Words more terrible than any Mantynnai's sword were cutting through the close-packed ranks of the invaders: ‘The Mareth Hai is dead! The Mareth Hai is dead!'
And soon the defenders were motionless. Watching, through battle-weary eyes, the ebbing of the great tide that had been Ivaroth's mighty army.
Chapter 42
On the other battlefield, the two great hosts were moving apart. The Serens moving from line to column and marching eastward back towards Whendrak, the Bethlarii dispersing and scattering to their various homes. The battle unfought.
As Menedrion had raised his lance to give the signal to advance, Feranc had laid a hand on his arm, untypically excited.
'No,’ he had said. ‘Not yet. Their line's going to break. If we attack they'll unite again, for sure.'
And even as he spoke, the Bethlarii line began to disintegrate.
Within the hour, ghalers, under flags of truce, had brought the news to Menedrion.
'There has been growing discontent at the increasing power of the priests,’ was their gist. ‘Few of us wanted this conflict, and fewer still applauded the manner of its making. Now we have received word that Navra, Endir, indeed the whole north-east, have been taken by a horde from across the mountains and that even now they may be moving against your own territories. It seems that the priests meddled in the affairs of the gods, and our whole land is now to pay for their folly.'
'I'd not have you linger further in superstition and ignorance,’ Menedrion told them. ‘No gods brought you that word, only my father's Dream Finders. It was they who discovered the reality of the deception that had been wrought on you and they visited you last night both to tell you the truth and to undermine your will to fight.'
It was a crucial admission.
'The dreams were but a test by Ar-Hyrdyn,’ the priests had claimed in both bewilderment and desperation, as years of resentment at their oppression had begun to flicker into life amid the battle-ready Bethlarii following Antyr and Pandra's strange sending. Then, exhausted stragglers had arrived from Endir to confirm the news in graphic detail, and all further priestly persuasions and threats had been swept aside.
Now Menedrion's revelation dispelled the last, lingering doubts in the minds of the Bethlarii that they had been both brought to the field and dismissed from it at the whim of some god.
The leader of the ghalers stepped forward and took Menedrion's hand. ‘You and I would have fought a more honourable war than this, Duke to be, had true cause arisen. When all this is concluded, we shall debate an honourable peace.'
'You and I might well, soldier,’ Menedrion replied. ‘But you have your Hanestra and your Council of Five…'
The Bethlarii looked at him resolutely.
'When all this is concluded,
Ibris, standing to one side, smiled as he felt a will the equal of his own and knew that the words needed no qualification.
The ghaler spoke again. ‘But now we march for the north-east to relieve our cities and punish these invaders. That done, we shall send proper envoys to both Whendrak and Serenstad to discuss due reparation and the drawing up of a further treaty between us. The rule of the priests is over.'
'May the speed of your march ring down in legend, Bethlarii,’ Menedrion replied. ‘We go, too, though another way. Even now, I fear I may be losing my father's son and his finest warriors against this foe.'
When Menedrion and Feranc and the remainder of Ibris's regiment of bodyguards came to the farmhouse, however, it was to witness the stomach-turning horror of the cleansing of the battlefield.
The task had fallen to a reserve battalion from Viernce who had come in response to one of the many messengers that Ibris had sent following Antyr's revelation about Ivaroth.
The torn and mangled bodies of horses and men were being dragged across the churned earth to be thrown on to great bonfires. Birds and small animals were scurrying about the field and, despite the cold, clouds of flies were appearing. Those injured men abandoned by their fleeing companions and whose injuries could be treated, were duly tended, but many could only be given ease by the physicians’ long knives.
No count of Ivaroth's dead was made, though it numbered many hundreds. Of Arwain's force, some fifteen had died; six of the Mantynnai, nine Serens.
When the Bethlarii reached Navra and Endir, it was to find the cities abandoned by the tribesmen. They followed the trail of their reckless retreat for some way, but, exhausted from their own prodigious forced march across country, they made no attempt to pursue them into the mountains.
The tale of the return of the tribes to the plains is for another time.
Ivaroth's body was found on top of the hill, but there was no sign of the blind man.
'Where is he?’ Ibris asked Antyr, concerned that this terrible individual might return in avenging fury, but the Dream Finder just shook his head and said, ‘I don't know, sire. But he's gone from this world. And he's twice blinded now.'
Ciarll Feranc and the Mantynnai talked long to Haster and Jadric as they rode back from the battle, but that, too, is a tale for another time.
In Ibris's dominions, much was changed and much remained the same.
The massacre of Larnss’ reservists invoked shock and dismay throughout the land, while the stand of Arwain's force at Kirstfeorrd threatened to become legendary.
Antyr's role in the darker battle that had been fought that day was known only to a few, and even he laid no claim to understanding what he had truly done.
The Sened and the Gythrin-Dy talked and debated at endless length. The Guilds and the great trading houses protested at the disruption of the full voluntary mobilization, though none railed too loudly. The realization that their land could be threatened by powerful forces from beyond their borders did more to ease the more excessive internecine political squabbling and feuding than any amount of Ibris's urgings.
Even Nefron was strangely subdued, and erstwhile opponents of Ibris found they no longer had her covert support. Indeed, it was whispered that from the cold and bitter ashes of their long-spent passion, green shoots of friendship were appearing …
Arwain returned to his wife, while half-heartedly, Menedrion returned to his various conquests. Soon, however, he married a beautiful, sloe-eyed woman. A childhood companion who had been ever by him, watching, waiting, silently tending to his foolish needs until the time when he would more truly know both himself and her.
Ibris noted with some irony that it was his peace-loving son who had fought the terrible battles and his warrior son who had sealed the peace. He noted too that they were both the wiser now, and he was well pleased.
His other son, Goran, returned to his painting and architectural studies, having been placed by his father, for want of anything more suitable, in charge of the building of temporary barracks for the many volunteers and reservists gathered in by the mobilization. ‘You like studying buildings, don't you?’ Ibris had told him.
Pandra returned to his retirement, though not for long. Within a month of his return he was proving to be a considerable thorn in the side of the Council of the Guild of Dream Finders. Several members resigned-in protest at his lack of respect, they said-as did their Companions: cats, for the most part.
Haster and Jadric made to leave the land as quietly as they had arrived, but Ibris, beginning to understand them, intercepted them personally.
