Barbidal's resolute stare, into chill darkness, speculated on direction of the advancing morning horizon. Undiluted clarity, in his discerning sense of direction, told him the tormented men in his precarious craft were unquietly on edge. Holding the boat on a balanced tack into the wind, his strapping frame leaned into the steering oar. Autumn air currents were predominately from the north-west, the direction of Glassel. It was necessary for the boat to zigzag, against the swift flowing onward movement of air, to arrive at its destination. Marmalock, the old wizard, struggled the length of the pitching boat, in sullen gloom, to talk with Thorvald.
"What is your prognosis Marmalock," asked Thorvald boldly? The spry old man shuffled aft with morose determination. His purposeful eyes seemed to intuit Barbidal's inquiring resolve. "Will we make land before this intemperate breeze cripples us? Great Odin, God of the wind, laughs at us. Menace of his rampage intimidates all in its path. Tell me what you forecast. What clairvoyance has the pentacle foretold?"
"It forecast only the danger of one of our forgotten warriors," retorted Marmalock. "A man with whom we are not returning has been taken slave. The cane envisioned a trio of men who had one of our clan prisoner."
"It could have been any one of more than a dozen people with whom we originally sailed from Glassel," remarked Thorvald. "Who specifically was in the premonition?"
"I believe it was your subordinate, Landregal Waterhunter," continued Marmalock, "the vision was too obscure to ascertain with certainty. What do you estimate our position to be in sailing time to Glassel?"
"We are still being followed. If this merciless ocean pitched us upon her shores in the next instant I would not become surprised," stated Thorvald coldly. "I wish the gods had been merciful enough for us to return with all of our men. One in every three, of the men with whom we originally sailed from Glassel, fell victims to our final altercation with Trome and Lord Volki. Our alliance with Aboregale and Torymorton has caused me to abandon some of my closest colleagues. We were fortunate to escape with the princess."
As the two men scrutinized the enclosing cloak of nightfall, a meager glow of illumination emanated from the starboard side of their ship. Slowly, a hesitant dawn crept upon them until it was possible to discern, from one end of the boat to the other, remaining cynical faces of the pessimistic crew. A flock of dissolute sea gulls appeared on the dim, cloudy gray, horizon. Marmalock Arabolis listened to their rakish calls as they barked to one another in a shrill penetrating clamor that depicted closeness and direction to land. The wizard's prescient telepathy allowed communication, through a mystic incantation, with the birds as they rushed over the rough sea. At a vaporous interval, between Thorvald's boat and the motionless horizon, a pursuing vessel crept from the gloom.
From his commandingly reinforced bastion, in the capital of Trome, Lord Feydor Antonavich Volki III regarded staunch ranks of reliably steadfast troops. His black hair and sunken dark eyes promenaded brightly in front of a sharp and alertly malignant mind. Draping black and red robes fell loosely about his feet. In convergence with his tall frame, glistening golden jewelry danced mordantly on his potently forcible fingers. His feet had become covered with eloquent black silk slippers. A palisade in front of Dormanquest Castle set the invincible stronghold of Lord Volki above an unfurled countryside. The lethargic lord zestfully examined his adjutant and questioned an administrative assistant on the success of the army's conquest.
"What provisions have become made for the fortification of my castle," Volki demanded? The nervous auxiliary weighed his question with cautious constraint. The lord of Trome was in a dangerous mood as they enjoyed peace of the inner chamber of his castle. Clamor of men outside his throne room prevailed in constant commotion of rattling equipment and boisterous orders. "Answer me," continued Lord Volki! "Are you deaf?" A member of the inner guard, secret police consigned to the ruler's protection, moved in on the hesitant advisor with a sign from the obstinate lord.
Morning had become spent giving contrary sets of instructions. The ultimatums clashed in repugnant antipathy among his men. As the generals bent to one set of tasks, Volki countermanded his own orders with measures to opposite effects. Superiors were at odds with the supreme commander of Trome. The lord's rule had procured wealth and power to the men who paid it heed. They now attempted, perplexed at his contradictions, to please the sovereign magistrate and gain favor with him as the steadfast ruler of their solemn dictatorship.
"Lord, you instructed us to bring grain from the threshing mills and store it in the castle's silos. This we did, at your instruction," complained the administrative assistant. "You further ordered the silos be sealed; the grain was to be used only as reserve for emergency purpose---then declared an emergency that caused us to break the seals! You ordered prisoners from your Bastille, to the fields with our slaves, to enhance the castle's fortfications. You later ordered those fortifications torn down; the prisoners returned to Dormanquest's dungeon. You had us burn the fields along the immediate perimeter of the castle's walls then use water, we spent weeks accumulating, to put out the blaze. The men are growing weary of what appear to be ambiguous and contradictory orders."
"Idle minds are seedbeds, not only for creative thought but revolutionary ideas as well," explained Lord Volki to his advisor. "See that the men are kept busy. When they question my orders it means they are thinking too independently. We do not have room for autonomous thought in my newly formed government. The men devoted to my direction and my personal staffs have become well provided for through our successful military campaigns. Let me do all the inner-directed thinking. I want those men kept so busy they will not have time to question my authority, only to obey it. Do you understand me?"
"Yes my Lord," replied his confused and subverted aid. "All independent thought will become avoided unless it originates from our sovereign, is that correct?"
"That is correct," reiterated Volki. He motioned to his secret police to back away from the troublesome advisor. Feydor walked to a planter. He stood by one of the windows to the great hall.
The counsel reflected on his ruler's stupefied bluntness with denticulate annoyance. 'How can our monarch be so unsettling as to emphasize that his men have absolutely no impartial judgment,' he thought to himself with quarrelsome resentment. 'Certainly, men must live with more than a determination simply to follow orders!'
Volki became retiring in his thought. 'Why do men of history return in my memory,' the lord thought quietly to himself? The characters of antiquity seem to be coming reincarnated. Rulers, peasants, murderers and saints, it is as though they are reintegrated with each successive generation of humanity. I feel somehow assured that the chaos of creation was so great it knew no good from evil or, rather, that one could not exist without the other. It must me why I do not fear being devious with these indigenous half-wits. Even the most malign men seem always to return to subjugate unfortunate simpletons who are either too weak or too passively complacent to care whom they become subjugated by. Had there never been sharp teeth of a hound, neither would there be the fleet legs of a hare.'
Lord Volki stood engulfed in his own thought. Bright blossoms and morning sunshine seemed to wither from his obtrusively discordant dynamism. His very spirit repulsed things that were humorous in favor of more grievous matters. He listened not to sounds of resonant nature but to the wrathful clamor of subjugated men. Appearances of imperceptive characters occupied in the meaningless burden of sustaining their overseer's discretion, men daunted only by exhaustively augmented threats of their own extermination and annihilation, echoed in calamitous commotion along extensive halls of the palace. Intimidating patrols of recruits, everywhere, paid for with the plunder from invaded neighboring nations, furiously enforced Volki's will on his disinclined populace.
Feydor Volki's power had become effected by evil madness. He read into dealings with humanity an array of macabre representations that were justifications for his supreme position. The superlative lord ignored his own vanity, satisfied that indisposed rationality over men's lives was a power entrusted to him by overwhelmingly decadent forces effecting creation of the universe. In his conquest, to circumvent humility, Volki drew command from a cadaverous fascination of wicked potency. In Scandinavian mythology the earth arose from conflict between men and giants. Evil and mischievous forces that had become chained beneath the earth by Viking gods instigated nefarious power to men who paid them homage.
A great vault, beneath Dormanquest Castle, residenced a macabre and degenerative group of men under domination of the villainous lord. Resulting from his victorious campaign, partisans to his ascendancy hallowed Volki's rule as irrevocable rightfulness. Criminals, considered abnormal by his secret police force became restrained in remorseless chambers for inquisition by the despotic lord.
Essence of the hated autocrat's grievous dominion was such that accumulation of wealth became made only by capitulation to the monarch's insensitive jurisdiction. Commonplace workers found influence and employment only by exaltation to the oppressive potentate. The most influential citizens, persons with nonpartisan minds and distinct self-governing perception, militantly congregated Volki's polluted prisons. Toy maker's, book writers, insurgent and rebellious disrupters to Trome's iron fisted dictator, became apprehended and executed. Statesman and negotiating parties, to Trome from Aboregale, had become killed or imprisoned in Dormanquest's eremitic dungeons along with distinguished residents. Anguished wailing of accused men, as they wasted in the ribald prison, lacerated the bastion's impenetrable walls.
"Tell me what dispatch comes from the triumph over Emperor Torymorton on this disagreeable morning," demanded the dishonorable chief of state. "Has the process of conquest and subjugation exhumed the objective of my drive into Aboregale? I yearn to know what became of Nicholas Torymorton's pentacle and the stigmatized old sorcerer who advises him on its capability. My entrancing has given way to allurements capable of locating the elusive scepter. What became of Torymorton and his exquisite emblem of authority?"
The faltering aid deterred nervous discomposure. "The staff and the sorcerer have not been recovered," replied the adviser. "Torymorton's body, along with his entire council, was found after our army ransacked his citadel and headquarters. No sign became discovered of the emperor's staff, as you mentioned. The most powerful resistance Trome encountered was a paltry party of barbarous men from Glassel. We are confident that Aboregale's ruler contracted a foreign congress for protection. The allies were either too late or existed in insufficient numbers to effect their purpose. It had become suspected that a boat load of men escaped our overthrow of the emperor's spiritless legions and vanished north, into the ocean."
"A scourge upon followers of Freyr and their accord with the rulers of Aboregale. Have measures become taken to pursue them? Speak man, what became done about the men who escaped," stipulated Volki?
"A squadron of ships followed them in a storm. It was ruin to our own boats," capitulated the aid. In two days all but our largest ship turned to set mast and run before the wind. It is has not become known rather the remaining ship sank or continued the chase." Volki eyed the adviser with infuriated annoyance.
"Get out of my sight!" He yelled defiantly. Personal bodyguards and council left the throne room. Volki's extended power of telepathy warned him, suddenly,