Ten days into the march, in Ruderin, near the northernmost finger of Anstokin, he decided it was time for a rest.
Tarlson protested. "We've got to keep moving! Every minute wasted ..." Each day he grew more pessimistic, more dour. Ragnarson had tried to get to know him, but the man's anxieties got in the way. He grew ever more worried as no news came north to meet them.
Ragnarson, while his troops were involved in maintenance and training, asked Tarlson if he would care to go boar hunting. Their guide said a small but vicious wild pig inhabited the region. Tarlson accepted, apparently more to keep occupied than because he was interested. Mocker tagged along, for once deigning to mount a beast other than his donkey.
They had no luck, but Ragnarson was glad just to escape the cares of command. He had always loved the solitude of forests. These, so much like those around his grant, infected him with homesickness. For the most part they rode quietly, though Mocker couldn't stifle himself completely. He mentioned homesickness too.
Toward midafternoon Tarlson loosened up. In the course of conversation, Ragnarson found the opportunity to ask a question that intrigued him.
"Suppose we find the Queen deposed?"
"We restore her."
"Even if the usurper is supported by the Thing?"
Tarlson took a long time answering, as if he hadn't considered the possibility. "My loyalty is to the Throne, not to man or woman. But no one could manage a majority."
"Uhm." Ragnarson remained thoughtful. He hoped Haroun's scheme wouldn't put them on opposite sides. Tarlson was the only Kaveliner with any military reputation, and he clearly had the will to manage armies.
Ragnarson wrestled serious self-doubts. He had never commanded such a large force, nor one so green and ethnically mixed. He feared that, in the crunch, control would slip away.
It was nearly dark before they abandoned the hunt, never having heard a grunt.
On the way back they struck the remnants of a road.
"Probably an Imperial highway," Tarlson mused. "The legions were active here in the last years."
iv) A castle in the darkness
Darkness had fallen. There was a quarter-moon, points up, that reminded Ragnarson of artists' renderings of Trolledyngjan warships. "What warriors," he mused aloud, "go reeving in yonder nightship?"
"The souls of the damned," Tarlson replied. "They pursue the rich lands eternally, their captain's eyes fiery with greed, but the shores of the earth retreat as fast as they approach, no matter how hard they row, or how much sail they put on."
Ragnarson started. This was another side of Eanred. He had begun to fear the man was a small-minded, undereducated boor.
"Varvares Codice," said Mocker, "same being attributed to Shurnas Brankel, legend collector of pre-Imperial Ilkazar. Hai! They send fire arrows."
A half-dozen meteors streaked down the night.
"Ho! What's this?"asked Ragnarson. They had topped a rise. Something huge and dark lay in the vale below.
"Castle," said Mocker.
"Odd," said Tarlson. "The guide didn't mention any strongholds around here."
"Maybe ruin left over from Imperial times," Mocker suggested. There was hardly a place in the west not within a few hours' ride of some Imperial remnant.
They drew close enough to make out generalities. "I don't think so," said Ragnarson. "The Empire built low, blockish walls with regularly spaced square towers for enfilading fire. This's got high walls with rounded towers. And the crenallated battlement didn't become common till the last century."
Tarlson reacted much as Ragnarson had minutes before. Mocker laughed.
The road ran right into the fortress, which made no sense. There were no lights, no watchfires, no sounds or smells of life.
"Must be a ruin," Ragnarson opined.
Curiosity had always been a weakness of Mocker's. "We see what's what, eh? Hai! Maybe find chest of jewels forgotten by fleeing tenants. Pot of gold buried during siege, waiting to jump into hands of portly investigator. Secret passage with skeletons of discarded paramours of castle lord, rings still on finger bones. Maybe dungeon mausoleum full of ancestors buried with riches ripe for plucking by intrepid grave robbers..."
"Ghoul!" Tarlson snapped.
"Pay him no mind," said Ragnarson. "Weird sense of humor. Just wants to poke around."
"We should get back."
He was right, but Ragnarson, too, was intrigued. "Like the old days, eh, Lard Bottom?"
Mocker exploded gleefully, "Hai! Truth told. Getting old, we. Calcification of brainpan setting in. We go, pretending twentieth birthday coming still, and no sense, not care if dawn comes. Immortals, we. Nothing can harm."
That was the way they had been, Ragnarson reflected.
"We explore, hey, Hulk?" Mocker stopped his mount beneath the teeth of a rusty portcullis.
"Go ahead," said Tarlson. "I'm going to get some sleep."
"Right. See you in the morning, then." Ragnarson followed Mocker into a small courtyard.
He got the feeling he had made a mistake. There was something wrong with the place. It seemed to be waiting... And a little surreal, as if he could turn suddenly and find nothing behind him.
Overactive imagination, he told himself. Came of remembering what they had gotten into in the old days.
Mocker dismounted and entered a door. Ragnarson hurried to catch him.
It was dark as a crypt inside. He pursued Mocker's shuffling footsteps, cursing himself for not having brought a light. He bumped into something large and yielding. Mocker squawked like a kicked hen.
"Do something," Bragi growled, "but don't block the road."
"Self, am listening. And trying not to be trampled by lead-footed stumbler about without sense to bring light. Am wondering about sound heard over stampede rumble of feet of same."
"Let's go back, then. We can come by tomorrow."
Logic had no weight with Mocker. He moved ahead.
So gradually that they did not immediately realize it, light entered their ken. Before they had advanced a hundred feet, they could see dimly, as through heavy fog at false dawn.
"Something's wrong here," said Ragnarson. "I smell sorcery. We'd better get out before we stir something up."
"Pusillanimous dullard," Mocker retorted. "In old days friend Hulk would have led charge."
"In the old days I didn't have any sense. Thought you'd grown up some, too."
Mocker shrugged. He no longer was anxious to go on. "Just to end of passage," he said. "Then we follow example of Tarlson."
The corridor ended in a blank wall. What was the sense of a passage that went nowhere, that had no doors opening off it?
"We'd better go," said Ragnarson. The sourceless light was bright now. He turned. "Huh?" His sword jumped into his hand.
Blocking their withdrawal was a curtain of darkness, as if someone had taken a pane of starless night and stretched it from wall to wall.
Mocker slid round him and probed the darkness with his blade. A deep thrust got results. Laughter like the cackling of a mad god.
"Woe!" Mocker cried. "Such petty end for great mind of age, caught like stupidest mouse in trap..." He charged the darkness, sword preceeding him.
"You idiot!" Ragnarson bellowed. He muttered, "What the hell?" when his companion seemed to slide out of existence as he hit the blackness.
"Might as well." He hit the darkness seconds behind the fat man.
He felt like he was tumbling down the entire well of eternity, rolling aimlessly through a storm of color and sound underlaid by the whispering of wicked things. It went on and on and on and... Without breaking stride he entered a vast, poorly lighted chamber.