Saoel mused, somewhat morbidly, over the blunt truth of battle, its deciding effects on multitudes of people. Forkbeard's final conviction was: that decisions not reached with reason would always be decided by war. He flouted the uncontrolled mass of long hair, that hung tangled beneath his powerful jaws, as he drank dry red wine from a silver goblet. Memory of imbued mayhem created by a determined objective, to further his own credibility in the eyes of Trome's leader, left a bitter aftertaste in his stomach. Along with the wine, it made him edgy. A taunted ruthlessness seemed continually to effect the captain's determined thoughts. The recollections of war effected his ability to relax.
Demitri Rostov Gulari, the shrewd governor of Obrian, had come to speak with Saoel Forkbeard, on a cold afternoon, concerning the captain's council with Feydor Volki some weeks ago. The contriving politician was escorted into Forkbeard's house by an inquiring servant. The Governor's black hair and gleaming eyes shown resolutely behind a thick mustache which was tinged with ice from his frozen breath and the crystallizing of melted snow. Gulari's reddened cheeks resounded a stinging cold which howled outside thick walls to Saoel's home in Trome. "Please have a seat," Saoel insisted.
Saoel eyed the governor with a suspicious respect for the man's intellect. Governor Demitri Gulari was a man who was as purposeful as he was effective, although he existed in only one status: an instrument to the desire of Feydor Volki. Without Volki's autocratic power, Gulari's potency was weak. At the present time that power, however, endowed him by the lord of Dormanquest Castle, was as forceful as it was strict. Gulari possessed police authority over his citizens, as well as a financial bridle in levying their taxes.
Governor Gulari preferred to remain standing along with a heavy set sled driver, named Trok, who operated the instinctive politician-of-times-long-past's carriages. The burly sled driver stood dutifully by the doorway and waited until the governor waved him out of the room.
"What have you come for?" Forkbeard asked in a slightly irritated voice after being forced to emerge from his introverted thought. "Is it for more taxes? My taxes are paid governor. If you are here for more taxes, take them then and get out."
"I have not come to collect taxes," explained the calculating partisan to Feydor Volki's dictatorial state, "Rather, Captain Forkbeard, I have come to discuss the disposition of our ruler with you. What do you think are Volki's intentions with the coming of spring? Did he forecast any new conquests to you in your last meeting with him."
Saoel eyed Governor Gulari with close-minded distrust. His suspicions hinged on rather the politician had come to his home to discuss matters of state or to extort some favor, possibly a great amount of money, from him. Forkbeard offered the governor wine and answered his questions cautiously. "Our superlative ruler, Lord Volki, related no specific plans to me in our discussion," the incredulous captain replied cautiously.
To the best of Saoel's knowledge, Gulari had gained no information as to the treasure left beneath Lardock Trappler's estate in Aboregale. And yet, as the discussion continued, the captain could sense a cold hearted greed in the governor that was unmatched even by his own ruthlessness. "Tell me then," Saoel insisted, "what provokes this meeting? And I must insist, since you are in my house, that you drink with me."
Gulari took a glass of wine to appease Captain Forkbeard and evaded his attempt to further discover the nature of Saoel's meeting with Feydor Volki. The contents of the heavy sacks, he had seen being carried by Saoel's accomplices, was no mystery. His two partners bragged openly of their wealth on the night of the party's return to Dormanguest Castle. Their rumors traveled quickly. Governor Gulari's driver, Trok, had witnessed Chin Le Tang exchanging gold in a local tavern and discovered the nature of that wealth. Utanba, also had been reckless. He had gone so far as to negotiate the purchase of a small house with proceeds from the trio's plundering in the northern kingdom. In order to elude the topic of spoils from Aboregale, Governor Gulari questioned Saoel about a list of faithful individuals demanded of him by Feydor Volki in the discussion with Trome's ruler before the arrival of Captain Forkbeard.
"Volki wishes that I report to him the coordinators of this new faith that seems to be infiltrating the ranks of our thrawls," he warned the captain. "Of those held in bondage, on this estate, whom have you heard pronouncing the devout, new, doctrines of Christianity?"
"Most of my slaves come from Aboregale," Saoel stated factually. They have probably all had some affiliation with the new churches we recently crushed in our war with Aboregale. On my land, I guarantee you, the practice of this religion could be no more than suffering murmurs on a few frostbitten lips. The rememberings of Aboregale grow dimmer to them as time passes. But still, I am sure the older slaves have not forgotten the practice of their religion. Would you like a list of all the thralls who work my land then?"
"Only ones who may be some kind of spiritual leaders," insisted the governor. "Volki wants an end to their laudable exercise of allegiance to one who, they claim, is more absolute than he."
"A ruler more comprehensive than the master of Trome," Forkbeard mused. "Next Volki shall demand that the rivers in Trome run backwards. And being the man of perceptible power that he is, it would probably be accomplished. I will give you a list of the slaves and nothing more. For the practice of their religion is strictly forbidden on my estate. Trouble makers here are thrown into Dormanquest's dungeons! It is my wish, as well as that of our sovereign ruler."
As the captain became more intoxicated he began ranting about his campaigns and alliances to the lord of Dormanquest Castle. "War is my only God!" exclaimed Forkbeard. His goblet clamored to the ground, spilling wine over the dirty floor. "I believe only in the rigors of battle Governor Gulari. Do not be deceived that I would form leagues with any man or thing opposing our ruler. Except to my own bow, sword and the glory of Trome, I have no alliances! It is for weak fools to adhere to such superstitious nonsense as is spread by the believers in Christianity."
Thoroughly convinced of Forkbeard's nonconformist attitude toward the new faith which spread briefly through Aboregale before its defeat by Trome, Demitri Gulari gathered his warm garments and prepared to return, with Trok, to his office in the town of Obrian, some miles away. "Report to me any suspicious activity you witness with your slaves," Gulari advised him. "It is to both our benefits that Volki be appeased in his objective to destroy Christianity in Trome once and for all." At last, morose over not having obtained more information concerning the raider's new source of wealth, Gulari left Forkbeard's house, with his driver, to return to Obrian.
As the governor's hardy team of horses trudged through a dotted spray of stinging, frozen, precipitation, the translucent blast of ice crystals numbed Trok, the driver's, face and hands. He growled purulently at the undertaking, lamenting over having to leave the warm house and lumber back out into a forbidding winter evening. "You know those men had some gold with them when they returned from Aboregale," the burly sleigh handler mentioned to Rostov. "I saw the big Mongol, that Captain Forkbeard returned from the northern country with, exchanging money in a tavern."
Gulari sat complacently behind his driver, watching the faded distance and arguing with himself, inwardly, over the legitimacy of Feydor Volki's authority in appealing for total suppression of the thrall's new religion. "If we could only lay a tax on the peasants' new beliefs, the country would be rich beyond our wildest dreams," the governor told his servant, Trok, with disdainful resolution. "The only thing the poor serfs want to do is pray; so why not tax them for that privilege? It will be more trouble to remove haranguers of that new and untried persuasion than it is to simply charge them for the very benefit of delivering their sermons."
Rostov knew Feydor Volki's military power was so imposing that it would require a great deal of inducement, even to submit his suggestion. This being so, he concealed any further opinionated concepts from the driver, Trok, by thinking only to himself. As night fell, he intuited the thoughts of the dark overlord of Dormanquest castle and directed his chauffeur to hurry in their return to his office and small estate in the town of Obrian.
As days drew odiously by, among toilers and bondservants on Saoel Forkbeard's punitive farm, Landregal Waterhunter became an amiable companion with the, somewhat less than, proletarian laborer Sawtooth. As well as being a friend and acquaintance, the querulous thrall became the hunter's confidant; he was noted for peevish irritability, missing all but a few of the notched projections along disintegrated gums in his moldering jaws. With his companion, as they travailed anguishing cold and labor together in Trome, Landregal discussed things he intuited from runic passages in the 'book of spells' plundered from the estate of the wizard, Lardock Trappler.
"I gather from the runes, in the book I pilfered from that castle in Aboregale," Landregal said secretly to Sawtooth as they both soberly worked at cleaning one of Forkbeard's stables, "that there are three practitioners of black magic who are guided by what is in that volume, along with some, rather prophetic, staff and a sorcerer's necklace."
"The slaves say that Lord Volki, in Dormanquest's Castle, is a persuasive practitioner in the arts of magic," Sawtooth replied. "He reads people's minds; he inflicts death and disease on his enemies and their livestock without ever leaving that fortress of his. He is greatly feared; only dead men have double crossed him. That is a fact."
As they worked in the barn together, amid vehemence of winter, comforted by the relative warmth of Saoel's cattle and horses, Sawtooth conveniently uncovered a long two-edged sword from beneath some straw in the livestock's shelter and held it at arm's length in front of him.
"This is Helm's Hurt," he told Landregal passionately.
The hunter, Landregal, eyed the blade with brash honesty. The curved guard of the weapon gleamed like an attractive hammer before him; he saw in the razor-edged metal the salutary chance for his freedom. Its two keen edges, highlighted with an inlay of silver at the sword's hilt, suggested the weapon had once belonged to someone of importance, possibly the stolen prize of, Forkbeard, the farm's owner.
"We took this from old Forkbeard's armory without his knowing it," Sawtooth told Landregal. "And there certainly will be hell to pay when he finds out about it. It belongs, for now, to any of us who are brave enough to attempt an escape."
Landregal grasped the broadsword then handed it back to Sawtooth. "When the spring arrives we will lay plans to escape on horseback," he instructed his friend. "Guard this prize well Sawtooth; when the time comes I may make good use of it."
Sawtooth continued to wrap the formidable looking blade in a piece of cloth and return it to its hiding place beneath the feed and bedding in the barn. He shook violently from the cold and coughed so that it was difficult to breath. "I doubt that I will be of much help to you," explained the disorderly serf. It was indeed fact, that Sawtooth held very little in the way of physical preeminence over any of the other slaves. After years of bondage, none of the captured workers were healthy. All of them suffered from dysentery and malnutrition; they turned occasionally to prayers, remembered from their old country before it had become overrun, but none of them did anything in an attempt to throw off the oppression imposed on them by their owners and rulers.