their leader, Barbidal became confused by the woeful tribute his men now paid him. The melodious clattering of voices rang in his lodge. Thorvald listened to them, reluctantly, with low, menacing, despondency.
"Volki's army is not invincible," a powerful and hazardous looking man with a thick reddish-brown beard complained. "Why did you lead us to the citadel? We should have retreated with the emperor in our boats. The power of Trome does not best us on the high seas. We all know that!" The rest of the men roared in heated acknowledgment to the disagreement of their fellow combatant with Thorvald.
"Had we the reinforcements of our entire development here in Midgard, we would have defeated even the most formidable of the army's assaults," replied Thorvald. "It is late in the season. I am cautious to risk our entire fleet on the winter ocean. Intemperate gales, such as the one we fought in returning to Glassel, would have waylaid us all in Aboregale. Thorvald tried to justify his dependent action, "What could we do when we were as hopelessly outnumbered as we were but die with our swords in our hands?"
"Death in battle would have been more honorable than the disgrace we now face in retreat," the hardened Viking countered.
"Let me speak!" hailed Liana above the roar in the room. In a commanding voice, she addressed the assembly of men. "I know that you were each promised a reward for your endeavor," she hailed the congregation of disheartened fighters. "For each man in Midgard there remains a hundred pounds of silver, hidden beneath one of the blockhouses in our southern most territory. As the army retreated, a great hoard of treasure became stored. It is still carefully hidden I am sure."
"There are a myriad of resolute soldiers between Aboregale's northern coast line and your southern most territory," argued a hazardous looking miscreant with the princess. "The throng would require a multitude of men to disorganize. I dare say, more than would be willing to venture to Aboregale with you from the merely speculative prediction of hidden silver."
"Can you not see then," continued Liana Torymorton in her argument with the bearded reprobate, "that, both, the defeat of Lord Volki as well as the depravity of his dishonest army is our common motive. You must realize that his contention is a real threat to your well being, as well as to the safety of Midgard and Glassel. There will come a time when you will have to confront the rising threat of his army."
"I am afraid that the majority of these men will want to see the color of your treasure before they are prompted to further fighting with the hosts from Trome," persisted Thorvald.
Liana became ruminatively quiet. Unable to persuade the men with logic and altruistic reasoning, she retreated conscientiously from their conversation. Thorvald continued to argue with the disputatious men over the authenticity and merit of her promises. He had discussed his own matters of purpose beforehand with Liana, finding her cause to be one of valor as well as importance.
Liana consulted with Marmalock who stayed, sensibly, aware of their argument for the time being. "Imbeciles!" Liana proclaimed----she waited for her unrestrained outrage to subside before declaiming the warriors of Midgard concerning the laudable worker of enchantment. They will not listen to common sense. The rabid destructiveness of Trome's ungovernable tyrant will be clutching their shores before they consolidate on a plan for battle! Can you not see that magician?" Liana looked with unyielding compassion into the eyes of, Marmalock Arabolis, the man who had been her father's advisor for many years. "My love of Jesus is momentous sorcerer. It is irresistible, but not so unyielding that I would watch my loved ones slaughtered, then lay down beside them to be exterminated. Extinction is not my goal nor annihilation my ambition. We must make a plan to sway Thorvald's followers into the realism of our determination."
"Your cause is just but your motives seem contradictory," argued Marmalock. "Am I to understand that you wish to lead a force against the contingency of Trome----a Holy war? The powers of men are trifling matters against the effectiveness and capability of gods and magic. You must not allow the motives behind violence to sway you into justification in your desire for revenge against the ruler of Dormanquest Castle, Liana. The unlit shadows of darkness have long been Feydor Volki's domain; he lurks there, awaiting arrival of the influence of light, that he may eradicate all existence with his glacial conspiracy. All things that enter into the dark master's domain terminate in a carpet of repentant affliction. His soul is an unbent tunnel into the depths of despair Liana; be well advised in the faculty of your adversary, he has no compassion and he has no weakness."
"I know Feydor Volki's gross wickedness is intense," complied Liana. "The greatest savior of all time, the one who died for the sins of mankind, is my guiding light, Marmalock. My aim, only, is to restore the government of Aboregale into hands of its rightful rulers and guide its people in pursuit of the new faith."
Marmalock sat enshrouded in his thoughts. He tried to convince Liana, further, in the futility of her objective. "Men will never be solidified in their choice of faiths," he argued, "just as they will never remain stable in the selection of a single favorable government. Do not take it upon yourself to convince the population of Glassel as to the strength of your own beliefs. Without violence, over their differences of opinions, the Vikings would have no leaders. It has been their method of selecting favored captains for hundreds of generations. They do not exercise the intelligence embodied in your religion to select who is to lead them. Their devotion is to battle. It was not the sorcerer's intention to dissuade the princess in her conviction, only to make her realize what a colossal task it would be to sway the barbaric inhabitants of Midgard into her determined favor.
As she ended her discussion with Marmalock Arabolis, a short fight broke out. Thorvald, and a trouble making crewman who disputed him, brawled briefly in the middle of the room. Their dispute was over the earnest pledge of rewards for the man's fighting in Aboregale. Hosts of men surrounding the irritated couple, enthusiastically, cheered them on. The rampage lasted only a few moments. It ended as Barbidal picked the man up and catapulted him across the top of a low table. Thorvald watched, with equanimity, as his attacker landed on the floor of the commune, at some distance, with a thunderous crash. Rendering the disputer senseless finalized his argument. The men in the lodge cheered for their unremitting leader with a loud assault of boisterous yells; he took only unimportant altercations from arrival of his men's further arguments.
"Hurrah for Thorvald!" The crowed shouted as Barbidal raised his arm in victorious acknowledgment to their cries. Thorvald continued to eat and consume a moderate quantity of wine. Defeated, the warrior lay dazed on the floor some distance from, Thorvald, the dauntless director of Vikings in that particular lodge.
At the bottom to the moat of his castle, Lardock Lagarias Trappler lay mortally stricken. Discharged arrows, propelled by unremitting assailants, lodged painfully in his back. With anguishing torment, Lardock lay paralyzed in the cold, enervating, water. The muddy entrenchment engulfed him as he looked up at its surface with morbid despair.
Light, from the outermost boundaries of his weakened perception, splashed in rippling circles across the top of the blood stained water. Barely able to respire, through discolored incisions that acted as gills at the sides of his neck, Lardock positioned himself so as not to become seen from above the extensive gutter that protected his once powerful stronghold. There was no restraint to the penetrating misery that overwhelmed him as result of Saoel Forkbeard's attack. The cowardly assault had crippled him; Lardock avowed to himself that he would remain alive until he discovered means of reeking revenge upon his attacker. Survival became an overwhelming coercion. Webbed claws in his enervated hands clutched at murky rocks on the bottom of the dirty trough surrounding his castle.
To keep himself from rising off the bottom of the moat, Lardock grabbed a sludge covered bolder. For elongated hours, with strenuous soreness, he rested on his side until it was clear, to the cheerless magician, he was not becoming observed from the surface. Incapacitated, the sorcerer, with a demented validation of consciousness, clung permanently to life.
Marked by discrepancy, Chin Le Tang, Saoel Forkbeard and Utanba Tu carefully combed inner confines of Lardock Lagarias Trappler and Nicholas Torymorton's austere castle. Its prominent mansion stood, with nobility, inside a preponderant barrier of the formidable outer walls. The palace's construction suggested it became built with precarious concern over the possibility of invasion by hostile armies.
As Forkbeard stood in a shrouded chamber of the castle's manor, he puzzled over the villa's lack of adornment and ornamentation. Eloquently decorated chandeliers, expensive candelabrums and affluently produced coats of arms, plated with precious metal, which once made up the sanctuary's inner vestments became meticulously removed from the lavish dwelling. The only things left, in the interior of the landed estate, were the barest of its wooden furnishings and items of little or no utilitarian purpose.
Forkbeard skulked over a room's lack of exquisite valuables and sat, with his arms folded, in an uncomfortable chair of stained oak. As time passed, his two partners, with comparable findings, came to join him in that room. The commodious chamber, in which the three men resided, looked down with arrogantly domineering majesty at the entrance to the castle.
Landregal sat complacently at the drawbridge, aware that the three men observed him from inside the manor, and waited patiently for their return. He thought at that moment to escape, fearing a severe and certain reprisal for that attempt. With no weapons, his situation seemed despairing. The hunter looked across muddy water in the moat, toward the men's horses, and back through the opened drawbridge. It was a brief run to where the horses remained, outside the castle, harnessed to some branches in the tree line a short distance away. "Bring our horses inside the castle----watch that the hunter does not try to escape," Forkbeard ordered Utanba.
As he walked over the bridge to fetch the men's horses, Utanba eyed Landregal suspiciously; his ornamented armor made Landregal's unpretentious robes seem thin and vulnerable. Once back inside the walls to the castle, Utanba again scrutinized the hunter with distinct attention. Inside the toppled blockhouse, Utanba secured the horses then raised the castle's bridge so that the occupants remained confined to the interior of the fortification. As the day wore on all four men gathered, with Saoel Forkbeard, inside the barren mansion.
"What do you think it is," Saoel asked his two associates in an indelicate tone, "that provoked the emptying of this palace? Not a stitch of plenitude, of any kind, remains inside these halls. There is nothing eatable in any of the kitchens; not even a cask of wine remains in its cellars. Could it all have become carted away before the arrival of our invasion? What are your opinions as to the whereabouts of any of this castles wealth?"
"A majority of the country's abundance was captured in Nicholas Torymorton's citadel," commented Chin Le Tang. "However, I suspect that not all of it was carted that far north. Retreat from this region would have to have been made with very little warning; it leads me to suspect that some kind of alternate hiding place was made for part of this estate's riches."