that!”
The flare sprung off the vehement statement struck Sethvir as a spark touched to flame. If Vivet and her kin believed Arithon’s spirit could be leashed, they soon would find their net snagged on the thorn in the blossom of Torbrand’s descent. The Sorcerer winced. Almost, he pitied the Ettin elders, subject to the wicked explosion their repressive culture deserved.
Indeed, the bleak hour had come, forecast over two hundred and fifty years ago: the dimming of Arithon’s psyche, engineered by Koriathain through the tactical severance of Elaira’s influence. Once, on a damp tide-flat by a drift-wood fire, Traithe had served the enchantress due warning: “… for good or ill, you’re the one spirit alive in this world who will come to know Arithon best. Should your Master of Shadow fail you, or you fail him, the outcome will call down disaster …”
Sethvir bowed his head. Tangled hair like shaved ice in the moonlight streamed through the library casement, he listened with every hair prickled erect.
No whisper arose from the absent colleague whose silence stayed adamant: Davien ventured no overture towards a contrite return to his colleagues. Yet Althain’s Warden sensed the first whisper of avalanche. That dire wave of fore-running impetus, set off and gathering force, that could see the riven Fellowship of Seven restored back to unity at their full strength. Or else tonight’s consequence tripped their downfall. If destiny’s card came to shatter their covenant, entropy must not be allowed to unravel the harmonic that bridged the arc of Athera’s mysteries.
Summer 5923
Provocations
The Hatchet thumped down his mallet fist hard enough to displace the stones weighting his tactical maps. Correspondence and lists exploded in flurries from the stacks on the trestle in front of him. “Say again!”
Officers summoned for his revised orders quailed, while the mousy scribe startled out of dictation squeaked and splayed his best pen nib.
Few dared to bait The Hatchet’s ill temper. Not since the momentous disaster that routed his invasion of Havish, and never under the redoubled fury incited by unforeseen set-backs.
“My summer campaign plan’s bedevilled, thick as pests in plague-ridden batches.” Up to his nose in the scent of hot horseflesh steamed off the latest courier, the Light’s supreme commander fumed on, “Speak up, boy! Spit out whatever foul news has blown in here with the squall.”
“The galley-man you hired for transport from East Bransing has defaulted on your signed contract.” The pimpled adolescent dripping on the carpet braced rattled nerves and yanked off the sling hanging his dispatch case. “Best read the details, Lord. The vessel in question’s already sailed.”
“This happened yesterday?” The Hatchet hopped in livid distemper. “Light scorch her venal master and broil his skanking carcass! Show me the merchant captain alive who won’t duck a war-bond requisition for a bribe!”
“Not for coin, and not for apostasy this time,” the browbeaten courier dared to insist, too exhausted to cower, as The Hatchet’s cobra-quick snatch ripped the packet away from him.
The senior staff waited, trapped in the storm’s eye. Tension crackled the pause. The guttering lamps distorted the shadows of the command tent’s grisly, stuffed-animal trophies, while the gusts outside battered the torrential rain, and leaks through the canvas pavilion pattered The Hatchet’s volcanic annoyance.
He cut the soaked fastenings with his knife, ranting onwards in his bass growl, “The two companies I just force-marched into Dyshent are stalled at the dock without shelter because of your tardy disclosure.”
The courier wrung his gloves in petrified silence. His desperate urgency had lamed two mounts, and brought a rider to grief on the road. The dispatches delivered at such cost in flesh became slapped on the table. Unrolled, the official wax seals and gold ribbon should have curbed the most arrogant displeasure.
Yet the panoply of High-Temple authority failed to quench The Hatchet’s vexation. He read, lips clamped, his fuming breaths marked by the flutter and tap as moths blundered into the lamp panes. Soon enough, the gist raised his stentorian bellow. “Did you know the contents of this before you darkened my threshold?”
The courier unlocked his chattering teeth. “Rumour’s flying like bale-fire. Has your hired galley in fact been pre-empted on the pretext of divine authority?”
“Pirated, rather!” The Hatchet punched a stub finger into the salient line: ‘… her captain forced to cast off in duress, or watch his vessel burn to the waterline with all hands …’
When the next leaf disclosed the run-amok avatar’s motive, The Hatchet’s complexion turned purple: ‘… the s’Ilessid scion’s heretical pursuits have not abated … his movements were contained until he slipped the over-confident grasp of our Examiner at East Bransing … now believed to be moving to thwart your advance to eradicate unreformed clansmen …’
“Lysaer? Coming here?” The Hatchet stiffened. “Light’s havoc! No way I’ll suffer the next dose of ruin sown by that dandy’s rank cowardice!” His meaty fist banged again. Parchments encrusted with seals bounced and settled, while the stacked notes that directed supply collapsed in a slithered cascade. “The mincing flit abandoned the field when the battle turned sour at Lithmarin! I’ll hang the daisy by his curly short hairs before he befouls my tactics again!” A gesture spurned the offensive documents, while tactical diagrams and requisition slips sighed to rest in the shavings spread underfoot to sop up the puddles. “Yon High Priest’s blustering drivel is useless. We’ve no facts to plot a sound strategy, besides, thanks to that lame-brained examiner. Which way will the avatar jump, plying havoc? Back towards Rathain, or will he muck into my campaign in north Tysan?”
The nervous courier disclosed the development too sensitive to be penned under seal. “The latest informants’ reports favour Tysan. The co-opted galley weathered the storm in a cove down the coast, which suggests her course lies to the west.”
“Flimsy guess-work!” The Hatchet scraped at the stubble on his bull-dog jaw. “No one can say with authority what that whey-faced wastrel intends. He might have been out-bound for Falgaire or Morvain before heavy seas forced him to snug down.” Squat as an armoured battering ram, the Light’s first commander shoved his chair back. Kicked papers fluttered like birds in his wake as he belaboured his officers. “I want that galley overtaken and searched. Cuff every living deck-hand aboard and shake them down by rough questioning!”
Tasked with what seemed a suicidal assignment, a dismayed staffer denounced, “You believe the avatar’s elsewhere?”
“I like my targets kept tidy,” The Hatchet cracked in earnest. “If the detail you send gets scalded alive, we’re hell-bound to know, like the weathercock, which way Lysaer’s pointed for certain.”
The pavilion headquarters seethed into motion, the dismissed officers treading over the papers jettisoned under changed orders.
“I’ll have the veteran divisions split into skirmish groups. Equip the best to cross the mountains towards Valenford, then swing them north to engage the rest of my battle plan soonest. The second wave will fan out behind and muster beneath the western foot-hills.”
“Supply’s caught short-handed,” a rattled voice protested. “Rearrangements on that scale are going to take days!”
“Then improvise, quick!” retorted The Hatchet. “Hungry men can forage at need during summer. This post will be stripped. Lean troops on the march are better off than a batch of post-sitting, burned skeletons, paralysed by ineptitude!”
Against scoured silence, The Hatchet plunged on. “I’m saving our finest! Do you understand? March them out before dawn. Take what food they can carry. No wagons. No tents! I want speed. The heavy equipment left here must maintain the illusion we haven’t dispersed.”
Cooks