Roger Taylor - Dream Finder

Larnss staggered out of the steam and ran towards his tent nearby. Outside it stood the flag of the Rendd reservists. He seized it and held it high.

'To me! To me!’ he roared.

A rider emerged from behind a tent and, with a malevolent grin, answered his call by levelling a lance at him. Hardly aware of what he was doing, but possessed by a terrible anger, Larnss held his ground until the last moment and then stepped to one side, at the same time bringing the standard down on the lance. Its point dipped and then plunged into the soft earth and the rider was hurled over the top of it to land several paces away with a sickening thud.

Larnss, wrenching the spear from the ground, heard both the wind and the life go out of the man, but it was of no more interest to him than the knowledge the grass on which he stood was green. All that mattered was the next attacker.

He was impaled on his comrade's weapon as Larnss again stepped aside and thrust the spear straight up under his chin and then released it. He heard, sharp and clear in his now profound awareness, the clink of the point striking the inside of the man's helmet as it passed through his skull.

'To me! To me!'

Another rider fell, this time to a savage sword cut that almost severed his arm.

Fleeing men gravitated to Larnss’ powerful call and the waving standard. He looked around. The camp was a sea of galloping horsemen, swords rising and falling, strange, alien flags fluttering. Here and there were islands of men standing in groups, in pairs, alone, hacking and fighting.

And the noise: the shouting, the screaming; a great paean of hatred and terror and pain.

You are finer men than any legendary warriors of heroic saga, Larnss thought, as he slashed at the face of a nearby horse. And you deserved a better leader.

The injured horse reared in panic and threw its rider, but its flailing hoof caught the Rendd reservists’ acting commander in the face and killed him instantly.

High on the hill, Endryn and the others watched the massacre enviously.

Endryn nodded appreciatively. ‘They fought well, these southlanders,’ he said. ‘No cowardice at the end. They fell like stones, each man in his place.'

He turned to Ivaroth. The Mareth Hai, however, was in no mood for singing the praises of a gallant foe. His face was livid. Endryn involuntarily edged away from him.

'Stop him,’ Ivaroth was saying, his trembling hand pointing towards the retreating figure of Larnss’ messenger. ‘Stop him.'

'We can't. He's too far away,’ Endryn exclaimed, immediately wishing he had simply galloped off on the futile errand instead and bracing himself for a savage rebuke, if not worse, for his folly.

But Ivaroth was not talking to him, he was talking to the old man standing by his saddle. The old man, his face hooded, looked up at him and slowly shook his head.

Ivaroth bent down and hissed at him. ‘If he reaches Rendd, then the news of our coming reaches Viernce also. And you see how these people fight. Without Viernce secure at our back we can't move to destroy whoever's left at Whendrak and all fails. Stop him.'

Still the old man did not move.

Ivaroth lowered his voice further, his black eyes peering relentlessly into the dark void of the hood. ‘If we do not win this land, then my own kind will kill me, let alone the enemy. And without me, you'll not be able to reach the places beyond or the other place you're so anxious to find.'

The blind man seemed to ponder for a moment, then he looked up and turned towards the fleeing messenger. Slowly, reluctantly, he raised his hands, as if reaching out to him.

A low rumbling filled the air, and the riders at the top of the hill found themselves struggling to control their mounts as the ground beneath them began to shake.

The rumbling faded, or rather, retreated. Watching the distant rider, Ivaroth saw a swathe of destruction following after him. Soil and turf, shrubs and plants were torn up and thrown bodily aside as if by some unseen giant hand. The messenger reached the top of a small incline and looked over his shoulder briefly.

Then he disappeared in a cloud of dust.

Ivaroth's eyes shone with satisfaction.

'Mareth Hai!'

Ivaroth turned round sharply at the alarm in the voice, but before he noted the speaker, he felt the old man leaning against his leg.

Then the mentor and dark angel, who had brought him this far, slithered to the ground.

The atmosphere in Ivaroth's camp was tense and uneasy. What should have been a raucous celebration of the destruction of the Rendd reservists was dampened by Ivaroth's fury at the losses they had sustained.

But Endryn knew that the fury, justified though it might have been, was not what it seemed. In reality it was a transmutation of the fear that had struck Ivaroth when the old man had collapsed.

Pacing up and down his tent, he tried to push the memory of the fear in Ivaroth's eyes from his mind as, yet again, it returned to torment him. He could not remember ever having seen Ivaroth afraid before. Even when they were children together, it had been Ivaroth, the younger, who had been the leader, riding the wildest of the horses, taking the hardest of the falls, sneaking close towards the camps of hostile tribes, and unflinchingly, contemptuously even, accepting whatever punishments the adults had meted out from time to time.

Endryn wiped his brow. Two questions bayed at his heels. Who else had seen the look in the Mareth Hai's eyes and, worse for him personally, did Ivaroth know that he, Endryn, had seen the look?

He had flicked his eyes away from Ivaroth's face on the instant, and turned them to the collapsing man, for fear of Ivaroth's dreadful response to the witness of such weakness, but …?

And who was this old man, with his blind white eyes and his flesh-crawling presence, to induce such a reaction in Ivaroth? The oft-asked question rose to displace Endryn's immediate concerns. It came now with an urgency more pressing than ever before. Not that he had ever dared to ask it. Such few as had, had received no answer other than Ivaroth's terrifying black-eyed gaze, and those foolish enough to misinterpret this and to press their inquiries had died for their pains.

Yet it should be addressed, with the camp seething with rumour, their advance halted without any reason being given, and the Mareth Hai sitting, unapproachable, by the cot of the grotesque companion he had brought out of the wilderness.

Part of the answer he knew: the old man was power-real power. Not for him the noisy conjurings of the swift-fingered shamans to gull the superstitious. His was a way of dark, watchful silence that would not grace such antics even with contempt; the way that went straight to its goal and crushed anything that stood in its path. An ancient, a … Endryn's mind hesitated at the word … a magical power; one beyond all understanding.

Yet, though he had no understanding of this power, Endryn was well content to accept the evidence of his own eyes and be grateful that he stood near to the man to whom the command of it had seemingly been granted.

He could not begin to guess at the bargain that Ivaroth might have made to make this creature his own … if that indeed was the case. But now, as mysteriously as he exercised his power, the old man had been stricken; over-reached himself in some way perhaps, as he sought to destroy the fleeing messenger.

And now the great drive south was halted. The camp idle and the men festering.

With each passing day there was the risk that random refugees who had avoided their patrols and scouts, would reach Bethlar or Serenstad and reveal what was happening. He must do something. He was Ivaroth's closest confidant. The ties that bound them were rooted strongly in their pasts, they should protect him.