The 1st Chronicles of Thomas Covenant #2: The Illearth War (51 page)

The Warmark himself had said nothing more after describing his final strategy.

He wrapped himself in his blindness and allowed Mhoram to place him on Mehryl’s back.

He did not ask about Fleshharrower’s army, though only the speed of the Ranyhyn saved him and his companions from being trapped in the city. Despite the scream of frustration which roared after the riders, he carried himself like an invalid who had turned his face to the wall.

And Lord Mhoram also suffered. After the battle of the masterplace, fatigue and dread had forced tenacious fingers into the crevices and crannies of his soul, so that he could not shake them off. Yet he helped the First Haft and Lord Callindrill as best he could. He knew that only time and victory could heal their wounds; but he absorbed those parts of their burdens which came within his reach, and gave back to them all the consolation he possessed.

There was nothing he could do to ease the shock which Amorine’s report of the Warmark’s final plan gave Quaan. As she spoke, the Hiltmark’s concern for her gave way to a livid horror on behalf of the warriors. His expression flared, and he erupted,

“Madness! Every man and woman will be slain! Troy, what has become of you? By the Seven! TroyWarmark!” — he hesitated awkwardly before uttering his thought “Do you rave? My friend,” he breathed gripping Troy’s shoulders, “how can you meditate such folly?”

Troy spoke for the first time since he had left Doriendor Corishev. “I’m blind,” he said in a hollow voice, as if that explained everything. “I can’t help it.” He pulled himself out of Quaan’s grasp, sat down near the fire. Locating the flames by their heat, he hunched toward them like a man studying secrets in the coals.

Quaan turned to Mhoram. “Lord, do you accept this madness? It will mean death for us all-and destruction for the Land.”

Quaan’s protest made the Lord’s heart ache. But before he could find words for any answer, Troy spoke suddenly.

“No, he doesn’t,” the Warmark said. “He doesn’t actually think I’m a Raver.” Inner pain made his voice harsh. “He thinks Foul had a hand in summoning me-interfered with Atiaran somehow so that I showed up, instead of somebody else who might have looked less friendly.” He stressed the word looked, as if sight itself were inherently untrustworthy. “Foul wanted the Lords to trust me because he knew what kind of man I am. Dear God! It doesn’t matter how much I hate him. He knew I’m the kind of man who backs into corners where just being fallible is the same thing as treachery.

“But you forget that it isn’t up to me anymore. I’ve done my part-I’ve put you where you haven’t got any choice. Now Mhoram has got to save you. It’s on his head.”

Quaan appeared torn between dismay for the Warward and concern for Troy.

“Even a Lord may be defeated,” he replied gruffly.

“I’m not talking about a Lord,” Troy rasped. “I’m talking about Mhoram.”

In his weariness, Lord Mhoram ached to deny this, to refuse the burden. He said,

“Warmark, of course I will do all that lies within my strength. But if Lord Foul has chosen you for the work of our destruction-ah, then, my friend, all aid will not avail. The burden of this plan will return to you at the last.”

“No.” Troy kept his face toward the fire, as if here reliving the acid burn which had blinded him. “You’ve given your whole life to the Land, and you’re going to give it now.”

“The Despiser knows me well,” Mhoram breathed. “He ridicules me in my dreams.” He could hear echoes of that belittling mirth, but he held them at a distance. “Do not mistake me, Warmark. I do not flinch this burden. I accept it. On Kevin’s Watch I made my promise and you dared this plan because of that promise. You have not done ill.

But I must speak what is in my heart. You are the Warmark. I believe that the command of this fate must finally return to you.”

“I’m blind. There’s nothing more I can do. Even Foul can’t ask any more of me.”

The heat of the fire made the burn marks on his face lurid. He held his hands clasped together, and his knuckles were white.

In distress, Quaan gazed at Mhoram with eyes that asked if he had been wrong to trust Troy.

“No,” Lord Mhoram answered. “Do not pass judgment upon this mystery until it is complete. Until that time, we must keep faith.”

“Very well,” Quaan sighed heavily. “If we have been betrayed, we have no recourse now. To flee into the Desert will accomplish only death. And Cravenhaw is a place to fight and die like any other. The Warward must not turn against itself when the last battle is near. I will stand with Warmark Troy.” Then he went to his blankets to search for sleep among his fears. Amorine followed his example dumbly, leaving Callindrill and Mhoram with Troy.

Callindrill soon dropped into slumber. And Mhoram was too worn to remain awake. But Troy sat up by the embers of the campfire. As the Lord’s eyes closed, Troy was still huddled toward the flames like a cold cipher seeking some kind of remission for its frigidity.

Apparently, the Warmark found an answer during the long watch. When Lord Mhoram awoke the next morning, he found Troy erect, standing with his arms folded across his breastplate. The Lord studied him closely, but could not discern what kind of answer Troy had discovered. Gently, he greeted the blind man.

At the sound of Mhoram’s voice, Troy turned. He held his head with a slight sideward tilt, as if that position helped him focus his hearing. The old halfsmile which he had habitually worn during his years in Revelstone was gone, effaced from his lips. “Call Quaan,” he said flatly. “I want to talk to him.”

Quaan was nearby; he heard Troy, and approached at once.

Fixing the Hiltmark with his hearing, Troy said, “Guide me. I’m going to review the Warward.”

“Troy, my friend,” Quaan murmured, “do not torment yourself.”

Troy stood stiffly, rigid with exigency. “I’m the Warmark. I want to show my warriors that blindness isn’t going to stop me.”

Mhoram felt a hot premonition of tears, but he held them back. He smiled crookedly at Quaan, nodded his answer to the old veteran’s question. Quaan saluted Troy, bravely ignoring the Warmark’s inability to see him. Then he took Troy’s arm, and led him away to the Eoward.

Lord Mhoram watched their progress among the warriors-watched Quaan’s respectful pain guiding Troy’s erect helplessness from Eoman to Eoman. He endured the sight as best he could, and blinked down his own -heart hurt. Fortunately, the ordeal did not last long; Fleshharrower’s pursuit did not allow Troy time for a full review of the Warward. Soon Mhoram was mounted on his Ranyhyn, Drinny son of Hynaril, and riding on toward Cravenhaw.

He spent most of that day watching over the Warmark. But the next morning, while the Warward made its final approach to Garroting Deep, he was forced to turn his attention to his task. He had to plan some way in which to keep his promise. He melded his thoughts with Lord Callindrill, and together they searched through their combined knowledges and intuitions for some key to Mhoram’s dilemma. In his dread, he hoped to gain courage from the melding, but the ache of Callindrill’s self-distrust denied him.

Instead of receiving strength, Mhoram gave it.

With Callindrill’s help, he prepared an approach to his task, arranged a series of possible answers according to their peril and likelihood of success. But by noon, he had found nothing definitive. Then he ran out of time. The Warward staggered to a halt at the very brink of Garroting Deep.

There, face-to-face with the One Forest’s last remaining consciousness, Lord Mhoram began to taste the full gall of his inadequacy. The Deep’s dark, atavistic rage left him effectless; he felt like a man with no fingers. The first trees were within a dozen yards of him. Like irregular columns, they appeared suddenly out of the ground, with no shrubs or bushes leading up to them, and no underbrush cluttering the greensward on which they stood. They were sparse at first. As far back as he could see, they did not grow thickly enough .to close out the sunlight. Yet a shadow deepened on them; mounting dimness spurned the sunlight. In the distance, the benighted will of the Forest became an almost tangible refusal of passage. He felt that he was peering into a chasm.

The idea that any bargain could be made with such a place seemed to be madness, vanity woven of dream stuff. For a long time, he only stood before the Deep and stared, with a groan of cold dread on his soul.

But Troy showed no hesitation. When Quaan told him where he was, he swung Mehryl around and began issuing orders. “All right, Hiltmark,” he barked, “let’s get ready for it. Food for everyone. Finish off the supplies, but make it fast. After that, move the warriors back beyond bowshot, and form an arc around Lord Mhoram. Make it as wide as possible, but keep it thick-I don’t want Fleshharrower to break through. Lord Callindrill, I think you should fight with the Warward. And Quaan-I’ll speak to the warriors while they’re eating. I’ll explain it all.”

“Very well, Warmark.” Quaan sounded distant, withdrawn into the recessed stronghold of his courage; and the lines of his face were taut with resolution. He returned Troy’s blind salute, then turned and gave his own orders to Amorine. Together, they went to make the Warward’s final preparations.

Troy pulled Mehryl around again. He tried to face Mhoram, but missed by several feet. “Maybe you’d better get started,” he said. “You haven’t got much time.”

“I will wait until you have spoken to the Warward.” Sadly, Mhoram saw Troy grimace with vexation at the

discovery that he had misjudged the Lord’s position. “I need strength. I must seek it awhile.”

Troy nodded brusquely, and turned away as if he meant to watch the Warward’s preparations.

Together, they waited for Quaan’s signal. Lord Callindrill remained with them long enough to say, “Mhoram, the High Lord had no doubt of your fitness for the burden of these times. She is no ordinary judge of persons. My brother, your faith will suffice.”

His voice was gentle, but it implicitly expressed his belief that his own faith did not suffice. When he walked away from the Deep to take his stand with the warriors, he left Mhoram wrestling with insistent tears.

A short time later, Quaan reported that the Warward was ready to hear Troy. The Warmark asked Quaan to guide him to a place from which he could speak, and they trotted away together. Lord Mhoram walked after them. He wished to hear the Warmark’s speech.

Troy stopped within the wide-seated arc of warriors. He did not need to ask for silence. Except for the noises of eating, the warriors were still, too exhausted to talk.

They had marched and ached in blank silence for the last three days, and now they chewed their food with a kind of aghast lifelessness, ate as if compelled by an old habit unassoiled by any remaining endurance, desire. Moving their jaws, staring out of moistureless eyes, they looked like dusty skeletons, bare, dry bones animated by some obsession not their own.

Mhoram could not hold back his tears. They ran down his jaw and spattered like warm pain on his hands where he held his staff.

Yet he was glad that Troy could not see what his plans had done to the Warward.

Warmark Hile Troy faced the warriors squarely, held up his head as if he were offering his burns for inspection. Sitting on Mehryl’s back, he was stiff with discipline-a rigid refusal of his own abjection. As he began to speak, his voice was hoarse with conflicting impulses, but he grew steadier as he continued.

“Warriors!” he said abruptly. “We are here. For victory or defeat, this is the end. Today the outcome of this war will be decided.

“Our position is desperate-but you know that. Fleshharrower is only a league away by now. We’re caught between his army and Garroting Deep. I want you to know that this is not an accident. We didn’t panic and run here out of fear. We didn’t come here because Fleshharrower forced us. You aren’t victims. We came here on my order. I made the decision. When I was on Kevin’s Watch, I saw how big Fleshharrower’s army is. It’s so big that we wouldn’t have had a chance in Doom’s Retreat. So I made the decision. I brought us here.

“I believe we’re going to win today. We are going to cause the destruction of that horde-I believe it. I brought you here because I believe it. Now let me tell you how we’re going to do it.”

He paused for a moment, and became even stiffer, more erect, as he braced himself for what he had to say. Then he went on, “We are going to fight that army here for one reason. Lord Mhoram needs time. He’s going to make this plan of mine work-and we have to keep him safe until he’s ready.

“When he’s ready” — Troy seemed to clench himself — “we’re going to run like hell into Garroting Deep.”

If he expected an outcry, he was surprised; the warriors were too weak to protest.

But a rustle of anguish passed among them, and Mhoram could see horror on many faces.

Troy went on promptly, “I know how bad that sounds. No one has ever survived the Deep-no one has ever returned. I know all that. But Foul is hard to beat. Our only chance is something that seems impossible. I believe we won’t be killed.

“While we fight, Lord Mhoram is going to summon Caerroil Wildwood, the Forestal. And Caerroil Wildwood is going to help us. He’s going to give us free passage through Garroting Deep. He’s going to defeat Fleshharrower’s army.

“I believe this. I want you to believe it. It will work. The Forestal has no reason to hate us-you know

that. And he has every reason to hate Fleshharrower. That Giant is a Raver. But the only way Caerroil Wildwood can get at Fleshharrower is to give us free passage. If we run into Garroting Deep, and Fleshharrower sees that we aren’t harmed-then he’ll follow us. He hates us and he hates the Deep too much to pass up a chance like this. It will work. The only problem is to summon the Forestal. And that is up to Lord Mhoram.”

He paused again, weighing his words before he said, “Many of you have known Lord Mhoram longer than I have. You know what kind of man he is. He’ll succeed. You know that.

“Until he succeeds, the only thing we have to do is fight-keep him alive while he works. That’s all. I know how tough it’s going to be for you. I-I hear how tired you are.