“What is that supposed to mean?” the dwarf exclaimed angrily. “You won’t fight for your life?”
“I want to do a deal,” he groaned.
“Is that so? What are you offering?”
“Spare my life and I’ll tell you where our secret rendezvous is,” he coughed, dropping his hand to press it against the wound in his belly.
“You’ll betray your leader, the heroine of Idoslane, to save a life to be spent in shame and disgrace?” laughed Hargorin. “What makes your life worth so much more than hers?”
The man moaned and struggled. It was not an easy decision. “But I have a family,” he mumbled in distress. “Four children and a wife-they all depend on me. I can’t leave them on their own. Not in these times.” He sank onto one knee as the dwarf came up closer to him. “Please spare my life and let me return to them!”
Hargorin looked down from his saddle and saw the honest concern and despair displayed on the man’s face. “What is your name?”
“Tilman Berbusch,” he answered.
“And is it a long journey back to where you live?”
He shook his head. “No. I should be able to get there in spite of the injury. I’m from Hillview.” Tilman tried to catch his breath, but his injuries made it difficult. “The secret places are in…”
Hargorin lifted his hatchet and split the man’s skull before he could finish his sentence. There was a crack, and blood poured out of the cut and out of his mouth and nose. When the thirdling pulled the blade out again, the lifeless corpse fell back.
“I shall look after your family, Tilman Berbusch from Hillview,” Hargorin promised, all malice gone from his voice. He steered his horse round the body, back to the wagon and the Black Squadron. “Vraccas, forgive me. You alone know why I do this,” he whispered, before rejoining his troop.
This orbit had cost him dear and his fortune would be plundered for it. The alfar always insisted on full payment, so he would have to make up the losses from his own coffers.
Hargorin raised his brown gaze westwards, where a dark cloud of smoke drifted up to the sky.
The Dson Aklan were finishing off their work in Hangtower, it seemed.
Mallenia took a look behind her and recognized a unit of the Black Squadron coming round the edge of the wood. She was far enough away from the dwarves. The Desirers no longer presented a danger.
But when she looked ahead, her heart sank. A huge cloud of smoke was billowing up from Hangtower; a sight that made deadly sense in light of those words of Hargorin Deathbringer.
She spurred her horse on to greater speed still, taking it back off open ground to the road to gain time.
The town gates stood wide open and several bodies-which, as she slowed her horse, she saw to be those of the sentries-lay out in the snow. A raging fire was crackling and hissing, a hubbub of voices reached her ears, and the horse snorted in fear.
The guards had been killed with precise stab wounds. The decapitated body of a woman lay in the middle of the path. Mallenia could see it was Tilda Cooperstone. Her eyes filled with tears and she was overwhelmed with hatred and apprehension, prompting her to make her way hurriedly to her relative’s house. Although she already knew she was too late.
The streets were filled with people shouting and lamenting, clutching their possessions; some were carrying their children while others were gathering what was most necessary or valuable, loading it onto horses, donkeys or oxen, and heading out of town.
Fire was out of control in the part of town where Cooperstone’s house had stood. The building was in the middle of the inferno.
Mallenia stopped, while a stream of fleeing townspeople swept past her, some blindly bumping into her horse, which danced nervously on the spot. No one was fighting the flames-perhaps they had tried but been forced to give up the attempt. Without a miracle the whole of Hangtower would be razed to the ground.
Her thoughts were racing. She had not known Tilda well but had liked her open and generous spirit. They could not have met more than ten or so times altogether and Tilda would have had no inkling of the plan to steal the tribute. And she had been killed before the alfar could have known anything at all about the robbery. It was her ancestry alone that had sealed Tilda’s fate.
The punishment that had been meted out to Tilda and Hangtower was unjustifiable. Totally unjustifiable.
Mallenia did not have any illusions that the alfar cared about justice. They were out to destroy all descendants of the house of Mallen and that was all. In that, at least, Hargorin had spoken the truth.
Somebody grabbed her right foot and the stirrup.
“It’s you, Mallenia,” said a man whose face she did not recognize at first under the soot and burn marks. His woolen coat and boots had been destroyed by the flames, as if he had been walking through the fire itself.
“Enslin?” she was about to dismount, but he stopped her with a gesture.
“Run! The Dson Aklan are still here,” he cried, fear in his voice. “They’re searching for you.” He pulled at the horse’s harness, turning the animal round to face the open gates. “You have to stay alive, Mallenia. Get away, keep up the resistance and never give up, do you hear? I was a fool not to support you all.”
“I…” She ran her eyes over the picture of the fleeing masses, about to lose all they had in the world, everything they had built up over previous cycles. Her struggle seemed pointless to her now if it dragged innocent victims down with it.
Rotha patted her leg, his badly burned hand leaving a damp mark on her boot, and she thought she could feel the heat his body exuded. “The alfar and the thirdlings are the true enemies of our people, not you,” he urged her to understand. “You are the only hope left to us. If you die, all is lost.” He gave the stallion a slap on the rump and the horse lunged forward. However hard she tried to rein it in, Mallenia could not slow it down. The confusion and noise in the alleyways, the screaming, the smell of smoke and the crackling of the fire had overwhelmed the animal’s senses.
Mallenia left Hangtower feeling more vulnerable and cast-down than ever, in spite of the success of the mission and her victory over the Desirers. Even the triumph she had scored over their leader. It was all fading fast.
III
The Outer Lands,
The Black Abyss,
Fortress Evildam,
Winter, 6491st Solar Cycle
Boindil sat in the lamplight with a broad grin on his face, watching his friend stuffing himself with food. “So they didn’t give you anything proper to eat on the other side?” he joked. “No one does rock-barley and gugul mince like Goda. Am I right, Scholar?”
They had withdrawn from the noisy company and were sitting in Boindil’s personal chambers. The walls were hung with weaponry and shields and one side of the room was covered with various maps of Girdlegard. The table they were sitting at had a detailed plan of the fortress displayed under a sheet of glass. The room spoke of attention to detail, strategy and combat readiness, such as befitted a general.
Tungdil had taken off his tionium armor and was wearing a dark beige garment decorated with runes and symbols; his brown beard was still trimmed short, as always, but now it was thicker and showed a distinctly silvery streak on the right side. His long brown hair was dressed close to the scalp with oil and hung down loose at the back. He stopped chewing. “You keep staring at me.”
“Can you blame me?” laughed Ireheart, reaching for his tankard of beer. “I haven’t seen you for two hundred and fifty cycles!”
“And now you want to know everything in a single evening by dint of staring yet more wrinkles into my face?” Tungdil countered with a smile. He took his own tankard to drink to Ireheart’s health, then noticed what was in it. “Is that water?” he said in disgust, pushing the mug away. “Is there no brandy here for a warrior? Are all your soldiers drunkards, then? And why didn’t they give me black beer like you?”