the Mountain Folk always prefer safe to sorry.
‘What’s that noise?’ Garin said. ‘Sounds like shouting.’
Kov rose to his feet and listened. ‘It’s the guards.’ He shaded his eyes with his hand and gazed across to the wall. ‘Strangers coming.’
A cluster of guards surrounded the strangers and led them across – four human men, leading riding horses and a packhorse. As they drew near, Kov recognized the sun blazons of Cengarn. One of the humans, a dark-haired fellow, shorter than his escorts, with the squarish build of someone whose clan had mountain blood in its veins, also looked familiar.
‘It’s Lord Blethry, isn’t it? The equerry at Cengarn.’
‘I think you’re right.’ Garin held out his hand. Kov handed him his walking stick. With its help Garin hauled himself to his feet and looked out towards the wall. ‘Yes indeed, that’s Blethry. Those other fellows look like a servant of some sort and then an armed escort.’
Kov rose, too, and watched as dwarven axemen marched the human contingent across the park land. At the foot of the stairs, they paused and allowed Blethry to shout a greeting in Deverrian. ‘Envoy Garin! May I come up?’
‘By all means!’ Garin called back in the same. ‘What brings you here?’
Blethry waited to answer till he’d panted his way up to their perch, some hundred and twenty steps high. He wiped the sweat off his face with one hand and snorted like a winded horse.
‘War, that’s what,’ Blethry said. ‘The Horsekin are building a fortress out in the Westlands. We figure they want a staging ground for a strike at our borders.’
‘And if they take over your lands,’ Garin said, ‘they’ll be heading north, no doubt, for ours.’
‘No doubt. Gwerbret Ridvar’s hoping we can count on your aid to destroy the place. It’s called Zakh Gral.’
‘Our High Council will have the final word about that. Now, as for me personally, I hope his grace Gwerbret Cengarn doesn’t take this as a slight, but I’ll have to send my apprentice here to Cengarn with the news, whatever it may be. I can barely walk.’ Garin used his stick to point at his wrapped and swollen ankle.
‘I’m sure young Ridvar will understand.’ Blethry turned to Kov and bowed. ‘My thanks for accompanying us.’
‘Most welcome,’ Kov glanced at Garin, who was smiling in what appeared to be relief. It’s not the ankle, Kov thought, he just doesn’t want to leave the safety of the dark.
‘Kov,’ Garin said, ‘go down and help his lordship’s men tether their animals and set up their tents and suchlike. Then join us in the envoy’s quarters.’
Lord Blethry had visited Lin Serr several times, but the sheer size of the place always left him awed. The steel doors led into a domed antechamber that could have held Cengarn’s great hall twice over. The shaft of sunlight from the open doorway cut across the polished slate floor and pointed like a spear to a roundel, inlaid with various colours of stone to form a maze some twenty yards across. Beyond it, on the curved far wall, tunnels opened into distant gloom and led down to the deep city, forbidden to strangers.
Some ten feet in, well before they reached the floor maze, Garin turned left, hobbling along with his stick, and led Blethry down a short side tunnel that ended in a tall wooden door, carved in a vertical pattern of chained links. Yet for all its massive appearance, when Garin poked it with his stick it swung open without a sound to reveal a small room, bright with sunlight.
‘Here we are,’ Garin said. ‘You’ve stayed here before, haven’t you?’
‘I have,’ Blethry said. ‘It’s a comfortable place.’
A big window made the small room seem large and airy, thanks to its view of the green park land far below. Tucked against the inner wall stood a bed, and near it a table and a pair of wooden chairs. On the walls hung steel panels, chiselled and graved into hunting scenes. Garin shoved a chair in to the most shadowed corner of the room, then lowered himself into it with a grunt of pain. Since the last time Blethry had seen him, a thick streak of white had appeared in Garin’s close-cropped hair. His short beard had turned entirely grey.
‘I’ll have Kov bring in another chair,’ Garin said. ‘Brel will want to join us once he hears the news.’
Indeed, Brel, the avro, to give him his dwarven title of ‘warleader’, arrived at the same time as Kov and the third chair. He strode in, stood for a moment to glower at Garin, then sat down in a chair near the window and stretched his legs out in front of him.
‘The Council’s called an emergency meeting,’ he said to Blethry. ‘They meet down in the deep city, of course, so you’re to describe the situation to me, and I’ll relay it to them.’
‘Very well,’ Blethry said. ‘In that case, I’d better speak formally.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I come in the name of Ridvar, Gwerbret Cengarn, to call in the aid owed to us in time of war from the Mountain city of Lin Serr. By treaty and solemn oath we are bound together to render assistance to one another for our mutual benefit.’
‘He speaks the truth.’Garin joined this recitation of ancient formulae. ‘We did renew our pact on its prior terms after the hostilities known as the Cengarn War, concluded at the date 1116, as is written in the –’
‘Worms and slimes!’ Brel broke in. ‘I know all that. If the Council can’t remember it, they have gravel where their intellect ought to be.’
‘It’s a question of the proper wording,’ Garin snapped. ‘The Council needs to know that we’ve heard Lord Blethry speak the proper wording, and that I responded in the same way.’
Brel growled and cross his arms over his chest.
‘As is written in the documents pertaining to that war, that time of blood and darkness.’ Blethry took over again. ‘In that most solemn instance we did celebrate a victory over the army of the peoples known to us as Gel da’ Thae or Horsekin, when they made so bold as to besiege our city of Cengarn. In thankfulness for that aid, we did renew our bonds with the Mountain Folk who do inhabit the city of Lin Serr.’
‘I too did witness this,’ Garin said. ‘So be it.’
‘Are you two done now?’ Brel said.
‘We are.’ Blethry grinned at him. ‘You can tell the Council that we brought a sacrifice to the temples of proper manners.’
‘Huh!’ Brel snorted profoundly. ‘Oh, and welcome! It’s good to see you, by the way.’
‘My thanks.’ Blethry smiled again. ‘It’s good to see you too.’
Young boys carrying trays of food marched in and began to lay a meal upon the table: a platter of bats, disjointed and fried, a soft mushroom bread, and stewed purple roots of a sort new to Blethry. Kov shut the door after them, then sat on the floor for want of another chair. Garin poured everyone pewter stoups of a thick brown liquor, which Blethry had encountered before. He drank it in small sips and made sure he stopped well before he finished it. He noticed Kov doing the same.
While they ate, Blethry expanded upon his reason for coming to Lin Serr. Some of the savage Horsekin
