"I shall. This is a risk I take, Longsword. If you're captured, if they find I have given you this, then Callodon is dust."
"I will not be captured.” Gawain said coldly, and with a certainty that made Brock shiver in the warm summer air. "How accurate is this?"
"It is accurate." Allazar asserted.
"Whitebeards made this?" Gawain sneered.
"No. I did."
Brock nodded. "On my orders. Before Raheen…Before we knew of Morloch's Breath."
Gawain studied the map. So many burned dots. It would take a long, long time…
11. Juria
When Queen Elspeth of Callodon retired to bed that night, she pleaded with her husband to come away from the window and sleep. But Brock refused. For hours he stood at the window, revelling in the cool breezes that tickled his beard. Only when he saw the western sky suddenly flare orange, and then glow a dull red, did he smile, and close the window, and retire to his bed.
Gawain sat in the saddle, studying the map again, in the glow from the burning Ramoth camp a hundred paces away. There were four more between castletown and the border with Juria.
In the distance, he thought he could still hear screaming above the roar of the flames and the crackling of burning logs. He rolled the map, tied it with the strap, and stuffed it under his tunic before turning Gwyn north again.
So many black dots upon the map. It would take a lifetime to destroy them all. And it seemed that the honourable Callodon guardsman Tallbot had been right, so long ago. The Ramoths did have some dark means of communication. Although no army of Ramoth guards swept down upon him, they were becoming more alert.
Four more towers lay in ashes by the time Gawain crested the hills that marked the border between Callodon and Juria, and each had been more testing than the last. Guards had been doubled, and now patrolled within their palisade perimeters as well as without. It did not spare the emissaries from Raheen vengeance, but it did prompt Gawain to reconsider his former and somewhat simplistic tactics.
The problem was, he knew, there was only one Gawain, and dozens of Ramoth towers between Callodon and the Dragon's Teeth. By the time he got to the vile wooden spire in Threlland, these crazed and relentless Ramoths would have rebuilt the towers in the southlands.
Nor could he expect any assistance, nor did he. Since the fall of Pellarn some sixteen years ago, the hastily assembled armies mobilised in each kingdom had dwindled. No need for armies in peacetime, and the whitebeards had assured their kings that the empire would cease its westward thrust once it had Pellarn in its dark clutches.
Of course, the kings had believed them, and of course, it takes coin to maintain an army. Thus, after such a lengthy peace, there simply were no armies. Most of the royal honour-guards each kingdom maintained had never seen combat. Most of the military, if they could be called that, were simple town guardsmen the like of Tallbot, charged with maintaining the King's Peace in their protectorates. Warriors they were not.
Thus the astonishment at Gawain's prowess with sword and arrow. Thus the fear in the Callodon patrol's eyes when they faced him outside Jarn. Thus the apparent ease with which the Ramoth towers fell, and the ease with which Gawain knew they would be rebuilt.
The cold rage which had boiled within him faded as Gwyn strode along the winding track through the woods atop Callodon's border hills. That rage now simmered, glowing darkly like the strangeness he'd seen beyond the Dragon's Teeth from the slopes of Tarn, in Threlland. It drew the light in, that strangeness, as if it would draw the sun from the very skies. Gawain's quest for justice and vengeance simmered likewise, drawing the life from his eyes and his complexion, leaving him hard-faced, stone-hearted, and single-minded.
North then, he'd decided. By way of Juria's castletown. According to the map, there was one tower waiting to be razed between him and Juria's capital. It lay on the outskirts of a small town called Bardin. It shouldn't take long. But the journey to the Dragon's Teeth would take longer, and that, Gawain knew, was the well-spring of the foul flow of robed chanters that plagued the land and called down destruction upon his homeland. Ramoth, and Morloch. Cut off the head, and the snake dies.
"Make way!" came a familiar call from ahead.
Gawain's mouth set in a cruel, thin smile. He'd seen Gwyn's warning signals and had expected simpleton brigands to emerge from the trees ahead as the ground sloped gently downwards towards the Jurian side of the border.
"Make way for Ramoth's Emissary!" he heard again, and Gwyn picked up her pace, rounding a bend in the track at a trot.
Ahead lay the border-post, little more than a collection of cabins. A trading-post, an inn, and several huts for the Callodon and Jurian border-guards, who even now were dragging aside the wooden trestles that blocked the road and marked the official border-crossing.
Gwyn, in response to her master's grim intent, slowed to an amble, continuing down the track even as the Ramoth procession began to wend its way upwards towards them.
The procession was identical to the one Gawain had seen on his first encounter with these despised vermin. A pole-carrier, eight robed acolytes bearing a sedan chair, and six mounted mercenaries. He brought Gwyn to a halt in the middle of the track, and waited, some two hundred paces away.
One of the Jurian border-guards spotted him as they were replacing the trestles in the wake of the Ramoth procession, and Gawain saw an arm raised, finger pointing in his direction. Still the procession advanced.
Replacements, Gawain thought, no doubt hastily assembled and hurrying to Stoon, or Jarn, or more likely the Callodon castletown. Ramoth must be anxious to reinforce his position in the minds of Callodon.
"Make way!" came the call again, this time directed at Gawain, who stood in plain view, simply waiting.
Behind the Ramoths, border-guards of both sides met in a small group, all faces turned up the slope towards Gawain.
"Make way for the emissary of Ramoth!"
Gawain blinked, flexed his shoulders, and checked his feet in the stirrups. Gwyn snorted derisively.
The procession slowed a little, bells jingling.
"Make way there!" the lead mercenary yelled, face flushed with indignation. And spurred his reluctant horse forward.
The main procession was a hundred paces away now, still moving forward. The mercenary was much closer, his skittish stallion jigging almost sideways up the slope to the solitary figure blocking the track.
"You! Out of the way or be a bloody carpet on which my master'll walk!"
Gawain didn't move, and simply transferred his gaze from the sedan chair to the Ramoth guardsman now a mere ten paces away. There was not the slightest hint of recognition in the mercenary's eyes. Only malice, arrogance, and blood-lust.
Gwyn lunged forward as Gawain whipped the longsword from over his shoulder, cutting the mercenary down. Gawain didn't so much as look behind him as the onlookers below gazed dumbstruck while the guard's body slipped from the saddle and the horse bolted off towards Callodon, dragging the corpse behind it.
The Ramoth guardsmen were still fumbling for their weapons when Gwyn smashed into the pole-carrier and crashed into the group of chair-bearing acolytes. Gawain's blade flashed in the sunlight, and screams mingled with the clash of steel.
The two mounted guards either side of the sedan chair were cut down in moments, taken completely unawares by the reach of Gawain's sword. Gwyn kicked and stamped, the longsword rose and fell, and the border-guards below stood agog.
One of the mounted guardsmen in the procession's rearguard must have realised who this madman was that brought such violent and remorseless death into their midst, and jumped from the saddle, discarding his sword. He'd almost made it to the border crossing when he heard the thundering of hooves on the track behind him, and the snorting counterpoint of Gwyn's excited breath.