by Roger Taylor
He must be careful with them. Rigid things shatter, he thought. It was an old memory. As a child he had had a formal training in arms as befitted his station and, for a little while, he had been taught by an old man who, though much respected by his peers, used techniques which were frighteningly effective yet strangely soft and subtle. He had never seen the like since and none of his subsequent instructors had made such an impression on him. ‘Relax. Let go. Only dead things are rigid,’ the old man used to say. ‘And rigid things shatter. Shatter suddenly.’ He would clap his hands explosively and laugh. He laughed a lot. Ibryen had enjoyed his training but had never understood what he was being taught, always throwing himself massively into either attack or defence, invariably to crushing defeat and always much to the old man’s amusement. ‘Don’t be upset,’ he would say. ‘What little I’ve truly taught you, you’ll understand when you need it. There’s no hurry. Some things can come only with time.’ Then he would always add, ‘But you’ve learned more than you realize.’ There had been a great affection between them and Ibryen had been deeply distressed when the old man had died. Even now, he often thought about him, always remembering his kindly ways but always too, with the feeling that an opportunity had slipped away from him which would not come again.
Yes, he must be careful with Rachyl and Hynard. Circumstances for his followers demanded a meticulous attention to the procedures that had grown up over the years. To veer away from them was to jeopardize the whole community. That was an article of faith. But had it become mere blind ritual? Had Rachyl and Hynard become strong, supple and well-founded like great trees, or had they become dead stumps, stiff and useless, mere obstructions to be walked around? Would they crumble and disintegrate into ineffectiveness at the wrong touch?
Patience, he counselled himself. Let them ease fully into the present. Put time between the now and the frightening discovery that there had been silent footsteps at their back.
‘Iscar’s been,’ he said abruptly. When the first rush of surprised exclamations petered out he motioned Marris to recount the reason for the premature visit.
Both reacted to the news of Hagen’s death with unfeigned and noisy delight, the only regret being from Rachyl who, like Marris, mourned the fact that she had not been able to kill him herself. Their mood sobered a little as Marris went on to tell them about the purging that had been set in train as a consequence, but still they were uplifted. This was a worthwhile blow, well struck.
‘What a pity they didn’t toll the Dohrum Bell a little more,’ Hynard exclaimed at one point, his face alight. ‘It might have brought the whole tower down on their wretched heads and solved all our problems at once.’ His dark humour was as infectious as it was inappropriate, the more so because the same idea had occurred to both Ibryen and Marris when Iscar had told them of the bell, though neither had voiced it.
Released in some way, Rachyl and Hynard simultaneously downed more water and then began to eat. Ibryen smiled. The footsteps along the Hummock were a little further away already.
‘What are we going to do with him, then?’ Ibryen asked into a lull that followed Marris’s telling and the subsequent questions. His cousins stop chewing and frowned at him. He flicked a hand towards the Traveller. Their four eyes followed his direction, then became uncertain again.
Hynard swallowed. ‘It takes some accepting, but he’s at least telling the truth about the direction he came from. I can’t say I trust him, but that’s no insult the way we are here. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. I’ll even guard his back if he needs it.’
Ibryen looked expectantly at Rachyl.
‘And me,’ she said after a pause. Then she spoke to the Traveller directly, as if anxious to make amends for her earlier manner. ‘But you can’t leave.’ She waved the words aside apologetically. ‘I mean, you mustn’t leave. If you’re captured by the Gevethen’s men, they’ll torture you until you tell them everything.’
The Traveller smiled and, leaning across to her, took her extended hand. ‘Don’t fret,’ he said quietly. ‘When I go, it’ll be through the mountains. There’ll be no one there.’ Rachyl looked at him strangely then, with a slight start, withdrew her hand sharply and put it awkwardly in her lap. She cleared her throat.
‘What are you going to tell everyone about him?’ she asked Ibryen, hastily reverting to her usual forthright manner.
Ibryen glanced at Marris. One of the lanterns hissed and flickered briefly, trembling the edges of the shadows in the room. When he spoke, Ibryen’s voice was steady and careful. ‘I told you when the Traveller first arrived that things had happened of late that you weren’t privy to and that I needed your help and courage. That’s still the case.’ He outlined the assessment of their future in the valley as it had revealed itself to him through the day. Both of them protested at length, but the logic that had swayed Ibryen and Marris, eventually swayed them also. Time and attrition would destroy them as surely as an attack by overwhelming odds. It was a cold, frightening realization that dashed utterly their exhilaration at the news of Hagen’s death, and it left them in the same predicament as their leader. If their current strategy was destined inexorably to failure, what else could be done?
Ibryen did not let them languish. ‘Everything that’s happened to date has been necessary for us to reach this point. Have no doubts about that. We could have done nothing else. Now we’re ready for change, and we will do the following. Raids against the Gevethen’s troops will stop. We’ll simply continue to observe their…’
A protest from Rachyl stopped him but he held up a hand to silence her. ‘Listen! I don’t know what the next few weeks are going to bring, but we continue only with what is valuable from the past. We can’t afford to lower our guard, to slip into carelessness, but what is merely habit or convenience must be abandoned, and all minds must turn towards looking at events afresh.’
Rachyl swept aside his demand for silence. ‘We can’tnot fight!’ she burst out. ‘We’ve got to…’
‘We’vegot to do nothing!’ Ibryen said angrily. ‘Just listen, as I’ve asked. This isn’t going to be easy for any of us to accept, but understand, we’ve no choice.We change or die.’ Rachyl seemed set to continue her protest but Ibryen allowed her no opportunity. He was with his old instructor again – understanding dancing about him, solid yet elusive. He spoke as his thoughts formed. ‘Change, in the form of a random assassin, has intruded on the Gevethen. Let them cope with that as they may – the greater disruption Hagen’s death causes, the more likely that mistakes are going to be made. Those few knife blows won’t bring the Gevethen down, but they’ll have shaken the entire edifice of their power, just as the Dohrum Bell shakes the Citadel tower. If we continue as we’ve always done – a spring offensive – moving out, raiding and harrying, then that consistency, that normality, will help to support them while they recover. But if suddenly we’re not there, and rumours are flying around the city that an attack is to come from some unexpected direction and that Hagen’s death was planned as part of it, what then?’
The argument unsettled Rachyl, but she clung on. ‘We could tie up part of the army, leave them fewer men to purge the city with.’ She dismissed this herself as soon as she spoke it, however. The Gevethen’s army was no skilled fighting force, but it was large. Whatever happened in the mountains it was unlikely that it would have any serious effect on the numbers available to purge the city. Added to which was the fact that the purging was under way now. Any venture that the Count’s followers could mount would be weeks away. She shifted ground. ‘And what do we do if they come looking for us?’
‘Let them come,’ Ibryen replied off-handedly. ‘We watch and wait, as always, but that’s all. Obviously if they look like coming too far we’ll intervene. But we’ll fight them defensively. Like a token force, left behind to guard a camp. Let them do the attacking. They’ll not like that in this terrain.’
Defeated for the moment, Rachyl picked up a piece of bread and began slowly breaking it up.
‘But…’
‘But how are we going to overthrow the Gevethen if we do less than we’re already doing?’ Ibryen finished her question. Feeding herself with small pieces of bread, Rachyl gave a soft grunt of agreement.
Ibryen’s mood darkened. He spoke carefully. ‘While you were away, we travelled this same ground many times.’ He indicated Marris and the Traveller. ‘No logical conclusion is to be found. So we are faced with two choices – despair and die – or pursue a course of action that has no apparently logical basis.’
Rachyl’s eyes were fixed on him, thumb and forefinger slowly rotating an almost non-existent piece of bread into her steadily grinding front teeth. Hynard was sitting very still, his head craning forward intently as though to miss some tiny detail of what was being said would plunge him into darkness. Neither spoke.
Ibryen continued. ‘This has been a desperately long day. We’re all such a distance from where we were when we woke this morning. An assassin brought change to the Gevethen, the Traveller has brought it to us. And what’s been unmade can’t be remade.’ He forced himself back to the subject that he was evading and tumbled into it. ‘I intend to go with the Traveller up into the peaks to try to find the source of the sound that drew him here and the source of the strange call that’s been disturbing me these last few days.’
‘What!’ Rachyl spat crumbs. Hynard gaped.
Ibryen hung on to the reins of his tale with grim determination. ‘Marris will take command in my absence and you will pursue the tactics that I’ve just outlined. Company commanders will be…’
‘Are you crazy, Ibryen?’ Rachyl spluttered standing up. She filled the small room like a thunder cloud. Her earlier softening towards the Traveller vanished instantly. ‘You can’t go wandering about the mountains with a complete stranger, looking for some vague… noise.’ She gesticulated violently. ‘What are you going to do if you find it? Shout the Gevethen out of the country?’ She swore and threw down the crust that she was waving incongruously at the Traveller. ‘He’s probably heard some rutting animal, and you’ve probably got indigestion,’ she diagnosed. ‘And we’ve still no idea who he is. He might well have come from the south, but that leaves us none the wiser about why he’s here.’
‘Sit down, Rachyl.’ Ibryen’s quiet tone brought her to a blustering halt but she did not sit. Ibryen turned to Hynard expectantly.
‘I think Rachyl’s raising some valid questions,’ Hynard said unsteadily after a momentary hesitation. His attempt at diplomacy warmed Ibryen.
‘I understand your concern, Rachyl,’ he said. ‘Marris has already been over the same ground with me at length… great length.’ He had hoped to be conciliatory, but her looming presence made him frown. ‘Will you sit down, please. This room’s too small for you to flail about in.’
Replying with a scowl of her own, Rachyl sat down but perched herself bolt upright on the edge of her chair so that she was only marginally less intimidating than she had been standing. ‘Whose idea was this?’ she demanded, loath to concede anything further.
‘Mine.’ It was the Traveller who spoke. His tone was unexpectedly serious. Rachyl’s hand shot out, its extended forefinger moving between Ibryen and the Traveller while she struggled to find words to express the realization of her worst fears.
Ibryen took the initiative. ‘What’s he going to do, luring me up into the mountains, Rachyl? Murder me? I told you, he could have done that already when he first spoke to me.’
Rachyl moved effortlessly to her next thrust. ‘The way he can climb he could just abandon you and be off to the Gevethen with everything there is to know about us here.’
‘He could have left any time he wanted to.’ This time it was Marris who spoke. He gestured to the Traveller as Rachyl faltered again. ‘Show them.’
The Traveller pulled a sour face.
‘Show them,’ Marris insisted. ‘Rachyl and Hynard are nothing if not realists. Cut through all this blather, we’re wasting time.’
‘What do you mean, he could have left?’ Rachyl asked indignantly of no one in particular.
The Traveller looked at Ibryen for support but found none.
‘Marris is right,’ the Count said to him resignedly. ‘I know you don’t like doing it, but they’ll grasp the significance of what it means at least as fast as we did and then we’ll be able to get on. Do it.’
Hynard’s eyes narrowed suspiciously during this exchange, but Rachyl was becoming increasingly agitated. Half-standing, she levelled her finger at the Traveller again but spoke to Ibryen. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if he…’
The Traveller opened his mouth slightly. Ibryen was vaguely aware only of a faint humming but Rachyl stopped abruptly and sat down with a thud, her eyes glazed and fixed. Hynard started turning towards her then he too became still.
‘What have you done?’ Ibryen said, suddenly concerned. ‘That’s not what happened to me.’
‘Nor me,’ Marris added.
‘This is less distressing to me, if you don’t mind,’ the Traveller said haughtily, his voice echoing oddly. ‘And also kinder to them. Besides, the circumstances are different. And the materials I have to work with. Go and stand behind them.’ This instruction was given to Marris in a tone that brought him immediately to his feet and carried him across the room. As he moved behind the two cousins, they were themselves again. Hynard finished turning towards Rachyl while she completed her declaration, ‘… tries any fancy tricks on me, don’t think either his age or your protection will…’ She stopped and blinked. ‘What the…! Where’s…?’
‘I’m here.’
Both jumped up and spun round at the sound of Marris’s voice. Rachyl’s chair clattered over. Marris stepped back hastily, arms extended as Rachyl’s hand moved instinctively to the knife in her belt.
‘Sit down.’ The Traveller’s voice, though not loud, filled the room and halted this sudden flurry. His two subjects obeyed the command without hesitating, but seeing the shock in their eyes Ibryen did not wait for any questions. ‘Marris just walked behind you, that’s all. For the last few seconds you’ve been…’ he struggled. ‘… asleep, for want of a better word.’ He lifted his hands in denial. ‘Don’t ask me what was done, or how, but that’s what happened.’ Pausing, he looked at them both shrewdly. Rigid things shatter. Had the Traveller’s demonstration been too sudden, too severe? ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
Hynard blinked several times and then opened his eyes very wide. ‘Apart from seeing someone vanish, yes, I think so,’ he said.
‘Rachyl?’
‘Yes, fine, fine,’ she said, though her voice was unsteady. ‘Just a little shaky at finding someone suddenly behind me, that’s all.’ She shuddered noisily and put a hand on her knife again. It was obvious to Ibryen that both of them had been more badly affected than they were admitting, but their straightforward responses eased his concerns. He repeated his previous remark. ‘I don’t know what he did or how he did it, and I suspect he couldn’t explain it to us even if he wanted to. But you’ve felt it now. I’ve no doubt at all that he could have slipped through the entire camp unnoticed at any time if he’d wished. And I know for a fact that his strange gift can be used to far more destructive ends than sending people to sleep for a few seconds. He gave me and Marris a much more violent demonstration of what he can do earlier.’
Rachyl, who had been glaring at the Traveller, and receiving only a smile in return, looked sharply at Ibryen at this. Understanding made its way through the angry confusion in her eyes and her voice became excited and earnest. ‘We could use it to…’
‘No, we couldn’t,’ Ibryen interrupted quickly, anticipating Rachyl’s conclusion and fully reassured now, seeing her turning so readily to tactical matters. ‘We’ve discussed this at length already. Apart from the fact that this isn’t the Traveller’s war, and using his gift as a weapon carries a special toll for him, it would merely be an extension of what we’re already doing and wouldn’t change the ultimate con
clusion. We go the way I’ve said. I go into the mountains with the Traveller in search of whatever’s brought him here, and you and the others remain here, to watch, defend and think.’ He held out both hands in a gesture of openness. ‘I’ll not bandy words,’ he said. ‘This is an act of faith. There’s no apparent logic to it except the logic of defeat if we continue as we are. Nothing may come of it, but we all know the value of our instincts out here, and I’m following mine now. They reason too finely for my thinking wits to follow and I must simply trust them.’
There was a brief silence, then Rachyl said, ‘You were right, it has been a long day. I feel as if the last five years were in another lifetime.’
Hynard nodded. ‘Nothing will turn you from this?’ he asked with finality.
‘Nothing that I’ve heard or thought of so far,’ Ibryen replied. ‘But if you can think of anything, I’m listening.’ He became matter-of-fact. ‘When you came back you were prepared to give the Traveller the benefit of any doubt you had. I respect your caution but, when you’ve got over the shock you’ve just had, I think you might find yourselves on the way to trusting him. However, that’s not important. Consider this: what’s to be lost by my following this… fancy? Spending a few days, perhaps a few weeks, in the mountains? Nothing. And what’s to be gained? Who can say? But no harm can possibly come of our re-ordering our thoughts; of making ourselves more ready to respond to change, can it?’