neither song nor saga will they be heard of again.'
Then he relaxed and became almost avuncular. ‘But I'm an understanding man, young Wrenyk. I've children of my own-somewhere.’ His two companions joined in his lecherous laugh. ‘I'll forgive you your hasty tongue, and give you and your men one more chance to live. Accept my leadership and join the confederation of the tribes and together we'll sweep down through the mountains and reclaim our ancient lands to the south. Honour, glory, and battle lie by one hand, with more than enough women and … goods … to replace those you've lost. But by the other hand lies certain death. Think well, chieftain, before you speak. You have the fate of others in your gift.’ He looked significantly at the still motionless riders cresting the hill.
Wrenyk fought to control his face. ‘My answer is the same as my father's,’ he replied eventually, his voice quieter. ‘We came in our battle array not to threaten but to show you our weakness. We can't avenge ourselves nor do we seek weregild for our dead. We acknowledge your domination of the tribes of the plains, but we ask that you leave us alone. We want none of your folly. We live at peace with this land and all its creatures and its plants and its endless mystery. We have neither need nor desire to bring flame and sword to the peoples of distant lands. To bring to others the pain that we ourselves are feeling even now.'
'Desire!’ Ivaroth snarled, suddenly angered by the young man's grief and the seeming absence of any wish for vengeance. ‘My intentions for the south aren't some idle whim. They're the destiny of our people. The southlands were ours before the sea people drove our ancestors out and forced us to retreat to this…’ He waved his arm across the plains about them. ‘…this bleak wasteland.'
Wrenyk followed the sweeping arm and his eyes became sad. ‘You're as blind as you're demented, Ivaroth,’ he said. ‘You see only a wilderness while I, even in my youth, see true riches. And you speak of old camp fire tales and fables about the south as though they were as true and real as a quarrel about last season's hunting.’ Contempt began to mingle with his sorrow. ‘But, setting that aside, great leader of men,’ he went on. ‘Haven't your kin in the border tribes told you about the mountains with their great crags and narrow pathways where a missed footing can hurl man and horse into depths unimaginable?’ The contempt became withering. ‘We're a plains’ people, Ivaroth, not mountain-dwellers. And horses are plains’ animals. And has no one told you about the stone-faced Bethlarii who guard the passes and relish nothing more than cruel fighting in that terrain?'
He pointed to the south. ‘Blood, pain and death are all that await you and all that follow you there, Ivaroth, believer of children's fireside tales and murderer of women and children.'
Ivaroth, stunned by Wrenyk's tirade, sat motionless for a moment. Then he started forward, his face livid, as if to strike him. But Wrenyk did not flinch. Instead he suddenly stared into his eyes intently. Ivaroth hesitated. Wrenyk's eyes were like his own. The irises were black, like deep pits.
'Ah,’ Wrenyk said softly, his voice breathless with both fear and realization. ‘I see you truly now. You have the sight as I do. You walk the dreams of others. It's you who's brought the demon to our nights. You who's been possessed by it. And it's you it uses for its own ends! How could I not have seen.’ His voice rose to a shout. ‘Abomination! I…'
Before he could finish however, Ivaroth had deftly pivoted his spear in its saddle sheath and with a powerful thrust, run him clean through.
Wrenyk cried out in pain and shock, but then he wrapped his hands around the shaft to prevent Ivaroth withdrawing it. Leaning forward on to it, he whimpered, childlike. Then, his face close to Ivaroth's, he opened his mouth and breathed in his face. Ivaroth flinched away but, held by his own grip to his spear, he could not withdraw. With unexpected vigour, Wrenyk suddenly spat at him and, releasing the spear, wiped one hand down Ivaroth's cheek. It left a smear of dust and black ash.
'By air, water, earth and fire, I curse you, Ivaroth,’ Wrenyk gasped, scarcely able to speak. ‘Would I had the flame here that would sere your accursed black soul, but…’ His voice faded and he began to grope for a dagger in his belt. As he did so, Ivaroth wrenched his spear free. Wrenyk cried out again, and with one hand clutched at his bleeding wound while with the other he gripped his saddle in an instinctive attempt to avoid the rider's indignity of tumbling from his horse.
'There are others, abomination,’ he whispered painfully. ‘Others who walk the dreams and who will oppose…'
Ivaroth swung the spear round and struck him viciously on the temple with its weighted butt. The impact tore Wrenyk out of his saddle, but he uttered no sound other than a harsh gasp as he crashed on to the hard earth.
Deliberately, Ivaroth jerked his horse round to trample on the still form, kicking it into brief, grotesque life. Then he raised his spear high, a great cry forming in his throat.
It faltered before it left him, however, as he looked again at the ridge of the hill. It was empty. The Ensceini had gone. Drifted softly away like the morning mist while all eyes had been on the two leaders.
For a moment the sudden shock turned his stomach into ice and the trembling that had possessed Wrenyk's hands threatened to take over his own.
Feverishly he fought for control of his wilful body, keeping his face away from his men. For a moment he felt the great momentum of his destiny waver. Then, as the abyss opened before him, he was himself again.
His face furious, he rounded on his waiting riders.
'Donkeys!’ he thundered. ‘Blind, brainless donkeys. Isn't there one pair of eyes among you?’ The entire mass of riders moved back as one under the weight of his anger. Then, as he paused, sensing the declaration of a dire punishment for their neglect, they forestalled it with the same spontaneous unanimity by simultaneously moving forward with a great cry before he could pronounce it.
Rapidly gathering speed, they poured up the hillside like a great, breaking wave.
Ivaroth, standing in their path, found, as leaders have before, that he had little alternative but to lead the charge.
Wrenyk's body was crushed beyond recognition by the same hooves that had destroyed his tribe.
But the furious charge was to little avail. When the leading riders reached the top of the hill, only a few of the Ensceini were to be seen, and they were travelling at great speed in different directions. The rest were gone; vanished like campfire smoke into the vast, deceptive terrain that they knew so well.
Ivaroth reined his horse to a halt and wiped Wrenyk's spittle from his face. He watched the distant, fleeing figures fade into the landscape and cursed silently to himself. That had been an ill finish to what should have been the final act of his conquest of the many tribes of the plains.
The Ensceini were to have been publicly and conspicuously crushed not only for their continued opposition to his will but also to stiffen the resolve of some of his less enthusiastic allies. Now, scattered and leaderless, they could offer him no opposition, but their strange departure might ensure that part of them would linger in the minds of his superstitious followers. That, at least, he could crush.
'We've no time to chase wisps of dead grass over the plains.’ His powerful personality washed over his now silent followers. ‘The Ensceini are no more. They've paid the price of their defiance. Now, united, we shall prepare for our greater destiny.’ And with a mighty cry, he turned his horse about and galloped back down towards the camp.
As the riders turned in response, the cry, ‘Ivaroth, Mareth Hai! Ivaroth, Mareth Hai!’ began to be heard, and as they reached the camp, it was ringing out in a great, echoing roar.
Mareth Hai. First and greatest. Great leader. King emperor. The words held many meanings with the many tribes, but above all they meant that his power was now absolute and beyond question.
The acclamation swept away the lingering remnants of dismay at the escape of the Ensceini and of Wrenyk's black-eyed sight into his soul. Ivaroth rode the sound as he might ride a string of chained horses in the Mirifest, the great annual celebration of riding skills that, hitherto, had been the only uniting element in the lives of the plains’ tribes.
Faintly, like a slave whispering in his ear as he rode in triumph, however, Wrenyk's last words returned to him. ‘There are others who walk the dreams…'
They were as nothing, however, amid the jubilation and exhilaration and it took little effort on his part to dismiss them. Many strange, terrifying things happened in his night wanderings, but with the blind man as his guide and guardian he was protected from all ills when asleep just as he was protected in his waking hours.
'Ivaroth, Mareth Hai!'
The cry seemed to hover in the air about him, all through the breaking of the camp and the return south to the huge, almost permanent, camp at Carthak that had become the base for his conquest of the tribes.
It grieved some of his closest personal allies that he seemed to be abandoning their traditional wandering
