The meeting was tense. Feldak, while not wishing to offend the imperial commander, was unable to disguise his astonishment at his tiny force. Chaldez told him how he had been betrayed to the Stachaxi by his guide and ambushed. "We were already much reduced and greatly weakened after crossing the mountains," he added, by way of excuse for what had followed.
Feldak then said a surprising thing. "Even with 50,000 men you could not save Laifya."
Chaldez frowned at him. "There must still be armies in Laifya which have not been defeated. Brought together into a single command I have no doubt but that they could destroy our enemy."
"There are no armies left," Feldak said, his voice rising with emotion. "Laifya is but dust."
"Sigmar has done this?" Chaldez was incredulous.
"Sigmar? What are you talking about? Their commander is Jaejisir. Have you not heard of Jaejisir?"
"Jaejisir? No, I have not heard that name. But Sigmar is their king."
"They have no 'king'!" Feldak exclaimed.
"The Sairians have no king?" Chaldez wondered if he was talking to an idiot.
"Why do you speak of the Sairians?" Feldak asked.
"You've just told me I couldn't defeat them even with 50,000 men!" Chaldez was becoming exasperated.
Feldak passed his hand over his face. "The Sairians," he said slowly, "were expelled from Laifya ."
Chaldez was thoroughly confused. He looked at the ground and for a while was silent as he digested the implications of what he had just heard. Then he repeated the name he had just heard for the first time. "Jaejisir. You had better tell me about this Jaejisir.”
The story Feldak then began to tell him, and continued to tell him over the next few days, was more terrible than anything he had heard before.
Feldak was the son of Rha Abback, ruler of the Laifyan Rhanese of Itsia which two years earlier had come under threat from the Muraks. Abback formed an alliance with his neighbours, and the advance of the barbarians was at last halted. Abback's strength was growing, but his own chief minister had begun to accept secrets payments of gold from Jaejisir and at a crucial moment he had Abback murdered. Feldak went into hiding, and the chief minister, with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of gold and gems with which to buy the services of fellow Laifyans, began the systematic rape of Itsia.
Towns, villages, hamlets and farmsteads were raided by marauding bands in the pay of the new ruler of Itsia. All who were too old, weak or ill to be of use were casually put to death; the rest were rounded up and marched off in chains to the capital where the Muraks had made their headquarters.
His voice choking, Feldak described the high tower which they built outside the city walls.
"I saw it," he said, his eyes filling with tears, and Chaldez knew that he was about to hear of some terrible use to which it was put.
"I saw them . . . " said Feldak, "I saw them take away the babies and the little children. No one knew why. Some mothers cried and fought but many let it happen. I think perhaps they expected to be killed themselves and thought the little ones were to be spared . . . " he was unable to go on. After a while he pulled himself together sufficiently to finish. "It was a human sacrifice, you see. To their God of War. The Sacrifice of Innocents they call it," and he described the sacrificial ceremony which the priests of Histigga had evolved and perfected since Jaejisir had made himself master of the Lodmurak and Brodmurak armies and begun his conquest of Laifya. He said he had seen the victims hurled from the top of the tower to die on the sharpened staves at its base, and had heard the shouts and cheers of the assembled warriors as the ritual unfolded. "Those that were left," he said, "the mothers and fathers and older brothers and sisters are to be slaves. They say they will work the mines of a distant land, a place called Kroya."
Chaldez had to pretend that the name meant nothing to him, though its utterance tortured him. For a moment he pictured the port and city of Raggan as he had looked down on it during his flight from Budenrath, and he remembered the remark he had made to Dan at the time about forgetting Sigmar if Kroya could be his. He thought of the fine buildings and beautiful artefacts which had so delighted him. Kroya, his Kroya. What had they done to it? And what had happened to the Theigans; had Cregitzig and Havil been driven back to Theigia by the barbarians?
Feldak told Chaldez that for a time he had been held by the Muraks; it was as their prisoner that he had witnessed the events surrounding the Sacrifice of Innocents. But he had escaped, and on his way north had collected together other young men who had avoided capture or had, like him, escaped. It was his intention, he said, that they should join an army which he had heard from travellers was operating in the east.
"So what are you doing here?" Chaldez wanted to know.
"Driven from our lands and our homes," Feldak explained, "we have nothing, and as you know, it is impossible to live on nothing. The Bezane is paying us, and when we have enough we will move on."
There was a question Chaldez had to ask "The Sairians, who were your enemies - what has become of them?"
Feldak shrugged. "I am told their land is overrun, as mine is."
"This army you have heard of," Chaldez asked, "what do you know of it?"
"Very little except that it is there and that it is harassing the Muraks in the east. There are but 40 of us, but our number grows."
Chaldez knew that all his schemes for the overthrow of Sigmar were now redundant; for all he knew Sigmar was dead. The new enemy were these barbarian Muraks and their leader Jaejisir.
It was an odd experience to have Sigmar removed so abruptly from his life. He had been a malign and threatening presence for so much of it that he had difficulty adjusting to his sudden absence. "I am confused," he confessed to Dan. "Everything is so different from what we had expected. The gods have brought us this far, but to what purpose? I was to avenge my parents and take what is rightfully mine, with you at my side. All our lives we have been moving towards that target, and just as we are about to reach it we find that it has been taken away. What am I to do?"
"Sigmar might be dead," said Dan, "but your kingdom still awaits you. The target is not so very different."
"I think," said Chaldez after a longish silence, "we have been preserved by the gods in order to bring down punishment on these Muraks. Alive or dead, Sigmar is unimportant. I will die content if I know that I have helped to destroy Jaejisir and his hordes. I intend to join Feldak and go with him to find this army he speaks of."
Dan shrugged his shoulders. "I don't agree that Sigmar is unimportant," he said, "and I shan't be content until the crown of Sair is on your head. But apart from that I agree with you: we should join this Laifyan, if you think he is to be trusted, and we should attempt to find the army he speaks of. The Muraks are our first problem for until they are destroyed you cannot be king of Sair, that much is certain."
Chaldez clasped Dan's arm. "You never give up, do you?" he said, smiling. At that moment he was filled with warmth for his friend. "It's settled then. We go east with Feldak."