‘Damn you, you never say anything,’ Aoz Roon exclaimed good-humouredly, pulling at his meat with his strong teeth. ‘Talk to me.’
Dathka turned his head so that his cheek rested on his knee and gave Aoz Roon a knowing look. ‘What’s going on between you and Goija Hin then?’
Aoz Roon’s mouth went hard. ‘That’s private between the pair of us.’
‘So you won’t talk either.’ Dathka turned away and regarded the cantering hoxneys once more, where they wheeled below the high cumulus piling up on the western horizon. The air was full of green light, robbing the hoxneys of their brilliant colour.
Finally, as if he could feel the black regard of Aoz Roon through his shoulder blades, he said, without shifting his gaze, ‘I was thinking.’
Aoz Roon flung his chewed bone to Curd and lay flat under the blossoming bough. ‘All right, then, out with it. What have you been saving up all your lifetime to think?’
‘How to catch a live hoxney.’
‘Ha! What good would that do you?’
‘I wasn’t thinking of good, any more than you were when you called Nahkri to the top of the tower.’
A heavy silence followed, in which Aoz Roon said no word. Eventually, as distant thunder sounded, Eline Tal brought round some beethel. Aoz Roon demanded angrily of the company in general, ‘Where’s Laintal Ay? Wandering again, I suppose. Why is he not with us? You men are getting too lazy and disobedient. Some of you are in for a surprise.’
He got up and walked heavily away, followed at a respectful distance by his hound.
Laintal Ay was not studying hoxneys like his silent friend. He was after other game.
Since that night, four long years ago, when he was witness to the murder of his uncle Nahkri, the incident had haunted him. He had ceased to blame Aoz Roon for the murder, for he now understood better that the Lord of Embruddock was a tormented man.
‘I’m sure he thinks himself under a curse,’ Oyre had once told Laintal Ay.
‘He can be forgiven a lot for the western bridge,’ Laintal Ay replied, in a practical way. But he felt himself spoiled by his involvement in the murder, and increasingly kept his own counsel.
The bond between him and the beautiful Oyre had been both strengthened and distorted by that night when too much rathel had been drunk. He had even become wary with her.
He had spelt out the difficulty to himself. ‘If I am to rule in Oldorando, as my lineage decrees, then I must kill the father of the girl I wish to make mine. It’s impossible.’
No doubt Oyre also understood his dilemma. Yet she was marked out as his and no one else’s. He would have fought to the death any other man who went near her.
His wild instincts, his sense for the cunning trap, for the unregarding moment that spells disaster, made him see as clearly as did Shay Tal that Oldorando was now left regularly vulnerable to attack. In the present warm spell, nobody was alert. Sentries drowsed at their posts.
He raised the question of defence with Aoz Roon, who had a reasonable answer.
Aoz Roon said dismissively that nobody, friend or foe, travelled far any more. A mantle of snow had made it easy for men to go wherever they pleased; now everywhere was choked with green things, with thickets growing denser every day. The time for raids was past.
Besides, he added, they had had no phagor raids since the day Mother Shay Tal performed her miracle at Fish Lake. They were safer than they had ever been. And he passed Laintal Ay a tankard of beethel.
Laintal Ay was not satisfied with the answer. Uncle Nahkri had considered himself perfectly safe that night he had climbed the stairs of the big tower. Within a couple of minutes, he was lying in the lane below with his neck broken.
When the hunters went out today, Laintal Ay had got no further than the bridge. There he turned silently back, determined to make a survey of the village and see how it would fare under an unexpected attack.
As he commenced circling the outskirts, the first thing he observed was a light plume of steam on the Voral. It rode along on a certain line in midstream, never deviating, seeming to advance above the dark rapid glide of the water, yet ever remaining in the identical place. Feathers of vapour shredded back from it along the breast of the river. What it signified he could not determine. He proceeded with a sense of unease.
The atmosphere grew heavier. Saplings were springing up over mounds that had once been buildings. He viewed the remaining towers through their slender bars. Aoz Roon was right in one respect: it had become difficult to get round Oldorando.
Yet warning images formed in his mind. He saw phagors riding kaidaws, leaping obstacles and charging into the heart of the settlement. He saw the hunters straggling home, loaded with bright skins, their heads heavy from too much beethel. They had time to witness their homes burnt, their women and children dead, before they too were trampled under savage hoof.
He forced his way through prickly bushes.
How the phagors rode! What could be more wonderful than to mount a kaidaw and ride it, master it, share its power, be one with its action? Those ferocious beasts submitted to no mount but a phagor: or so the legends said, and he had never heard of the man who had ridden a kaidaw. The very notion made one dizzy. Men went on foot… But a man on a kaidaw would be more than the equal of a phagor on a kaidaw.
Half concealed by bushes, he could see across to the north gate, which stood open and unguarded. Two birds perched on top of the gate, twittering. He wondered if a sentry had been posted that morning, or if the man had deserted his post. The silence, through the heavy air, took on a booming quality.
A shambling figure came into his line of vision. It was immediately recognisable as the slave master, Goija Hin. Behind him went Myk, led by a rope.
‘There now, you’ll enjoy this afternoon’s work,’ Laintal Ay heard the slave master say. He stopped beyond the gate and tied the phagor to a small tree. The creature’s legs were already chained. He patted Myk almost affectionately.
Myk looked at Goija Hin with apprehension. ‘Myk can sit here in the sunshine some time.’
‘Not sit, stand. You stand, Myk, you do as you’re told, or you know what you’ll get. We’re going to do exactly as Aoz Roon says, or we’ll both be in trouble.’
The old phagor made a growling sound. ‘Trouble is always all round us in the air-octaves. What are you Sons of Freyr but trouble?’
‘Any more of that I rip your stinking hide off,’ Goija Hin said, without malice. ‘You stay there and do what we were told and you’ll have your chance on one of us Sons of Freyr in a minute.’
He left the monster where he was concealed from gaze and marched off with his flat-footed walk, back towards the towers. Myk promptly lay down on the ground and was lost to Laintal Ay’s view.
Like the trail of vapour riding on the Voral, this incident made Laintal Ay uneasy. He stood waiting, listening, wondering. The twittering stillness was one he would have regarded as unnatural only a few years ago. He shrugged his shoulders and walked on.
Oldorando was unguarded. An undertaking must be made to rouse the hunters to a sense of peril. He observed that steam seeped from the caps of the bare rajabarals. There was another portent he could not interpret. Thunder rumbled, far to the north, yet with intimate menace.
He crossed a brook which bubbled and let forth steam, the vapour snarling itself among teeth of fern growing from the bank. When he bent to dip his hand, he found the water tolerably warm. A dead fish floated past, tail uppermost, just under the surface. He squatted there, looking across it at the tangle of new green through which the tops of the towers showed. No hot spring had existed here before.