'I am ready to teach him, when he agrees to the tuition,' said Phemanderac defensively.

'Though it seems as though you could have done just as well.'

The man from Inch Chanter raised his beetling brows, then laughed shortly. 'He wasn't ready.

Still isn't ready. Doesn't want to be ready. Nevertheless, he must learn!' He turned his owl-like gaze on Leith, who tried not to quail at his stare.

'You must learn, and quickly. I thought you would have listened to those provided for your instruction, but you wouldn't have it. This must change.'

'How is it everyone knows what I should do but me?'

'How is it you still don't know what you should be doing?' Jethart responded evenly.

'Do you know? I'm asking politely.' Leith's terse, angry voice belied his words.

'I'm not the one appointed to teach you.'

Leith jerked the Arrow out of the grasp of the Widuz leader and forced himself to his feet.

'You don't know, that's why.'

'Maybe youare right,' Jethart responded.

'Then I'll find my own answers,' Leith said stubbornly, and stomped away from the fire.

Phemanderac followed him into the darkness. No matter how fast Leith walked, or where he turned, the philosopher kept up with him. The young man found his angry steps taking him away from the huge camp site, past the sentries who dared not question the youth with the mighty arrow, out into the harvest fields of Westrau, but still could not shake Phemanderac off. Soon he was running, angry anew at the sheer silliness of what he was doing, at his own childishness and at what the losian must think of him, but did not stop until his pursuer caught him by the shoulder.

'Sit down, Leith,' said the philosopher's voice, his face hidden in the darkness, the only contact the hand on the youth's shoulder, and the voice in the night. 'Sit down and listen to what I have to say.'

Leith squatted on the ground and listened as Phemanderac spoke. 'I should have told you,' he said. 'I really only suspected at first, and it wasn't until you sent the Fire out to mark the losian in the crowd that I realised what it all meant. I must apologise to you.'

'What what meant? What are you talking about? Why could the Widuz warrior touch my Arrow?'

'Listen, Leith. Please; this is important. Falthans descended from the First Men are of the Fire.

That is how the Most High came to them; that is the nature of the covenant he made with them. But not all people are of the Fire. Other Falthans are descended from people who are of the Earth, like the Widuz and the Children of the Mist; still others are of the Air, like the Fenni, and there are yet more who are of the Water.'

'But they are losian?' exclaimed Leith, confused. 'They fled from the Vale, from the Fire, and are lost. How can they have another covenant?'

'Because the losian the First Men told us about are no more than a myth,' said Phemanderac firmly. 'There were people of the Vale who rejected the calling of the Most High, but I doubt any of them made it through the desert to Faltha. The people living here in Faltha before the time of the First Men were not refugees from the Vale of Youth. They came to their own understanding of the way the gods dealt with them. When the First Men arrived, they explained the existence of these people in their own terms, and the explanation also served to make the so-called losian lesser, which justified the taking of their lands. Don't you see? The Fire is of the First Men, the last-comers to this land. The land was of Earth and Water and Air before the Fire came. The First Men brought death and destruction, a great burning, and the Faltha the losian knew was laid waste.'

Leith listened to the earnest voice coming from the darkness. A cool wind picked up from the north, rustling the wheatfields surrounding them and bringing with it the cooking smells of the distant camp: the familiar smell of Instruian fare and, mixed with it, the spicy scent of exotic food.

'So if the only people the Jugom Ark is a weapon against are the descendants of the First Men, why do we see the Arrow as our salvation in the coming war?' he asked slowly, thinking carefully as he spoke. 'Surely the Bhrudwans are not of the Fire?'

'No, they are not,' came the answer. 'From what we've been able to piece together over the years, they are of the Water. But remember, the Destroyer was once Kannwar, strong in the ways of the Fuirfad. He can be touched by the Jugom Ark, we know that; he has only one hand because of the Arrow you now hold.'

'If he was of the Fire, how did he manage to subject the Bhrudwans to his will?'

'Ah, this is the great mystery,' said the disembodied voice of his friend. 'Hauthius believed that when the Destroyer drank of the Fountain of Life, in disobedience to the command of the Most High, he entered into a second covenant without breaking the first. Thus, alone of all people the Destroyer is of two covenants, Fire and Water. Together they mix in his veins, keeping him alive past his time - in the same way the spray of the Fountain preserved the dwellers in the Vale, giving them their legendary longevity. This second covenant made him acceptable to the Bhrudwans, and gave him power over them. He is the only one in the whole world who could rule over both Falthans and Bhrudwans. Such is his ambition.'

Leith shifted nervously: the Arrow in his palm seemed to burn with an even greater potency, though the flame did not flare like it often had. 'You say only those not of the Fire can touch the Arrow without hurt,' he said. 'Why can I touch it, then?'

The silence emanating from the darkness went on for some time. 'Leith, I don't know the answer to that. But somehow you and the Arrow are linked: it responds to your thoughts and emotions, it heals where you see hurt, it flames when you are angry. It is an extension of your heart. Anyone who looks on the Arrow sees you, and the strength and beauty and fire within you.' The philosopher's voice sounded suddenly thin, somehow hesitant, as though approaching a thought he did not want to give voice to.

But this fragility did not communicate itself to Leith. 'My heart? Or the Arrow's heart?

Phemanderac, I feel like I am an extension of it - as though I am a walking quiver, a place for the Jugom Ark to rest before it is finally used by its rightful owner. Sometimes it speaks to me, and makes me do what it wants! You don't know how many times I've begged it to leave me alone!' Abruptly the youth stood up and stumbled off into the darkness, clearly unable to bear the weight of what was being asked of him. The Arrow flared in his hand like a beacon: bright, clean, pure, beckoning. Desirable.

Phemanderac did not follow. Instead he put his head in his hands, and whispered to himself: 'I see your heart, Leith.' Then, unable to speak the words written on his own heart, he wept.

CHAPTER 10.

THE HALL OF CONAL GREATHEART.

THE BHRUDWAN ARMY MARCHED westwards, dragging Stella along with them.

Somewhere ahead lay the borders of Faltha; and somewhere beyond that huddled the towns and villages of home, places made by ordinary people doing everyday things, unaware of what marched towards them.

Stella shivered in her white cocoon. She knew with a dreadful certainty what marched towards the Falthans. She had seen it in all its pitiless, terrifying violence. She stared at the wastelands outside her cot, seeing nothing but the fire set to Loulea, the cries of those about to die. Nothing she could do was able to erase the horror, so much greater than even her own terror of the man who had her in thrall.

A week ago Stella had woken from evil dreams to find the eunuch leaning over her, shaking her, his eyes rolled back in his head and his flabby body rigid with the control of his master.

'Awake, Gem of Faltha!' rasped the mocking voice, in the way he had taken to calling her.

Awake, my Morning Star! I have something to show you!' As always, the power of the voice was enough to pull her to her feet and send her stumbling out into the bright morning, still in her hated silken nightclothes.

Before them lay a tattered village, nestled in a dell that obviously protected the few buildings from the winds here on the northern plateau. The houses had seen better days. Old stone walls had been more recently supplemented with animal skins, or with timber, and more recently still with sticks scavenged from the woods nearby. In all, twenty or thirty ramshackle dwellings huddled together as though awaiting a beating.

As Stella watched, the villagers were dragged from their homes and assembled on the rutted track that passed for a main street. The men, women and children were clothed in oft-mended garments; some of the children clinging to their parents went shoeless on the frozen ground.

Fear rimmed their eyes and hunched their shoulders, as though even the children knew what was about to happen.

Stella knew. This was the village which refused to supply the Bhrudwan army. Late the previous afternoon the great army had turned to the south, away from the westward road, and followed a seldom-trod path through a low range of ice-striped hills. They were here to punish the village, to make a point to the soldiers in this dark army, to teach them ruth-lessness. And, chillingly, to make a point to Stella herself. Would the Destroyer put this village to the sword just to impress me? She tried to make her stiff limbs move, though she knew what the penalty would be if she tried to flee. - Before she could take more than a step from where she stood, hands clamped down on her shoulder blades, sending shockwaves of pain through her body.

Better this . . . better this than accepting what is to come ...

When she came to, the women were being led away. She could see the last of them walking into a small glade, spear at her back, trying to take a final despairing glance over her shoulder at the loved ones she would never see again. There were two ragged, bloody shapes on the ground in front of the men and the children, and one of the shapes moved still, making noises like a newborn kitten. Someone had resisted.

Soldiers set fire to the houses, and Stella watched. They took the children and cut off their hands and feet, and Stella watched, hollowed out by the sight. She watched as they made an obscene pile of the off-cuts in front of the men. She watched as the soldiers brought pieces of wood - doors, walls, tables - up from the burning village and stretched the men out on them, nailing them to the wood like shoes to a horse's hoof. She listened to the crackling and roaring of the flames, and to the crashing of the timbers as the houses caved in. She listened as the children shrieked and the men shouted out their pain and frustration. She listened as the soldiers cheered and cried with inhuman glee. She could hear other cries in the distance, and tried not to listen to them.

The voice coming from the round-faced man beside her gave her a running account of what was happening, and she was compelled to listen. The voice passed comments on the accuracy of his archers as they stood the pieces of wood up in a row and loosed arrows at human targets. He described in detail the agony the villagers would be experiencing, and how long it might take them to die. With every word he needled her with the inescapable fact of her own power-lessness.

The long hours blurred together into a tableau of blood and suffering, a shattering vision of a Bhrudwan future. Far more directly even than her capture and mistreatment, first by Deorc and then by the Destroyer, this day spent watching the slow death agonies of an innocent village brought home to Stella the fundamental evil of life. Once she had thought the world a fair and pleasant place. Such self-indulgent folly! Now she saw more clearly. The world was a place of power and powerlessness, where the few who had power made the lives of everyone else a hell of cruelty and hate. To think anything else was to deny the truth, or perhaps to not recognise one's own place of power. People in power could do anything they wanted to the powerless.

Anything.

Leith's Falthan army continued on its eastwards march. Two days from Instruere to the time they left Mercium, then five more days to Sivithar, a large city on the south bank of the Aleinus River. There they halted to replenish their supplies, much of which had been barged up the great river from Instruere. More and more Leith learned the wisdom of his generals, who all agreed their success in the coming war depended as much on the provisioning of their soldiers as it did on the tactics debated every evening.

The army was kept well to the south of the city, to prevent desertion, drunkenness and other temptations common to soldiery. Kurr, however, insisted the Company take lodgings at a tavern in the heart of Sivithar. In the hour before sunset he walked them around the city in which he had been born and raised, the city he had fought for in uprisings nearly half a century ago. A bittersweet homecoming indeed for the old farmer. In the many years he had been absent, making a life for himself in the cold north of Firanes, many of the places he remembered were changed beyond recognition.

Some of the damage had been done, he admitted, in the uprising itself, but what surprised him most was how many of the beautiful fountains for which the city had been justly famous had fallen into disrepair. Indeed, on the site once occupied by the best of them, the beautiful Fountain of Diamonds, a squat wooden doss-house now stood, filled with rowdy sailors from the docks. Some of the city's beauty remained, but to Leith and the others even the smell of the place was of something gone slightly to seed.

That night Leith sat on a hard-backed wooden chair, poring over a detailed map of the Aleinus River. He had found a small storeroom at the back of the tavern, empty except for a few dusty mats, and took the opportunity to spend a little time there alone, away from the clamour of the army and all the people trying to get his attention. He stationed a servant at the door with instructions to refuse all callers.

According to the map, the Aleinus seemed to wander over a large area of the Central Plains.

He could make out a main channel, broader and straighter than the minor streams, though even this main channel wound back and forth like a worm seeking soft earth. Long curved lakes, channels ending in swamps and streams winding in and out of each other completed a complex picture. His generals had explained to Leith how the army would march west to Vindicare, well away from the river, to avoid coming to grief in this difficult land.

His finger traced its way up the river to Vindicare. There the river seemed to behave itself, keeping to one channel. Disciplined, easier to deal with. He laughed to himself. He knew which type of river his parents wished him to be.

A soft knocking intruded on his thoughts. Without waiting for permission his mother opened the door and stepped into the room.

'Hello, Leith,' she said brightly. 'We've missed you this last week. How have you been?'

Leith bridled at her words. How have I been? You meant to ask me where I have been.

Keeping his thoughts to himself, he set aside his map, stood up and offered Indrett his chair.

'I've been busy.'

'Anything we could help you with?' His mother smiled still, though the lines around her eyes had tightened. He knew the signs.

'Not unless you can explain this map to me,' he said. 'But thank you for offering.' It was a dismissal. Rude, far too early. He should give her a chance to speak, but he had so looked forward to time alone.

Her eyes tightened further. 'You may not want help, son, but you need it. The Company wants to be reassured you know how to use the Jugom Ark. More importantly, I want reassurance you are going to apologise to Hal for the hurtful things you said to him.'

'You are seriously telling the leader of the army of Faltha how to treat his brother?' Leith was determined not to lose his temper.

'You may hold the Jugom Ark, but you're still my child.' Instantly a look of regret passed over her face.

'Child? Mother, you cannot have it both ways. In one breath you tell me to grow up, in the next you call me a child. How long since you called Hal a child?'

'He's not a child,' Indrett said, her voice rising. 'But he can still be hurt. Promise me you'll seek him out and talk to him at least. Please, Leith.'

'I will,' he said, and his mother breathed a sigh of relief.

'I will,' he repeated, 'when I hear you have gone to him and given him the same message.' He moved to the door. 'Now, I'd be grateful if you could allow me some time to myself. I have much to think about.'

He had left his mother no choice but to leave. I was right to speak this way to her, Leith told himself as he closed the door behind her. If I give in and make peace with Hal, everyone will forget the issues I have raised.

He sat on his chair, but left the map untouched. I am not a child. But she is partly right: I must seek Phemanderac and find out more about this Arrow.

For the hundredth time he thought about asking the Arrow's voice, but didn't know what would be worse: a smug answer designed to draw him further away from his own will, or silence.

Leith sighed. Phemanderac had behaved oddly towards him in the last few days. Why did everything have to be so complicated?

Farr couldn't sleep. The small room above the tavern closed in on him as he lay on a sagging pallet. He'd offered the better pallet to the Haufuth, who snored loudly next to him. For a while he imagined he lay under a canopy of trees, but there was less comfort in the tavern bed than any bed of moss and tree roots he'd found in Withwestwa Wood. Eventually he shrugged aside his blanket and went to explore the tavern, leaving the room to the resonating throat of the big Firanese man.

The hallway creaked, as all hallways do, no matter how carefully Farr trod in his stockinged feet. The tavern below him was quiet. He had no idea how late the hour was, but was surprised to hear a thin sound on the stairs. Someone else was awake. Wounded? He rushed forward. No. Someone was sobbing.

Indrett sat on the top stair, her head bowed, tears falling on to her lap. A pale light filtered under a door to her right, gently illuminating her shaking frame. She seemed completely unaware he stood a few paces from her.

'Indrett? Lady?' he whispered, then spoke her name again more loudly. 'Indrett? Can I be of assistance?'

She raised her swollen face. 'No,' she said. 'Not unless you have some magic word to unlock the stubborn will of the Arrow-bearer.'

Slowly the proud woman unburdened herself to the most unlikely of counsellors. Fair tried to understand how a lad like Leith could argue against a destiny so clearly given him by the Most Highhimself. The more he listened to the story, the more his incredulity grew. In his experience men faced their tasks square-on, without resorting to sophistry to excuse them from their duty. If only the Most High had chosen Wira, or he himself, for such an honour. He would not have taken a backward step! He would have taken the Jugom Ark and faced the Destroyer in single combat, if need be!

'Indrett, we must talk with the Company about this,' he said to her. 'Leith must be made to see sense, or to relinquish his task to someone more worthy.' Righteous anger filled his voice, making it husky. 'Let us call a meeting and make everyone aware of your concerns. What you have said tonight is far too important to keep to yourself. I will organise it at the earliest opportunity.'

Indrett nodded her agreement. Farr patted her shoulder a couple of times, then made his way back to his room and his pallet.

The Company took their accustomed position at the head of the ranks early the next morning.

Leith turned in the saddle and looked back at his fighting force, then lifted his arm, letting the Flaming Arrow blaze out, occasioning a mighty shout from fifty thousand throats and signifying the start of the day's march. Shaking his head, he turned his face to the east.

Already his great army had suffered casualties. Two days ago a horse threw a shoe, apparently, tossing its rider into a ditch. The resultant broken wrist invalided the young man back to Instruere. Leith had seen the youth leave: he'd tried to put a sad face on his misfortune, but a week with the army had taught him, like many other volunteers from Instruere, just what an undertaking they were marching towards, and he was unable to keep his relief from showing. His captain reported the mishap to Leith himself, taking the opportunity to see the Jugom Ark at close quarters, and commented on the difficulties he was having maintaining discipline among his young charges. He looked Leith in the eye and spoke deprecatingly, but in a voice devoid of irony, about the callowness of youth. Leith watched the youngster walk slowly away in the direction of Sivithar's docks with more than a little envy.

Of many other mishaps, the worst was perhaps a drunken brawl in which two hard-bitten men from south of Mercium were beaten senseless by a number of as-yet-undiscovered assailants.

The blame was being laid squarely at the door of the losian army, but Leith seriously doubted this, guessing suspicion of the losian was inflamed by their seemingly lax discipline. Maybe he'd have to say something about that.

As was their custom, the generals of his army rode close by early in the morning, passing on any important information about their men. It was merely an act of politeness, Leith knew. The group of stalwarts who served as leaders of the Instruian, losian, Deruvian and Straux forces managed not to be condescending only by the barest margin. The Captain of the Instruian Guard was the youngest of the group, the most willing to hear anything the Company might wish to say, but also the lowest in the informal pecking order. Excepting the losian leaders, of course, who were treated with polite indifference. Axehaft made the point privately to the Company that of the War Council only he himself, Kula of the Widuz and the Fenni warrior Nutagval had any real experience in fighting an enemy. The Instruians had fought amongst themselves, not the same in losian eyes. From the look of them, the Westrau additions would be more trouble than they were worth. Only the Deruvians seemed to have the bearing and dedication necessary for proper soldiering, according to Axehaft of the Fodhram.

This morning there was little to discuss. The supplies awaited them at the docks, causing Kurr to note that the army itself might have taken the same route, thereby saving valuable time. To Leith's delight the generals did not agree, instead applauding his decision to strike southwards and make certain of his reluctant ally. He tried to restrain his smile at the old farmer's discomfiture, but from the scowls directed at him, he doubted he had succeeded.

They left the Aleinus River at Sivithar and struck out eastwards towards Vindicare, the main city of Austrau, the eastern province of Straux. To the north of their route the wide plains descended into the stinking mires and stagnant lakes of the Maremma, through which the Aleinus picked its way in a never-ending series of snake-like bends, switchbacks and oxbow lakes. To their south, and drawing ever nearer as they marched, were the Veridian Borders, from which, Kurr told Leith, the Company descended on their way north out of the desert slavelands of Ghadir Massab. Indeed, he said on the fourth day east of Sivithar, the army now followed the very road they had used. To the right, in the distance, he pointed out the northward-thrusting spur of ancient rock down which the Hamadabat Road wound, and upon which stood the one-time fortress of Fealty.

Out on the plains of southern Straux the army made good time, as much as fourteen leagues a day. 'It's all a matter of leagues marched per day,' Leith's generals would tell him. 'Ten leagues a day for a hundred days and we will arrive at the Gap ready to fight.' But increasingly he noticed their guarded looks as they told him this, and he wondered how they might keep this pace up in more difficult terrain. He remembered the slowness of their journey over Breidhan Moor. 'Are there any places like that?' he asked them, the reply to which was a shuffling of the feet and the odd equivocal comment: 'The Nagorj can be tricky in places,' or 'You wouldn't want it to snow in the Vulture's Craw.' Leith's anxiety grew as these comments were repeated.

Eventually he made them show him the whole journey on a map. Their progress eastwards from Instruere, a small dot near the coast on the left margin, was marked by a red line with a cross showing every place the army had stopped for the night. Vindicare stood in the path of the red line, still more than seventy leagues to the east, on the banks of the Aleinus River which, as Leith remembered from his own map now lining his cloak, described a huge loop to the north between Sivithar and Vindicare. Their projected route was dotted in charcoal black, and east of Vindicare it seemed to follow the river very closely. 'That's because we're taking to boats between Vindicare and the Gates of Aleinus,' said his generals and strategists. 'We told you all this, remember? That's why we sent anyone with shipcraft ahead on swift horses.' Leith nodded, not bothering to correct their impression he had forgotten their words. From the writing on the margins of the map he could see that shipping the army up the great river would save them many days of walking and cut more than a week off the total journey. 'My masterstroke,' said his chief steward proudly.

The map allowed a total of fifty days for the army to reach the Gates of Aleinus, nearly three-quarters of the way across the parchment, then another fifty days for the last quarter. 'It will be colder then,' he was told. 'We will have to allow for winter storms.' The Aleinus was not navigable above the Gates, and the army would have to negotiate the Vulture's Craw, a narrow and difficult path. The Wodranian Mountains to the north had no paths suitable for armies, and no food supplies to sustain them, while the Taproot Hills to the south were too tall, with high passes unable to bear a winter traverse.

Once the passage of Vulture's Craw had been effected, the remainder of the journey was arduous but by no means impossible, according to his strategists. East of Kaskyne, the Redana's capital, which the map said they would reach after sixty days, they would follow the north bank of the Aleinus through Piskasia to the town of Adolina at the mouth of Sivera Alenskja, the vast and impenetrable upper gorge of the great river. They would reach this small town at the eastern limit of habitable lands after eighty-five days' marching, leaving the army fifteen days to make their way up the Northern Escarpment and on to the Nagorj Plateau. From there they would make their way eastwards to the Gap, a low saddle between the huge bulk of the northern Aldhras Mountains and the cold, dry spikes of the Armatura to the south, where they would dig in and wait for the Bhrudwans to appear.

One hundred days in total, of which eighty-eight remained. As he rode on down the road, doing the sums in his head, farmers paused in their harvest to cheer the passing army and the boy with the burning arrow. Leith did not acknowledge them. He could not stop thinking about the mathematics. Fifty thousand soldiers, one thousand leagues, one hundred days - and one unpredictable enemy, who might already, at this very moment, be pouring through the Gap like a colony of ants bent on picking the Falthan larder clean.