Gryvan tore his gaze away from the great vista before them. He regarded his Chancellor with a wry smile.
‘Ever the practical man,’ he said.
‘I share the vision,’ Mordyn said and thought, You had not the half of it before you opened your ears to me. ‘But still, the glories of two years hence are founded upon what we do tomorrow, and next week and next month.’
Gryvan clapped him on the shoulder and laughed. ‘I know, I know. You remind me often enough that I shall not forget it. And we shall pick Igryn’s successor soon, though I am tempted to leave his bloodthirsty brood to tear at one another for a while longer. No great harm can come of it, so long as the thousand men I left there remain.’
Mordyn nodded, and judged that the moment was right to share the small concern that had been nagging at him over the last couple of days.
‘Appealing though the southern prospect is, I fear we must give some thought to events in the north, my lord.’
The High Thane was not so drunk that he did not raise an eyebrow at that, and fix Mordyn with a steely gaze.
‘I thought we were on safe ground there, Mordyn. We agreed before I went south that anything that happened in the Glas valley would matter little in the long run.’
‘Of course,’ said Mordyn with an ease he was no longer sure he truly felt. ‘Gyre has as much wish to see the Horin Blood spending its strength as we have to see Lannis being drained of its. Ragnor oc Gyre will not come to Horin-Gyre’s aid.’
The Chancellor still believed it to be true. He, and therefore the High Thane, had always known there might be an attempt upon the Glas valley once they had summoned Croesan’s best warriors away, but Mordyn was certain Ragnor oc Gyre lacked the will to put his full strength behind it. He had a few precious eyes and ears buried amongst the Bloods of the Black Road and knew something of how things stood there. More importantly, he had the words of the Gyre Thane himself. It would likely trigger instant revolt in the lands ruled by both men if it were known that Gryvan and Ragnor had exchanged messages in the last few years, especially if the content were revealed. No promises had been given, no explicit guarantees, but the outline of an understanding had been sketched: Gryvan would not threaten the strongholds of the Black Road so long as Ragnor extended the same courtesy to the True Bloods. If some of the lesser Bloods—Lannis and Horin the obvious, unstated examples—came to blows, neither High Thane would permit the situation to escalate into full-scale war and neither would permit their peoples to claim any new lands. Unrestrained conflict was in nobody’s best interests. So long as that held true, no great damage could be done by the latest disturbances, save to Lannis pride.
Only in the last few days had a sliver of doubt intruded upon Mordyn’s confidence. There had been no word at all from Behomun Tole in Anduran, and the last message from Lagair, the Steward in Kolkyre, reported rumours that the Lannis-Haig capital itself was besieged. The Chancellor was not accustomed to being surprised; that news had startled him. How a Horin-Gyre army could be encamped around Anduran so quickly, given the strength of the defences upon Lannis-Haig’s northern borders, was a mystery. The most worrying possibility—that the Bloods of the Black Road were, after all, united in the assault and had simply overrun Tanwrye with an immense army—was one the Chancellor would not admit to Gryvan, but which demanded some precautionary measures. If it was indeed the case, Ragnor oc Gyre had lost his reason. He must know that sooner or later the Haig Bloods would destroy even the greatest army the Black Road could keep in the field south of the Stone Vale.
‘So, if you do not fear Ragnor has played us for fools, what is your concern?’ the High Thane asked him.
‘I can only admit that it seems the Horin-Gyre forces have moved more swiftly than I—than any of us—thought likely,’ Mordyn said with as much humility as he could muster. ‘It is no great worry. We still have time enough to deal with them. No, it is Kilkry-Haig that occupies my thoughts.’ There was truth enough in this line of argument, Mordyn believed, to convince Gryvan.
‘There must be some doubt about how long even the leash of your command will keep Lheanor from the field. We do not want him gaining some glorious victory on his own. Anyway, should he be drawn in before our strength is mustered, this could become a more protracted affair than it need be. The outcome would be the same, of course, but there would be more... waste.’
‘Waste,’ repeated the High Thane. ‘And you do hate waste, don’t you, Mordyn? Well, you would not raise the matter if you had no answer to it, so let me hear it.’
‘We remind Lheanor that he is to await the arrival of the armies of the other Bloods before taking the field, my lord. And perhaps hurry along a few men to reassure him that we are making haste. A few hundred should suffice.’
Gryvan nodded. ‘Easily enough done,’ he said.
‘And perhaps,’ Mordyn went on, ‘lend a little more urgency to our assembly of the main force? If Anduran is indeed already besieged, there is little to be gained from further delay. The sight of the Black Road hammering at his own door will have given Croesan pause for thought. If he has not realised by now that his best interests lie in maintaining your good favour, he never will.’
Gryvan turned and looked out once more over Vaymouth. Night was coming on quickly and the city was falling away into shadow. All across the sprawling capital of the Haig Blood pin-pricks of light were sparking as the citizens lit torches, candles and lanterns. The High Thane yawned and rubbed his face.
‘Do it, then,’ he said. ‘We can use some of the men I brought back from Dargannan-Haig; they’ve not dispersed yet. The great must keep moving onwards, but we might hope for a little more time to rest between our triumphs.’
Gryvan laughed at his own words, and Mordyn, satisfied with his evening’s work, joined in.
The Chancellor rode back towards his palace flanked by grandly attired guards and preceded by a pair of torchbearers who cleared a path through the thronged streets. Parts of Vaymouth seemed more convincingly alive during the hours of darkness than in the day. There had been a fashion for night markets this last summer, and even though the lazy warmth had gone from the evenings, a few still operated.
The seething crowds parted, in the main without protest, at the approach of the Chancellor’s party. Even those who did not recognise him could tell from his escort and dress that he was a man of importance. It was a giddy height for the son of a timber trader to rise to, but then Mordyn Jerain had never been quite like other merchants’ sons. As a young boy in Tal Dyre, when Vaymouth was just the name of one more foreign city, he had not been popular with his peers. He imagined he must have been an arrogant child: cleverer than most, more instinctively aware of his own potential even at that tender age. He could not really remember. His childhood often seemed to have been lived by some other person, linked to the man he was now by only the most tenuous of threads. He learned the arts of manipulation as a defence, and they came naturally to him. By the time he left the island at the age of fourteen, he had more allies than enemies amongst the other children, and those who spoke against him would quickly be on the receiving end of a beating.
He liked to think that as soon as he saw Vaymouth he knew he would never return to Tal Dyre. The merchant isle was still a match for Vaymouth, in wealth at least, in those days, but the capital of the Haig Bloods was so vast and crudely vibrant that it was intoxicating to the ambitious young Mordyn. While his father laboured to build a business, Mordyn had set about educating himself in the ways of the city. It probably broke his father’s heart when Mordyn abandoned his Tal Dyreen roots and took service at the Haig court as a lowly official. Probably, but the Chancellor could not be sure, for he had never seen any of his family again. They had left the city and returned to Tal Dyre many years ago. His Tal Dyreen contacts knew better than to trouble him with any news of them.