"For all the good that did me, yes. What point is there in doing what has been done before?"
"I think, Garth, that you resent the ingratitude of those who have benefited from the trade you began."
"Perhaps I do, old man; what of it? Does it matter to either of us that I am scorned by those I have made wealthy? Or that my old companions allow me no responsibilities in the village I gave them? They are no concern of ours. I am sworn to aid you in your death-magic, O King; that is what concerns us. I am waiting for you to tell me how I may fulfill my oath."
"I have told you that I have not yet remembered."
"Then I must wait until you do."
"And plague me with angry questions?"
"Should I so choose, yes."
The King did not reply immediately; during the pause, Garth drank the rest of his ale and decided against ordering another.
"Garth, I would have you leave me in peace," the old man said at last, "so that I might be able to think more clearly and recall more easily what I wish to recall."
The overman shrugged. "I care little what you would have, old man. I am not sworn to heed your every whim, only to fetch your book and aid you in your magics."
"You are bored. What if I gave you a task that could harm no one, but would result in great benefit for many innocent people?"
Garth stared into the depths of his empty mug, then looked up, gazing across the table into the shadows that hid the old man's face.
"What sort of a task?"
"Slaying a dragon that has laid waste the valley of Orgul."
Garth considered. His anger was fading, but his mind was slightly hazed with liquor. "A dragon?"
The old man nodded, once.
Garth thought it over. He was bored. He was irritable from inaction. It would be good to travel again; to see new places, to spend each night somewhere different from the night before. It would be good to get out of Skelleth, away from so many unpleasant memories. It would be good to accomplish something useful, and there could be little doubt that killing a dragon was useful. He had never seen a dragon, but he was familiar with the stories and legends about them. All agreed that the creatures were huge, dangerous, and phenomenally destructive. He himself had been a destroyer far too often in the past, he felt; here, then, he might find a chance to make up for some of that by destroying a menace worse than he had ever been.
In a way, it might be a step toward avenging himself on Bheleu. The god of destruction had used Garth as a puppet, and the overman resented that. He felt that it might be a small sort of retaliation to kill a creature that could be considered one of Bheleu's pets.
He nodded. The more he thought about the proposed adventure, the more it appealed to him. "I think I'd like that," he said.
The Forgotten King's mouth curved into a faint smile.
Far to the west, in a windowless chamber draped in black and dark red, a man stared at the image in his scrying glass and smiled as well. The image had been exceptionally clear and detailed, and he had been able to read the overman's lips. He had only the tail end of one side of the conversation, but it was obvious that Garth was being sent on an errand of some sort. That should provide an excellent opportunity for actions long delayed. Nearly three years had passed since the overman had defied the cult of Aghad, smashed the god's altar, and slain his high priest; much had happened during that period, but the cult had not sought vengeance. Haggat, the present high priest of Aghad, was a patient man, and had taken his time in gathering power and planning his actions. He had wanted to be sure that nothing would interfere with the proposed revenge. Now, at last, everything was ready.
He put down the glass, blew out the single candle that lighted the chamber, and went to give the order that would set the prepared machinery in motion.
CHAPTER TWO
Garth was unsure just where, amid the hills and mountains, he had crossed the border between the Eramman Barony of Sland and the independent region of Orgul; if there were any signposts or markers, he had missed them in the dark. Shortly after dawn arrived, however, he topped the crest of the final encircling ridge to see the valley of Orgul spread out before him, its fields and forests a thousand shades of green, its rivers gleaming blue and silver in the morning sun. He saw no traces of the draconic ravages he had been led to expect.
In fact, he thought as he looked out across the countryside, Orgul appeared far richer and more peaceful than the lands he had traversed to reach it.
For the first three days after leaving Skelleth, he had ridden at a leisurely pace across flat plains brown with mud, traveling openly by day and stopping freely at the very few inns and taverns along the way. He had been turned away once, simply because he was an overman, but had met no other serious inconvenience or opposition until the third evening, when, amid the smoldering ruins of a farm that chanced to lie between disputing baronies, a human soldier took a shot at him with a crossbow. The quarrel missed its target, and the man fled when Koros, Garth's warbeast, bared its fangs and roared; Garth himself did not even have to draw his sword. Still, he knew he had been lucky that the bolt had missed; he had not seen the man crouching behind a broken wall.
After that he had traveled by night, sleeping by day in whatever cover he could find. The land had grown ever richer as he moved south; though he could see no color by night, at sunset and dawn the earth was lush and green-where it hadn't been burned black.
That first burned-out farm had not been unique; as he continued on to the south, he found many others, usually in clusters along the invisible lines between baronies. Nor were farms the only things destroyed; he passed an inn that was reduced to charred timbers, and a gallows nearby held three rotting corpses. On one piece of prime land the blackened crops were still smoldering. Some fields had been destroyed not by fire, but by marching feet, and one had apparently been the site of a recent battle; it had been churned into a muddy waste, strewn with broken links of mail and scraps of cloth spattered with dark blood. Everything of value, every weapon that might be reforged or melted down, had been removed, though Garth suspected that had been the work of looters rather than the contending armies.
He rode by still more farms, some abandoned, some where families cowered behind barricaded doors, and others where the doors were wide open in welcome, on the assumption that resistance to the whims of soldiers would be fatal. Garth avoided villages and towns and castles, giving them all wide berths, and dodged any armed men he spotted in time. No unarmed humans were to be found abroad after dark.
Those few patrols and sentries that he could not avoid, for whatever reason, invariably let him pass unhindered after the warbeast clearly indicated that it was ready to defend its master. Only rarely did Garth feel it necessary to draw a blade or speak a serious threat. He considered himself fortunate that he had not encountered any company larger than a patrol squad, nor any other sniping bowman with a grudge against overmen.
Eramma, in the throes of internal war, he had seen as a patchwork of the land's natural wealth and the barren leavings of battle.
The last portion of his journey had been the worst. The fighting had begun when the Baron of Sland had attacked the High King at Kholis, and although the High King had never managed to restore his full authority, several barons had helped him make sure that Sland would no longer be a threat. The troublesome Baron had been assassinated after his defeat on the field of battle, and his successor had made peace with his Eramman neighbors-though Garth had heard rumors that the new Baron had designs on the lands beyond his western border, outside Eramma's limits. Unfortunately, by the time this peace had been established, much of Sland was a burned-out desert. The land showed some signs of recovery after a year of peace, but was still largely desolate and empty. Garth had been relieved to get up into the hills, into the forests where he was not surrounded by mud and ash.
And now, as he emerged into the valley of Orgul, the warm, green vista before him was a staggering contrast.
It was very odd. He had spoken with people along the way, wherever it had seemed safe to do so, and those who had heard of Orgul at all had also heard of the dragon; they had described the valley as a scorched wasteland. Even in Sland, the survivors, racked by hunger and disease, had considered themselves more fortunate than the people of Orgul. They had spoken of burned crops, seared fields, empty, ruined villages, and whole populaces devoured or destroyed.
That description did not accord with what Garth now saw. He wondered briefly if somehow he could have gotten turned about in the forest's darkness and wound up in the wrong valley. The sun was where he had expected it to be, and he had noticed no other trails as he had ridden, but he resolved to ask the first person he found.
If he was lost, he had no idea where he might be or how to get to the real Orgul. He had little choice but to assume that he had indeed reached his destination and that the stories of the dragon's depredations had been exaggerated. He wondered whether the Forgotten King had known more of the situation than he had said; Garth hoped that he was not once again becoming entangled in some labyrinthine scheme the old man had concocted.
With an almost imperceptible shrug, he urged the warbeast forward. The spire of a small temple gleamed golden above the trees before him, not more than two or three leagues away at most; he was sure that he would find a village there, and someone from whom he could ask directions. If there were no one in the temple or village, then it was a safe assumption that he was in Orgul and that the dragon was real and terrible.
The ride down the hillside was pleasant; the highway wound down from the promontory through a final patch of forest before opening out into farmland, and the morning sun poured through the leaves in a spatter of honeyed light. Birds sang on either side. A deer wandered across the narrow road, then turned and flied at the sight of the warbeast. Off to the left, Garth heard the splashing of a rocky stream, its cheerful burble accompanying him down the slope. He glimpsed a hawk overhead, soaring in graceful, wide circles.
It seemed utterly incredible that this peaceful valley could harbor a dragon. Dragons were said to be the most formidable and destructive creatures in all the world, and the dragon of Orgul, Garth had been told along the way, was the most ferocious dragon ever known. Something here was not as it seemed, and his mistrust of the King's motive for proposing the mission steadily increased. Having come this far, however, he was not inclined to turn back.
The road he followed was little more than a narrow trail at this point, but it was not seriously overgrown; Garth wondered what traffic it bore that kept down the weeds and grasses. He had been told that no outsiders dared venture into Orgul and he decided that the Orgulians themselves must be responsible. This implied that they still conducted a minimum of trade with the outside world, which did not quite accord with the stories Garth had heard. The people of Orgul had been described to him as a dwindling handful of humans who lived constantly in hiding and in perpetual fear of the monster that ruled their land.
Obviously, if this valley was Orgul, all the stories were greatly exaggerated.
The exact details were immaterial, however. He had come to dispose of the dragon once and for all, regardless of the extent of the damage it caused. A single unnecessary death was enough to justify his task.
It struck him as odd that the Forgotten King should allow him to risk his life in such an altruistic venture-if altruistic it actually were. He grew more certain that the old man had some ulterior motive, some subtle and selfish reason for sending Garth off on this journey.
His thoughts were interrupted by a growl from his beast; he glanced down at the creature's flattened ears, then at the road ahead.
A figure was emerging from one side of the forest and waving desperately at him. Whoever this person was, he evidently wanted the overman to stop. Garth spoke a word to his mount, and the warbeast came to a smooth halt a pace or two away from the man.
The overman glared down at the human. He was aware that his appearance, particularly when mounted upon Koros, was impressive and even intimidating; he made good use of that fact at times.
The man hesitated, gazing up at the huge, dark form of the overman. He had heard of overmen, but had never seen one before. Descriptions had not done them justice, and he was certain of Garth's species only because he knew of no other large humanoid beings.
Koros he could not place at all; he simply stared.
Two pairs of inhuman eyes stared back, one set golden and catlike, one red as blood and whiteless, but otherwise almost human.