‘Lost in thought?’ came a familiar voice just ahead of him. Rovil was grinning at him.
‘Always lost in thought,’ said Taemon sharply.
‘Or seasick,’ said Loeth. ‘Though that won’t be a problem now.’
Thoriol said nothing, happy to live up to his new name, but smiled back amiably.
Then he pulled his hood up against the chill sea-wind, taking care to avoid the crush of bodies around him, and followed his companions up the winding streets from the waterfront to whatever future awaited him in the city.
Chapter Twelve
Caradryel sat on a low, rough-hewn bench, resisting the urge to scratch his neck. He kept his back straight and his hands clasped loosely in his lap, trying to project the kind of elegant disinterest that he supposed the dawi would expect him to display.
Since arriving at the dwarf camp he had felt eyes all over him, scouring him like some slab of precious metal ready for the hammer. They were subtle, though; they never looked at him straight on, but only from under heavily lidded eyes. He could never quite meet their gaze – they turned away, quick as cats, muttering impenetrably into their plaited beards.
He’d done his best to observe them in return, making mental notes of their habits and demeanour. Their physicality was quite astonishing, from the tightly corded muscles of their exposed forearms to the heavy tread of their ironshod boots. They crashed through the undergrowth like bulls, growling, expectorating and grumbling the whole time. Yet, when they truly wanted to, they could slip into the shadows like wraiths, sinking into an almost trancelike stillness.
They smelled strongly, though not in the bestial, unclean way he’d imagined they would, but more of burned things: metal, leather, embers. If anything, they reminded him of the faint aroma he’d detected from Imladrik, the residue from the drakes he rode.
They had treated their guests well enough – curtly, with plenty of snide remarks on elgi weakness and moral cowardice, but no physical violence. That gave Caradryel at least some hope that things were not as far gone as they might have been. Grondil had escorted him and the Caledorians to a clearing some five miles from where the ambush had been laid. On the way they’d passed several heavily armoured columns of dwarfs marching west. They didn’t so much march through the forest as annihilate it, smashing aside the grasping branches and treading the splinters into the mud. Now Caradryel sat alongside Feliadh and the others, waiting; ignored by the dozens of dawi warriors that came and went across the clearing, though their hostility was palpable on the air, hanging like a stink of contagion.
Perhaps, he admitted ruefully, thinking back on his grand plans for ingratiation, on this occasion at least, I may have overreached myself.
‘Who is the one sent by Imladrik?’ came a voice then from the far side of the clearing.
Caradryel’s head snapped up. A dwarf had emerged from the trees, flanked on either side by a retinue of axe-wielders in iron battle plate. Unlike most of the others he wore no helm, and his black beard spilled openly across his finely worked breastplate.
Something about his eyes, the way he looked straight at Caradryel in the way that none of the others did, gave away his status. Those grey eyes had the fixed certainty of command that he’d only witnessed before in Imladrik. Like him, this dwarf walked with a kind of unconscious air of confidence. Also like him, there was a bleakness to him, an austere mien that lined his face and gave his wrinkled skin a greyish sheen.
‘I am,’ Caradryel said, rising from the bench and bowing.
The dwarf lord looked at him for some time before snorting. ‘You’re no warrior,’ he observed.
‘Indeed not.’
‘Why did he send you?’
‘I perform these things for him. My service is with words, not with blades.’
‘I can see that.’
Caradryel worked hard to maintain a deferential manner, fully aware of his danger. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the heavily armoured guards regarding him carefully, as if yearning to find an excuse to strike.
‘Imladrik spoke to me highly of the dawi,’ Caradryel said.
The dwarf lord grunted. ‘Imladrik,’ he repeated slowly, as if savouring the bitter taste of the word. ‘He is here again, on this side of the ocean?’
‘He is at Tor Alessi.’
‘Why did he not come himself?’
‘For the same reason, I imagine, that you do not walk in the vanguard.’
The dwarf nodded slowly. ‘Once he rode freely all the way to Karaz-a-Karak. He was our guest at the Everpeak. Did you know that?’
‘They were freer times.’
‘They were.’
The dwarf lord gestured to his retinue – the faintest movement of a finger – and the armoured warriors withdrew a few paces, crossing their arms and glowering on the edge of the clearing.
‘These are my bazan-khazakrum,’ he said to Caradryel. ‘Each has sworn a death-oath and would lay down his life a dozen times over before any harm came to me. They find your presence an insult.’
Caradryel resisted the urge to glance at them. ‘I regret that.’
‘Perhaps you think that your status will be enough to protect you.’
Caradryel could sense Feliadh and the others tensing up and willed them not to do anything stupid. Caledorian hot-bloodedness was an asset on the battlefield but a handicap for this sort of work.
‘I understand the point you are making,’ he said.
‘Do you?’ The dwarf lord drew closer to him. ‘What point am I making?’
‘What happened to your ambassadors was shameful,’ said Caradryel. Those words, at least, were no deception – Caledor had been stupid to humiliate the dwarf embassy and all but the most blinkered of his ministers knew it. ‘Imladrik regards it as an unforgivable crime.’
‘Unforgivable, eh?’ The dwarf lord came closer still. His forehead came up to Caradryel’s chest, but somehow the disparity in height did nothing to alter the unequal relationship of threat
