Tarrian started from some silent reverie. ‘Er … west,’ he said absently, as if he had only just thought about it.
'West,’ Antyr echoed neutrally. ‘To the cliffs, I suppose?'
There was another pause before Tarrian replied vaguely, ‘Yes … yes.'
Serenstad was built by the river Seren in a lush and fertile valley, but the practical difficulties of building in the soft valley soil and the incessant need to maintain defences against many enemies had led successive rulers to expand the city up the side of the valley until, in the west, it had reached a ridge which dropped away sharply in precipitous cliffs and afforded the city at least one boundary that needed little or no defence.
Antyr offered no comment. There was little point. Tarrian needed to walk, needed to think, needed to do whatever it was a wolf did when it was burdened with human follies and happenings that ran contrary to everything it had ever known. It would be a long walk, and steep at the end, where the city's walls began to dwindle as they merged into the rising rocks.
Antyr felt reluctance dragging at his feet like soft dune sand as his long-held doubts about his calling surfaced again. What was he doing searching the Duke's dreams? Keeping the company of the likes of Aaken Uhr Candessa and Ciarll Feranc? And what was he doing, following Tarrian on some chilly and pointless ramble around the city? He knew that Tarrian was not listening to his thoughts but, fearing the wolf's acid responses, he tried to dismiss his fears and the longings he had for some other, less … bizarre, calling.
But even as the familiar thoughts emerged again, they changed. He did not long for some other calling. He longed for
The intensity of the feeling made him stop.
'How are you burdened?'
Tarrian's voice made Antyr start. ‘I … I … didn't know you were…’ he began awkwardly.
'Listening?’ Tarrian finished the sentence. ‘I wasn't. I was somewhere else. But you called me back.'
'I don't understand,’ Antyr said.
'Nor I,’ Tarrian replied simply, then he began walking again, keeping his usual station several paces ahead of Antyr as is the way with pack leaders.
Antyr's thoughts reached out to question him, but there was no response; Tarrian was ‘somewhere else’ again.
They continued their walk, each preoccupied with his own thoughts and largely oblivious to both the terrain and the dismal weather. When Antyr finally looked about him he was surprised. He had not realized they had walked so far or so high, though, almost immediately, his legs began to ache.
From where they were, the view could be breathtaking. To the east, the sweep of the city walls down into the rich greens of the valley, and the silver thread of the river Seren winding south through the undulating countryside on its way down to the port of Farlan and the wide ocean. While, to the west, stood the dark, imposing rock-face of the neighbouring valley, a fitting partner to that which formed the western boundary of Serenstad.
Today, however, the winter mist hid not only the horizon but most of the valley. Antyr looked up at the dark bulk of the city's outer wall rising above him in response to the steepening slope of the rocks. It was solid and grim in the greyness. Last night he had thought it a prison, but now it seemed to assume once more the mantle of protector, standing steadfast and immovable, taking upon itself the anger and hatred of the enemies of the city.
The anger and hatred of enemies. The words resonated around Antyr's mind.
Enemies. Whose enemies? What enemies?
The questions came unbidden and had an insistence about them that made Antyr frown. He had no interest whatsoever in the complex and convoluted politics of Serenstad and its subject domains, except in so far as he had been obliged to serve in the army when younger to defend its interests or to punish some upstart town or city that was getting above itself.
But the questions hung in his mind, almost defiantly. He looked up at the wall again. It glowered back at him, like a stern matriarch, allowing him no relief.
Why should he be asking himself such questions here, now? It was not as if it were a matter that needed any subtle debate. There was always opposition to Ibris's rule from one faction or another, but, in its more violent forms, it almost always stemmed from the agitations of the Bethlarii, the citizens of Bethlar, several days’ ride to the north-west.
A severe, warlike people, they had once dominated almost the whole of the land south of the northern mountains and even now they held sway over most of the cities to the north and west.
The problem with the Bethlarii was that they still claimed dominion over the whole land, declaring, perhaps rightly, that they were the direct descendants of the original settlers, the sea peoples who had arrived to drive out the barbarian tribes that had then occupied it.
The Serens, they said, were usurping newcomers, mere merchants and artisans, who should bow the knee before the warrior founders of the land.
But, as every Serens knew, the true hatred of the Bethlarii stemmed from their black, misanthropic bigotry and was in reality for what they saw as the Serens’ easy, hedonistic ways and the fact that the despised merchants and artisans had brought such wealth and power to Serenstad, both from their efforts at home and their trading abroad, that one by one Bethlar's subject cities had changed their allegiance.
Whatever the truth of the matter, there had always been animosity between the two cities and their allies, sometimes culminating in savage and bitter fighting. The Bethlarii, however, had found that the effete and degenerate Serens could make war well enough when need arose and could also afford to buy a leavening of mercenary soldiers to stiffen their lines and train their people.
It was a point of some dark amusement to the Serens that while the Bethlarii scorned such a practice, they were obliged eventually to resort to it themselves.
Now, however, since Ibris had negotiated the Treaty following the siege of Viernce, an uneasy stability existed in the land. The Serens continued to despise the Bethlarii for their grim military ways, their dismal communal houses, their stone-faced mindless discipline, and their ghastly priesthood with its worship of the warrior god, Ar-Hyrdyn, to the exclusion of all others. And the Bethlarii continued to despise the Serens, ostensibly for what they considered to be their corruption and decadence, but in reality for their continuing and growing economic success and the power that it brought.
The stability, however, was dynamic, and within the loose framework of the Treaty there was a constant swirl of plotting and counter-plotting, jostling for this advantage or that, bribing, coercing; individuals, factions, whole cities; both sides manoeuvring to gain more power and influence to protect themselves from the other.
Antyr understood enough of the political realities of the land to know that such matters were beyond rational analysis, and that though he might despair at the folly of it all at times, he had neither the wealth nor the power to change it.
True, like any other Guildsman, he could run for office in the Gythrin-Dy which, with the Sened, advised the Duke, but that seemed to be but the same folly writ small, with dozens of factions shifting and changing allegiances, and treachery and mistrust being the stock in trade.
It was true also that his position of disdain for the political institutions of the city could equally not stand rational analysis while he chose to avoid participating in them, but that was something he avoided considering, along with the majority of the Serens. It was sufficient for him that he pursued his calling, paid his taxes, where unavoidable, and generally conducted himself within the law of the city.
Why then should he find himself wandering the western edge of the city on a damp and dismal day, pondering about its enemies? Yet he was; for the word, enemies, not only persisted in his thoughts but seemed to carry a different meaning, a meaning that hovered at the edges of his awareness like a mysterious shadow which disappeared when stared at directly.
Further reverie, however, was prevented by their arrival at the end of their journey; the western cliffs, the Aphron Dennai, Aphron's Stairway, named after the tyrannical Duke Aphron whose favourite pastime was to have people hurled over them on to the shattered pinnacles below, until one day the people rebelled and allowed him a closer view of the spectacle.
Possibly climbable by the foolhardy, but not quickly and certainly not by many, the Aphron Dennai formed the city's most secure boundary.
