also did those of the other, although its manner was still fierce and defensive. Then Antyr felt another emotion rising up within Tarrian. And within the other wolf, he realized. It was the pain and distress that had sent Tarrian yelping through the house in a frenzy.

  But now it was more coherent. And through its heart rang something else. Recognition!

  Antyr’s eyes widened as the revelations spread through him also. The wolf opposite was Tarrian’s brother.

  As the thought formed in Antyr’s mind, the other wolf’s expression changed suddenly, becoming placid and submissive. It dropped on to its belly and crawled towards Tarrian who bent down and sniffed it intently. Antyr withdrew from the mind of his Companion.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Estaan asked softly.

  Antyr stood up slowly, raising a hand for silence.

  Estaan looked significantly towards the old man. Antyr shook his head. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘His Companion’s still dangerous.’

  Then the wolf wriggled to its feet, and for a few seconds the two animals romped and wrestled like pups. Images leapt unsought into Antyr’s mind from their excitement. Images of laughter and echoing chambers. Of strange haunting song, though not, oddly, human. Images of sunlit mountains and valleys, of people and animals unafraid, of great peace and harmony. Then came sadder images of parting and travelling . . . endless travelling . . .

  Then the images faded as the two wolves returned to the grim present. Gradually they became still. Tarrian stood for some time with his head held over his brother’s bowed neck.

  Antyr waited.

  Eventually, Tarrian spoke, the resonance in his voice showing that he spoke to Estaan also. He said, ‘This is . . .’ The word he uttered was rich in subtle meanings. Antyr had never heard the like before. ‘We share dam and sire. Nyriall called him Grayle.’

  Estaan looked round uncertainly, lifting his hands to his head.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ Antyr said. ‘You’re being granted a rare privilege. Just listen, this is important.’

  He looked at Grayle, but made no attempt to speak to him. Then he turned again to Tarrian. ‘What’s happened here?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Tarrian replied. ‘Grayle’s shocked and barely coherent. He’s talking about Nyriall being separated from him. Like we were. And about being attacked somehow. Powers, forces, searching. Nothing clear though.’

  Antyr looked at the old man. ‘Ask him if we can attend to Nyriall, would you?’ he said gently.

  ‘You may,’ Tarrian replied immediately.

  Antyr nodded to Estaan who, still watching Grayle warily, sheathed his knife and disentangled his cloak from his arm as he walked over to the bed. Sitting on the edge, he lifted Nyriall’s dangling arm, felt for a pulse and then laid it across his chest with a shake of his head. Almost tenderly he laid a hand on the dead man’s face.

  ‘He’s still warm,’ he said. ‘It feels to me as if he’s only just died.’ He examined the body. ‘I can’t see any signs of violence, and he doesn’t look as though he’s been poisoned. Perhaps some shock burst his heart.’

  Grayle started to whimper uncontrollably.

  Antyr looked down at the dead man and his night-black eyes. Why had he and his Companion been prepared for the search when from the state of his clothes he had not been intending to go out?

  Shapeless questions flitted darkly about his mind like gibbering bats. This was the man from whom he had hoped to obtain explanations of recent events. It had been a slender hope at best, but now where was he to turn?

  He frowned.

  And yet, Nyriall’s strange death showed that perhaps it had not been such a slender hope after all. A frightening thought began to form.

  It grew with appalling rapidity until it filled his mind like a black cloud.

  ‘No!’ Tarrian shouted at him fearfully. ‘No. You can’t.’

  Antyr felt all his options run out. He had no choice. It seemed that all the wandering of his life had been but to bring him to this, in this tired, simple little room in the Moras.

  ‘Tarrian, remind your brother of his duty. Grief is for later and we’ve little time left,’ he said, sternly.

  He turned to Estaan, who was trying to keep his bewilderment from his face. ‘Estaan, guard the door. Make sure no one disturbs us, and under no circumstances must you touch me. The wolves will kill you, or you them, if you’re lucky and fast, and then all could well be lost. If anything untoward happens, Tarrian will speak to you. If he can’t, then seal this room as well as you’re able and go for the Dream Finder Pandra.’

  Estaan’s bewilderment had become concern. ‘What are you going to do?’ he asked anxiously.

  Antyr looked at the dead Nyriall again, then he pulled up a chair and sat down beside him.

  ‘I must learn what killed him,’ he said. ‘I must enter the dead man’s dream.’

  Chapter 19

  Ivaroth Ungwyl came to the crest of the hill and looked down at the blazing encampment. The fire was so hot that the thick black smoke was propelled to a considerable height before the cold plains’ wind could begin to snatch it away and disperse it against the grey backdrop of the wintry sky.

  The distant sound of screams and shouts rode on that same wind to greet him, and he smiled at both the sound and the sight. It was a familiar chorus and a familiar scene. And there would be few more such for him to relish in the future, if any – at least on the plains. When they moved south, that would be a different matter, but that was a little way off yet.

  Nevertheless, he clenched his teeth in a savage leer in anticipation of the spectacle that the sack of a city must surely make. And sacked they would be until all bowed their necks to his yoke and begged to serve the peoples that their ancestors had dispossessed in the ancient times.

  A powerful concussion reached him, making his horse shy a little and rudely dispelling his vision. From the centre of the encampment below, a ball of flame began to rise into the sky supported on a pillar of black smoke.

  There was a chuckle beside him. ‘Well, they wouldn’t have been wanting lamps this winter anyway,’ said its creator.

  ‘Indeed they wouldn’t, Greynyr,’ Ivaroth said. ‘The light of the Ensceini will be gone from the plains forever soon, and with it the last flicker of opposition to my rule.’

  His companion nodded appreciatively. ‘All the tribes united,’ he said quietly. ‘I’d never thought to see the like in my lifetime. These are truly times of greatness, Lord. Your shadow will darken the whole world in the years to come.’

  Ivaroth smiled and, once again, the burning camp became a burning city, and the great anticipation returned.

  Down below he could see figures running to and fro, vainly trying to flee from his horsemen. The sight of their flight released his predatory instinct and he turned to his entourage.

  ‘I’m in the mood for a little sport today, my friends,’ he said. ‘We must make sure that the Ensceini hunters have nothing to return to, and our men down there may be getting weary by now, you know how Endryn’s sword arm troubles him after a while.’

  Raucous laughter and cheering greeted this sally and, catching it at its peak, Ivaroth raised his spear with a great cry and spurred his horse forward towards the encampment. The wind blew cold and vigorous in his face, and the pounding hooves of the galloping horses behind him filled the air with their own special thunder to accompany the lightning of his army’s countless spears and swords. And all were merely extensions of his will; his to command. To launch or to stay. This was the way it was destined to be. It had been written into his soul before he had been born and with
each heartbeat he drew ever nearer to its final glorious apotheosis.

  Your shadow will darken the whole world, Greynyr had said.

  Yes! The whole world!

  A figure appeared in front of him, rising up from behind a small bush like a startled bird. It was a woman, he noted indifferently, wild-eyed and distraught in her flight. And with a child in her arms? He was unsure. Not that it affected anything.

  Without thinking about the action, his practiced arm spitted her on his spear, then he twisted agilely in the saddle to withdraw it swiftly and cleanly as he galloped past.

  His horse did not even break step and there was a cheer of appreciation at the deed from his companions. Ivaroth joined in, waving the bloodied spear high. One of the followers reached down and seized the woman’s hair as she pirouetted from the impetus of Ivaroth’s blow, but such was the speed of the riders that her hair tore out by the roots and the body disappeared under the flailing hooves amid further cheering and scornful laughter.

  Then they were at the camp, joining with the riders who had launched the attack. The air was full of the cries and screams of both the slayers and the slain, a tangled skein of death songs written above the bass roar of the blazing tents.

  There had been little or no opposition to Ivaroth’s assault. How could there have been? The men of the tribe were out wandering the plains, hunting for the food that would tide them and their families through the coming winter. The occupants of the camp were old men, young boys, women and babes.

  They had come out offering their traditional hospitality to the approaching riders. And they had died. Slain like the animals their menfolk were hunting but with greater relish and less respect.

  By an irony, however, Ivaroth’s frenzied entrance into the blood-letting spared them the crueller excesses of the many forms of slow dying that stained the ways of the plains’ tribes and to which a more leisured assault would have brought them.

  ‘I want no survivors,’ was his command. ‘Let the bodies lie where they fall, for the foxes and the birds, and let their men see this pyre from the far ends of the plains and know then what it is to defy the will of Ivaroth Ungwyl.’

  And none would have disobeyed Ivaroth’s commands even had they wanted to.

  After a breathless, galloping, hacking interval, a rider, shadow-like and stark against a backdrop of the blazing camp, reined his horse to a halt before his leader. ‘It’s done, lord,’ he proclaimed triumphantly.

  Ivaroth stared at him, unseeing, for a moment, until the features of his lieutenant came into focus.

  ‘All dead, Endryn?’ he asked in regretful surprise, lowering his bloodstained sword.

  ‘All dead, lord,’ Endryn confirmed. ‘Now the Ensceini menfolk can do no other than come against us and perish for their arrogance in defying your will. Then your leadership of all the tribes will be beyond dispute.’

  Ivaroth bared his teeth exultantly, then jumped down from his horse, tore a shawl from the hacked corpse of a woman lying nearby and began cleaning his sword with it.

  When he had finished, he squinted, narrow-eyed, along the blade, wrinkling his nose irritably as he fingered the edge where it had been turned in places. ‘We must spare some of the city blacksmiths when we get there,’ he said. ‘I hear they make fine swords.’

  As he sheathed the sword, the cloth in his hand caught his eye and he brought it close to his face for examination in the flickering firelight. Though soiled, its fine weave and delicate coloured patterning were clearly visible and along its tasselled edge hung tiny, carved wooden figures.

  ‘Weavers and carvers,’ he sneered. ‘The Ensceini would have been of no value to us anyway, with their women’s ways. Better that they at least die as men.’

  Contemptuously he threw the shawl away and remounted his horse.

  ‘To camp, Endryn,’ he said. ‘Leave our sign here and make sure that our trail is clear. The Ensceini may be great hunters, but I want this matter ended quickly now, and I’ve no desire to be waiting about for days while they search us out. We’ve greater deeds to move to and the sooner we get back to Carthak, the better.’

  A low red sun broke through the clouds as Ivaroth and his troop rode away from the camp. It threw long shadows across the harsh plains’ grass, and until it sank below the horizon it also threw the wavering shadow of the black smoke from the burning camp along their path like a grim warning finger.

  Within two days it seemed that Ivaroth’s wish was to be fulfilled. The Ensceini men emerged from the morning mist carrying their battle flags.

  Despite Ivaroth’s arrogant dismissal of their worth, however, their sudden appearance caused a wave of alarm to spread through the camp, for they stood silent and unmoving along the broad summit of a nearby hill, appearing first as dark shadows and then as grey uncertain monoliths as the sunless dawn broke. Their skill as hunters was legendary among the tribes and none of the camp guards had heard them arrive or could say how long they had been standing there in their eerie vigil.

  Thus Ivaroth was wakened by a sudden panic-stricken clamour from the alarm bell.

  ‘They could have been on us with fire horses while we slept! Cut us down as we groped for our swords!’ He could hear the words flying round the camp even as he focused on the waiting figures.

  Then, chillingly, ‘Why are they not afraid?’

  And because of them, Ivaroth spared his guards the summary punishment they might justly have expected for such negligence, for he knew that each hasty blow to a guard would have reverberated through the camp like a clarion call, confirming the very aptness of the fears and tipping his army over into panic.

  Spared all save one, that is; the guard who had sounded the alarm. Him, he felled with his own bell-striker.

  ‘You disturb my sleep with your clatter,’ he said, handing the man his striker back and kicking him casually as he rose, to let him know that he was being treated leniently.

  Then he turned towards the waiting Ensceini and sniffed. They were still silent and motionless. That they had not chosen to fire the camp when they had the opportunity was yet another measure of their weakness, and too, he realized, the protection that his destiny afforded him. Now they would pay for their folly with their lives the easier and all the sooner.

  ‘They’re waiting because they’re in no rush to join their womenfolk,’ he said with dismissive scorn. Incongruously, his stomach rumbled in the morning stillness. He patted it and grinned malevolently. ‘Mount up. We’ll eat afterwards. The exercise will sharpen your appetites.’

  Thus Ivaroth took his army’s fear and turned it into courage and confidence once more.

  The Ensceini did not move as Ivaroth’s horde began to ooze from the camp like a vast, uneasy mudslide. As they began to move up the shallow hill however, one of the waiting riders moved forward, bearing a flag of truce.

  Ivaroth signalled a halt and, nodding to his two companions to accompany him, continued up the hill to meet the lone rider.

  As he drew nearer Ivaroth recognized the man.

  ‘Ho, Wrenyk son of Wrenyk,’ he shouted. ‘Is it the Ensceini way to send a boy to do a man’s work? Where is your father? You’ve caused me much trouble and I’d hoped to receive his apology from his own lips.’

  ‘With my mother,’ the young man replied, his voice unsteady. ‘The sight of your handiwork took the life from him as surely as if you had speared him yourself.’

  Ivaroth shrugged indifferently. ‘It’s a pity he didn’t die sooner,’ he said. ‘Then perhaps your tribe wouldn’t have been misled by his foolishness and would have joined us. And all this need not have happened.’

  ‘It need not have happened anyway, you hell hound.’ Wrenyk’s passion burst out and his horse shied a little. ‘What harm did we offer you or your vaulting ambition that you had to slaughter our women and children?’ Ivaroth’s companions closed about their leader, protectively, but he waved them aside and walked his horse forward until he was within a pace of the young man.

&nbs
p; Wrenyk was pale, and his face was bewildered and stained with dried tears. He was covered in dust from riding, and black ash from the razed camp, and he held his reins tightly to stop their trembling as his raging inner turmoil contended with his fear before the menacing presence of the man who had become at once the unifier and the scourge of all the tribes of the plains.

  ‘You’re young and foolish, Wrenyk,’ Ivaroth said darkly. ‘Scarcely into manhood, for all you might think otherwise. You should have let one of your uncles undertake this task. They’ve cooler and wiser heads and are better versed in the acceptance of such matters. If you’ve come here with this sorry remnant for vengeance or reparation you’ll find neither. And if you don’t listen to me then the Ensceini will perish utterly this day, and in neither song nor saga will they be heard of again.’

  Then he relaxed and became almost avuncular. ‘But I’m an understanding man, young Wrenyk. I’ve children of my own – somewhere.’ His two companions joined in his lecherous laugh. ‘I’ll forgive you your hasty tongue, and give you and your men one more chance to live. Accept my leadership and join the confederation of the tribes and together we’ll sweep down through the mountains and reclaim our ancient lands to the south. Honour, glory, and battle lie by one hand, with more than enough women and . . . goods . . . to replace those you’ve lost. But by the other hand lies certain death. Think well, chieftain, before you speak. You have the fate of others in your gift.’ He looked significantly at the still motionless riders cresting the hill.

  Wrenyk fought to control his face. ‘My answer is the same as my father’s,’ he replied eventually, his voice quieter. ‘We came in our battle array not to threaten but to show you our weakness. We can’t avenge ourselves nor do we seek weregild for our dead. We acknowledge your domination of the tribes of the plains, but we ask that you leave us alone. We want none of your folly. We live at peace with this land and all its creatures and its plants and its endless mystery. We have neither need nor desire to bring flame and sword to the peoples of distant lands. To bring to others the pain that we ourselves are feeling even now.’