Colonel Vento entered the chapel on the sixteenth floor of Battleaxe Tower and looked for the high priest, Resalintas, most senior of the seven priests of Samnos currently stationed in the city. Resalintas was easily the most powerful of the War God's worshippers in eastern Ilandia, perhaps in the whole country, and had been awarded the title ‘Defender of the Faith', the highest honour a priest of Samnos could receive, for his part in the redemption of Baliksburg ten years before.

     Vento found him meditating in an anteroom adjacent to his private quarters, and as he went in he was struck, as he always was, by the almost tangible aura of power and righteousness that surrounded him. Resalintas was a man awesome in his faith, terrible in his holiness, who made any lesser man in his presence feel humble and unworthy, as was the intention, no doubt. When Resalintas focused his steely grey eyes on a man, that person got the uncomfortable impression of having become totally transparent, that all his sins were plainly visible, bared for critical scrutiny. Even Vento felt like that, despite the fact that, militarily at least, he outranked the priest. He had no doubt that, should they ever have occasion to differ seriously on anything, Resalintas's will would easily win out over his own.

     As he entered, the priest stood to face him. He was an ageing, grey haired man whose face and body bore the scars of many battles, but he kept himself fit with daily exercise and weapons training. No-one doubted that he could still easily defeat any number of men half his age by weapon skill and muscle power alone, without needing to draw upon the tremendous power of his lord and master, the God of the Fight against Evil. He wore a chain mail shirt beneath his flowing blood red robes, and beside him on a table stood his steel helm, with its crest of needle sharp spikes and a badge of two crossed swords above and between the eyes. His holy symbol, the Golden Griffin, hung on a chain around his neck. He wore steel and leather boots with kicking spikes on toes and heels, a short sword belted around his waist, a great two handed sword strapped across his back and two daggers in wrist sheathes only partially concealed beneath his sleeves.

     "I'm sorry to interrupt your meditation, Captain, but I need your advice on something that happened earlier today."

     "What was that?" asked Resalintas brusquely. He had a strong voice that sounded like great slabs of granite sliding against one another, a voice of complete confidence and power, a voice that perfectly matched the flinty hard glare of his eyes even when speaking to the man who was the closest thing he had to a personal friend. Another man standing there in the chapel would never have guessed the respect and admiration the two men felt for each other. He might have thought instead that Vento meant nothing to the priest and that he was annoyed by the interruption. Only a man who knew the old priest as well as Vento did would have noticed the slight change in his stance as he turned to face him. The slightest relaxation of the eternal state of alertness and readiness with which Resalintas held himself which told that the old priest was in the presence of a man he regarded almost as an equal, a man whose wisdom and fighting ability he trusted almost as much as those of a fellow priest.

     Vento told him briefly of Diana's visit and her warning, which apparently came straight from Caroli Herself, that another invasion was coming soon. A fourth Shadowwar soon to begin. Resalintas frowned as the Colonel spoke. "If this is true, why has my Lord not informed me of this?"

     "I raised the very same point myself," said Vento, "and she was unable to give me a satisfactory answer. For this reason, I was tempted to dismiss the whole thing as a product of her over zealous imagination. You know how a young cleric can sometimes misinterpret an ordinary dream as a true vision. Then again, it may have been a true vision, but sent by one of the evil Gods to deceive us and cause mischief. After some thought, I decided to bring it to you, to see if you could shed any light on the matter."

     "Yes, you were right to come to me with this." said the priest. "I will ask Him."

     They left the meditation chamber, the priest picking up his helmet as he went, and made their way to the altar standing in front of the bronze statue of Samnos in the chapel itself. Resalintas dropped to one knee before the statue and began a long carefully worded prayer in Old Garonian, of which Vento understood only about one word in ten. He then began a litany of praise and a recitation of the nine sacred names, none of which was really necessary as the God would respond just as readily to a simple request for an audience spoken in plain language, or even just a thought formed in the priest’s mind. Samnos was a practical God, with little patience for the rituals and ceremonies that some Gods demanded, and Resalintas was the same most of the time, but he was of the firm belief that, when time allowed, and especially when one was in the God’s own temple, that the dignity and authority of the God should be acknowledged by following the full ritual, omitting none of the sacred forms.

     Finally, though, he reached the end of the long incantation and was able to get to the point. "Mighty Lord Samnos,” he said, his head still bowed. “Defender of the weak, destroyer of the wicked, champion of the righteous and enemy of the enemies of freedom, I humbly beseech Thee to reveal to Thy unworthy servant whether the warning brought by the follower of Caroli is true. Tell me, I beg of Thee, whether the Shadowhosts are planning, once again, to invade this land and all the other free nations of the world. Reveal this to me, Mighty Lord, I beg of Thee."

     When he'd finished speaking he remained kneeling and closed his eyes, as if listening. Vento waited impatiently while ten minutes passed in this way, until the priest finally stood, spoke a few more words in praise of the War God, and turned to face him, looking puzzled.

     "Well?" prompted Vento.

     "He declined to answer," said Resalintas, frowning. "I sensed His presence, but he remained silent."

     "He didn't confirm the girl's story then?"

     "But neither did He deny it. It is most puzzling."

     "It doesn't matter," said Vento. "He didn't confirm her story, that's all that matters. It means she was wrong and we don't have to worry about an imminent invasion. Thank you, my friend, you've been very helpful."

     Resalintas watched as Vento marched smartly out of the chapel, and listened to his footsteps disappearing down the corridor. He wasn't quite as ready as his Colonel to dismiss the matter right away. He was confused and puzzled by his God's refusal to say a single word in answer to his question. A simple ‘No', denying the cleric of Caroli's story, would have been quite sufficient, but even that had not been forthcoming. The last time this had happened, Samnos had been chastising him for showing mercy to an unrepentant enemy. He searched his memory of the past few days, trying to think of anything he might have done to offend Him, but could not. So far as he could remember, his previous week had been as faultless as it was possible for an imperfect mortal to make it. What could it be, then?

     He considered asking the question again, but knew that the answer would be the same. He then briefly considered hiring a wizard to perform a divination on the matter, but dismissed the idea almost immediately. If his God had declined to provide the information, it would be very sinful to seek the information from another source. He decided eventually that there was only one thing to do, a return to more fundamental methods. He would send spies east, to the very edge of the Shadow itself, to see what the Shadowarmies were up to.

     Having come to this decision, he felt much better and wondered whether this had been what Samnos had intended all along. Maybe He felt that they were becoming too dependent on Him as a source of information, and wanted them to become a bit more self reliant. Yes, that must be the reason. It felt right to him. It had become a habit these days to seek guidance from Him on every little thing, no matter how trivial, instead of going to the effort of finding the answers for themselves. It was a weakness, a weakness that an enemy might one day use against them. Very dangerous, and it had taken a cleric of Caroli to make him realise the fact!

     The shame of it burned in his soul, and he suspected that this was also part of his God's message to him, a subtle form of punishment. He knelt before the altar once more, therefore, and began another long series of prayers and meditations that lasted the rest of the day and continued long after most of the temple's postulants and acolytes had finished their tasks and devotions and retired to their hard, uncomfortable cots.


☆☆☆


     Shaun's sword was returned to him, as promised, when the six travelers left the city the next morning. Good riddance, he thought as they set off on the road to Andor. As far as he was concerned, they could keep their so called civilization. As soon as they had found the Sceptre of Samnos, he intended to return to Kenlinton and spend the rest of his life hunting shologs and goblins for bounty. You knew where you were with them.

     Thomas led them as they rode through the rich and fertile Ilandian countryside, his excitement at being so close to home transferring, by some strange telepathy, to his horse, which fidgeted and chewed the bit restlessly, eager to gallop off. The others, however, were content to take it easy and admire the beauty of the countryside through which they were passing. In Ilandia, as in most civilized countries, strips of farmland tended to follow the roads, dividing the original forest into hundreds of relatively small patches of woodland in which the native wildlife survived in reduced numbers. No evil creatures inhabited them, though. Any sholog or goblin that dared to cross the border into Ilandia would soon be killed or chased out by the occupying Beltharan soldiers.

     Ilandia was one of seven major provinces of the kingdom of Belthar which, together with a number of minor provinces, colonies and protectorates, made up the Beltharan Empire, the heartland of which was over a thousand miles north, occupying a wide, open country bordered on either side by the Copper and Black Mountains. There was a small resistance movement that opposed Beltharan occupation with midnight murders and acts of sabotage, but most people recognised the necessity of the imperial presence. Without the strength of Belthar behind them during the last three Shadowwars, Ilandia would have been overrun by an evil so great that few people dared to even think about it. Only now, with the last Shadowwar thirty years in the past and most people believing that the danger was over, was an anti-imperial feeling becoming more fashionable among the general population, and if the peace lasted another ten years there were those who believed that there would be a genuine uprising, an attempt to regain their independence after over a hundred years of occupation. Either way, troubled times lay ahead, Thomas thought gloomily. Either another Shadowwar or a revolt.

     It was the same all through human history, all over the continent. Even during the so called great age of peace there had been strife and conflict, not least of which had been the Mage Wars in which vast tracts of land had been rendered uninhabitable for centuries. For a while he envied the shae folk, or even the trogs, for whom the centuries seemed to pass gracefully and without incident from one millennium to the next, but the feeling only lasted for a moment. Just think how boring life would be if nothing bad ever happened, he thought. On the whole, he decided that he enjoyed the human lifestyle best, unsettled though it was.

     They passed through several small villages that day, most of them little more than clusters of houses where roads crossed. At one point they passed an area of woodland covering a few hundred acres from which the sounds of fighting came. A group of a dozen or so tents had been erected in an adjoining field, and a Beltharan soldier occasionally emerged from the wood with a look of disappointment on his face, to be greeted by an officer. "Probably a training exercise," Thomas explained to the others. "The ones coming out are probably ‘casualties'."

     They spent the night in the large town of Eastgate, which was about halfway between Fort Battleaxe and Andor. This time they decided not to go exploring and stayed in their rented rooms all evening and night, setting out again early the next morning and hoping to reach Thomas’s home town before nightfall. At around midday they crossed the river Ranning, the river on which Andor stood, but the river took a wide loop to the north and east while the road took a short cut through an area of dense woodland. Thomas confidently expected to be through the woods before late afternoon, but found to his embarrassment that he had misjudged the distance and when nightfall came they were still some distance from his home town. Shaun suggested that they spend the night in the next village they came to, but Thomas was determined. "It's just another couple of miles further on. We'll be there in an hour or so. We'll spend the night at my folks' place."

     "It'll be fully dark by then," pointed out Shaun, however. "And you said Andor is a walled town. Will they let us in?"

     "No," said Thomas, a grin on his face, "but don't worry, I know a secret way through the wall. I discovered it as a kid, and no-one knows about it but me. We'll get in all right, no worries about that."

     Sure enough, just about an hour later they saw the walls of Andor ahead of them, dyed the colour of blood by the light of the red sun. Although Andor was a much smaller town than either Eastgate or Fort Battleaxe, having a population of just over two thousand, its walls were just as tall and just as strongly built and soldiers patrolled ceaselessly along the walkway near the top. The gates were barred shut, but Thomas led them along the wall to a place where a cluster of brambles grew up against it, about halfway between two round towers that stood where the wall turned a corner. Thomas looked at the brambles with a frown. "They've grown a lot thicker since I was last here," he said. "I think we can still get through, though."

     "You want us to crawl through there?" asked Shaun apprehensively.

     Thomas shushed him and glanced up nervously to see if the soldiers had heard him. "Don't worry," he whispered. "It looks worse than it is. I'll go first." He pulled the hood up over his head, got down on his hands and knees and pushed his way into the prickly undergrowth. The others watched as he slowly disappeared from view and heard the occasional cry of pain as a thorn scratched him. They could make out his progress by watching the twitching of the bramble branches as he pushed past them and they watched as he got steadily closer to the wall. "Nearly there," they heard him say. "What's this? Ugh!" Finally, after about ten minutes of agonising progress, they heard a faint cry of triumph as he finally reached the lichen encrusted stonework.

     "Now then, where's that hole?" he muttered. He searched around, first one way along the wall, then the other, getting more and more frustrated. "It's around here somewhere, I know it is. This is definitely the right place. Hello, there's a patch of new stonework here. They must have been, Oh Hell!"

     A guard looked down from the wall to see what all the noise was about. "Who's that down there?" he called out.

     "Sorry," called up Shaun, thinking fast. "We're just looking for a place to set up camp until morning."

     "Well, do it quietly," said the guard and walked off, muttering to a comrade in arms. The phrase ‘bloody foreigners' came drifting down to the shivering travelers and Shaun grinned at the others with a shrug of his shoulders. "Ilandian hospitality," he said, and Lirenna giggled.

     A few minutes later Thomas re-emerged, his face and hands scratched and a hole torn in his cloak. "They've filled in the hole!" he exclaimed angrily as Lirenna and Jerry struggled to hide their amusement. "They must have found out about it somehow and filled it in!"

     "Great," said Matthew. "So how do we get in now?"

     "I suppose we'll just have to set up camp out here, under the stars," said Shaun philosophically. "It's hardly the first time." He opened his backpack and unrolled his sleeping bag, followed by the others.

     "Blast it!" cried Thomas however, hurt and baffled. "I was so looking forward to sleeping in my own bed again!"

     "Don't worry," said Lirenna, with a broad grin of amusement. "You will, tomorrow night."

     "Yeah," said Thomas, trying to cheer himself up a little. "What's one more night after five years?" They set up camp and settled down for the night, but it was a long time before the miserable Thomas finally fell asleep.