Valderen ft-2

by Roger Taylor

  ‘You heard its voice. You heard it howl,’ Farnor said significantly, cutting him short.

  Derwyn pursed his lips and frowned. An uneasy tension filled the room. ‘Yes, you’re right,’ he replied eventually. ‘I did hear it howl. And I’ve no desire to meet whatever made that noise. But my feelings don’t come into it. I told you. We can’t do otherwise. No matter what that creature is, we must use what skills we have to track it down, just as you must track down this Rannick.’

  Farnor looked round at the watching faces again. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said unhappily, after a moment. ‘I didn’t mean to offend you. But I know what this thing’s like. It’s no natural creature. It sends terror before it.’ His voice fell. ‘It feeds on terror. Don’t let anyone go anywhere alone… or even in small groups. And never unarmed.’ He snatched a phrase from one of Yonas’s tales. ‘Stack your night fires high and ring your camps with guards for a great army is seeking you.’ The seriousness of his tone removed any incongruity from his words.

  ‘We’ll do as you say,’ Derwyn replied simply. ‘And we’ll ride with you until we have to part, if you’ll allow us.’

  Farnor met his gaze. ‘You’ll go your own way, no matter what I say,’ he replied. ‘But I’d be lying if I said I’d be anything other than glad of your company.’

  * * * *

  For the rest of the day Farnor wandered about the lodge with Edrien as his guide. At Edrien’s prompting they ate at Bildar’s, where the old Mender insisted on giving Farnor, ‘A quick look-over. Just to set my own mind at ease.’

  ‘Thanks a lot, for that,’ Farnor said to Edrien acidly as they left. ‘Was that your father’s idea, or your stomach’s?’

  Edrien smirked.

  Then, at Farnor’s request, they climbed up to Marken’s giddy eyrie. When they arrived, Marken was leaning on the handrail, staring out over the vast treescape below. Roney was perched on his shoulder. ‘Thinking about giving him flying lessons?’ Edrien asked irreverently.

  Marken gave her a narrow look, then lifted Roney from his shoulder and held him out to her. ‘Take him for a walk for a few minutes,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to Farnor.’

  Marken smiled as Edrien walked off. ‘I think Ang-wen must have been frightened by a gall wasp when she was carrying that one,’ he said reflectively. ‘She’s got a natural charm that’s really quite… elusive.’ Then he chuckled. ‘Mind you, she’s changed lately. Watches her tongue a lot more. I think your arrival made her think about a great many things she’d taken for granted before.’

  Before Farnor could offer any comment on this he found himself being scrutinized intently. Taken aback, he ventured, ‘I suppose you want to know what it was really like, meeting the most ancient?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Marken replied passionately, but without lessening his scrutiny. ‘But not now. We can talk on the hunt.’

  Farnor had a momentary vision of Marken among the Valderen hunters, being scattered like fallen leaves by the creature just as Nilsson’s men had been.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Marken asked.

  Farnor looked away from him. ‘Nothing. Nothing much,’ he said, then, ‘I’m frightened. Frightened for you, and everyone who’s going on this hunt.’ He tightened his grip on the handrail and shook his head violently, before turning his gaze back to Marken. ‘I shouldn’t be, should I?’ He echoed Derwyn’s phrase. ‘After all, you’re not children. You’re experienced hunters and I’m not, and nor were Nilsson’s men. I must trust. I must trust.’

  Marken took his arm.

  ‘It’s not easy, is it?’ Farnor said, looking out over the trees again.

  ‘No,’ Marken replied simply. ‘Trusting the ability of people you’re fond of to face danger is profoundly difficult, but we all have to do it sooner or later.’ He nodded pensively to himself as if he had reached a decision. ‘I’m truly glad to see that Edrien’s not the only one who’s changed.’ Farnor turned back to him. ‘Your eyes are still haunted and full of fear, but where there was anger – perhaps even madness – now there’s determination – resolution.’ He looked as if he wanted to say much more, but he simply patted Farnor’s arm paternally.

  * * * *

  The next day, after a pleasant but slightly self-conscious breakfast with Derwyn and his family, Farnor was led down to a Forest floor awash with people and horses. And rain. A fine steady rain.

  As Derwyn led him from group to group of waiting hunters, he did his best to cope with the confusion of introductions. There were not only given names, but lodge names and family names, elaborate lineages, convoluted relationships and, not infrequently, trades became involved in some way: climbers, slingers, rootmen, splicers, and many others, equally unfamiliar. In the end he was utterly bewildered and confined himself to nodding and smiling and holding his arms tight against his sides to minimize the effect of the many crushing greetings he was receiving.

  After each meeting, however, he noted that the hunters faded into the surrounding trees, and when eventually all the introductions were complete and he was riding towards the place where he had first been discovered, he was surprised to find himself accompa-nied only by Derwyn, Marken, Melarn, Edrien and Angwen. ‘Where is everyone?’ he asked.

  ‘They’re here,’ Derwyn said, waving an arm airily.

  Farnor peered earnestly into the dripping trees. Here and there he caught sight of an occasional rider, but he could see nothing of the great crowd that had gathered in Derwyn’s lodge. ‘They’re very well hidden,’ he remarked.

  Derwyn merely smiled, smug again, and the party continued in silence.

  Farnor examined his companions as they rode on. Melarn’s bright yellow hair held his attention. He had never seen hair that colour, ever, even though many of the valley people were fair-haired. He cast his mind back to the gathering of the hunters. With their bobbing heads, red, yellow, brown, and every rich and subtle combination of these colours, they had reminded him of wind-ruffled autumn leaves. It brought home to him vividly for the first time how strange he must seem to them with his black mop. He was smiling at his whimsy when Marken brought his horse alongside.

  ‘Now you can tell me what it was like, Farnor,’ he said. ‘Hearing the most ancient. I’ve heard that the trees there are truly huge and that the silence is almost tangible.’

  Farnor looked at him. The Hearer’s brown eyes were full of youthful excitement and curiosity. ‘Give me your hand,’ Farnor said, extending his own. Marken’s hand shot out and seized it enthusiastically. ‘Show him,’ Farnor said silently to the trees, closing his eyes, ‘Reach out. Learn and teach.’

  There was a brief hesitation and then abruptly the fear pervading the surrounding trees washed over him. He felt Marken’s grip tighten in alarm and he tightened his own in a reassuring response. ‘Show him,’ he insisted. And as if he were some great centre to which all must be drawn, the deep silence of the most ancient entered him, setting aside the fear. Deliberately Farnor filled his mind with his memory of the soaring splen-dour of the great trees and the awe which he had felt in their presence. Marken made no sound as they rode on.

  After a timeless interval, Farnor felt the Hearer’s hand slipping away from him, and gradually he became aware of the Forest about them. He looked at Marken. The old man’s eyes were shining with tears. Farnor remained silent.

  Throughout the rest of that day, Farnor and the Valderen hunters moved unseen and silent through the trees, drawing inexorably further away from the heart of the Forest, and nearer to their unknown and fearful destination.

  * * * *

  Gryss started violently as he heard the door of his cottage open and close quickly. It had been his sad practice of late to lock his door at night, but it was far from being a habit yet. ‘There was an uncertain rumbling from the dog and some rustling in the hallway while, with no small trepidation, he levered himself up out of his chair. Before he could reach the door, however, it opened.

  ‘Marna!’ he exclaimed, as she stepped hastily inside and clo
sed the door behind her. ‘Where have you been? What’s been happening? Why…’

  Marna signalled silence as she motioned him vigor-ously back towards his chair. Gryss retreated under this assault, but he was not so lightly silenced. ‘Your father’s frantic with worry, Marna,’ he said in a low, urgent whisper, for some reason feeling the need to keep his voice down. ‘What…’ His chair nudged him behind the knees and he sat down abruptly.

  Marna dropped to her knees in front of him and seized his hands. ‘There are people here, Gryss. People from over the hill. Come to kill Rannick,’ she an-nounced.

  Gryss gaped at her, but before he could speak she was recounting the story of her decision to flee the valley and her meeting with the four strangers, though she made no mention of the man she had killed. When she had finished, Gryss closed his eyes and put his hands to his head. For an awful moment, Marna thought that her impetuous entry had been too severe a shock for the old man.

  But his eyes were sharp and attentive when he opened them. ‘Tell me all that again, but more slowly,’ he said, lifting her up from her knees and pointing her to a chair opposite.

  For a little while the room was filled with the soft murmur of her half-whispered tale and Gryss’s intermit-tent questions. The two of them leaned towards one another, their faces almost touching, like a tentative arch. When she had finished her second telling, Gryss closed his eyes again and leaned back in his chair. ‘This will take me a moment or two, Marna,’ he said.

  Marna tapped her fingers impatiently on her knee as she waited.

  ‘How did you get here?’ Gryss demanded suddenly.

  ‘They watched until the search party went back to the castle, then they brought me to where I could reach the top fields on my own,’ Marna replied.

  ‘Where are they now?’ Gryss asked.

  Marna shook her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘They wouldn’t tell me. They said it was in case Nilsson found me and I told him about them.’

  Gryss looked at her closely. ‘You don’t seem too offended by that,’ he said, gently taunting.

  Marna grimaced. ‘A day or two ago I might have been, but not now,’ she said. Then, with an effort, ‘More’s happened than I’ve told you about.’

  Gryss frowned. The comment confirmed the pain that he could feel underlying her every word. ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’ he asked.

  Marna shook her head vigorously. ‘Perhaps one day,’ she said. ‘When this is all over.’

  ‘Whenever you want,’ Gryss said. ‘But it may be some time before that happens. What can four people do against Rannick and Nilsson? Storm the castle?’

  Marna’s manner changed and she looked at him like a parent about to admonish a child for an offence that was so serious that shouting and summary punishment were out of the question. ‘I was with them, Gryss,’ she said. They’re real soldiers. Real.’ She slapped her stomach to confirm the depth of her inner certainty about this declaration. ‘And they move like shadows. They brought me, and the horses, through ways over the tops that I never dreamed existed. And they’d never been here before. They just… see things. And they pay attention to such details.’ She nodded reflectively to herself, then, with quiet, but deep assurance, ‘I told you, they know about the power that Rannick has. It frightened them more than it ever has us, and still they’ve gone on to fight him. Gone, on their own, because they knew they hadn’t the time to get the help they needed. But they’ll do something that’ll be neither foolish nor futile, and, at the least, they’ll hurt him badly in some way.’ She leaned forward and her voice became urgent. ‘And they’ll do it soon. Very soon.’

  ‘I don’t suppose they told you what they were going to do, either, did they?’ Gryss said.

  Marna shook her head. ‘No, but they were very in-terested when I told them that Rannick sometimes rides out alone to the north. I think if they get the chance, they’ll try to ambush him.’

  ‘They made quite an impression on you, I gather,’ Gryss said.

  ‘Yes,’ Marna replied simply.

  ‘And?’ Gryss caught the note in her voice.

  ‘And whatever it is they’re going to do, we can’t let them do it alone,’ she said.

  Gryss looked at her, almost fearfully. There was no youthful petulance or impatience here. He could still sense the presence of a frightened and lost young girl, but this was fluttering at the edges of a stern resolve. She was unequivocally not the Marna of even a few days ago. He resisted the temptation to question her about those parts of her journey that he knew she had kept from him. ‘What can we do?’ he asked, trying to keep any hint of defeatism from his voice.

  Despair flared into Marna’s eyes momentarily, only to be swept aside. ‘Be ready,’ she said, clenching her fists. ‘Just be ready to help them, protect them, if anything starts to happen. Not be frightened of the unknown.’ Before Gryss could interject any reservations, she ploughed on. ‘I’ve been thinking. Everyone who we’re certain is with us can go up to Farnor’s place tomorrow. If we’re asked, we can say we’re starting to rebuild it for whoever it’s to be granted to. There’s plenty to do there that’ll warrant a crowd carrying axes and hammers and the like, without causing any alarm. And from there, we can arrange to watch the castle. And to move, if we have to, if anything starts to happen. We don’t even need to tell anyone why we’re really there.’ She hesitated. ‘In fact we mustn’t tell anyone else why we’re there. We’ve too few good liars.’ She frowned thoughtfully. ‘We’ll tell everyone it’s just what it is. A ploy to watch the castle. To see if we can find out how well they guard it, how many new people are arriving, whether they ever send patrols to the north; anything that might be useful later on!’ She nodded her head, satisfied.

  Gryss’s eyes widened in surprise. His mind filled with doubts and hesitations but they foundered against both Marna’s determination and the simple practicality of her suggestion. He felt a long-suppressed anger and resentment bubbling up through the confusion of his thoughts. And too, guilt. Had he acted with such plain common sense at the very outset and, say, questioned Nilsson and his troop, perhaps none of this horror would ever have come to pass. It was no new thought, but it tormented him no less for that. Indeed it had grown worse with time, as, rippling out from that first wrong action, had come so many others: small, day by day acts of appeasement and quiet acquiescence to Nilsson’s and thus Rannick’s will. Even though such deeds were done ostensibly as a cover for the organizing of more forthright action, they distressed him pro-foundly, not least because of the example they set to the other villagers.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You’re right. It’s a good idea. I’m sick of doing nothing except fret over ever more futile plans.’ He stood up. ‘Jeorg, I think, should know what’s happened. But I agree, none of the others. I’ll tell your father you’re safe but not where you are. And you’d better keep well out of sight.’ He lifted down his cloak from a hook. ‘I’ll start things moving right away. Delays have won us nothing in the past, and with a bit of effort I should be able to get a… working party… to the farm before noon tomorrow.’

  When he had gone, Marna locked the door behind him and doused all the lanterns. Then she curled up in the chair and waited.

  Chapter 22

  The following day was cloudy and overcast, but to Marna’s considerable relief it did not rain. Where a group of people working in the sunshine might not have been unduly conspicuous, a group working in the pouring rain would be highly so.

  She was awake before dawn after a night tormented by confused desire-laden dreams of Rannick and terrifyingly vivid images of her struggle with the man she had killed. The latter in particular had started her upright, sweating and gasping, and they came some-times even when she simply closed her eyes. It helped only a little that Aaren had told her to expect such a reaction to her ordeal.

  Moving silently about the cottage, she packed some food, left a note for Gryss, and then used the morning twilight to cover her journey to the Yarrance
farm. Studiously she tried to move the way that the four newcomers moved, for despite the danger and urgency of their mission, they had made a point of instructing her where they could.

  While her endeavours were hardly skilled, she had instinctively picked up some of their sense of inner stillness, and she found that she both saw and heard many things on the short, familiar journey that she had never noted before.

  Despite the horror of the destruction of the Yar-rance farm, the ancient momentum of the valley’s ways had seen the livestock rapidly moved to several different farms for care until such time as Farnor might return, or a decision be made by the Council about the disposition of the property and goods. No one, however, had known what to do with the various household items that were immediately salvageable from the wreckage of the farmhouse, and, with a strange mixture of care and embarrassed haste, they had been put into one of the undamaged store sheds.

  Marna paused as she reached the open gate to the farmyard. In the dawn gloaming, the scarred and broken farmhouse looked both sinister and vengeful, with its charred rafters dark against the dull sky and its shadowed windows like sightless eyes. She hesitated for a moment, nervously, then, avoiding looking at the house, she slipped quietly across the yard to the shed.

  Her nervousness eased a little as, after a brief strug-gle with the wooden latch, she closed the door behind her, gently. The interior of the shed was dark and it took some time for her eyes to adjust.

  Though she had chosen dull and nondescript cloth-ing for her journey, she felt the need now for clothes that would disguise her even more effectively. Then she would need some weapons. One thing that she had noticed while she had been with the four outsiders was the extent to which they were armed. And, she was sure, what she had seen was by no means all that they carried.

  Tentatively, she had touched on the subject of carry-ing a knife… or something… for her protection, in the vague hope of receiving advice of some kind about how she should use one.