At the foot of the city way-post, Grimm saw a hunched, hooded man, who looked up as they drew near, although his face was in shadow.
Could it be… it must be!
He knew only one man who would cover himself from head to foot on a glorious, sunny morning like this.
'Hold up, General!' Grimm said, scrambling from the wagon as Quelgrum brought it to a halt.
'Tordun!' he crowed, smiling. 'I'm so glad you could make it.'
The titanic albino rose to his full height, dwarfing the tall, slender mage with his sheer bulk. 'I heard you might need some help, Questor,' the giant warrior rumbled. 'So here I am.'
'How long have you been waiting here? Why didn't you enter the city?'
'I've been here two days. I thought Miss Drexelica might be around,' the albino muttered, and Grimm understood his reticence.
Despite Tordun's imposing physical presence and battle prowess, the mage knew the muscular swordsman was as nervous and halting as a callow adolescent in the presence of the fairer sex. On their one Quest together, Questor Xylox had decreed that Tordun should share a tent with Drex, pretending to be her lover. This charade continued in Quelgrum's desert encampment. It appeared that the albino was too embarrassed to confront the girl again, despite the fact that he had been a model of propriety in her presence.
'Greetings, General,' the pale titan said, changing the subject.
'Hello, Tordun,' Quelgrum said with a polite nod. 'It's good to have you aboard. I'm sure Miss Drexelica will be sorry to have missed you.' The old soldier's eyes twinkled. 'She's Baron Grimm's housekeeper now,'
Grimm was sure he had not fooled the General for a moment with this story, and he hid his embarrassment under the guise of suppressing a cough. This was just a little good-natured ribbing.
'General,' the swordsman replied, proffering a polite half-bow. Turning to the mage, he said 'May I join you, Questor Grimm?'
'Please do, Tordun. I'm just relieved you came. I…'
An angry-looking head popped out from under the canvas cover of the wagon. 'What's the bloody hold-up here? I…' Guy said, and Grimm smiled at the wide-eyed astonishment on the magic-user's face as he beheld the pasty man-mountain. At last, it seemed, somebody had managed to render the moody Questor speechless!
'Guy Great Flame, may I present Tordun, of whom I've told you so much? Tordun, this is Questor Guy, called the Great Flame. I'm sure you'll get on well together.'
'Greetings, Lord Questor Guy,' the albino said, and Grimm could have sworn that the ground trembled at the sound.
Wordless, Guy nodded, ducking back into the wagon as Tordun climbed aboard.
'Are we ready to go now, Lord Baron?' the General asked from his lofty perch. 'Is everyone aboard now?'
With a broad smile on his face as he remounted the vehicle, Grimm said, 'This is the full complement, I'm pleased to say. Heaven help Lizaveta, with Tordun on our side!'
The wagon rolled on and the albino's deep bass voice joined the cheery chorus in the back, but Grimm was pleased to note that Guy's voice was somewhat more subdued than it had been.
Quelgrum turned left at a fork in the road, past a leaning signpost reading 'YOREN-30 MILES'.
Grimm knew both Crest and Harvel regarded Yoren as a dangerous place, but he could no longer bring himself to worry about it, with Tordun on his side. Everything would be fine.
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Chapter 24: Yoren
As the wagon rolled towards Yoren, it seemed to Grimm as if all colour had been washed out of the land. The afternoon sun still shone as brightly, but the young mage was struck by the town's dilapidated appearance, which seemed to dominate the landscape, depressing and subsuming it. He saw an endless expanse of grey stone, from ancient, crumbling remains of city walls to small, boxy dwellings. Even the flagstones of the ramshackle streets and thoroughfares seemed to be made of the same dull-coloured substance. The conurbation appeared not so much to have been designed as thrown together by some giant, petulant child who had discarded his unwanted toys.
Imaginative architecture and town planning don't seem high on the list of priorities here, he thought, with a wry smile, reflecting on the cheerful appearance of the reborn city of Crar.
The Questor saw no towering battlements, portcullises, forts or other protection against possible invasion; Yoren seemed defenceless.
Not too surprising, I suppose. Who'd want to take over this benighted hole? If some insane horde of barbarian raiders stormed in here and demolished the place, it'd probably improve it no end. And from what I've heard of the gentle people of Yoren, a band of marauding savages would probably be regarded as a minor public nuisance.
The only nod in the direction of civic defence appeared to be a small hut by the side of the road, beside a flimsy, bleached wooden barrier before which Quelgrum brought the vehicle to a stop.
Grimm noted the horses' wild, staring eyes, their fitfully-flicking tails and their nervous whickers and whinnies.
Wonderful. This place even makes the animals uneasy.
'Hello! Anybody there?' Quelgrum cried in a commanding, parade-ground bellow, to be greeted by a wall of silence.
Grimm frowned. 'We can just drive round this, General. It doesn't seem much of an obstacle to me.'
'I think you may be right, Lord Baron. We don't want to hang around here all day.'
As the General raised the reins, a dishevelled man walked out of the hut. He wore a strange melange of armour: faded, cracking leather, rusty scraps of chain mail and dented fragments of steel plate all figured in his bizarre clothing. Grimm noted that the wooden shaft of the guard's halberd was warped and parched, and the head was dull and pitted. This, clearly, was not a man of arms who took pride in the condition of his equipment, or of his appearance.
'Byersel? Whassit?' The guard spoke in a guttural, almost impenetrable accent.
'I'd love to put this fellow through a few weeks' basic training,' the General muttered to Grimm. 'I'd soon shape him up, I promise you.' In a louder voice, he addressed the shabbily-dressed man. 'What's that? Speak up, can't you, man?'
'Just who ju fink y'are? Comin' in here, shoutin' th'bloody odds 'sif you owned the bloody place!' the scruffy watchman whined. 'Gotta job t'do, ain't I? Buy or sell, what's it to be?'
Quelgrum shrugged. 'We must be here to buy, I suppose, watchman. We don't have anything to sell.'
'Show me the colour o'yer money, then.'
Grimm saw the General's jaw tighten, and put his hand on the soldier's arm. 'We don't want to start trouble before we've even got here, General,' he muttered.
Cursing under his breath, Quelgrum showed his money-pouch to the untidy, ill-mannered moron. 'There's plenty here.'
The drab little man smiled, displaying a mouthful of decaying, broken teeth. It was not a friendly smile. 'Gimme eight gold, else yer can't come in.'
Quelgrum exploded. 'Eight gold pieces, just to enter this stinking hellhole? The whole place isn't worth a copper groat!'
'You must want sumfink.' The guard's face bore a mask of naked, feral avarice. 'Else you wouldn't be here. There's some fings you can only get at Yoren; fink I don't know that? You must want sumfink awful bad to come here, a man wiv your money. Gimme eight golds, and I'll let yer froo.'
'I'll give you the back of my bloody hand!' the General snapped.
''Ere, 'old up, mate. You don't want to freaten me!' The shabby sentinel brandished his corroded weapon. 'I ain't afraid o'you. That'll be nine golds now, so 'and it over or piss off.'
This is going nowhere, Grimm thought. It's time to use a little persuasion.
His Mage Sight showed the guard's mind as a grey, greasy worm squirming in a soupy sea of muck,
