escorted through the city in the middle of the night by palace guards and someone from the Duke's own bodyguard, he was amused by Tarrian's underlying vexation at the slowness of the pace of these ungainly long-legged creatures towering around him.
Antyr stumbled slightly as Tarrian returned his mind to its own body, and a powerful hand caught his arm. ‘Sorry,’ came the thought from Tarrian. ‘Never could manage the way you walk.'
'Are you all right?’ The officer's voice seemed loud and raucous in Antyr's ear after the subtle nuances of his thought conversation with Tarrian. But though it was authoritative, it was leavened with some genuine concern. It was the first time the man had spoken since they had left the Dream Finder's house apart from answering Antyr's initial surge of questions with a polite, ‘In due course.'
Antyr nodded. ‘Just cold and a little tired, thank you … sir,’ Antyr replied. The man nodded and released his arm, but did not speak again. The pressure of the man's grip seemed to linger for a little while and Antyr felt a small but uneasy swirl of emotions eddy through him. The hand had sustained and, for whatever reason, cared for him. It was a long time since anyone had touched him thus. Yet that same hand, with that same purposefulness, would surely have killed men in the past as its owner had made his way through the wars and through the sometimes bloody labyrinth of city and palace politics to serve with the Duke's bodyguard.
Antyr felt an unexpected surge of approval from Tarrian at this insight.
Tentatively, Antyr tried again to reach this hooded guardian. ‘I hadn't expected to be out in this filth again tonight,’ he began. ‘I haven't seen it so bad since…’ But the attempt faded into nothingness as he felt it rebound off the man's indifference.
This time it was dark amusement from Tarrian. ‘I told you before, you weasel,’ he said. ‘He's a pack leader. He won't deal with the runts of the litter except to tell them what to do.'
From the shade of his hood Antyr gave his Companion a malevolent look.
'Forgive me if I don't share your levity about this, Tarrian,’ he said. ‘But these are palace guards escorting us, and this “pack leader” is one of Ibris's personal bodyguard.’ Fear churned inside him again. ‘We could be heading for one of the palace dungeons for all we know.'
Tarrian replied as if to an exasperating child. ‘What for?’ he said wearily. ‘Personally I'd lock you up for the crimes you've committed against yourself, but you've certainly not committed any against city law. And since when do Ibris's personal officers do the Watch's work? This is business, that's all, I can feel it in my fur. It'll be some important courtier's wife…’ His tone became ironic. ‘Seeing “great horrors ahead” for the … city … the land … the whole world. A routine nightmare, nothing more.’ He paused. ‘But there should be a good fee in it-and good contacts if you shape yourself.'
Antyr frowned. ‘Minutes ago you were reproaching me for thinking like that,’ he said.
There was no immediate rejoinder. Instead there was an untypical and awkward silence, then, ‘We've still got to eat, Antyr.'
But behind the words was something else. A fear-a great fear.
'You're hiding something.’ So vivid was the alarm that had suddenly slipped from the wolf's control and bubbled up into his mind, that Antyr almost spoke the words aloud, and again his step faltered. He felt the officer's gaze turning towards him. ‘We're just preparing ourselves,’ he said with an authoritative gesture. Both voice and gesture were harsher than he had intended and he winced inwardly at his folly in behaving thus to such a man, but the officer simply turned away without seeming to take offence.
Silence hung in the minds of the Dream Finder and his Companion, while around them the rhythmic tread of the marching guards and the fluttering hiss of their torches echoed flatly through the fog.
Antyr felt Tarrian wilfully recover himself and the fear was taken from him. ‘What was that?’ he demanded urgently.
Silence.
'Tarrian!’ He shouted into the wolf's mind.
'Nothing!’ Tarrian snapped back angrily. ‘At least nothing that concerns us here.'
'That's not good enough, for pity's sake,’ Antyr said. ‘You said yourself we're probably going on a search…'
'I know where we're going, and there's nothing that concerns us here. Trust me.’ Despite the last words however, Tarrian's interruption was almost ferocious and, echoing his inner speech, his lip curled back and a deep menacing growl came from his throat.
The officer looked down at him sharply and then at Antyr, his hand moving discreetly but ominously into his cloak. Antyr returned the unseen gaze and tried to repair any damage his earlier hastiness might have done. ‘It's all right, sir,’ he said, raising his hand reassuringly this time. ‘He means no harm. He just doesn't like the fog. The scents upset him.'
At the same time he replied to Tarrian, ‘All right, all right. Calm down. You forget how nervous you can make people. I'll trust you-not that I've any alternative at the moment. But I didn't like the feel of that and I want to know what it is you're keeping to yourself. I don't…'
Tarrian interrupted him again, though now his voice was calm and controlled. ‘I'm sorry, Antyr,’ he said. ‘It was a slip on my part. We'll talk later … I promise.'
'But…’ Antyr began.
An order from one of the guards cut across his doubts and made him look up. Preoccupied with his inner debate with Tarrian, and content to be swept along by his escort, he had not paid any attention to where they were walking. Gazing around, he saw that there were now many more street torches. Some were isolated and brilliant, others formed ordered lines that curved away from him in all directions. There was something familiar in the pattern, but seeing the lights hovering seemingly unsupported in the fog disorientated him for a moment.
'It's the palace square,’ Tarrian said.
'I know, I know,’ Antyr lied irritably. ‘I'm not that addled.'
A scornful silence rose up from the wolf.
As the group strode purposefully across the square, the torches that decorated the surrounding buildings with their balconies and high, winding walkways faded into sullen dots, while overhead, several lines of torches began to converge.
They would meet, Antyr knew, at the top of the spectacular Ibrian Monument, a legacy from an earlier Duke Ibris who had had it built following a great victory by a then much frailer Serenstad over a numerically far superior alliance of other cities, if cities they could have been called in those distant days. Now, however, the horrors surrounding its origins had long been softened by time, and the monument was regarded with amused affection by those citizens of Serenstad who ever gave it a moment's thought. Current critical opinion-though not that of artists and craftsmen-patronized it witheringly.
Sure enough, as the converging lines of torches faded into the gloom overhead, there appeared ahead of the advancing group those torches that decorated the monument itself. By their light, Antyr could just make out the lower tiers of the monument; close-packed ranks of ferocious infantrymen brandishing their heavy-bladed pikes. It should have been a familiar sight, but looming out of the swirling, ill-lit fog, the motionless stone figures looked like some grim ambush and Antyr felt a brief shiver of alarm. Worse, he realized abruptly the alarm was not his, but Tarrian's. He glanced down at the wolf, but the moment was gone and Tarrian's resolute control forbade any questioning.
Then they were at the palace, its great double-leaved gate emerging from the fog to greet them. The massive close-timbered body of the gate was secure behind an ornate iron facing, brutally decorated with great spikes and bolt heads. At the centre of each leaf, lit by large, flickering torches, was a carved relief of the Duke's insignia, the lamb in the talons of an eagle. The carving was traditional and cruelly realistic, but no one commented on the merits of this particular piece of work.
In the unsteady torchlight, the insignia seemed more alive than ever, and Antyr looked at the terrified lamb nervously. Abruptly, however, his concern vanished and, for an instant, he found himself looking up at the lamb though Tarrian's eyes and savouring the warm taste of freshly hunted quarry.
'Sorry,’ came Tarrian's hasty and sincere apology before Antyr could rebel against this unexpected and unwelcome intrusion.
Returned to his own mind again, Antyr looked up at the gates expecting them to swing open. Instead a small wicket door opened anti-climactically and the officer, with Antyr and Tarrian following, strode through without even pausing. Behind them, the escort broke formation and lowered their pikes to follow in their turn. Glancing over his
