Roger Taylor - Dream Finder

He fell suddenly silent.

'Who attacked you?’ Haster asked after a moment, laying his hand over the soldier's comfortingly.

Bewilderment returned to the man's face again, but this time it was different. He shook his head. ‘Bethlarii, I suppose,’ he said. ‘But … they didn't look like Bethlarii … and I've never seen so many horses. There were thousands of them…'

'How many, trooper?’ Haster asked, stern again. The man met his gaze. ‘Thousands,’ he repeated unequivocally. ‘Thousands and thousands. The hillside was black with them. Coming and coming.’ His calm slipped away from him again. ‘And they killed everyone … We were in bad order, but we managed to form squares … but they broke … I saw it. All five companies destroyed, wiped out. Everyone.’ His face began to distort as grief started to assert itself. ‘All my friends. I…'

'Later, trooper,’ Haster said quickly. ‘Tears later. Tell us how you escaped and what your message was.'

Words spilling over one another, the young soldier told of Larnss capturing the horse and saving his life in the stream.

'Where am I?’ he said abruptly, breaking into his own narrative, his face shocked. ‘I was supposed to go to Rendd … to warn them … then go to Viernce…’ Agitated, he tried to sit up again but Haster held him. ‘Where am I?'

'You're in a farm house near Viernce,’ Haster said reassuringly. ‘You rode your horse to death, and almost killed yourself in the process. But you're safe here. Tell me what killed your other horse. It tore up the ground, you said.'

The young man's agitation increased violently and his face became white with terror. The woman stepped back in alarm and Jadric moved forward hastily to help Haster hold him down if need arose.

It was some time before the soldier was quiet enough to speak coherently again. ‘It came after me.’ He lifted his arms over his head as if to protect himself.

'What did?'

'I don't know … I could feel it … full of hatred and evil … but I couldn't see anything … the ground heaved and lurched underneath it … soil and shrubs were thrown up into the air…’ His eyes looked upwards as if he were still watching the destruction. Then he looked at Haster and seized his arm again. Haster winced at the force of the grip and with a deceptively gentle movement, pulled his arm free. ‘I jumped off my horse … rolled down the hill. My horse … burst … burst … a great shower of … blood and … bits. Terrible sound…'

Haster and Jadric looked at one another over the distraught storyteller. Both of them were pale.

'I must have caught the other horse … I suppose … I don't know … I just remember … pounding, pounding … fleeing … and the hatred … the horror … following me…’ He began shaking violently again.

Haster nodded to Jadric to hold the man down while he began searching through the medicine pouch again. Retrieving another small stone jar he hastily pushed a second tablet into the man's mouth and then held it shut. After a moment, the man's trembling diminished and his eyes closed.

The two men stood up as he relaxed. ‘He'll sleep for some time now,’ Haster said to the woman. His face was strained and, as if to reassure himself about something, he drew his hand across his forehead.

'Where's his horse?’ he asked.

'It's out in the field at the back. Where it fell,’ she replied. ‘I'll show you.'

A little later, the two men rode into the nearby village and sought out the local Liktor.

'I'll send someone up to the cottage to tend the man straight away,’ the official said after they had recounted the young messenger's tale, omitting only his telling about the destruction of his horse. ‘But all this business about an attack by horsemen on Rendd and then the city…’ He shook his head and pulled a knowing face. ‘Everyone knows the Bethlarii don't have that kind of cavalry. And they certainly wouldn't attack Viernce with it if they had; it's fortified. I think perhaps…'

There was a brief flash of impatience on Jadric's face, but a quick, almost imperceptible, gesture from Haster made him keep silent.

'They're not Bethlarii, officer,’ Haster interrupted, his voice authoritative. ‘Though they might be in league with them as they must have passed through their territory. They're tribesmen from beyond the northern mountains. We travelled through their land to come here and the horse the lad rode is one of theirs without a doubt. Go and look for yourself. You've not seen a horse like that in these parts ever, I'll guarantee you.'

'I haven't seen one like yours, if it comes to that,’ the Liktor retorted with some indignation. ‘But I'm not going to make an invasion out of it. And I can't go rousing the garrison on the strength of a dead horse, and the gullibility of two strangers for the tale of a fevered reservist who's probably nothing more menacing than a deserter.'

Haster fixed the man with a cold gaze, his presence suddenly powerful and dominant. ‘You won't rouse the garrison, officer,’ he said. ‘The commander there will, when he's considered all the relevant information which I would ask you to deliver as soon as possible. If it's a mistake, which I doubt, then no harm's been done, and if the lad's story is accurate, then every moment is vital.'

Despite a good effort, the Liktor could not hold Haster's gaze, and he glanced down quickly at some papers on the desk in front of him. Haster continued before he could speak. ‘As for being strangers, you're quite right. We're both strangers and outlanders, visiting your land for the first time. We've no desire to become involved in one of your wars.’ He reached into his cloak and pulled out a document. ‘However, we're travelling this road at the request of a Commander Ciarll Feranc to see the Duke with the army at Whendrak. As a result of our encounter today we'll now be travelling there as fast as we can. The danger's real, no matter what you might think about it. Please take the lad's story to the commander at Viernce with the same dispatch.'

He offered the document to the officer sufficiently long for him to note the Duke's insignia, then, with a salute, he turned and strode out of the office. Jadric followed him, his face set.

When the Liktor, discomfited and flushed, stepped outside after them, it was to see them galloping down the village street. ‘Reckless riding,’ he muttered to himself crossly, adding peevishly, ‘and you'll not get to Whendrak at that speed, my lords, fine though your horses are.'

'We'd better do as they say, corp. They sounded like Mantynnai to me.'

The intrusion came from a cadet Liktor who had sat silently in the background during the discussion and who now emerged behind his senior to watch the outcome. Part of his training today included learning when to keep silent. The Liktor scowled down at him ferociously.

'Have you finished those mobilization reports I gave you to do, yet, cadet?’ he thundered.

Ivaroth looked down at the blind man, lying on the rough bed. He was torn as ever. Part of him wanted to finish the old man off; rid himself of this fearful creature. That's what it'll come to in the end, he thought, as he had many times before.

Yet still he watched the rising and falling of the man's chest anxiously, like a mother with a new-born child.

Still he needed him. Needed him to sustain himself with the personal power that made him the greatest and most feared warrior among all the tribes.

He cursed himself for his folly in driving the old man to so outreach himself in attacking the fleeing messenger. But he had become so used to the old man using his power directly on physical objects as well as firing his own inner fighting spirit, that it had never occurred to him that it was anything other than effortless. The old man had broken spear shafts and sword blades, shaken the earth, causing horses to stumble, lit fires, all with a flick of his hand. And, of course, there were the wild, almost unbelievable excesses he indulged in when they visited the worlds beyond. Nothing Ivaroth had seen had prepared him for the toll that destroying that messenger had seemingly wrought.