by Roger Taylor
‘I could say I hadn’t heard about it,’ Jeorg said, still clinging to his idea.
‘Not if you’re caught sneaking through,’ Gryss said a little petulantly. ‘And if you walk straight into them, they’ll just turn you back anyway. And Nilsson did say there’d be punishment for anyone trying to leave without permission.’
Jeorg’s mouth worked briefly but no further protest came forth.
‘Over the tops?’ Gryss said, half to himself.
All four shook their heads and Gryss himself dis-missed the notion as soon as he spoke it. That would be far too dangerous; and no chance of taking a horse.
‘He’s got us,’ he said, his jaw set. ‘We’re trapped.’
The room fell silent again. Gryss’s dog made a snuf-fling noise and rolled over with a thud.
‘Then all we can do is watch and wait,’ Yakob said. ‘I agree with what you said before, Gryss. Whatever they are, Nilsson wants us to think they’re King’s men and if we behave as though they were then we’ll probably find out more about them than if we start doing anything reckless.’ He looked significantly at Jeorg who, fortu-nately, was looking the other way.
‘It could be that I’m worrying about nothing,’ Gryss said, reverting unconvincingly to Yakob’s first remark.
‘It could indeed,’ Garren said. ‘But equally you could be right. There’s a lot we’ve taken for granted. Questions that we should’ve asked can’t be asked now. It’s a fair assumption that no one will be allowed to leave and it’ll be too risky to try to sneak out, so there’s nothing else we can do but watch and wait as we decided in the Council meeting.’ He leaned forward. ‘But we five must keep in touch. Meet regularly to discuss developments. And we must keep our ears open for the feeling in the village.’
Jeorg scowled at this conclusion. ‘We should do something,’ he said heatedly. ‘Not just mope around waiting for something to happen. I’d still like to have a go at getting to the capital.’
Gryss looked at him intently. Jeorg was a robustly practical man and inaction was against his nature. To forbid him to leave the valley would be to store up some future problem almost inevitably.
Cautiously, he said, ‘No, Jeorg. Not yet at least. We must get more idea of what’s actually going on.’
‘The longer we leave it, the worse it might get,’ Jeorg retorted. ‘If they’ve already set up a guard post it could be a small fort next.’ His eyes widened. ‘They might even ask us to build it,’ he added indignantly.
‘No, Jeorg,’ Gryss said. ‘We none of us here must do anything without telling the others.’ He did not wait for any agreement to this idea. ‘By all means think about leaving, Jeorg. I’ll tell you the way to the capital, such as I can remember of it, and we can decide what you’ll need, and what tale you’ll have to tell, so that everything will be ready if you get the opportunity to go. But don’t do anything without discussing it with us first. Is that agreed?’
Taken aback by this sudden vigour on Gryss’s part, Jeorg gaped. ‘I… I suppose so,’ he stammered.
Gryss looked at the others. They all nodded, Garren smiling a little at Jeorg’s discomfiture.
‘And we keep this discussion, all our discussions and ideas, to ourselves,’ Gryss declared with an air of finality.
No one disagreed, and the meeting broke up. Before they parted, Gryss spoke to Harlen and Garren.
‘I’d like to take Farnor and Marna partly into our confidence,’ he said. ‘They’re both sensible children…’ He gave a guilty shrug. ‘Young people, I suppose I should say, these days. And they can wander about – run messages more inconspicuously than we can. And they’ll pick up more things than we would – gossip and the like.’
Garren gave him an arch look. ‘Well, Farnor’s been spending more time here than on the farm of late, so I suppose it’d hardly constitute a change,’ he said.
Gryss’s hands fluttered apologetically at this blunt-ness, then he decided to let out at least part of the truth.
‘Farnor and I have spent a lot of time talking about Nilsson and his men,’ he admitted. ‘He came to me of his own accord with his doubts about them after we’d been up there the first time. He’ll work things out for himself when he hears the news, and I think he’d be better off knowing he could turn to you as well as to me.’
Garren looked hurt. ‘He can turn to me any time about anything,’ he said. ‘He didn’t have to come running to you.’
‘He didn’t come running to me,’ Gryss said reassur-ingly. ‘It just happened in the course of conversation, as it were. Don’t reproach him for it. I’ve always been a bit of a grandfather to him, and there’s things you can tell your grandparents that you can’t tell your parents.’
‘I suppose so,’ Garren conceded, colouring slightly. ‘And if he’s already bothering about what’s happening, then I’ve no objection to him knowing what we think. To be honest, it’ll make things easier at home. He’s become rather elusive recently.’
Gryss turned his attention to Harlen. Getting a young man involved was one thing, a girl – a young woman – was another…
But Harlen was, if anything, relieved. ‘I can’t pretend to be happy about it,’ he said. ‘But Marna’s been talking along the same lines as you almost since these people arrived. I think it’d be a good thing if she knew you thought the same. I’ve been concerned that she might end up doing something foolish.’ He hesitated. ‘We get on well together, but… we don’t always talk as well as we should about some things. It’s difficult… she needs a woman about the house, really. Someone she can talk to properly.’
‘I understand,’ Gryss said. ‘At least I think I do. On the whole I think I understand women less now than I did fifty years ago, but I know she loves you as much as you love her.’
Harlen nodded. ‘She’s also headstrong and stub-born,’ he said. ‘If it came into her mind to do so, she wouldn’t think twice about marching up to the castle and demanding to see some letter of authority from the King.’
Gryss could not help but laugh, albeit self-consciously, at Harlen’s manner. ‘So you don’t mind her helping?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I do,’ Harlen replied with some force. ‘But, no, tell her what you want and with my blessing. She’ll go her own way anyway.’
A little later, Gryss stood at his front door and watched his visitors departing. Idly he fingered the iron ring, feeling the lines of the etched figures sharp beneath his touch. The bell tinkled as he tugged the chain, and a faint, sleepy bark drifted down the hallway. Handling the ring reminded him of Nilsson’s almost angry question when he had visited him a few days earlier. No preamble, no subtle introduction to the subject, just, ‘Where did you get this ring from, old man?’
Gryss looked at it. ‘You know more about these people than we do, don’t you?’ he said out loud. Then he sighed. He wished he had asked more of the man from whom he had bought it all those years ago. Now he couldn’t even remember what he looked like.
Still, that was wind through the tree: long, long, gone. He set the ring down. It rattled slightly against the wall of the cottage.
Gryss took a deep breath. The air was fresh, cool and still now. He looked up. Clouds, rich with blacks and dark blues, ominous with grey and sometimes silver edges, moved to the whim of a wind of their own against a moonlit sky.
He had mixed feelings about what had transpired. He was glad that he had shared at least part of his burden with his friends, but he felt some remorse that he had lied to Garren and Harlen about the involvement of their children. There was nothing else he could have done, of course, and he had promised both Farnor and Marna that he would try to clear the way for them to continue to be involved without bringing parental strictures down on them.
Even so, deceit went against the grain. It had the feeling of a bad omen. He reached up to strike the sunstone as he had done every night for as long as he could remember. Then he hesitated and lowered his hand. Not tonight, he thought. Not tonight.
He turned and went inside, c
losing the door gently behind him.
Chapter 24
Fortunately, the extensive debate that the Council had held and the final decision to watch and wait, had been well absorbed by the individual Councillors and thus, for the greater part, it pervaded the public breaking of the news about the intended garrison over the next few days.
Inevitably, though, the reaction of the villagers was mixed. Most naturally pondered the reasons for it, but in the absence of any great knowledge about the world over the hill their attempts foundered or became manifest flights of fancy such as Yonas the Teller might have retailed.
One or two, nodding wisely, announced that they had known all the time that something of the kind had been intended. ‘Why else would they arrive here, after all these years?’ Although it was well noted that these individuals had neglected to share this foreknowledge with their friends and neighbours prior to the public announcement.
No small number shrugged indifferently, regarding the matter as being one beyond their control and thus not worthy of serious concern.
A small minority – a very small minority – by some circuitous reasoning all their own declared that they felt reassured to have an armed force nearby because the fact that an armed force was needed nearby made them feel uneasy.
On the whole, the men expressed varying degrees of indignation – generally in the familiar security of the inn – while the women, wiser by far, fell silent or drew in sharp breaths and lifted their hands to their breasts to still the fluttering fear that rose from their inner depths to greet the news.
Few were really concerned about the positioning of a guard post down the valley. ‘Nobody ever goes down there anyway. Besides, it’ll keep any undesirable outsiders out.’ Though quite when any undesirable outsiders had last visited the valley was a question not pursued.
Gryss and most of the other Councillors found themselves occupied at length in discussing the matter, but this time Gryss was happy to be repeating the same story. The feeling that gradually spread across the village chimed with the villagers’ natures.
‘Don’t rock the hay-cart.’
‘Don’t stir the pigswill if you don’t want the smell.’
In short, leave them alone and they’ll leave us alone. The funeral knell of many a society.
Despite his relief at the reception of the news, how-ever, Gryss’s concerns did not lessen. He looked at the complacency he was helping to engender and wondered if he were not once again failing the village as he had failed them when he accepted the arrivals as tithe gatherers without comment.
After a few days, he called another Council meeting and had himself confirmed in the duty that he had already assumed, namely official representative for the village at the castle.
Not that his services seemed to be needed. There was no activity from the castle other than the occasional group of men heading down the valley, or returning. Harlen reported that their guard post was only a few tents, although he remarked also that they were patrolling widely on horseback.
Gryss merely nodded at this intelligence, though he ensured that it was repeated in Jeorg’s presence.
Marna and Farnor, now officially seconded to Gryss’s command, as it were, found they had nothing to do except pursue their everyday tasks. Gryss would glance inquiringly at Farnor when they met, but the young man had no further strange contacts to report.
Increasingly, though, Farnor kept sensing the dis-tant, unintelligible babbling that he had heard before his last contact with the creature. It tended to come to him when he was at the edge of sleep, yet it was unequivo-cally from beyond himself, he knew; it was no figment of his imagination.
For no reason that he could have given, he did not mention this to Gryss. Whatever it was, it had none of the malignity that he had felt so sharply in his contacts with the creature.
* * * *
While the momentum of the villagers’ age-old ways began to reassert itself, matters at the castle were less serene.
Rannick came and went to a rhythm of his own, just as he always had, accounting to no one for anything. But each time he returned he was peculiarly elated. The men, however, were less so. They had turned to him partly out of fear, but also because he had given them a vision of the future which they had had once before, and the destruction of which had sent them out from their homeland into their present fruitless and futile wandering.
Now however, apart from manning the guard post down the valley, they found themselves without much to do. When they had stumbled on this castle, they had been exhausted, hungry and almost totally demoralized, their will sapped by the ever-present fear of retribution from the past. Now they were more secure than they had been since they began their travels, and the bonding that a common privation had given them began to weaken.
It needed no great sensitivity on Nilsson’s part to detect the growing discontent, but he was at a loss to know what to do. Rannick had bound them to the valley and, to ensure peace, Nilsson himself had effectively bound them to the castle and its immediate environs.
He taxed Rannick. ‘The men need to be occupied, Lord,’ he said. ‘They’ll go sour on us left to their own devices for too long. Sour and quarrelsome.’
Rannick, recently returned from one of his ab-sences, was sitting staring into space. He gave no indication that he had heard anything and Nilsson made to speak again, but as he opened his mouth Rannick lifted his hand.
‘Every day,’ he said softly.
‘Lord?’
‘Every day,’ Rannick said again. He looked at his hands. ‘Such things I find.’
Some inner voice told Nilsson not to inquire further. A long silence elapsed. Then Rannick stood up and turned to face Nilsson. ‘Yes, you’re right,’ he said. ‘The men will not only become sour and quarrelsome, they’ll become soft and useless if they’re allowed to continue thus.’ His face hardened. ‘And they’re of no value if they can’t fight, and fight well.’
‘Yes, Lord,’ Nilsson agreed. ‘But what…?’
‘We ride,’ Rannick said, cutting across his question. ‘We ride downland, out of the valley. Begin our journey along the golden road.’
The last remark made no sense to Nilsson, but the import of Rannick’s intention did. ‘Leave here, Lord?’ he exclaimed, unable to keep the surprise out of his voice. ‘Why?’
Rannick smiled unpleasantly. ‘To get them used to the field again, Captain. The better to appreciate this haven. And to search, to find, to take, to learn, to test our strength. Many things.’
Still little the wiser, Nilsson turned quickly to prac-ticalities.
‘As you command, Lord,’ he said. ‘How many do you wish to go, and for how long?’
‘All of us, Captain,’ Rannick replied. ‘All of us.’ He looked round at the plain stone walls and arched ceiling. ‘But not for long. There’s much to be done here when we return. This place must be made fit for our presence.’
‘All of us, Lord?’ Nilsson echoed cautiously. ‘We must leave a dozen or so to guard the place.’
‘Against what, Captain?’ Rannick said with a flicker of a malevolent laugh that chilled Nilsson. ‘The villagers? They’re less likely than ever to come up here now. And what would they do if they did? Nibble at their stolen tithe like mice?’
Nilsson had no answer. ‘Old habits, Lord,’ he said after a moment.
Rannick turned his attention back to his hands, flexing each of them in turn, then he nodded slowly. ‘Besides, I will leave a guard here that none will defy.’
Thus it was that, early the following day, the villag-ers found themselves watching the entire troop trotting noisily through the village. There was some elation at first, but it soon vanished as, in their wake, came the cold-eyed message that Nilsson had left with Gryss:
‘We’ll be back.’
Nevertheless, their departure opened up opportuni-ties for some, as Nilsson, for some reason, had chosen to tell Gryss that the entire troop was leaving on an exercise, and that nothing would be
required at the castle until they returned in a few days.
‘Harlen says they’ve gone all the way downland,’ Jeorg said. ‘And left no guard posted. We mightn’t get another chance. I can leave for the capital right now, and you and the others can go to the castle and see if there are any documents there saying who they are.’
Gryss was unhappy about both ideas, not least be-cause, in an attempt to prevent Jeorg from doing anything impetuous, he had been fulfilling his promise to instruct him in the route to the capital. He had made the instruction quite leisurely, affecting to forget certain parts and spending a great deal of time referring to some very old journals that he had kept during youthful journeyings. Despite Gryss’s delaying tactics, though, Jeorg had been attentive, thorough and uncharacteristi-cally patient. And now his reasoning was sound: who could say when the valley would be left unguarded again?
‘I suppose so,’ Gryss agreed, after some protracted badgering. ‘But in the name of pity, Jeorg, take care.’
‘I’ll keep my eyes open obviously, but I’ll tell them I was coming after them to ask permission if I bump into them,’ Jeorg said confidently.
His confidence, however, was not contagious, and Gryss could not keep his anxiety from his face as he bade farewell to his friend later that day.
‘Don’t look so miserable, Gryss,’ Jeorg said. ‘We’ve planned it as well as we could. I’m no tracker, but they’re a big crowd and I don’t think I’m going to run into them by accident.’ He looked up at the sky. ‘Anyway, it’s a fine day for a ride.’
Gryss ignored the false heartiness. ‘Are you sure your wife’s agreeable to this?’ he asked, in a final attempt to deter him.
Jeorg’s confidence faltered. ‘Yes,’ he said, followed immediately by, ‘Well, no. Not really. But… it’s got to be done, hasn’t it? She’s with me.’
And that was that. Gryss stood motionless, his head forward and his shoulders hunched in tension as he watched Jeorg ride off. The sun was warm on his face and the air was filled with the scents and sounds of burgeoning summer, but inside, Gryss roared with anger. Anger at himself for what seemed to be his continuing folly in placating the villagers and allowing Jeorg to undertake this risky journey. Anger at Nilsson for being whatever he was and for bringing such dismay to this quiet and beautiful place. Anger at Jeorg for being so capable, so naive, so…