The brief outburst had been in some way cathartic and Antyr seemed to feel that both his mind and his body were moving more easily now.
Without speaking, they resumed their practice, Antyr gradually gathering the courage to attack more purposefully, and Estaan continuing to avoid the attacks effortlessly and deliver his painless but lethal counters.
After a little while, Estaan called a halt and they sat down on the floor.
'I'm not telling you anything you don't know when I tell you that you're no sword master, am I?’ he said.
Antyr, breathing heavily and wiping his forehead with a kerchief, shook his head.
'Still,’ Estaan went on. ‘I've seen worse, by far, and there are one or two little things-simple straightforward things-that we can work on, that you'll find helpful, as well as…’ He tapped his forehead with a smile. ‘Also you need more exercise. You're not in the best of condition.’ His smile broadened as Antyr looked at his sweat-soiled kerchief. ‘The heart of your personal combat strategy is going to be flight; you understand that, I know, and you'll need to be as fit for that as for fighting.'
Antyr lay back on the hard, wooden floor and nodded again, ‘I'd forgotten how hard all this business was. Can't I be excused effort, on compassionate grounds?’ he pleaded faintly.
'I have no compassion,’ Estaan replied, grinning.
Antyr groaned softly.
'Don't worry, I've not lost a trainee yet,’ Estaan went on unsympathetically. He stood up. ‘But I've seen enough, and you've done enough for now. What I want you to do now is think.'
With a remarkable lack of both grace and dignity, Antyr managed to struggle to his feet. ‘I understand,’ he replied. Estaan took his arm and began leading him towards the door. Tarrian and Grayle padded after them.
'Think about the question you asked me,’ Estaan replied. ‘And apply it to yourself. Why do you wish to carry a sword? Turn it round and round, and don't turn away from your darker nature.'
Later, washed and rested, Antyr lay back in his bed and did as he had been told. A single lamp on a nearby table threw comforting shadows about the room.
It took him a little thought, however, to reach a conclusion and see the implications. In his anger he had demanded that Estaan justify himself for being what he was, and, to his distress, he had received an answer. This must now be his own, though the motivation was more selfish than the Mantynnai's.
He was entitled to carry a sword and, should need arise, protect himself from the strange, armed figures who stalked the Threshold. He would seek no confrontation, but if it were forced upon him-forced upon him-then the consequences, however horrific, were not his responsibility. He must harness the will of the darkness within him, keeping at bay its bloodlust if he could. He must strike; strike hard, strike fast; strike without pity; strike unencumbered by screaming bloodstained memories, past or future; strike from that most ancient need, the need to survive. Then and only then should he stay his hand.
'Very complicated creatures, people, aren't they?'
Tarrian's voice intruded into his conclusion. ‘Rambling round and round just to reach the blindingly obvious.'
Antyr reached out and lowered the lamp's flame to a tiny point. ‘Go to sleep, dog,’ he said, and, much more quickly than he had for several nights, he drifted gently off to sleep.
Chapter 31
Apart from continuing to familiarize himself with the palace and receive instruction from Estaan and some of the other Mantynnai, little of any great import happened to Antyr over the next few days.
They were far from quiet days, however. The palace was alive with activity, both frantic and ordered, while the Sened and the Gythrin-Dy were alive with rhetoric, both self-seeking and sincere.
And looking to the spiritual needs of their flocks, Serenstad's many priests offered a similar variety of choices. Some sat in silent, mysterious meditation, some spoke with quiet, caring reasonableness, while yet others railed, with various degrees of coherence both for and against war against the Bethlarii. The citizens of Serenstad did not lack for opinions to discuss.
And of course, there was the inevitable clamour of Guild officials besieging the mobilization offices pleading for this, that and the other special case. To no avail, however; the law permitted no exceptions for the able-bodied. Early in his reign, Ibris had abolished almost all forms of exemption from military service, not least the long- established practice of allowing individuals to purchase it. The proposal had met with a great deal of opposition from some of the powerful trading houses, but it had found much support from both the people and the ruling families and he had won the day. Such pleas by the Guilds were thus, in many ways, as ritualistic as any of the priests’ activities, but, their prayers passionately rendered and duly rejected, the Guild officials were able to depart with their civic consciences clear.
'One of my better decisions,’ Ibris would remark from time to time. ‘Whatever a man is born to in this city he can strive to change it and have my blessing, but arrow storms and cavalry charges are no respecters of either birth or worth and I'll have no one sheltering behind money bags while he expects others to shelter behind shields.'
Following the orders for mobilization, there was a short but spectacular increase in the unlicensed markets that were a feature of Serenstad sweet life, as the shrewder traders began to sell old swords, pikes, bows and other military paraphernalia, to those who through the years of comparative peace had … forgotten … that they were required by law to possess and maintain such equipment. These suddenly blooming commercial toadstools were known as wagon marts, as the participants invariably chose not to set up the traditional decorated street stalls, but to trade directly from their wagons to which their horses also remained harnessed.
In the spirit of the military thinking that begat this activity, the traders would post lookouts so that due warning of the approach of Liktors-or worse, the market Exactors-could be reported in sufficient time for them to institute an orderly retreat with a view to regrouping elsewhere. The particularly shrewd, however, held their ground and produced grinding and whetting stones so that they would be found, ‘Performing a public service, sir,’ when discovered. ‘No tax liable under mobilization.'
Almost inconspicuously among this mounting hubbub, Menedrion returned. He was well pleased with himself for his treatment of the envoy, but angry and concerned about Whendrak and anxious to be ‘doing something'. With him returned Pandra and Kany to confirm to Antyr the details of Arwain and Menedrion's strange and shared dream, and the finding of the Gateway into the Threshold.
Despite the fatigue of the journey, Pandra was in a state of some elation.
'To come across such a thing,’ he waxed. ‘It's thrown a light across my entire life as a Dream Finder. I feel as if I were just starting again, like some excited apprentice. To know for certain that all those worlds truly exist.’ He waved his hands to prevent Antyr interrupting. ‘I know you told me about them … but to actually see one … to be on the edge of it.'
Antyr, however, could not forbear sounding a warning note above this eulogy. ‘Take care, Pandra,’ he said. ‘We're stumbling about blindly, or worse, perhaps being moved at the whim of some power we can't perceive. What we both learn, we must teach each other, but we must take no risks. Both Arwain and Menedrion must be told of the danger the Threshold presents to them. They have a strong natural resistance, and knowledge will make it stronger. But you and Kany must guard both of them now. And if either comes near a Gateway again, wake them on the instant.'
'I will!’ Kany averred, before Pandra could reply, in a manner which clearly indicated that any response from Pandra, however worthy, was to be viewed with the utmost suspicion.
A couple of days after the return of Menedrion, the remainder of Arwain's escort returned. They brought with them the dark news that Whendrak was still sealed and apparently torn by civil strife and that the Bethlarii were indeed gathering an army somewhere to the west of Whendrak.
'We couldn't venture in as far as we'd have liked,’ they reported. ‘It was too dangerous. There were patrols everywhere.’ They had, however, seen sufficient supply convoys, camps, infantry and cavalry activity, to know that the army being gathered was far in excess of anything needed to take Whendrak.
It was enough. Ibris summoned his senior commanders and gave them the news.
'This, and other intelligence that I've received, convinces me that the Bethlarii are intending a major military
