Then, by way of a finishing touch, he reached across and embraced him before easing his horse back and saluting. The whole company saluted and then gave a formal cheer. Grygyr glared at Menedrion furiously. ‘Until we meet again, Serens,’ he said, through clenched teeth, laying his hand on his sword hilt.
It was the first recognizable emotion the envoy had shown since he had arrived and it heartened Menedrion considerably. ‘Until we meet again, envoy,’ he echoed, with a bow and a broad, satisfied smile.
The envoy and his three aides galloped off quickly, but Menedrion had the company remain at its station until they had passed out of sight. Then he had them rest and eat, and finally he sent out several small parties ostensibly foraging for firewood and fresh water, but in reality providing a source of confusing movement which might be of value to the Mantynnai following on behind.
Not that he knew where Ryllans’ men were. Deliberately he had not asked how they would enter Bethlarii territory and Ryllans had not volunteered the information. They might be in this very section of the valley right now, or they might be high on the ridges. But it did not matter. By keeping the company active for some time he was ensuring that they and not the silent trespassers would be the focus of attention for any watchers.
Finally they left. Menedrion risked taking one of the lower routes, but skirted wide when they came again to Whendrak. As they passed by the city, however, the fires were noticeably worse and this time there was no doubt about the sound of fighting.
Grim-faced, Menedrion led the company past at a steady trot.
It was night when the remainder of Arwain's platoon arrived back at Serenstad, and the fog was descending again, yellow and sulphurous.
Ryllans had set an easy pace and they had been met eventually by a concerned Drayner. Arwain, however, after a few hours’ sleep, had woken free from headache and all other ill effects of the blow he had received, save the pain of the wound itself. He pronounced himself fit to ride.
Drayner differed. ‘I'm here as the Duke's representative,’ he said at the first sign of reluctance by Arwain to submit to examination. ‘To dispute with me is to dispute with him.'
Arwain glowered at him for a moment, but he was no match for the physician's moral authority under such circumstances. With an ill grace he submitted, confining himself to a small gesture of childish defiance, by swinging athletically from his horse directly on to the hospital cart.
Ryllans caught Drayner's eye, and the two older men exchanged a brief and knowing smile.
Inside, Drayner spoke to Menedrion's physician as though, after the manner of physicians, Arwain were not there. Then he examined the wound, peered into his eyes, down his ears and, opportunely, in the middle of an increasingly angry inquiry from his patient, down his throat, all with a similar detachment.
In reply to Arwain's questions about the sudden appearance of Dream Finders in the middle of this crisis, Drayner maintained a steady litany. ‘I know nothing. You must speak to your father about it.'
In the end, however, he had been obliged to agree that Arwain would probably suffer more harm fretting about returning home as ‘…part of a damned baggage train!’ than by riding, and it was in this position that Arwain finally led his men on to the bridge over the river Seren.
There were no other travellers on it that night and it was a very different sight from when they had left two days earlier. The hovering firefly lights of the torches strewn about it emerged out of the gloom first, haloed and streaked, and giving it the atmosphere of a dimly lit cave; an atmosphere scarcely lessened by the gradual appearance of sections of its latticed sides which faded upwards into the yellow vagueness above like great cobwebs.
And the river itself seemed to be moving more slowly, its surface black and glistening and dully throwing back such of the torchlight as reached it.
No one spoke as the platoon rode slowly across the bridge, cloaks pulled protectively across their faces. The sound of the horses’ hooves, and the occasional cough, fell flat and dead in the stillness.
'This is intolerable!’ Ibris thundered as he yanked the great curtains together brutally to blot out the sight of the smothered, suffocating city. ‘It's been getting worse for a decade now.’ He waved his arms vaguely as if signalling his own futility in the face of this massive assault on his demesne. ‘And it's all Menedrion's fault,’ he continued, half-heartedly. ‘With his stinking workshops and factories. We didn't have fogs like this when I was young. If we had them at all they were grey and damp, not yellow and slimy!'
He sat down heavily in a large chair and pointed at Aaken. ‘And don't bother defending him,’ he said with a significant look. ‘He's more than capable of doing that. And I'm well aware of the weapons we need and all the other trade implications.'
He fell suddenly silent and his expression changed to one of concern. ‘When this Bethlarii business is over, if we're spared, we'll have to do something about it seriously,’ he said, after a moment. ‘This stuff's doing more harm to our people and the city than all the wars we've ever fought.'
It was an unequivocal judgement, and one he had never made before in such clear terms, although he had inveighed against the annual fogs often enough.
Aaken followed his Duke's advice and said nothing. The builder of the dazzling city needed no allies to his great cause and, having now voiced his new intent, would give short shrift to any who chose to oppose him. Besides, his outburst was not truly at the choking fog. It was at the Sened, with its bickering factions: some, for the most part safely beyond the chance of conscription, indignant and blustering, reproaching him for not summarily executing the Bethlarii envoy for his insolence and breach of the treaty, and demanding that war be declared on Bethlar immediately; others, whingeing and appeasing … we must compromise, give them this, give them that; while yet others, shrewd-eyed, were scenting the air like predators, looking for what advantage they might gain for themselves by agreeing with one side or the other.
And the Gythrin-Dy was different only in the emphasis of its rhetoric: Who's going to pay for all this? What about the disruption to trade and commerce? Special pleas for special trades, and their counterpart, ‘Would the Duke ensure this time that men will be drawn equally from all trades?’ And so on.
His own vision and will so clear, Ibris found the collective blunderings of others difficult to sympathize with and, particularly in times of emergency, would frequently remark in private that he was hard-pressed to know which of the many groups he despised the most.
On such occasions he regretted having delegated so much power to the two bodies, and it was little consolation to him that he knew he had had no alternative if his city and its dominions were not to be torn apart, either now or later, by the bloody tribal and family strife that had been the dominant feature of the land's long history.
Nevertheless, despite their failings, both houses had, reluctantly and after much noisy debate, given him the financial authority to mobilize the full army if need arose, ‘which need to be reported to this house immediately'.
Without that, he would have had to risk bearing the initial costs of the mobilization himself and had it proved unnecessary he would have received little or no compensation. Such a financial loss could have weakened his and his family's position so seriously as to jeopardize their role as, effectively, the city's hereditary leaders. Some among the Senedwrs, he knew, had looked to that in opposing his request. He would remember them in due course.
Familiar with his Lord's moods at such times, Aaken remained silent; glad that his irritation with the day's proceedings had found some kind of a voice in abusing the fog. He knew also, however, that Ibris's anger was compounded with concern for Arwain following the news of his injury brought by Menedrion's messengers. And too there were the alarming implications of the street violence in Whendrak.
The two men sat in silence for some time, Ibris lounging back and staring sourly at the faint halo around a nearby lamp.
Then, with a subdued snort of self-reproach at such idleness, he leaned forward and placed his hands on his knees, preparatory to standing up. As if on cue, the double doors at the far end of the room opened and Arwain entered, accompanied by Ryllans and Ciarll Feranc. The sound of busy activity washed in with them from the corridor beyond. It was cut off abruptly by the closing of the doors and the three men approached him.
Ibris rose quickly and without the old man's leverage on his knees he had been intending.
Embracing Arwain briefly but warmly, he pointed to his bandaged head, and with an unsuccessful attempt at curtness, asked, ‘Has Drayner seen that?'
'Yes, of course,’ Arwain replied with the slightly patronizing tone of the grown child towards its over-anxious
