ways, and there were, indisputably, many serious problems associated with living in a large fixed camp.
The concerns he eased with a mixture of blandishment and encouragement. ‘It'll not be for long … The harder we strive, the sooner we can go our ways again … Are we incapable of doing what the enfeebled city dwellers of the south do?'
The problems he solved by brutal delegation. ‘Deal with it,’ he would say, usually to the bringer of the problem. And it soon became apparent that that was to be the totality of his involvement. After some spectacular demonstrations, few returned to their leader with excuses, however valid, about why they had not been able to achieve this or that object.
Those problems that he could not solve were those he suffered from himself. Those that were written into the very nature of the people. For the plains’ people were wanderers, and the children of wanderers for unknown numbers of generations. To remain still was to be imprisoned.
Yet they remained in one place, held there ostensibly by Ivaroth's will and the needs of his wars of conquest, but in reality held by the strange needs of the blind man.
'This land is rich in the ancient powers,’ was all that he would offer Ivaroth on the rare occasions when he was at once coherent and in a mood to explain.
Ivaroth, however, was able to use the subtle anguish produced by this defiance of the tribespeople's basic natures to weld together the savage and angry heart of his huge army.
'When we are done, we shall have the entire world to roam in and none shall gainsay us.'
It was the elder Wrenyk's querying, and subsequent rejection of this promise that had led ultimately to his death and his tribe's downfall.
As the caravan neared Carthak, Ivaroth looked at the sprawling, ragged jumble of tents appearing on the horizon, their curved, peaked roofs seeming to mimic the mountains behind them to the south.
Carthak was built on the site that his tribe had been camping on when he had been expelled, and he could never approach it now without recalling his return from that brief exile, riding Ketsath's horse through the low morning mist and carrying a strange, hooded figure behind him.
A child gathering water from a stream had been the first to see him. She had looked up, wide-eyed and alarmed, as his horse had clattered on the stones fringing the curve of the opposite shore. There had been a brief pause and then recognition had dawned and she had turned and fled, calling out to her father. The pitcher she had been using rocked for a moment then tumbled over slowly to return most of its contents to the stream.
Ivaroth splashed his horse through the shallow stream and, bending low from his saddle, swept up the pitcher. With a grim smile he drained the small amount of water that remained in it, then threw it on to the rocks nearby where it smashed. He did not offer any to the figure behind him.
The child's shrill cries roused the camp more effectively than any amount of clamouring bells, and Ivaroth soon found himself walking his horse along an alleyway of hostile, shouting people. Whether intimidated by his arrogant manner or just curious to see his fate at the hands of others, however, none tried to lay hands on him.
When he reached the heart of the camp, the elders of the tribe were already gathering to meet him.
He did not wait to be addressed, however. ‘I come as your chieftain to take your obeisance, and to lead you and all my people to our greater destiny,’ he said before any of them could speak. Then, swinging his leg over his horse's neck so as not to disturb his companion, he dropped down on to the ground solidly and stared about him.
After a momentary, shocked silence, shouts of abuse and scornful denial began to rise from the crowd.
'Be silent,’ Ivaroth shouted immediately. His voice was unexpectedly powerful and seemed to echo across the whole camp. The cries faded as rapidly as they had arisen.
The elders were less intimidated. ‘Your right to be chieftain in your brother's stead is forfeit, as is your life, Ivaroth Ungwyl,’ one of them said, stepping forward. ‘Not only for defying the sentence of exile given to you for the slaying of your brother, but for the murder of Ketsath.'
'That's not for the likes of you to determine,’ Ivaroth said, unabashed by this opposition. ‘Ketsath was sent to provide me mount and sustenance, for that alone his name will be honoured by future generations.’ He glanced round the crowd until he saw some of Ketsath's kin. ‘And he died well,’ he said to them. ‘A true man. No yielder. He should have been buried thus.'
This comment and the dignified manner of its delivery caused a faint murmur of approval from parts of the crowd.
'No!’ shouted the elder, his voice shocked. ‘You add a blasphemy to your crimes, Ivaroth. You speak as though Ketsath were a sacrifice from the gods. He was a green youth that chance brought across your path in your moment of need. And he was no match for your cruel skills…'
Ivaroth pointed at him. ‘Do not purport to tell me the ways of the gods, old man,’ he said. ‘They guide my steps while they toss you hither and thither like seeds in the wind.'
The elder stepped forward furiously, but stopped abruptly as he met Ivaroth's gaze.
'I didn't return to bandy words with old men,’ Ivaroth said, waving his hand dismissively. ‘I returned to fulfil my destiny.’ Then, without losing any of his commanding presence, he became conciliatory. ‘But I shall not disregard the ways of my people,’ he shouted. ‘Set out the gauntlet. And make haste. I weary of this needless chatter.'
The remark was greeted first with silence and then uproar. His brief sojourn in the wilds had softened his brain and a death madness was now upon him, was the immediate opinion of most.
No one could survive the gauntlet! Most accused men willingly accepted banishment or slavery rather than run it.
Within minutes, the two lines of men had formed, facing one another and swinging their weighted staves. Ivaroth watched with a look of amusement on his face. Then, as the crowd fell silent, he turned to the hooded figure still waiting quietly on the horse, and held out his hand to him.
The figure moved its head in an unsettling, unnatural manner, then its hand came out, its fingers curling and uncurling expectantly. At once hesitantly and deliberately they wrapped themselves around Ivaroth's extended hand.
Then, abruptly, they released him, and waved him sharply towards the waiting lines as if they too were weary of waiting.
Ivaroth approached the two lines. Twenty men in each. By tradition they were the forty fighting men nearest to the challenger at the moment of his challenge, but he noticed that they were without exception drawn from his fiercest opponents.
A figure stepped out of the crowd. ‘This is unjust,’ he cried out to the elders. ‘These are all his enemies, to a man. Men who would benefit from his death. Why am I not there with him, I was within ten paces of him when…'
'Be silent,’ the chief elder said, rounding on him. ‘Ivaroth has no entitlement to trial by gauntlet at this stage. His life is already forfeit. This is merely to be his execution.'
The man's face twisted in rage, but to have opposed the elder's word further would have brought Ivaroth's fate down upon himself as well. Nevertheless, he snatched a staff roughly from a man nearby and threw it to Ivaroth.
Catching it, Ivaroth looked at it, and then at his would-be ally. ‘I'm indebted to you, Endryn,’ he said. ‘You shall ride by my side when this is over.'
'In the same burial cart,’ someone shouted, transforming the crowd's tension into jeering laughter.
Ivaroth, however, kept his eyes on Endryn. Then he threw the staff back to him and, with a last look at his hooded companion, walked towards the waiting lines.
'Remember this day,’ he said as he strode forward purposefully. ‘I shall not be so merciful to my enemies in the future.'
The hooded figure swayed from side to side as if moving to some rhythm that only it could hear, and as it did so, Ivaroth's voice rose above the din of the crowd like a great rolling thunderclap.
Then that was all that was left. Ivaroth the storm. His roaring voice like thunder, his movements as swift as the wind, and his terrible power, that of the lightning itself. Men, bigger and stronger than he by far, seemed paralyzed by his scything progress as with fists, feet, and murderous hurling grip, he dodged and smashed his way through the mass of flailing staves and jostling bodies with the unstoppable ease of a mountain boulder crashing
