by Roger Taylor
His hand trembling a little, he touched Albor's face.
'He's been dead for hours,’ he said, a question in his voice.
Stiel's glance took in the whole alley. ‘No one comes down here, except to dump their rubbish,’ he said. ‘It was only by chance that that old scavenger found them.’ He flicked a thumb in the direction of the man sat on the ground by the Keepers, his head slumped forward and his arms around his knees. Skynner looked down. Into the many thoughts that he was trying to order, came another, loosed by Stiel's remark: there could be other bodies lying undiscovered in this district. It was a truly awful thought and he turned away from it. He looked again at Albor's face.
'He looks surprised,’ he said, half to himself.
'The other one's the same as before, but worse,’ Stiel said. ‘Horribly frightened.’ He wiped his forehead. ‘I'll be lucky if I can keep him out of my mind tonight.'
'Don't try,’ Skynner said starkly. Then, pensively, ‘Why would he look surprised?'
He knew the answer even as he was asking the question. Albor had come into the alley to investigate something, seen and recognized the murderer, and died before he even knew what was happening. But that prompted many other questions. Why surprise and not anger? And who could have killed him so quickly and with such force? Albor was no junior cadet when it came to looking after himself.
Skynner stood up and pushed his fingers into his closed eyes. He felt old and lost; it was a bad feeling. He forced back the pain that was struggling to overwhelm him. ‘We're going to have to ask the Chief to levy part of the militia,’ he said, clinging to present needs. ‘We'll have to search every alley and every disused cellar around here, and we'll have to mount Ishryth knows how many more night patrols to cover the area properly.'
Stiel frowned but nodded. ‘I suppose so,’ he said. ‘But it'll create quite a stir.'
'Not as much as more murders would,’ Skynner retorted, turning and walking back along the alley. ‘And there will be more and more until this lunatic's caught.'
As he stepped out from the dark alley and into the bright sunlight, it seemed to Skynner that everything about him was tinged blood-red.
* * * *
Another unexpected incident occurred on that well-planned day.
* * * *
As is the way with small self-contained communities, the Madren were viewed in many ways by their neighbours. Adjectives such as ‘crafty, self-righteous, churlish’ and even ‘stupid', were a commonplace but, in fairness, were apt to be reciprocated by the Madren, as is also the way with small, self-contained communities.
However, amid this sea of vague and general impressions, fed as it was by rumour and hearsay, and moved by the irresistible gravity of ignorance, some evil currents flowed. For every five that spoke ill of the Madren, one was bred who said that they needed to be taught a lesson, and for every five of these, there was one who said they should be taught a lesson.
Not that these populations were fixed. They ebbed and flowed within each individual and throughout communities, in accordance with laws as immutable and as incalculable as those that blow the wind here instead of there. And, in Tirfelden, they had been flowing quite strongly of late.
While the Heinders pushed and jostled amongst themselves, and while Privv worked diligently to increase his personal wealth by embellishing and spreading tales of their activities, the great clatter of rhetoric that arose was heard far beyond Troidmallos. And, busy pushing and jostling, the Heinders neglected to notice who else was listening to the garbled and broken echoes of the sounds that they were making.
It was a mistake.
There were laws in Tirfelden that constrained Sheeters to tell the truth, on pain of drastic financial and sometimes physical punishment, and when some of Privv's Sheets began to appear there, sent by anxious Felden living in Canol Madreth, they were read against such a background and the tide of tribal mistrust began to flow very strongly.
Felden officials in Canol Madreth noted the clamour that was being raised about their country while they themselves were not being addressed. They received little reassurance from their counterparts in the Madren bureaucracy as the Castellans, compounding their mishandling of the situation in the heat of their conflict in the Heindral, were either not consulting them or not listening to them. They were regretfully obliged to shrug their shoulders helplessly when asked what the real intentions of the Madren government were.
Consequently, it was not long before the Felden authorities found themselves dealing with large public demonstrations demanding that they ‘do something’ about the now strident Madren. And being more apt to be led than to lead, they did.
Thus, while Privv was concocting yet another Sheet, while Vredech and Horld were pondering their own strange revelations, while Toom Drommel was awaiting destiny's embrace, and while Skynner was quietly mourning his friend, a company of the Tirfelden army marched into Canol Madreth.
* * *
Chapter 30
Tirfelden, unlike Canol Madreth, but like every other state in Gyronlandt, had a long history both of internal dissension and of menacing or being menaced by its neighbours in varying degrees. Thus it had always had some form of standing army. There had, however, been quite a long period of internal stability, and no serious aggression for even longer and, of late, the need for such an army had come under question.
The uproar in Canol Madreth, rendered raucously bellicose by distance and telling, and the responses that it provoked within Felden society, were thus ideal for those factions that wished to retain the army. Not least amongst these was the military hierarchy itself, some out of genuine patriotic concern, but most out of fear that they might find themselves reduced to hewing and tilling for their bread.
Fortunate enough to be inexperienced in actual combat, the Felden army was no hardened and skilled fighting force. It consisted of a largely ceremonial officer corps drawn from the sons of Tirfelden's richer families, and a markedly rougher element drawn from those members of society who could master no trade—or at least no honest one—or who for other reasons found the freedom and rigours of civilian life too intimidating.
Nevertheless, it was competent enough for one of its companies to march in and take over the village of Bredill that lay on the main route between Tirfelden and Canol Madreth. Once they were established, an official envoy and token escort, resplendent in formal uniforms, galloped to Troidmallos bearing a strongly-worded ultimatum. This told of the action that had taken place and offered it as a demonstration of the Felden government's willingness and ability to take ‘reprisals of the utmost severity’ should Canol Madreth proceed with its proposals to expel Felden nationals and seize Felden assets.
Unfortunately, when they arrived, it was dark and it was only by asking the way of a bemused Keeper that they were able to find the relevant government office. It was shut. The escort stood to one side in discreet silence while the envoy pondered. It is rumoured that he was heard to mutter, ‘Now, what would mother have done?’ but, truth being ever the first casualty of war, this is disputed. However, doubtless in reality fired with patriotic fervour by his senior officers rather than any residual maternal influence, he made his decision and boldly took out the ultimatum to fix it to the closed door. In the absence of hammer and nails he was obliged to fold it rather awkwardly under the iron ring which served as a handle to the door. That done, escort and envoy departed in a splendid echoing clatter of hooves.
Some way from the town they became quite badly lost and had to rouse a local farmer to find out where they were.
The only spectator to this small piece of history was Leck. Attracted by the unusual noise of galloping hooves and the strange scent that the newcomers brought with them, she had sidled over and rubbed herself against the legs of the envoy, startling and unbalancing him as he had tried to fasten the ultimatum under the iron ring with martial sternness.
When he had left, Leck jumped up and clawed the paper free. Dragging it to a near
by lantern she read it. Then she lay down on it and, eyes closed, let out a silent yell, loud enough to penetrate through whatever Privv was engaged in at the moment.
Within minutes he came racing along the street to examine the paper for himself.
Thus it was that the people of Troidmallos heard of the invasion of their land by Tirfelden. Not from a solemn-voiced official crier, but from a hastily produced and very simply worded Sheet—smaller than usual and at an increased price.
While Canol Madreth had no army it nonetheless had a much revered tradition of a civilian militia. Every male save the young and the old was obliged to have ‘and maintain’ a bow, thirty arrows, a sword, a knife, a ‘sturdy’ staff, a rope of at least twenty paces in length, plus various other accoutrements which, should need arise, would serve to make him a formidable and self-sufficient mountain soldier. All this was laid out in great detail in the Annex to the Militia Statute—a copy of which he was also supposed to have, together with the Santyth, of course.
Unfortunately, tradition was almost all that was left of the militia now as, apart from the occasional flurry of social conscience, the authorities took little trouble to fulfil their obligations towards the militia in maintaining a programme of levying and training. And men, being men, naturally preferred to talk a war than actually risk fighting one so, apart from a few conscientious enthusiasts, the militia was more a glowing word, similar in character to ‘a united Gyronlandt', than a practical reality.
Nevertheless, it was a word that came suddenly into popular usage as Privv's Sheet spread the news through and beyond the town. Many a shed and attic was ransacked that day for ‘that old bow’ and ‘those arrows of mine,’ and so on...
Eventually, the caretaker, a lowly government official, arrived to open the office to which the ultimatum had been delivered. A fine, sour-faced example of Canol Madreth's janitocracy, he scowled for quite a time at the now-creased and soiled document lying on the step before picking it up and, with an obligatory grumble, pushing it into his pocket unread. It was not, after all, his job to deal with such things. Only when he had performed his morning routine of lighting unnecessary fires in all the rooms, transferring boxes of files to their wrong destinations, and re-distributing the dust—brushing was the only activity he pursued with any vigour—did he deign to hand the document to anyone. The anyone he chose was a junior clerk, who, new to the service and thus rather rash, read it. Seeing confirmed under the Crest and Seal of Tirfelden what he had fearfully read in the Sheet earlier, he compounded this initial rashness by taking it upon himself to deliver the document personally to the chief adviser to the government rather than commit it to the internal mailing system—that is, to the ultimate charge of the same individual who had just given it to him.
The chief adviser was an educated and cultured man who ‘never read Privv's Sheet,’ so his copy of it was still concealed in his documents, pending an opportunity arising which would allow him to read it without fear of disturbance. He was thus one of the few people in Troidmallos who did not know what had happened. So he would have remained, had not the junior clerk slammed his own copy of Privv's Sheet in front of him with the observation, ‘It's just like it says ‘ere. Wot are you goin’ to do?'
The chief adviser was not disposed to enter into a debate on the matter. A man not without resource in a crisis, it took him only a moment to realize where his responsibility lay and, with barely a flicker of hesitation, he snatched up both the Sheet and the ultimatum and fled with them to his political master, currently in the form of the bemused and rapidly failing leader of the Castellan Party. By coincidence, this worthy was on a like errand. They met in a corridor halfway between their respective offices. It was an internal corridor and thus rather dark, as the caretaker, being too busy lighting the lanterns in other, windowed, corridors, had neglected to light those that hung there. The two men, Sheets in hand and held high, moved towards one another like short-sighted army signallers in the gloaming of second-hand daylight that seeped through from the doors of adjacent offices.
Prior to this momentous meeting however, other events had occurred, inadvertently set in train by Privv who, following some Sheeter's instinct, had personally delivered a copy of his Sheet to the Haven Meeting House. He stood silent as Cassraw read it, Dowinne looking nervously over his arm.
'You've actually seen this ultimatum?’ Cassraw asked, turning towards him.
'Of course,’ Privv said, risking a little indignation.
Cassraw's face became a mask. ‘You were right to bring this to me,’ he said. ‘Those who follow me will be rewarded.’ Somewhat to his surprise, Privv then found himself ushered quickly out before he could begin to interrogate Cassraw. As he rode away he wondered where he had heard Cassraw's last comment before. It sounded like something out of the Santyth, but it wasn't, he was sure.
When Privv had left, Cassraw went out into the grounds of the Meeting House. Dowinne followed him. He stood motionless for a long time, his gaze fixed on the summit of the Ervrin Mallos. Dowinne did not move either, though her gaze was fixed on her husband.
'I've been uneasy these last few days,’ Cassraw said eventually. ‘It's been as though His presence about the mountain has been disturbed in some way.’ His face became pained. ‘I'm striving to the limits of my ability,’ he went on. ‘The clarity of my vision of the future, my insight into the true meaning of the Santyth, grow daily. As do these strange powers which flow from me.’ He looked at his hands. ‘And people are flocking to the new way. But ...’ He turned to his wife. ‘Could He be abandoning me? Am I failing Him in some way?'
'You will not be abandoned, my love,’ she said. ‘These doubts are surely nothing but a testing.'
When Cassraw did not reply, Dowinne stepped close and gripped his arm fiercely. ‘A testing, Enryc,’ she hissed. ‘How far have you come these past months? Your old self was a mere shadow to what you are now. But how can you expect to become His arm in this world, to fulfil His great purpose, if you are not constantly tested and re-forged?'
Cassraw nodded slowly. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You're right. These doubts are weakness and I must tear all weakness from my soul if I'm to prepare the Way for His Coming.'
'And you must see His hand in all things,’ Dowinne urged, her grip still tight about his arm, her look significant. ‘Others than you have to be tried and tested if they're to serve truly.'
Cassraw nodded again, then his expression changed to one of urgency. ‘His chosen land is assailed by unbelievers,’ he said, his voice filling with anger. ‘The Felden must be envoys of the Great Evil of which He spoke. It's upon us already, and we're unprepared.’ He drove his fist into his hand in frustration. ‘This is the fault of those weaklings in the PlasHein,’ he fumed. ‘Had they held firm yesterday and pursued their original intention, the Felden would not have dared to act thus. And they'll do nothing about them now, except beg and plead with them to go away, wringing their hands and saying it was all a misunderstanding. Such is the consequence of deviation from His ways. The Madren lie leaderless, like scurrying sheep before the Felden wolves.'
'The Madren lie leaderless at His will,’ Dowinne said, her voice soft and insinuating and her eyes gleaming. ‘He's shown them the worth of the leaders so that they may choose others.'
* * * *
Following their impromptu, paper-waving dance in the twilit corridor, the leader of the Castellan Party and his chief adviser eventually calmed one another down sufficiently to set about putting to rights what had occurred. Obviously the Felden had not heard about the Heindral's decision of the previous day, and informing them of it was a matter of urgency. It should be no great problem to reassure them that it had all been a matter of purely local politics and that there had never been any serious threat of action being taken against Tirfelden nationals. That done, the Felden would surely withdraw their army, then arrangements could be made for future discussions to resolve this matter sensibly.
Ministers, party leaders and sen
ior officials were hastily gathered to agree an appropriate response and, by noon, liveried government gallopers were leaving Troidmallos for the borders, while official criers were being sent about the town to announce what was under way to the anxious crowds that were already gathering.
His political horizons widened once again beyond the cockpit of the Heindral by this action from outside, the leader of the Castellans demonstrated a little redeeming wisdom by declining to issue an order for the precautionary levying of the militia, on the grounds that it would be both provocative and ineffective. Toom Drommel, however, seeing an opportunity to present himself yet again as a sternly patriotic politician, spoke against this, citing the ‘long and proud tradition’ of the Madren militia and the need to ‘make a stand'. He was ignored. He might have been instrumental in causing the turmoil in the Heindral, but he was still only the leader of a minority party and the Castellans and Ploughers took great delight in making this silently clear to him. His new bass voice eventually rumbled off into a pouting silence.
'Now we can only wait,’ the leader of the Castellans said as the gallopers left. He reached into a pocket, unearthed a large flask and took a long drink from it.
* * * *
The gallopers reached Bredill without mishap and not all that long after the Felden envoy and his escort had finally found their way back. They were brought before the officer commanding the company, to whom they handed a personal letter from their government together with sealed letters which were to be carried to the Felden authorities. The officer read the letter carefully, then smiled and stood up.
'A storm in a pot then, gentlemen,’ he said to the gallopers. ‘I can't say I'm unhappy that it's blown itself out before blows were struck. My men and I will have to remain here until I hear from my own government, of course, but I doubt that'll be very long. Then the diplomats can sort it out.’ He looked resignedly about the crude tent he was occupying. ‘And then we can return to the comparative comfort of our barracks.’ He was about to offer the Madren a drink when he remembered that it was the inability of the Madren to cope with Felden liquor that had played no small part in this affair. ‘Will you dine with us before you return to Troidmallos?’ he offered. ‘Only field rations, I'm afraid, but we've lost no one so far.'