Ibryen

by Roger Taylor

  She sheathed the knife and stood up. The dogs came across to her.

  ‘Better see what we’ve started,’ she said to them, snapping her fingers and indicating the door. The dogs ran off. From the first she had taught them to leave the building as she did, never by the same way on two consecutive occasions. Now they had ways in and out of the building that even she did not know about.

  Outside all was still, save for a slight breeze. She looked up. Clouds littered the blue sky and the sun was warm on her grimy face. Perhaps once, celebration might have rung out within her at this but now, sight and sensation were of tactical value only. They gave her a measure of what places in the Ennerhald would be light, what places dark, where she might safely go without being seen, where she might not, what traders, what beggars, would be about and where.

  In the distance, beyond the forest, the mountains gleamed, many peaks still snow-capped. For a moment she was drawn to the idea of setting off towards them with a view to joining Ibryen and his followers. It was not the first time such thoughts had occurred to her and, as on all other occasions, she quickly rejected them. Amongst other reasons, it would not be the easy journey it appeared to be. The mountains were further away than the sunshine painted them, and there was the river to cross, with the Gevethen’s army guarding the obvious crossing points and constantly patrolling the rolling land on the far side. And other, more subtle, ties restrained her. She looked around at her immediate surroundings. This was her world. She understood it, she could use it. Here, she, and she alone, determined the time and order of combat. She found little to be relished in the prospect of skulking far away in the mountains, ambushing the Gevethen’s men, when the heart of the problem lay here in the Citadel and nothing would truly be achieved until it had been cut out.

  But despite this judgement, there still lingered the faint hope that one day she would look towards the mountains and the Count and his army would slowly emerge from the forest. She laid the notion aside more gently than she had most of her other reflections that morning.

  As she moved through the Ennerhald, it seemed to her that it was quieter than usual. Fewer of its denizens were abroad and even the birds were less boisterous than they should have been on such a day. Her senses, already heightened by the previous day’s work and the knowledge that some form of retribution would probably already be afoot, became even sharper. She moved slowly and cautiously from shadow to shadow, each footstep as silent as she could make it, ears and eyes fully alert. The dogs too, tails and heads low, moved stealthily, refraining from many of the bouts of urgent curiosity that usually marked their journeying. The pack was hunting.

  Steadily they moved closer to the area where Ennerhald and city merged uncertainly, until she came at last to a building with five towers that stood high above its neighbours. Two of the towers had partly crumbled and stood jagged against the sky. The remainder were intact. All were covered in ever thickening ivy as Nature quietly strove to regain her own. Noiselessly Jeyan slipped inside, then, pausing briefly for her eyes to adjust to the comparative darkness, she made her way towards a long winding flight of stone steps. As she started up them, Frey ran ahead of her and Assh lingered behind, vanguard and rearguard. At intervals, the stairs opened out into landings with doorways leading to the various floors, but she continued past them. Some of the doorways led only to vertiginous drops, the floors that they once served having long since collapsed, while others led to floors that were treacherously rotten. She had learned from terrifying experience in her early days in the Ennerhald to be very circumspect before venturing out on to untested timber.

  Eventually she reached the highest landing. A circle of arched openings led out on to a parapet. Frey was waiting for her dutifully, standing at the top of the stairs. Jeyan patted her then dropped down on all fours and crawled out on to the parapet. This was not for fear of tumbling off, as the parapet wall was whole and solid, but the towers were visible from many parts of the city, not least the Citadel, and any movement above the wall was at risk of being seen. Further, this was a part of the Ennerhald into which the Citadel Guards would venture if the mood so took them. It was not a place to which she normally came, for this reason, together with the fact that there was only one way in and out, though she had determined to use the dense ivy, now draping the parapet wall, as an escape route if need arose. Today however, she needed to peer into the city before she ventured into it, and this was by far the best vantage point. It had come to her as she made her way through the Ennerhald that the silence was so unusual because the steady murmur of the busy city which normally pervaded everything was absent.

  She came to a jagged hole in the wall. Once, rainwater had run through it, washing along a carved stone channel to discharge through the mouth of a leering head, but some chance had long since carried the channel away and taken part of the wall with it. Carefully she lowered herself on to her stomach and positioned herself so that by reaching out and parting the ivy she could peer through the opening. From here she could see part of the city, including a view directly along one of the long, straight avenues that led to the Citadel.

  What she saw confirmed her suspicions. The city streets, which should have been busy with people going about their business, were deserted. As she watched, a group of horsemen appeared and trotted along the avenue in the direction of the Citadel.

  She retreated and moved further round the parapet to another, similar opening. Everywhere that she could see was deserted save for groups of Citadel Guards and, on foot, columns of marching men; the army, she presumed. It was an ominous sight, but she registered it coldly. The Gevethen must have ordered a full curfew as a precursor to a purging – probably a bad one, with house-by-house searching. Anyone foolish enough to be found on the streets was likely to be killed on the spot or, worse, taken away for ‘questioning’ first. Excuses would be futile. Once, an entire household had been massacred as they fled their burning house during a curfew.

  For a moment a spasm of guilt threatened to shake her as she thought about what her deed had released on the city, but it passed. The city had not helped her when she needed it; now it must take the consequences of so readily accepting the Gevethen’s rule. Even before she had been driven into the Ennerhald she had seen clearly that no civilized proceeding would bring the loathsome pair down, so the people would have to tolerate ever increasing brutality until they too chose to awaken to this realization.

  The only question that formed in her mind was, why was the army there? Ostensibly, the army and the Citadel Guards worked together and held one another in mutual regard as the two pillars that supported the Gevethen. In reality there was little love lost between them. The army thought of the Guards as privileged milksops who, despite the occasional foray, avoided the real business of dealing with the Count in the mountains, and who did little or nothing to ensure the safety of Nesdiryn’s boundaries, now under some threat from nervous neighbours since the Count’s overthrow. The Guards in their turn viewed the army as an adjunct to their own power, a body of fairly worthless expendables necessary to prevent the Count from escaping the mountains and for keeping the population beyond Dirynhald under control until such time as the Guards were sufficient in number to handle the matters properly themselves. The Gevethen, creators of both, played their own game.

  Jeyan did not need to think about the answer to her question. If the army and the Guards were patrolling the city together, then the operation under way was a large one. She crawled to a third outlet. It told her nothing new, although she could make out foot patrols moving from house to house in one street. She allowed her high vantage to separate her from the nightmare that would be transforming those houses, as familiar, sheltering rooms became cruel, enclosing traps, as protecting arms were rendered impotent and pathetic, as precious possessions were smashed or stolen, as loved ones were humiliated and degraded or beaten and dragged away.

  How far would the purge spread? she asked herself. Usually a purge was confined to
a few streets either side of the place where some untoward event had occurred, but with the army having been brought in, this was obviously going to be much bigger than that. She pictured the streets around where she had laid her ambush and, not for the first time showing an unwitting affinity with her enemy, decided that the purge would be in a broad sweeping arc from the scene of Hagen’s death to the edge of the Ennerhald.

  It was obvious that she could not venture into the city today. All she need concern herself with was whether the purge would bring the army or the Guards into the Ennerhald itself. It was a risk, she decided. Even if the pickings here were likely to be few, the seeming inability of the Guards to cleanse the place utterly was a point of sneering disdain that the army frequently levelled at them. She must leave immediately.

  Assh and Frey, who had padded softly from doorway to doorway as Jeyan crawled around the parapet, suddenly growled. Jeyan spun round and raised a hasty hand for silence. It was a familiar gesture, at once grateful and urgent. But she was wide-eyed with alarm. There should be nothing up here that would disturb the dogs. Then, to her horror, voices drifted up to her. Several voices. From below. And there were other noises. Nothing was individually distinguishable but it was unmistakably the sound of a large body of men. It needed no great powers of deduction to decide that the purging had indeed been carried into the Ennerhald. She thought she could hear horses, but whether it was the army or the Guards below was of no import – she was trapped. Quickly she scuttled round to an opening on the side of the tower away from the city. She could see nothing, however; the old outlet merely offered her an ivy-framed view across the Ennerhald. The only way she could find out what was happening below was to stand up and peer over the parapet, or perhaps go partway down the stairs and look out of one of the windows. Although she knew that the chance of her being seen doing this was slight, it was far more than she was prepared to risk. Like any solitary animal that both hunted and was hunted, Jeyan was obsessively careful in her contacts with her own kind.

  Slowly she pushed her head forward as close to the opening as she could. At least she could listen to what was happening below. One hand still held the dogs silent. They lay down gently, ears pricked, hackles raised, and eyes fixed on their pack leader. Patient as Jeyan had learned to become, the dogs could out-wait her tenfold.

  She screwed up her eyes as she tried desperately to make out what was happening. Her thoughts were racing. Surely whoever it was would not bother to climb up the towers? In the past when Guards had come into the Ennerhald, they had confined themselves to rooting out basements and ground floors, risking dubious stairways and upper floors only in pursuit. All she had to do was remain silent and eventually they would go away. She cursed herself for coming so close to the city. It had not been necessary. She had food and supplies enough scattered about the further reaches of the Ennerhald to last for a long time before she needed to risk going into the city to steal anything. Indeed, by using her knowledge of the forest, she could have remained away from the city indefinitely. She clenched her teeth in anger. What could have prompted her to commit such a folly? It was not necessary to witness the fact to know that drastic action would be taken against the people following Hagen’s murder. That was as inevitable as the rising of the sun. And, by the same token, whatever that action might have been, there was little or no possibility that she would have been able to enter the city safely today even if she had wanted to.

  That it was vanity that had over-ridden her native caution never occurred to her. To know that she had wanted to revel in seeing the Gevethen’s men thrashing impotently through the city as a consequence of her actions – the great and powerful bending before her will – would have been to give her a measure of the brittleness of her strength that she could not have borne.

  Shouts began to reach her. Orders.

  If only she could see!

  Carefully she reached into the opening in the hope that moving some of the ivy might improve her view. As she began to push the thick tendrils aside however, two birds, startled by this intrusion into their roost, took violent flight, bursting noisily out into the Ennerhald quiet. Jeyan snatched her hand back and only just avoided crying out. Below, the noise faltered, then more orders were shouted. The dogs began to growl again. Jeyan silenced them and, without hesitation, crawled quickly back into the turret room. Silently instructing the dogs to stay where they were, she started making her way down the stairs. She must know what was happening.

  It was not long before she found out, for echoing up the stone steps came the clatter of feet. The heavily shod footwear confirmed that the intruders were the army but Jeyan had no inclination to ponder such niceties. Panic and seething rage welled up inside her in equal proportions; the one urging her to flee back upwards in the hope of finding some cranny where she might avoid detection, the other urging her to rush on down, knife drawn, and kill as many as she could before…

  Before what?

  ‘Before dying, donkey,’ came a colder assessment, cutting through the frenzy stirred by these alternatives.

  Or worse.

  Images of cruel, jeering faces and unstoppable hands threatened momentarily to paralyse her, turning her insides to lead. Then the approaching footsteps stopped and she was released. There was some shouting. She could not make out what was being said, but she heard the fainter answer from outside.

  ‘Right to the top, you blockhead!’

  Legs shaking and pulse racing, Jeyan turned and ran back up the stairs. Almost immediately she ran into the dogs sidling warily down. The sight of them at once sobered and heartened her. The dogs looked to her for many things and she must not infect them with her fear. Whatever she chose to do,they were going to have to fight their way out. Baring her teeth, she slipped between them and, placing an arm about each so that they could feel her anger, she hissed, ‘Go!’ and pushed them down the stairs.

  Within seconds, the sound of the ascending footsteps was replaced by a frantic uproar as Assh and Frey, propelled by gravity, the will of their leader and no small amount of natural malice, leapt at the throats of the leading soldiers. Both men were badly hurt before they even knew what it was that was attacking them, and those immediately following fared little better. Six men had been ordered up the tower to see what had disturbed the birds, and the last two were turning to flee as the dogs savaged their legs and sent them tumbling headlong before pounding over them to escape from the building.

  Jeyan listened to their progress with a grim delight. The dogs would be safe, she was sure. They were big, strong, and very dangerous animals, well used to fending for themselves. Either on its own was a disconcerting match for a man with his wits about him, let alone someone clambering up an unknown and narrow stairway in the half-light.

  And they carried something else with them which would double the havoc they caused. Jeyan did not have to wait long before recognition of it reached her, for as the sounds of the rout in the stairwell faded, they were replaced by sounds from outside, drifting in through a nearby window.

  ‘Death-pit dogs!’

  The phrase, increasingly high-pitched, was repeated several times but was soon lost in panic-stricken uproar. Jeyan clenched her fists and grimaced, willing the dogs on to mayhem. Amid the din she could just detect a voice desperately trying to impose order, then there was barking, and a terrified neighing, and it was gone.

  The noise went on for a long time, though Jeyan knew from its tone that Assh and Frey were safely away. In fact, they had done their worst and fled before the panic even reached its peak. The fear of death-pit dogs – their savagery and the diseases they carried – was a weapon such as the Gevethen themselves might have envied.

  Gradually, and only with a great deal of shouting and cursing, order was restored. Jeyan listened tensely as the sound of footsteps and voices came once again up the stairs, but she soon realized that it was only the original party decamping – or being removed, by others. There were several agonizing cries of pain. Jeya
n smiled. Her only regret was that she had not been able to watch the dogs at their work.

  ‘Welcome to the Ennerhald,’ she whispered softly. What a pity it was that the rest of Dirynhald did not give these creatures the same reception.

  She waited for a long time after the soldiers had left before even considering moving down the tower. The trembling that had persisted for so long after her attack on Hagen seemed set to return, even more overwhelmingly than before. But that act had at least been planned – fretted over for months before it became clear in her mind, and then perhaps as long again before she could find both the courage and the opportunity. This today had been so unnecessary – so pointless. It disturbed her deeply that she could be so foolish. Had she not learned yet? Trust no one, trust nothing – least of all chance. If she did not think – did not use her wits – how much longer was she going to last here? And how many times was she going to have to learn that lesson?

  Eventually, as the unnatural silence of the Ennerhald that day returned, she ended her vigil at the top of the steps and crawled carefully to the opening that she had first looked through. Hands still shaking, she parted the ivy and peered through. The sight was little different from what it had been before. The streets were still deserted save for groups of Guards and soldiers. One group she noted was moving along the avenue that led to the Citadel.

  It was too far away for her to make out any details, but the column looked uneven and disordered, and the officer at its head was definitely walking his horse.