by Roger Taylor
Fooling around with the servants again, eh, Commander? Vintre thought caustically. Getting caught out at that, plus the shock that Helsarn had just delivered to him—and a little good fortune—might well see another gap being made in the higher ranks of the Gevethen's aides, he mused. But Vintre kept any sign of this speculation from his face, adopting an expression of stony-faced shock as he halted the column and dismounted.
Gidlon, tunic awry, ignored his salute. He ran clumsily down the steps and threw open the carriage door. The driver's unconscious body slowly tumbled out into his arms. Gidlon uttered a startled cry at this unexpected embrace, for a moment fearing that it was Hagen himself. It took all Vintre's self-control to bite back an hysterical laugh at the sight. By the time he had reached his flustered Commander, the driver's body was sprawled on the ground.
'Get this offal out of here,’ Gidlon was shouting at no one in particular, kicking the body.
Helsarn stepped forward, quickly selecting three gaping Guards from the gathering crowd. ‘Take him to the physician straight away, and stay with him,’ he ordered, his manner cold and forceful and markedly at odds with his Commander's. ‘Mind how you carry him. Tell the physician he's to be tended carefully—he'll have to be questioned thoroughly later.’ He turned to the crowd. ‘The rest of you, get about your duties.’ Unusually, the order had only a limited effect. For a moment Helsarn considered repeating it then rejected the idea. It was perfectly obvious that though he had only spoken to Commander Gidlon, the news of Hagen's death had flown through the city faster than he had galloped. Even now it would be spreading through the Citadel like a cold wind bringing news of premature winter.
As the men set about removing the driver, Gidlon swung himself up into the carriage. Its springs creaked a little and the horses’ hooves clattered as they responded, then there was a sudden silence across the whole courtyard. The sounds of the city outside drifted in to fill it. When Gidlon emerged, there was blood on his hands, and his face was as pale as previously it had been flushed. Very slowly he stepped down from the carriage. Vintre noted that his tunic was now straight and that he had regained much of his normal control. For a moment, he felt a twinge of sympathy for his Commander. He would not have relished breaking such news to the Gevethen, and it certainly wasn't a matter that could be left to some underling.
Gidlon looked at Helsarn. ‘Get the physician here immediately,’ he said. Helsarn motioned urgently to Vintre, who ran off in the direction taken by the men carrying the driver. Gidlon gestured towards the people that Helsarn had arrested.
'They did this?’ he asked incredulously.
'Probably not,’ Helsarn replied discreetly. ‘It was only people running away that made me turn into the street. These were all that were left by the time we realized what had happened—the nosy and the stupid.'
Gidlon scowled and bared his clenched teeth viciously. ‘I told him repeatedly not to go into the city without his duty escort,’ he said, though he was talking to himself, weighing consequences.
'Lord Hagen was Lord Hagen,’ Helsarn sympathized coldly. ‘More than once he's dismissed me and my men, and he wasn't a man to be argued with. There's no reason why any reproach should be levelled at you, or any of us.'
'Reason doesn't come into it,’ Gidlon snarled. ‘Get these people locked up, we'll question them later. Then start making preparations for a full purge of that part of the city. That'll be the least that follows this.'
He looked into the carriage again as if for confirmation of what he had to do next. Then, preening his tunic nervously and straightening up, he said, ‘I'll have to go and tell them what's happened.’ Helsarn said nothing. Gidlon took a deep breath. ‘Find the other Commanders and tell them to meet me outside the Watching Chamber right away.'
'And the Lord Hagen's body?’ Helsarn asked uncertainly.
'Do whatever the physician says when he gets here,’ Gidlon said over his shoulder as he walked with heavy deliberation towards the inner gate.
It took Helsarn only a few moments to set in train the instructions that Gidlon had given, then he turned his attention again to the watching crowd. No grief was to be seen. That was not unexpected. It was highly unlikely that anyone felt any but, in any event, those who worked in the service of the Gevethen soon learned to become masters of their faces. Nevertheless, he could smell their uncertainty and fear. Who could have done such a thing? That was indeed a frightening thought which he himself did not care to reflect on too deeply at the moment. And who could guess what would flow from it and who would be arbitrarily snatched up in it? His first instinct was to scatter them with a blasting order, but instead, he said quietly, ‘Go about your duties. Say nothing and encourage no gossip. All that is necessary for you to know will be revealed in due course. It will be expected of you at such a time in particular to fulfil your duties without deviation and without error.'
This simple, cold statement had more effect than any amount of raucous bawling. Everyone there knew that mistakes, however slight, could sometimes be used as the basis for all manner of accusations. The crowd slowly melted away, leaving Helsarn with the carriage and the remainder of his Watch. Others drawn to the gathering turned about when they saw the crowd dispersing and then the courtyard was empty except for the occasional individual earnestly pursuing some errand with his eyes fixed firmly forwards.
As he surveyed the effect of his words, Helsarn reminded himself that he too was not inviolable in these changed circumstances. Better perform his duties as near as possible to what was normal, he thought. He dismissed six of the Guards to attend to the stabling of the horses and formed the others into an honour guard about the carriage.
Then came an interval of eerie silence. Even the sounds from beyond the wall were waning, as if the whole city was beginning to hold its breath.
The sound of footsteps broke into Helsarn's thoughts. He recognized them before the person making them appeared. Physician Harik's strides, like the man himself, were long, relentless and purposeful. They never varied. He could hear too the fainter sound of Vintre trying to match this testing stride without too much loss of dignity. The soft-soled boots for the Citadel Guards had been one of the Gevethen's whims. ‘Best the people do not hear you coming,’ they had said. Perhaps it was a dark joke, but no one laughed.
Harik's tall, lank form came through the wicket in the inner gate, with Vintre slightly behind and burdened not only by his shorter stature but by a long and awkward bundle that Harik had obviously thrust upon him. Helsarn flicked an order to two of the Guards who rushed forward and relieved their Low Captain of his charge. It was a stretcher. Harik cast a glance over the scene then acknowledged Helsarn with a cursory nod before turning to the carriage. He laid a reassuring hand on one of the horses then moved to the open door and stepped inside. Helsarn wanted to walk forward and see what was happening, but Harik intimidated him almost as much as the Gevethen, albeit in a different way.
Harik's face was, as ever, expressionless when he emerged. Taller than Helsarn he bent forward, bringing his face very close. ‘Gone to whatever hell he's made for himself,’ he said. ‘Long gone.'
Helsarn had difficulty in meeting the enigmatic grey-eyed gaze but he could not restrain a flicker of surprise. Harik was the last person from whom a remark such as that might be expected.
'What shall we do with the ... his ... the Lord Counsellor's body?’ he said, cursing himself inwardly for stumbling thus.
'Bring him to my Examining Room.'
Helsarn confirmed the order with a nod to Vintre. ‘Will anything about his wounds tell you what happened?’ he asked, still unsettled by Harik's manner and anxious to sound coherent and in control.
'Little other than the precise manner of his dying,’ Harik replied, looking directly at him again. ‘But doubtless they'll wish to hear it.’ Harik rarely referred to the Gevethen as anything other than ‘they', and though he gave the word no special inflection, it was nonetheless full of meaning. ‘I doubt the wounds
will tell me much about who did it.’ His gaze intensified. ‘Your province, I think.'
Hagen's body was gingerly taken from the carriage and placed on the stretcher. Harik looked down at him, bending only at the neck, as if to distance himself from the sight, then he produced a cloth from somewhere within his robe and placed it over the dead man's face. The tension amongst the watching men seemed to lighten perceptibly. It lightened further as the body was carried away.
Helsarn stared after it for a moment, then, cursing himself again for his folly, he dismissed the Watch with an order to remain in their quarters and, leaving a solitary Guard to tell Gidlon where he was going, he set off after the retreating physician. A rare figure he'd have cut, standing on the steps waiting for something to happen when Gidlon returned! Whether he liked it or not, he had become the Lord Counsellor's escort and he must attend his every moment for, sure as fate, he would be interrogated about it by the Gevethen themselves.
By the time he caught up with the stretcher party, they had passed through a broad-arched doorway in the inner wall of the Citadel and were moving along the corridor that led to Harik's Examining Room. This was the same room that Harik had used when he was the Count's Physician, and the area around it still had an open and airy feeling that had long passed from the rest of the Citadel. It was many years since Helsarn had been here and, as he took in the scents of the place, they transported him back to the time when he had been a wide-eyed and ambitious junior cadet in the Count's Guard. He scowled under the assault of the peculiarly vivid memories that were suddenly surging through him. Far too much darkness lay between that time and now. Far too much pain, too much cruel learning.
'You're troubled?’ Harik asked, noting the change in countenance.
The question brought Helsarn sharply back to the present. He tested the question for treachery. There would be none, he decided. Whatever else he was, Harik was beyond all Citadel politics. Nevertheless, caution was essential.
'How could I not be after such an atrocity?’ he replied stiffly. He thought he saw a hint of a smile on the physician's face—or was it a sneer? But if there was anything there at all, it did not linger, and Harik was merely nodding when Helsarn looked more carefully. The short journey was completed in silence.
Harik's examination of the body did not take long and Helsarn stood through it with stoical impassivity, though it was an effort. Not that he was particularly squeamish about knife wounds or, for that matter, most forms of violent injury, but there was a disturbing quality about Harik's combination of cold-blooded efficiency and delicate gentleness.
Harik straightened up when he had finished and pulled a cloth oven the body. He stood for some time looking down at the now anonymous form. ‘Doubtless they'll want his body accorded some special respect,’ he said eventually, without looking up. ‘Have your men take him to the buriers. Tell them to put him in the cold room until I have instructions about what's to be done.’ He paused and tapped the edge of the examination table thoughtfully. ‘Take him now. There's nothing else to be done and I must take them a report straight away.'
'Did you discover how he was killed?’ Helsarn asked bluntly.
'There was a knife wound in his shoulder, but he died from two stab wounds to the throat. I doubt you needed my expertise to tell you that,’ Harik replied.
'I didn't examine him other than to confirm that he was dead.'
Harik continued. ‘They were delivered from above, very powerfully.'
'A big man, then? Strong?'
Harik looked straight at him. Once again Helsarn found it difficult to hold the grey-eyed gaze. ‘Strength lies unseen in many unexpected places, Captain. It merely awaits the right key to release it.'
Helsarn frowned. ‘A big man, though?’ he persisted.
Harik turned away, a faintly weary expression on his face. ‘Probably,’ he said off-handedly. ‘And it was done with a knife about so long and so wide.’ His two forefingers then a finger and thumb demonstrated. ‘About the same size as the daggers that your Guards carry.'
Helsarn's stomach lurched and his knees started to shake. Casual remarks such as that could be disastrous. In present circumstances they could spiral out of control and lead to any conclusion—even a purging of the Guards. His voice was almost trembling when he spoke. ‘Knives like that are carried by every thief in the city, not to mention all the old Count's Guards,’ he said, too quickly. He cleared his throat. ‘It won't be necessary for you to make such a ... comparison ... in your report, will it?'
Harik eyed him again. ‘No,’ he said simply. ‘Just a statement of the size. Conjecture will be for others. As will everything else. Such as I can do I've done.'
As he was about to leave, Helsarn remembered the driver of Hagen's carriage. He inquired about him.
Harik indicated a door. ‘He's in there, with your Guards. I only had time for a cursory examination when he arrived. I'm going to have a proper look at him now. He seems to have had a severe blow to the head. He may not regain consciousness, and if he does there's no guarantee he'll remember what happened.'
'You must do whatever's ...'
Helsarn's words froze as Harik's gaze fixed him again. There was no mistaking the anger in it, for all that it was gone almost immediately. He left the sentence unfinished. The driver was in secure hands and he could be dealt with any time. All that mattered now was being ready for the Gevethen's response to what had happened.
When Helsarn had left, Harik began cleaning the examination table. Part way through he stopped and his impassive face became briefly both tragic and triumphant. ‘Still there,’ he said, very softly. ‘Strength lying unseen. Still there. Waiting for the right key.’ Then he was himself again, cleaning up the debris left by the Lord Counsellor Hagen.
Helsarn was not unrelieved to be leaving Harik's rooms. The atmosphere of the place still tugged him back to times long gone and he did not like it. As he and the men carrying the stretcher returned to the inner courtyard, he felt the old associations drop away from him. In their place came a renewed unease. It took him only a moment to realize what it was. Silence. Normally the Citadel was alive with activity as officials, Guards, servants went about their business. In addition, he felt as though he were being watched. That, however, was no great mystery. He was being watched. As he glanced around at the buildings lining the courtyard, faces quickly vanished from almost every window.
It occurred to him then, that the silence was wrong. Gidlon must have informed the Gevethen about what had happened by now. There should have been a massive response. Why wasn't the Citadel alive with the sound of clattering feet and rattling weapons as the Guards prepared to set out on a major purge?
A deep, echoing boom scattered his thoughts and made him jump violently. Though he had not heard it for many years, he recognized it immediately. It was the great Dohrum Bell, a growling, unbalanced and ill-tuned monster that hung from the rafters of the Citadel's main tower. It had not been rung for so long because the vibrations it caused shook the very fabric of the tower itself. Now however, its rumbling tones seemed appropriate to the event.
Nine times it tolled, and when it fell silent its fading resonances seemed to draw time after them, stretching each measuring heartbeat out into an eternity.
Helsarn and the stretcher-bearers had slowly come to a halt as the bell rang, and now stood motionless in the middle of the courtyard. He was about to order them to move off again when a high-pitched voice, cold, gratingly soft and quite unmistakable, folded itself around him. It merged with and was followed by another.
'Carry him on your shoulders, my children ...'
'... my children.'
'Such as he should not ride so near the dusty earth ...'
'... the dusty earth.'
Helsarn stiffened as he turned towards the voices, then slowly dropped down on to one knee and lowered his head in submission. Standing at the top of a broad flight of steps leading to an ornately canopied doorway, their mirror-bearers about the
m, stood the Gevethen.
* * *
Chapter 6
Ibryen found the crowd in the same mood as Hynard and Rachyl when he reached it. A bubbling mixture of anger and guilt and no small amount of fear that a stranger should have apparently breached their careful defences.
He did not dismount, but beat down their many questions with a forceful gesture.
'I don't know who this man is or how he came here,’ he shouted. ‘But he's come down off the ridge of his own free will when he could easily have fled, and for what it's worth, my feeling is that he's no enemy.'
His words addressed their fears, but did not allay them, and the questions surged up again. He became sterner. ‘What I learn, you'll learn, in so far as it's safe for many to know, as with everything we do,’ he said. ‘But I'll need to question him carefully and at length. For the time being he thinks he's a guest and he'll be treated as such ...’ There were cries of disbelief and some scornful laughter. Ibryen scowled. ‘That he's here at all tells you he's someone unusual,’ he said forcefully. ‘Perhaps our defences are not what we thought. Perhaps some of us may have earned a reproach for carelessness. I don't know. I'd have sworn not, only a few hours ago, but I'll find out more and quicker if this man is treated as a would-be ally than as a definite foe.'
It was not a popular conclusion, but the questioning faded into an uneasy silence.
Ibryen moved his horse to start shepherding the crowd back down the hill.
'Go back to your normal duties now, there's nothing to be done here.’ There was still some hesitancy. He paused, and looked at the crowd intently. His voice was kinder, more resigned, when he spoke. ‘Besides, guest or no, enemy or no, he's confined to the valley now, like the rest of us. He'll not leave until we all leave.’ He twisted round in his saddle and pointed back to the approaching trio. ‘Unless you think he's capable of escaping from Rachyl's care,’ he added, grinning. All eyes turned towards the approaching Traveller and his escort. Rachyl was taller than Ibryen and powerful as only a woman so inclined can be. Few of the men in the valley would have aspired to match her combination of strength, mobile athleticism and sheer brutality in unarmed combat. Even fewer would have been inclined to match her armed. The sight of the Traveller's slight frame between Rachyl and Hynard—himself not a small man—together with Ibryen's abrupt change of manner broke what tension there was left in the crowd and it began to disperse.