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 rea-sonableness 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 under-standing-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 coher-ent 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 demon-strate 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 rebel-lion, 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 him-self 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.