by Roger Taylor
Jeorg had ventured to leave the valley in cautious openness, hoping to be able to plead his way out should he be challenged. Marna planned for complete concealment. Dull, colourless clothes hid her in the palely lit night, and would help to conceal her too, in the daylight. A carefully acquired knowledge of the routines of the men who guarded the valley told her that only a few would be abroad patrolling so late. This, coupled with their not being truly prepared for anyone trying to escape, her own knowledge of the terrain, and her grim, fear-driven determination, carried her successfully along stream beds, through shrub and fern, and over rocky outcrops, until finally she had passed around the guarded line and reached the woods that fringed the valley's sides. Now, surely, only ill-fortune, or gross carelessness on her part would see her captured.
The thought reminded her that she was still quite close to the guarded line and she allowed herself only a few minutes’ respite before she clambered to her feet and cautiously set off again.
She looked up through the trees. The sky was greying a little. Soon it would be dawn, then her father would wake to find her message. She felt an uneasy twinge about the errand she had left him, but she did not dwell on it. She must do what she had to do. Someone had to reach the capital and bring some form of lawful retribution down on Rannick and these people, and she could do it, she knew. Besides, fathers were invulnerable, weren't they?
She shook her head as the memory of Garren and Katrin Yarrance threatened to return, and strode out as quickly as the darkness and the need for silence would allow.
She pondered the journey ahead of her as she walked. There was no way of knowing how far abroad Rannick's depredations had been carried, but if she used the night for the greater part of her journeying and the daytime for careful sheltering and rest, she must surely come eventually to a place that was beyond his reach, and then what could possibly prevent her from reaching the capital?
She looked up at the greying sky again. Each step she made was carrying her further away from Rannick and Nilsson and it would be a long time after daybreak before her father could deliver her letter and some form of search for her be set in train. She must make the most of this interlude.
After a while, she paused and looked back. She was far enough away from the guards not to be too concerned about travelling quietly. All she had to do now was walk, and listen for any kind of pursuit coming along the road below. Then, and only then, need she consider searching for somewhere to conceal herself for the day.
She strode out, through the lightening wood.
She was still striding purposefully forward when something wrapped around her ankle and brought her crashing down heavily. As she struggled desperately to regain her breath, she felt the grip on her ankle tightening.
'Well, well. What have we here, charging through the trees and disturbing our sleep?’ said a voice.
Startled, Marna kicked out violently with her free leg. She struck something and there was an oath as she was abruptly released. Still gasping for breath, and encumbered by her pack, she scrabbled awkwardly to her feet.
At the same time, two figures rose up out of the shadowy ground. ‘You should look where you're going, my friend,’ said one of them. The accent was strange. Whoever was speaking was not from the valley, but neither was he one of Nilsson's men. Apart from a note of irritation in the voice, Marna took some reassurance from this.
'First you barge into our little camp, making us think you were a bandit or suchlike. Then you nearly kick me in the face.'
'I'm sorry,’ Marna gasped, as she flexed her ankles and legs, instinctively testing for damage after the winding fall. ‘Who are you?'
There was no immediate reply, but she could make out the two figures turning to look at one another in the gloom. ‘Who are we?’ came the mimicking, high-pitched echo, after a moment. ‘Bless me if we haven't stumbled upon a lady, no less.'
'No, no. She stumbled on us, don't forget.'
'True. True.’ There was a pause. ‘I thought that ankle felt ... interesting.'
There was a short, unpleasant laugh, then. ‘Talking about ... feeling ...'
'Who are you?’ Marna asked again, sufficiently recovered from her fall now to begin to be frightened by the tone of the conversation she was hearing.
'Just two travellers come to join Lord Rannick's army. We were spending a cold, lonely night in the woods until ...’ The figure shrugged and came a little nearer. ‘But who are you, my dear, wandering the woods all alone?’ he asked.
'I'm not alone,’ Marna said, increasingly alarmed. ‘And I'm one of Lord Rannick's women.'
But on the instant, she knew that the tremor in her voice had exposed the lie in this announcement. There was another short pause in which the two men seemed to consult one another silently, then they stepped forward simultaneously. A hand was clamped across her mouth, and she felt hands grasping for her legs, seeking to destroy her balance and bring her down again.
She lashed out wildly and staggered backward. In the mêlée, her pack slipped off her back on to the floor and one of the men went sprawling over it. The other, however, still held her firmly and she found herself being spun around roughly. A stunning slap across the face exploded in her head and sent her reeling.
A terrible fear rose up inside her. She had never been struck before—not like that—not with malice and power and awful, focused intent. She remembered Nilsson felling the man in the courtyard, and knew now how he had felt. The strings of her adulthood began to unloose and childhood began to reassert itself.
As she floundered under the numbing impact of the blow, she was seized from behind, powerful arms pinioning hers by her sides. Ironically, the continued assault galvanized her. She began to struggle violently.
There was a grunt of effort from her captor as he tried to restrain her. ‘Whack her again, she's strong, this one,’ he gasped to his companion.
Marna saw the figure in front of her draw back his arm. Yoked together, fear and anger screamed defiance. She wouldn't be hit like that again! Wildly, she lashed out with her foot in the general direction of her attacker's groin. Insofar as she had been aiming, she missed, but her stout walking boot connected solidly with his knee.
The man cried out and staggered backwards, swearing foully. His partner tightened his grip around Marna, making her gasp with pain. ‘You all right?’ he called out breathlessly.
A further stream of abuse greeted this inquiry as the injured man crouched low, hugging his knee. ‘I'll teach you, you bitch,’ he concluded, straightening up slowly.
As he limped towards her, Marna saw the glint of a knife blade in the growing light. A pounding terror rose to paralyse her, like a rabbit before a stoat. In the far distance she was aware of a voice calling out, ‘No. Don't spoil her. We can do that after.'
The man with the knife hesitated, and Marna felt waves of gratitude towards her captor mingling with her terror. Then the man took another step forward. He lurched violently as his injured knee gave way under him. His hesitation vanished and the clear intent that rang in his cry of pain and fury brought Marna back vividly and brutally to this dawn-lit woodland and what lay ahead for her.
The knife drew nearer, with wilful, taunting slowness.
Marna began to struggle even more frantically than before. Then, as the knife was drawn back, she made a desperate final effort, and by blind chance did what any trained fighter would have told her to do. Her heel crashed down on to the foot of the man holding her, and her head jerked back viciously, hitting him full in the face. The grip on her slackened and with fear-bred strength, she twisted away from the lunging knife. Her arms came up wildly and she collided with the advancing attacker as she found herself staggering forward, suddenly free. Stumbling to her knees, she landed on her pack. In the midst of the tumbling horror of what was happening, the familiar contact was incongruously reassuring.
There was a strangled cry behind her, and as she clambered to her feet she saw the two men bending low and staring
at one another. The knife-wielder turned towards her. She could see his eyes, wide and savage. His mouth gaped to form a silent scream.
Without thinking, she swung her pack at him as he lurched towards her. It did not strike him particularly hard, but it unbalanced him and he fell to the ground with a cry of rage and pain as once again his knee collapsed. The knife bounced from his hand.
Unbalanced herself by her effort, Marna tumbled almost on top of him. Arms and legs flailing, she rolled away, intent now on seizing the fallen knife. As her hand closed about it, a great weight fell across her, forcing her face into the soft, damp forest litter. She gagged as she felt twigs and clinging soil being pushed into her mouth. Powerful hands twisted her over on to her back and she looked up to see her attacker sitting astride her, in a dreadful mockery of a childhood wrestling game. His weight crushed the breath out of her.
Then, those same powerful hands closed around her throat, thumbs hard, purposeful and practised, against her windpipe. All thoughts left her as a choking blackness instantly swept over her, but a screaming reflex thrust her hands upwards in an attempt to beat off this fearful assault. There was an interminable, timeless, moment, then the awful blackness was gone. Through her trembling, painful breathing, Marna saw light. As her vision cleared, she made out her attacker. He was still astride her. But he was motionless.
And there was something else...
On her hands. Warm. Unpleasant...
Slowly her eyes moved from the figure above her to her hands. Her face contorted in horror. One of the hands that had thrust up to beat off that final, murderous attack had held the knife. She felt it in her hand, but she could not see it. It had passed upwards, underneath the man's ribcage, killing him almost immediately. Blood was running dark down her hands.
She could not release the knife.
As she watched, the now untenanted form above her toppled very slowly to one side. With her grip still reflex-tight around the handle of the knife, Marna was drawn upwards by it, until with a blood-spurting sigh it tore free from the body, and she dropped on to one elbow. The corpse rolled away from her and lay still like a spent lover.
Marna was shaking uncontrollably. Something in her mind was crying out to warn her that this was not yet finished. She struggled to listen to it, knowing that it was important.
The other man!
She jerked her head around in sudden fear of a renewed attack. He was there! Only a few paces away. Leaning against a tree, and staring at her.
With a strange, animal whine, Marna scrambled desperately to her feet and, retreating, levelled the shaking knife at him. But he did not move. Then she saw that he was clutching his side, and a broad stain was colouring his loose, ragged tunic. Realization dawned. He must have received the knife blow intended for her when she fought free.
They stared at one another for a long moment, then the man, grimacing with pain, and his eyes fearful, turned and staggered off into the trees on a path that would carry him down the side of the valley and towards the road.
Marna stood staring after him for a long time after he had disappeared. She was motionless, except for the trembling that was still racking her. Then, with a cry of disgust, she spat the bitter twigs and leaves from her mouth and, dropping to her knees, vomited violently.
As the retching spasms faded, so others began, and she began to sob equally violently. At intervals she gasped, ‘I'm sorry,’ to the corpse of her would-be murderer. She crawled to his side and knelt by him, the knife still in her hand; for some reason she still could not let it go.
How long had it all taken? Perhaps only seconds, she thought.
And how was it possible that so much could change so quickly? For many things had changed. For one, her carefully planned journey to the capital was in ruins. She was a practical woman. She had allowed for fatigue and discomfort, for hunger and thirst, for weather, bad and good, but she had not allowed for events such as this; dangers from other people who were not Rannick's people. Such people would have been friendly and helpful, because that's the way people were. Now it came to her that Nilsson's band might perhaps be no more than the vanguard of a great army of such people, scattered all over the land.
And too, was gone her confidence in her own ability to complete her journey. That was the truly appalling loss, and the one that most of her tears mourned. Part of her knew her for a foolish young girl, whose reckless actions would probably bring great harm to her father and perhaps many others in the valley when Rannick found out that she had fled. And too, they had led her to the killing of a man.
And in her folly she had told Rannick what she was going to do! She drew in a sour breath through clenched teeth and looked up at the brightening sky. Was there no foolishness of which she was not capable? She should run back to her father, ask his forgiveness. Ask—no, beg—Rannick's forgiveness. Be strong by remaining in the valley and being close to him. Whatever he did to her could be no worse than her two assailants had intended. There was at least some affection in him, and who could say how he might change under her influence?
Yet still, another part of her told her that she was alive; that she had fought back against greater strength and prevailed. And that not only could she complete this journey, she must. How else could Rannick be stopped? For stopped he must be. Affection or no, he was a murderer, and he drew his own kind to him, like an open sore drew infection.
As the word murderer came to her however, she looked down at the bloodstained knife in her hands. Again, her response was disturbingly confused. She should throw the hideous, life-stopping thing away. Yet she knew that it was no more than an artefact. She was the life-stopping thing, not it. And she might well need a good knife again on this journey.
Her mind cleared quite suddenly, as if a cloud had moved from in front of the sun. And indeed, as her way ahead formed itself anew, long, bright shafts of sunlight began to cut through the wooded gloom, transforming it into a myriad greens and browns, shot through with the yellows and reds of countless woodland flowers. She began to hear the birds singing.
She looked down at the dead body. She could not leave it lying there; it was unthinkable. The forest creatures would...
She turned away from the thought.
Yet she could do no other than leave it.
Her resolution finally determined, she was about to stand up when a noise made her turn. She drew in a long, trembling breath, and the knife slipped from her hand.
Moving slowly towards her, ominous and long-shadowed in the dusty, leaf-dappled rays of the rising sun, were four riders.
* * *
Chapter 18
'Of the true beginning, the beginning of the time that was before this time, nothing is truly known, though we sense that the world that was then is remembered, albeit dimly, at the heart of our knowledge. And too, by some others, though they are strange, and elsewhere.
'But from the forming of this time, from the time of the fading of the Great Heat and the great remaking, we remember much.
'The shaping of the valleys and the mountains by those who were formed of the essence of the beginning, we remember. The filling of the rivers and the lakes and the oceans, we remember. The coming of the Movers in their many forms, we remember.
'And the Great Evil, we remember. For that, too, was of the essence of the beginning.'
There was a long silence. Many of the words that came to Farnor were so hung about with such subtle shades of meaning that he could scarcely begin to grasp them. He could grasp the pain and distress permeating them, however, and he made no interruption.
'And there was great suffering. Amongst ourselves, and the Movers of every form. Even the land itself was torn and racked. And the air and the seas and all the waters. All were tainted and foul. But perhaps above all, the greatest suffering was among the vast tribes of Movers such as yourselves, for such was the form that the Great Evil had chosen in which to exercise Its will.'
'Because that was Its true form from the time before t
he beginning,’ Farnor said. It was part statement and part question and he could not have said from where the idea came.
There was a pause, heavy with shock and wonder which gradually turned into awe. ‘You Hear further into our meanings than we could have believed possible, Far-nor.'
Farnor did not reply, but simply waited for the tale to continue. He stroked his horse's head gently, still remorseful at having struck it in his angry frustration and fear. His first act on returning down the mountain had been to ask the animal's forgiveness.
The voice continued. ‘That is indeed a most ancient belief, though it is not truly known, and what we speak of here, is truly known.
'And it is known that the Great Evil was overcome. Overcome utterly by a Great Alliance of many powers. Overcome for ever, it was thought, though Its taint was spread wide and deep, touching all things, and ever to be seen by those who chose to look.
'Now, what had been little more than a suggestion of dark happenings far away, a deep unease, has been revealed to us as a terrible truth. The Great Evil has come again, even within the span of your brief life, Farnor. Come, and been confronted, and overcome again.'
Farnor frowned, there was such fear in the voice that he had no wish to make light of this revelation, but he could ask no other than, ‘If It's been overcome, why are you concerned?'
The fear flooded into his mind, primordial and terrible. It forced a sharp breath into his lungs, and his hands came to his ears as if in some way that would end this silent distress. And there was another fear, deeper yet, far deeper. ‘What was that?’ he gasped, horrified.
The fear vanished, to be replaced by regret and dismay. But there was no reply. Then he sensed again a debate being held somewhere away from him. ‘Tell me,’ he demanded, intruding into it forcefully. ‘Share this with me. Or do you now consider ignorance to be preferable to knowledge?'
