Confused, Torrent settled back in the saddle. Could he just ride through this strange circle, continue on his way?
If these were Awl dogs, what would their behaviour signify? He shook his head-maybe if they were drays, then he would imagine that an enemy had drawn near. Frowning, Torrent stood in his stirrups and squinted to the north, whence the dogs had come. Nothing… and then he shaded his eyes. Yes, nothing on the horizon, but above that horizon-circling birds? Possibly.
What to do? Return to the camp, find a warrior and tell him or her of what he had seen? Your dogs found me. They laid themselves down. Far to the north… some birds. Torrent snorted. He gathered the reins and nudged his mount between two of the prone dogs, and then swung his horse northward. Birds were not worth reporting-he needed to see what had drawn them.
Of the six dogs he left behind him, two fell into his wake, trotting. The remaining four rose and set out for the camp to the south.
In the time of Redmask, Torrent had known something close to contentment. The Awl had found someone to follow. A true leader, a saviour. And when the great victories had come-the death of hundreds of Letherii invaders in fierce, triumphant battles-they were proof of Redmask’s destiny. He could not be certain when things began to go wrong, but he recalled the look in Toc Anaster’s eye, the cynical set of his foreign face, and with every comment the man uttered, the solid foundations of Torrent’s faith seemed to reverberate, as if struck deadly blows… until the first cracks arrived, until Torrent’s very zeal was turned upon itself, jaded and mocking, and what had been a strength became a weakness.
Such was the power of scepticism. A handful of words to dismantle certainty, like seeds flung at a stone wall-tender greens and tiny roots, yes, but in time they would take down that wall.
Contentment alone should have made Torrent suspicious, but it had reared up before him like a god of purity and willingly he had knelt, head bowed, to take comfort in its shadow. In any other age, Redmask could not have succeeded in commanding the Awl. Without the desperation, without the succession of defeats and mounting losses, without extinction itself looming before them like a cliff’s edge, the tribes would have driven him away-as they had done once before. Yes, they had been wiser, then.
Some forces could not be defeated, and so it was with the Letherii. Their hunger for land, their need to possess and rule over all that they possessed-these were terrible desires that spread like the plague, poisoning the souls of the enemy. Once the fever of seeing the world as they did erupted like fire in one’s brain, the war was over, the defeat absolute and irreversible.