Raucous cheering distracted him. A group of men were clustered around a figure whose beard and hair glowed golden in the light of the flames. So Jeirran and his men were back earlier than expected from the lowlands. Eresken’s annoyance was tainted with jealousy. Had Jeirran won some great victory that had enabled him to return in triumph?
“You all go on up to the rekin.” Eresken turned to the wounded men who had obediently halted to wait for him. “I must just speak with Jeirran.” He forced a smile to answer the grins of admiration the men were turning to their leader. Jeirran’s voice was loud, his gestures animated. “It sounds as if he has successes to report, doesn’t it?” There would also be food he could commandeer to stifle his gnawing hunger.
Eresken began to force his way through the crowd gathering around Jeirran. Tiredness weighed him down like a physical burden but he managed a warm enough greeting. “Jeirran! Good to see you back so soon. How did you fare?”
“Eresken!” Jeirran pushed a man with a flagon of ale aside and dragged Eresken into a crushing embrace. Jeirran’s breath was piercing with an unfamiliar, woody sweetness, eyes bright with the exuberance of alcohol.
Eresken detached himself with some difficulty and held Jeirran at arm’s length for a moment in a passable imitation of affection. “So how did you fare?”
“We drove those mewling cowards of villagers clean out of the foothills, all the way down to the chase above the lakes.” Jeirran laughed uproariously. “We thought about ducking them in the water but let them alone once they’d cleared our lands.”
“For the present, anyway,” quipped a bystander to ominous laughs.
“I thought you were to drive the Folk of the Forest south of the road?” Eresken managed a tight smile to cover his annoyance.
“Oh, we sent the squirrel fanciers scurrying up their trees, right enough. Took ’em on, man for man, fair fight and no quarter asked or given!” Jeirran took a swig from a crude glass bottle and sucked in air to cool the mellow burn of the spirits in his mouth. “We hit ’em first, burned ’em out, told ’em not to set foot on our lands again!”
Eresken steeled himself to look beyond the surface confusion of recollection and wishful thinking in Jeirran’s mind. Teasing out the truth was no easy task; memory was curdled by drunkenness and complicated by deliberate refusal to acknowledge darker truths lurking in the depths.
Jeirran had heeded the agreed plan to begin with, Eresken saw, attacking a small group of Forest Folk already fallen foul of an earlier sortie from the uplands. Eresken listened to Jeirran’s vainglorious boasting while seeing the truth of the events in his mind’s eye. The Forest Folk’s few possessions were dragged from their feeble grasp, the men hacked mercilessly down as they fought despairingly. Any woman who took up a weapon was cut to the ground by the fury of the Mountain Men. Those that sued for mercy were cruelly disappointed, used and discarded, bleeding and weeping.
Eresken nodded his approval; that much at least had been done properly. It had taken long enough to convince these fools to wage war as it should be done, unpicking their nicety and scruples, convincing them to use every terror as a tool.
He stumbled over a fearful recollection Jeirran had thrust deep into a recess of memory, cloaked in shame and confusion. So the heroic leader had joined his men in the wholesale rape? After all his high-flown words and claims to a lofty cause, he’d gone nosing in the dirt as eagerly as any beast, but this wasn’t just something done in the heat of the moment, Eresken realized with interest. Jeirran had a taste for it, unmasked by the deceits of drunkenness. That would be worth letting slip to Aritane, if her loyalty to this fool ever threatened to draw her away.
Eresken’s concentration wavered as anger shook him. The arrogant shit could take the western sweep next time, deal with the shoot-and-run tactics of the cowards with their bows and spears. Let Jeirran lose his best men to deadfalls and pit traps, find his nights poisoned as sentries were stabbed from the darkness by darts bringing death and madness.
Jeirran broke into a paroxysm of coughing, the spirits searing his throat as he tried to subdue unlooked-for memories with an unwary gulp from his bottle. Eresken blinked and saw the other man was ashen beneath his golden beard. He had to be more careful; if the sot mentioned such disturbance of thought and memory, Aritane would realize what he was doing, even if her idiot brother didn’t. Not that Jeirran was likely to tell her though, admitting weakness, when all the dolt’s own sense of worth depended on the admiration of others.
“So what took you out to the villages?” The Elietimm slackened his grip on Jeirran’s mind.
“It was time to take the fight to the real villains,” replied Jeirran robustly if hoarsely. His men had been squabbling over the inadequate spoils won from the Forest Folk; his unconscious mind told Eresken loudly. “Suratimm are like ticks on a goat, they drain its strength but can’t do too much harm, not if you burn their arses with a hot ember every so often,” Jeirran continued with an expansive gesture. “It’s the lowlanders that are the real thieves, the ones who’ll rob you blind and then steal what’s left from under your nose.” He paused, frowning a little as his own meaning escaped him. He need not worry, thought Eresken sardonically. The audience hanging on his every word were well on their way to being so drunk they’d cheer a quacking duck.
“So we took the fight to them,” Jeirran repeated, nodding with satisfaction. “Fought ’em, drove ’em off, a boot up the arse so hard their teeth shook loose!”
Eresken tried to make sense of his jumbled recollections; thatch burning in the gray light of dawn, screaming women, howling children, the outraged roars of men dragged from sleep by sudden assault. He gave up the struggle with a silent curse of derision. Come the morning he’d determine if Jeirran’s success was all the fool was claiming or just another ineffectual raid that would have to be gilded with enchantment to satisfy the men they had indeed won a mighty victory.
Eresken closed his eyes for a moment. Another task to remember, yet more demands on his time and energies. Well, he’d use more direct methods in the morning, no more tiptoeing around the edges of Jeirran’s arrogance, stealing his memories unseen. He’d go in with the ruthlessness his father favored; Jeirran could put the subsequent headaches down to indulgence in looted lowland liquor and any evil memories down to the lash of conscience. Sudden desire seared Eresken, to drown all the myriad tasks clamoring for his attention in the seductive golden depths of a bottle.
The Elietimm turned his back on Jeirran. Such release was denied him but Aritane was up in the rekin. Perhaps this was the time to break down her idiotic scruples and make a true woman of her. Once she’d forsworn that final vow, she’d be unable to betray him. He could draw on her strength, force her to take some of the load. Eresken’s step quickened as he headed for the fess. A brazier was smoking by the gate, white and red beneath a layer of fresh fuel. The Elietimm strode past without so much as a glance at the knot of men chatting casually around it.
Inside the fess, the noise confined within the massive stone circle buffeted him. Every building around the walls had windows lit and chimney smoking. Some doors were closed on work or sleep within, more were open to people coming and going, stepping around each other with scant apology. Two men stood unyielding as everyone else flowed around them, intent on comparing closely written slates. A shout made them both look up and one hurried over to a heap of sacks, spilled grain drifting at his feet. The main steps to the rekin were clogged with men deep in conversation, women exchanging news and opinion. The stone walls were dappled with shadows of torch and firelight until they reached high enough to cut a hard black outline in the starlit sky.