Your shadow will darken the whole world, Greynyr had said.
Yes! The whole world!
A figure appeared in front of him, rising up from behind a small bush like a startled bird. It was a woman, he noted indifferently, wild-eyed and distraught in her flight. And with a child in her arms? He was unsure. Not that it affected anything.
Without thinking about the action, his practiced arm spitted her on his spear, then he twisted agilely in the saddle to withdraw it swiftly and cleanly as he galloped past.
His horse did not even break step and there was a cheer of appreciation at the deed from his companions. Ivaroth joined in, waving the bloodied spear high. One of the followers reached down and seized the woman's hair as she pirouetted from the impetus of Ivaroth's blow, but such was the speed of the riders that her hair tore out by the roots and the body disappeared under the flailing hooves amid further cheering and scornful laughter.
Then they were at the camp, joining with the riders who had launched the attack. The air was full of the cries and screams of both the slayers and the slain, a tangled skein of death songs written above the bass roar of the blazing tents.
There had been little or no opposition to Ivaroth's assault. How could there have been? The men of the tribe were out wandering the plains, hunting for the food that would tide them and their families through the coming winter. The occupants of the camp were old men, young boys, women and babes.
They had come out offering their traditional hospitality to the approaching riders. And they had died. Slain like the animals their menfolk were hunting but with greater relish and less respect.
By an irony, however, Ivaroth's frenzied entrance into the blood-letting spared them the crueller excesses of the many forms of slow dying that stained the ways of the plains’ tribes and to which a more leisured assault would have brought them.
'I want no survivors,’ was his command. ‘Let the bodies lie where they fall, for the foxes and the birds, and let their men see this pyre from the far ends of the plains and know then what it is to defy the will of Ivaroth Ungwyl.'
And none would have disobeyed Ivaroth's commands even had they wanted to.
After a breathless, galloping, hacking interval, a rider, shadow-like and stark against a backdrop of the blazing camp, reined his horse to a halt before his leader. ‘It's done, lord,’ he proclaimed triumphantly.
Ivaroth stared at him, unseeing, for a moment, until the features of his lieutenant came into focus.
'All dead, Endryn?’ he asked in regretful surprise, lowering his bloodstained sword.
'All dead, lord,’ Endryn confirmed. ‘Now the Ensceini menfolk can do no other than come against us and perish for their arrogance in defying your will. Then your leadership of all the tribes will be beyond dispute.'
Ivaroth bared his teeth exultantly, then jumped down from his horse, tore a shawl from the hacked corpse of a woman lying nearby and began cleaning his sword with it.
When he had finished, he squinted, narrow-eyed, along the blade, wrinkling his nose irritably as he fingered the edge where it had been turned in places. ‘We must spare some of the city blacksmiths when we get there,’ he said. ‘I hear they make fine swords.'
As he sheathed the sword, the cloth in his hand caught his eye and he brought it close to his face for examination in the flickering firelight. Though soiled, its fine weave and delicate coloured patterning were clearly visible and along its tasselled edge hung tiny, carved wooden figures.
'Weavers and carvers,’ he sneered. ‘The Ensceini would have been of no value to us anyway, with their women's ways. Better that they at least die as men.'
Contemptuously he threw the shawl away and remounted his horse.
'To camp, Endryn,’ he said. ‘Leave our sign here and make sure that our trail is clear. The Ensceini may be great hunters, but I want this matter ended quickly now, and I've no desire to be waiting about for days while they search us out. We've greater deeds to move to and the sooner we get back to Carthak, the better.'
A low red sun broke through the clouds as Ivaroth and his troop rode away from the camp. It threw long shadows across the harsh plains’ grass, and until it sank below the horizon it also threw the wavering shadow of the black smoke from the burning camp along their path like a grim warning finger.
Within two days it seemed that Ivaroth's wish was to be fulfilled. The Ensceini men emerged from the morning mist carrying their battle flags.
Despite Ivaroth's arrogant dismissal of their worth, however, their sudden appearance caused a wave of alarm to spread through the camp, for they stood silent and unmoving along the broad summit of a nearby hill, appearing first as dark shadows and then as grey uncertain monoliths as the sunless dawn broke. Their skill as hunters was legendary among the tribes and none of the camp guards had heard them arrive or could say how long they had been standing there in their eerie vigil.
Thus Ivaroth was wakened by a sudden panic-stricken clamour from the alarm bell.
'They could have been on us with fire horses while we slept! Cut us down as we groped for our swords!’ He could hear the words flying round the camp even as he focused on the waiting figures.
Then, chillingly, ‘Why are they not afraid?'
And because of them, Ivaroth spared his guards the summary punishment they might justly have expected for such negligence, for he knew that each hasty blow to a guard would have reverberated through the camp like a clarion call, confirming the very aptness of the fears and tipping his army over into panic.
Spared all save one, that is; the guard who had sounded the alarm. Him, he felled with his own bell- striker.
'You disturb my sleep with your clatter,’ he said, handing the man his striker back and kicking him casually as he rose, to let him know that he was being treated leniently.
Then he turned towards the waiting Ensceini and sniffed. They were still silent and motionless. That they had not chosen to fire the camp when they had the opportunity was yet another measure of their weakness, and too, he realized, the protection that his destiny afforded him. Now they would pay for their folly with their lives the easier and all the sooner.
'They're waiting because they're in no rush to join their womenfolk,’ he said with dismissive scorn. Incongruously, his stomach rumbled in the morning stillness. He patted it and grinned malevolently. ‘Mount up. We'll eat afterwards. The exercise will sharpen your appetites.'
Thus Ivaroth took his army's fear and turned it into courage and confidence once more.
The Ensceini did not move as Ivaroth's horde began to ooze from the camp like a vast, uneasy mudslide. As they began to move up the shallow hill however, one of the waiting riders moved forward, bearing a flag of truce.
Ivaroth signalled a halt and, nodding to his two companions to accompany him, continued up the hill to meet the lone rider.
As he drew nearer Ivaroth recognized the man.
'Ho, Wrenyk son of Wrenyk,’ he shouted. ‘Is it the Ensceini way to send a boy to do a man's work? Where is your father? You've caused me much trouble and I'd hoped to receive his apology from his own lips.'
'With my mother,’ the young man replied, his voice unsteady. ‘The sight of your handiwork took the life from him as surely as if you had speared him yourself.'
Ivaroth shrugged indifferently. ‘It's a pity he didn't die sooner,’ he said. ‘Then perhaps your tribe wouldn't have been misled by his foolishness and would have joined us. And all this need not have happened.'
'It need not have happened anyway, you hell hound.’ Wrenyk's passion burst out and his horse shied a little. ‘What harm did we offer you or your vaulting ambition that you had to slaughter our women and children?’ Ivaroth's companions closed about their leader, protectively, but he waved them aside and walked his horse forward until he was within a pace of the young man.
Wrenyk was pale, and his face was bewildered and stained with dried tears. He was covered in dust from riding, and black ash from the razed camp, and he held his reins tightly to stop their trembling as his raging inner turmoil contended with his fear before the menacing presence of the man who had become at once the unifier and the scourge of all the tribes of the plains.
'You're young and foolish, Wrenyk,’ Ivaroth said darkly. ‘Scarcely into manhood, for all you might think otherwise. You should have let one of your uncles undertake this task. They've cooler and wiser heads and are better versed in the acceptance of such matters. If you've come here with this sorry remnant for vengeance or reparation you'll find neither. And if you don't listen to me then the Ensceini will perish utterly this day, and in
