by Roger Taylor
As he returned to Rannick’s room, Bryn’s remarks hovered in Nilsson’s mind. What was this creature that hunted with the murderous determination of a human and seemingly paralysed its prey with fear?
He had no answers, but the arrival of the creature had answered his earlier question. It had not wandered off howling into the darkness, it had been drawn mysteriously to its ailing master. What then would its reaction have been had Nilsson followed the prompting to slay Rannick?
He shuddered. He could not understand how he had stood there unable to move as the creature had leapt at him. Irritably, and with some difficulty, he thrust the concern to one side. A far more serious one lay in the condition of his Lord. What could be done to awaken him?
It occurred to him that he might have to send for Gryss, though who knew what reception his messenger might receive in the village when news of the slaughter of Garren and Katrin became known? True, he could ensure Gryss’s assistance by taking hostages from among the villagers, but there was no saying what treacherous tricks the old leech might have up his sleeve.
He sat down and gazed at the apparently sleeping form.
Damn you, Lord, he thought. Damn you to hell. You shouldn’t have done it. You should’ve listened to me. Now we’ve got fifty times the problems we had before.
He let his anger roam freely for a moment, though no sign of it appeared on his face, then he reached out and shook Rannick’s arm gently.
‘Lord,’ he whispered. ‘Lord.’
There was no response. Gryss it would have to be, then, though that posed the further problem of how he was to be reached now, with the creature patrolling the castle walls. He let out a weary breath and sagged back into his chair. Perhaps it would have gone by daylight.
He squeezed his eyes with his fingers. As he had accused Bryn, so he accused himself: he was too tired and addled to think straight. He needed to sleep. But how could he with Rannick, his future, lying thus?
Despite himself however, he closed his eyes. In the flickering darkness he found his mind watching the sinuous shadow gliding silently around the castle. He could feel the edge of the creature’s bubbling hatred.
He could not open his eyes!
Then on the fringes of his consciousness he felt the slight vibration of the wicket door being carefully opened and hastily slammed shut.
Silence…
And was that a drumming of fists he could hear?
Then a faint, shrill scream cut through his half dream. Suddenly released, he found himself bolt upright and wide awake.
Part of his mind was calculating. One man the less. That was a pity, but Avak had been marked for a long time and it would prove to be a salutary lesson for the rest of the men. Self-satisfaction oozed into his thoughts. He did not imagine there would be many more opportunities when he would be able to use Rannick’s creature for his own ends.
But the other part of his mind was listening. Listen-ing to a voice. It spoke one word, very softly, drawing it out and tonguing it with a diabolical relish.
‘Good,’ Rannick said, turning towards him.
Chapter 32
Gryss started awake. About him was the touch of a dark and awful dream, but it vanished on the instant as he became aware of sunlight filling the room. For a moment he was a young child again and the day opened before him, full of warmth and summer scents, soft breezes and everlasting freedom.
He was about to cry out joyously to his parents when he remembered who he was.
And where.
And when.
Briefly his face creased as if he were about to cry. Then it relaxed into a look of half amused resignation.
He had spent what was left of the night in a chair, and his body was protesting the fact loudly. Carefully, he began to ease his limbs into life and, as he did so, one by one, the events of the previous night reformed themselves in his mind.
He looked across at the bed. Jeorg had scarcely moved.
Time, he thought. Time was what was needed. Time for Jeorg’s injuries to heal. Time for Farnor’s bewildered mind to calm. Time for himself and the others to reconcile themselves to the cruel deaths of Katrin and Garren.
And time was what they would have, though it was little consolation as it would have to be lived through, second by painful second. He clenched his hands in a combination of self-reproach and anger. The pain of the passing of his time would be as nothing compared with that of Jeorg’s and Farnor’s and he at least could ease his own pain by seeking to ease theirs.
A noise brought him to the present and dispelled his thoughts. With a final effort he levered himself out of the creaking chair and limped heavily to the door, banging his reluctant leg irritably with his fist.
‘Did I disturb you?’ Marna said, as he scowled into the kitchen. ‘I was making some breakfast for us all.’ She stared disconsolately at the pan sizzling merrily in front of her. ‘But I don’t think I can eat it now. I’m sorry. I took the meat from…’
Gryss waved the apology aside. He looked at her. Her face was drawn and she seemed tired and defeated. She had shed no tears in his presence last night, but her eyes were red with weeping. He turned his face away to hide his distress, then he put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed her comfortingly.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Serve it up, and have some your-self. It’ll make you feel better.’
A spasm passed over her face. ‘I don’t think I want to feel better,’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t seem right, some-how, carrying on with all the ordinary things, when…’ She could not finish the sentence.
‘When Garren and Katrin are lying dead in one of their own animal stalls?’ he said, finishing it for her starkly but not unkindly.
She nodded and tears filled her eyes.
‘It’s not something we’ve any choice in, Marna,’ he said. ‘You don’t need me to tell you that. Weep for Garren and Katrin as much as you want. Rant and rage if that’s the way it takes you. And it’ll take you many ways, believe me. But in the end, you honour them and everything they were by the way you live your life.’
‘Words,’ Marna said.
‘They’re all we’ve got at the moment, and they’re better than nothing. They help to make the time pass, and occasionally they say something that helps someone.’
He looked at her squarely. ‘There’s no harder thing in life than standing by helpless, and you’re never more helpless, more inadequate, more useless, than when someone’s died.’
She returned his gaze, then looked down at the pan again, her mouth pouting. ‘Do you want some of this?’ she asked, dully, turning back to him.
‘Not if you’re going to burn it like that,’ he said, indicating the now smoking pan.
Marna swore, and there was a flurry of activity as meat and eggs were rescued and transferred to Gryss’s fine wooden plates and during which Marna burnt the tip of her finger.
Gryss retrieved a loaf from a cupboard and scooped up some cutlery. ‘Bring the plates through into the back room,’ he said as he left the kitchen. Marna took her finger from her mouth and followed him.
‘Eat,’ he ordered, as she placed the plates on the long table. Uneasily, Marna did as she was told. It was no celebratory feast, however, and for some time they sat silent, and ate dutifully, rapt in their own thoughts.
Then Gryss recollected himself. ‘Where’s your father and Yakob?’ he asked, guiltily.
‘Still asleep. Both of them,’ Marna replied. She gave a reluctant smile. ‘Like battered bookends, either side of Farnor’s bed.’
‘My bed, if you please,’ Gryss observed, angling like a patient fisherman to keep the smile.
But it slipped away. ‘Should I waken them?’ she asked.
Gryss shook his head. ‘Let them sleep while they can,’ he replied. Then he clicked his tongue and frowned. ‘I’m not doing too well this morning. I should have looked at Farnor before tending my own needs.’
‘He’s all right,’ Marna said, reassuringly. ‘He’s fast asleep.
’
Gryss looked at her uncertainly. ‘I’ll have a look anyway,’ he decided.
He had to agree with Marna’s description as he entered his bedroom. Harlen and Yakob were draped gracelessly in chairs on either side of Farnor’s bed. Harlen’s head was slumped forward while Yakob’s was angled backwards and to one side, and his mouth was hanging open. Farnor, on the contrary, was a picture of repose.
The sight was at once funny and poignant.
Moving delicately past the two sleeping guardians Gryss sat on the edge of the bed and laid his hand on Farnor’s forehead. It was cool.
That was a relief. The lad had problems enough without going down with a fever as a result of the soaking and the shock he had had the previous night.
Farnor stirred, but did not wake.
Harlen, however, did. After mumbling a few inco-herent words he opened his eyes and blinked vacantly. Then recognition came into his face and he made to move.
‘Easy,’ Gryss said. ‘Your chairs might be comfortable to sit in, but not for sleeping in.’
The soft conversation woke Yakob, who spluttered indignantly for a moment before he too felt the protest of his limbs at having been confined in a chair for so long.
Marna raised a single eyebrow when the three of them entered the back room, bleary-eyed, unshaven and unkempt. ‘Let them sleep,’ she echoed at Gryss. He gave a disclaiming shrug.
At Gryss’s urging, the two men made an attempt at the food that Marna had prepared, but it too was little more than an exercise in satisfying bodily needs, and a dark silence soon descended on the room.
Both Harlen and Yakob, like Farnor, were in a state of shock, though Harlen was perhaps the more affected of the two. The previous night he had gone to his home and bed burdened with the knowledge that one of his friends had been brutally beaten for no apparent reason, and that a menace had come silently to the valley, like a tainted autumn mist. Whatever dreams had arisen in the wake of this, though, were as nothing compared to the nightmare to which his daughter had wakened him: a hurried dash through the village to be greeted by Gryss and Yakob with a tale that made Jeorg’s beating seem almost trivial. A tale of cruel murder and wanton destruction. The sense of menace had increased tenfold.
And it had become worse as Gryss told of Jeorg’s whispered account, concluding with his final torture by Rannick.
The notion that Rannick could be leading such men and possess such powers invoked the same response from Harlen as it had from Yakob. He had looked to Yakob for support, but all Yakob was prepared to offer was an uncertain shrug and a wary, ‘He believes it,’ with a nod towards Gryss.
‘You know the tales about Rannick’s family line, going way back,’ Gryss had countered, heatedly. ‘It’s not just a saga of foul and unpleasant temperaments, is it? There are stories of strange gifts as well. Strange enough for them to be mentioned only in whispers if they’re mentioned at all. And you should know this: of our old friends lying murdered up the road, one was smashed as badly as if he’d been hurled down a cliff. No ordinary beating did that.’ Tiredness and grief had conspired to make him almost angry with his two friends. ‘Do you think I’d be telling you such wild tales at a time like this if I didn’t have good reason for thinking they were true? Both of you are old enough to know that there’re plenty of things in this world that we haven’t the remotest understanding of. Just hear me out.’
Rather abashed following this untypical outburst, Harlen and Yakob had fallen silent and Gryss had given the true account of his visit to the castle and the injury to Farnor’s arm. He told, too, of the creature that Rannick apparently controlled, though this he attrib-uted to information given to him by Nilsson’s injured men. Some instinct told him not to speak of Farnor’s own mysterious contact with the creature. Rannick’s powers and Farnor’s gift were beyond any logic that he knew of, and opposition to them would thus be visceral rather than reasoned. Who, then, could say where it would stop if once it started? And Farnor had no one to defend him now.
In the end, seeing that Gryss was not noticeably deranged, and in the knowledge that Farnor and Jeorg could be questioned in due course, the two men had reluctantly accepted his tale.
‘Though what it all means and what we can do about it I’ve no idea,’ Yakob had concluded in despair.
Gryss, however, had forbidden any debate. ‘I can’t tell you any more than I have,’ he said. ‘You have the truth as I know it, grim though it is. Sleep on it as well as you can. We’re all too tired and upset to think clearly about anything. And tomorrow we’re going to have a lot to do.’
Now tomorrow was on them, and, despite the sunlight streaming in through the window, no light seemed to reach into the hearts of the three men.
Their silence was too much for Marna. ‘We can’t sit around doing nothing,’ she burst out, abruptly, her voice shaking. ‘We must do something.’
Yakob cast an awkward glance at Harlen and then, acidly, he said, ‘What, you stupid girl? Charge up to the castle on horseback and drag Rannick out to give an account of himself before the council?’
Marna pushed her plate away angrily, contemplated a retort, then swung around to stare out of the window. Her jaw stiffened as she fought back tears. Gryss gave Yakob a reproachful look, but Yakob merely scowled unrepentantly.
Nevertheless, the brief outburst had shattered the leaden torpor that had pervaded the room.
Harlen laid his hands flat on the table as if to push himself up from his seat. ‘This is all too much for me,’ he said. ‘But I do know we must deal with the needs of the moment. We can talk later.’ He let out a long breath. He addressed Gryss. ‘Yakob and I will go to Garren’s and make some arrangement for bringing… the bodies… back. You and Marna can stay here and look after Farnor and Jeorg.’ He stood up. ‘Some air, some activity will do none of us any harm.’ His easy-going face hardened. ‘And, Yakob, I’ll thank you not to talk to my daughter like that again, unless she gives you just cause. We’re none of us over-endowed with wisdom in the face of all this.’
Yakob coloured and his mouth opened, but he did not reply.
When the two men had gone, Gryss and Marna set about tending to their charges.
‘What are we going to do?’ Marna asked, as she helped Gryss change some of Jeorg’s bandages.
‘I don’t know,’ Gryss replied. ‘I don’t think I’ve truly taken everything in yet. I can’t even believe that Garren and Katrin are dead.’ His voice faltered. ‘I don’t seem to be able to think properly.’
‘I cried a lot last night,’ Marna said, flatly, making no attempt to hide her own gnawing distress.
‘Maybe I should’ve done the same,’ Gryss said, paus-ing reflectively for a moment. ‘I probably will eventually.’
Marna moved close to him. ‘We’ll have to send for help,’ she said. ‘We can’t just do nothing. What’s happened is awful. The King should be told, his soldiers, his army, should be sent to put things to rights. The proper army.’
Gryss looked concerned. ‘One thing at a time, Marna,’ he said. ‘We need to talk, to clear our thoughts further before we decide about anything. Everything’s different now.’ He felt a sudden need to explain. ‘When I agreed to help Jeorg try to reach the capital, I thought I’d be able to talk him out of any trouble if he got caught, or the worst that could happen was that he might be locked up for a while. Or made to pay a fine of some kind. I didn’t think they’d do anything like this, or…’
Unable to continue for a moment, he fiddled nerv-ously with the bandages.
‘We can’t risk that happening again,’ he went on at last. ‘They’ll kill anyone else they find trying to leave, I’m sure.’
‘If they catch them,’ Marna said.
‘They caught Jeorg easily enough,’ Gryss said, miss-ing the tone of her voice.
‘He was following behind the entire troop,’ Marna pointed out. ‘Now they’re all back at the castle. They’ve probably not even left any guards downland. Someone could be thro
ugh and away before they even realized what was happening.’
This time Gryss did catch the tone. He looked at her. ‘And suppose they’re not all at the castle. Suppose they have left guards downland. What then, miss?’
‘I could move around them,’ Marna exclaimed, wav-ing her arms. ‘I know everywhere round there. All the streams, the trees, the secret ways…’
‘Marna, for mercy’s sake, stop it!’ Gryss burst out. ‘This isn’t some schoolyard game. We’ve had this conversation before and I told you then the journey to the capital is long and difficult. Almost impossible on foot unless you really know how to live off the land.’
Marna made to speak again, but he held up a hand to stop her. His voice became quiet. ‘As far as I can see, they’d have beaten Jeorg to death if Rannick hadn’t stopped them to play his own game. They’d do far worse to you. Far worse, Marna. Do you understand?’ He sighed. ‘I don’t want to hear any more talk like this. We need to stick together, to rely on one another. You’re near enough an adult now, but you’ve a lot to learn. At times like this, just watch and listen.’
‘There’s never been a time like this before,’ Marna retorted, retreating but defiant. ‘And when you’ve all debated and discussed it’ll come to the same in the end. Someone will have to go for help. If Rannick’s got anything to do with those men, they’ll get worse and worse if no one opposes them. And there’s no one here who can stand against men like that.’
This echo of Katrin’s words struck Gryss like a blow and he turned away sharply and began removing a bandage from Jeorg that he had only just put on. He swore when he saw what he was doing.
‘Damn you, Marna, shut up!’ he said. ‘You may well be right, I wouldn’t pretend to know at the moment. But I know this…’ He pointed at Jeorg. ‘This is the consequence of trying to find help. I shudder to think what they’d do against outright opposition. Jeorg and Farnor need our help right now, and that’s all we need to think about at the moment. The needs of the living must be met before those of the dead, no matter how we feel.’
