Whistler

by Roger Taylor

  Vredech rescued the man, pointing him towards a chair by the fire. He had barely sat down when the figure on the couch began to thrash about violently, throwing off the blanket that had been placed over him and only narrowly avoiding knocking over House’s water bowl. Nertha moved to his side and took hold of his flailing arms. Then slowly, from the depths, a great cry of pain and horror rose out of the man.

  ‘Hold his feet!’ Nertha cried out to Vredech as she began to use her weight to reduce the man’s spasms.

  Yan-Elter moved to the man’s head. ‘He’s been like this all the time. And crying too,’ he said. Then, to the sick man, ‘Iryn, it’s me. You’re safe now. You’re back. Everything will be all right.’

  But the man’s agitation only increased, as did his cries, and for a little while all three were fully occupied in restraining him. Suddenly he began to gasp for breath. Nertha sat up and sniffed, then, her jaw stiffening, she gave him a mighty slap across the face. The man’s eyes flew wide open.

  ‘You’re all right now, Iryn,’ Nertha smiled into them winningly. ‘You’re safe here. Rest back.’ Then, to Vredech, with a poke of her elbow that gave the command an urgency which she kept out of her voice, ‘Get my bag. And some water for him.’

  When the bag appeared, Nertha delved into it expertly and produced a small bottle. She measured a few drops into the water.

  ‘Drink this,’ she said to the still-bewildered Iryn. ‘It’ll help.’

  Iryn seized the glass in both hands and gulped the contents down without question. Nertha watched him carefully. ‘Dehydrated as well as exhausted,’ she said. ‘Go to sleep now, you’re very tired. Go to sleep. We’ll talk later.’

  Even as she was talking, the man’s eyes were closing.

  Nertha looked at Yan-Elter more sympathetically than before. ‘You don’t look all that much better than your friend,’ she said.

  ‘He’s my brother,’ Yan-Elter said.

  Nertha shrugged. ‘Then you don’t look much better than your brother. He’ll be asleep for some time now, which is what he needs. Sit down. House will bring you something to eat and drink, and then you can tell us how he came to be like this.’

  Yan-Elter sagged and moved back to the chair while Vredech went to deliver Nertha’s request to House. Nertha remained on the edge of the couch by her patient.

  When Vredech returned he sat down opposite Yan-Elter and looked at him expectantly.

  Yan-Elter became suddenly animated. ‘It’s that madman, Cassraw,’ he burst out. ‘Saving your cloth, Brother, but some things can’t be left unsaid. He’s not right in the head.’

  Vredech attempted a quietening gesture. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘You can say anything you want here without fear of reproach, but please try to stay calm, and take whatever time you need. What’s Cassraw got to do with your brother being in this state?’

  Yan-Elter pressed his hands to his temples as if trying to still his thoughts. ‘He’s got everything to do with it!’ He pointed towards his sleeping brother. ‘He was at that Bredill business,’ he said vehemently. ‘I still can’t believe it was only yesterday.’ Vredech and Nertha waited until he composed himself again. ‘Yesterday, one of his cronies from these Knights of Cassraw’s came for him. “Captain Yanos’s orders,” he says. “Come right away. Very important. Going to see the Felden off”.’ Yan-Elter looked at Vredech. ‘Now, Iryn’s not the wisest of souls, but he’s not totally stupid. For his sins, he’s a mite too keen to use his fists in an argument, but he wouldn’t want to get involved in fighting real soldiers. So, he asks what’s going on. Then, this… Knight…’ His voice was snarling with contempt, ‘just says, “Come now, it’s an order, you don’t have any choice”. Iryn’s still not happy and says so, whereupon the Knight says, “Come now or take the consequences of breaking your holy oath”. Very slowly he says it, full of menace. And Iryn just…’ he shrugged. ‘went quiet and left with him.’

  ‘Didn’t you try to help him?’ Nertha asked.

  ‘I wasn’t there!’ Yan-Elter exclaimed reproachfully. ‘I got the story off our mother when I came home from work. She was really frightened.’ His tone changed to one of anger. ‘This Knight was a nasty piece of work, she said.’ He drove his fist into his hand. ‘I’ll make a piece of work of him if I catch him. And that lunatic Cassraw.’

  Vredech let the threats pass.

  ‘The next thing I hear, there’s all this blather in the Sheets about a battle at Bredill and the Felden army being defeated. I had to leave the job I was on and go home. I knew Mother would be really frantic now.’ He clenched his hands together and gritted his teeth as if to force the next words out. ‘She’d already been to the place where these… Knights… meet. There were a lot of them there – in bad shape, she said – but they just told her to…’ He hesitated. ‘To go away,’ he said uncomfortably, ‘before they threw her out.’ He lowered his voice. ‘There was a lot of abuse. Then one of them said Iryn must have got separated on the way back. Quite a few had, apparently. He’d probably turn up later.’

  ‘So you went and found him?’ Vredech said, cutting through the rest of the tale.

  Yan-Elter nodded. ‘More by good luck than anything else,’ he said. ‘Just caught sight of his precious red sash in the gorse some way off the road.’ He looked at his two listeners. ‘He could’ve died for all they cared. He must have just wandered off exhausted, and collapsed.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘It’s beyond me. What kind of a crowd are they? You look after your own, don’t you? You don’t need to be a Preaching Brother to know that. You don’t just abandon people when there’s trouble.’ He fell silent.

  ‘Has he told you what happened?’ Nertha asked.

  Yan-Elter shook his head. ‘I managed to wake him up, but he was rambling. Shouting and moaning. And thrashing about – like just now. I don’t know how I got him here.’

  ‘Why did you bring him here?’ Vredech asked. ‘Why didn’t you take him to a physician?’

  ‘Have you told your mother he’s safe?’ Nertha asked, leaning forward and gesturing Vredech’s question aside urgently.

  Yan-Elter looked rapidly from one to the other. ‘No,’ he stammered guiltily to Nertha, then to Vredech, ‘He didn’t seem to be hurt badly. He could walk, but he kept… sitting down, as if he just wanted to lie there and give up. I asked him if he wanted to go to Cassraw’s but he started throwing a fit again, really badly. You were all I could think of, Brother Vredech. I know I’m no service-goer, but…’

  Nertha, momentarily deflected by this tale, recovered herself and pointed to the door. ‘Get home to your mother, now, right away,’ she said indignantly. ‘Tell her your brother’s safe, and where he is, and make sure she’s all right before you come back.’

  ‘Bit fierce with him, weren’t you?’ Vredech said when Yan-Elter had left.

  ‘Well, for mercy’s sake,’ she said impatiently. ‘The poor woman’ll be demented while he’s sitting here, unloadinghis worries.’

  Vredech changed the subject. ‘What do you make of it?’ he said.

  Nertha looked at the sleeping figure, then at Vredech. ‘We’ll have to wait for him to wake up before we can get the answer to that,’ she said simply.

  ‘How long will that be?’

  Nertha took Iryn’s pulse then shook her head. ‘The draught I gave him should keep him asleep for a couple of hours or so, but he’s very agitated. His mind’s fighting it.’

  She grimaced. ‘I doubt his dreams are helping him rest.’ She stood up and lowered the lanterns again, restoring the relaxing glow that had pervaded the room before Yan-Elter’s interruption. ‘I think we’re in for a long night,’ she said. ‘You make yourself comfortable in that chair and have a sleep while you can. I’ll keep an eye on our patient.’

  Vredech tried to protest, but Nertha pushed him back into his chair and thrust a cushion under his head. ‘Don’t argue,’ she said quietly, stroking his cheek. ‘I’m used to this kind of thing, you aren’t. This is the waiting tim
e. What can be done, has been done. All we can do is float in the time between that and whatever’s to follow. Besides, I think you’re going to have plenty to do when he wakes up.’

  The practical note reassured Vredech and he relaxed as he had been instructed, though with the clear intention of not actually sleeping. Very shortly, though, the warmth of the fire and the soft lights weighed down his eyelids and when Nertha looked at him again, he was fast asleep. She smiled. That was one less to worry about for the time being.

  * * * *

  Maelstrom.

  Sounds and patterns swirled about and through him. He was moving yet still; here and not here. The consciousness that was Vredech knew he was at the place that he came to before being hurled recklessly from dream to dream. How strange, he thought, that he had become used to this bizarre phenomenon: the why? and the how? of such a thing should torment him, so far was it from the reality of everyday affairs. Perhaps he had absorbed Nertha’s attitude: not allowing the limits of his sorry imagination to dictate what was and was not possible – especially when he could do nothing about it. But there was a deeper change -a rightness about what was happening – no sense of anything unnatural, still less of evil. Yet too, there was a sense of incompleteness about it. The feeling that something was missing, that he needed guidance, knowledge and, oddly, that he should not be alone here.

  Then he was out of the chaos and into a dream. This was the way it always was – never the slightest sense of change. And again he was both in the dream and aloof from it, feeling the dreamer’s emotions but unaffected by them, though those that swept over him now were profoundly disturbing. Delight at a goal having been reached, at fear having been overcome, at the sense of unity with his fellows in a venture from which only glory could come. And a deep, visceral response – ecstatic, almost. He liked hitting people. Liked it a lot. And here you could hit and hit without restraint, without reproach, because you’d been told to by those in the highest authority and because those you were hitting were lesser, contaminated creatures who were not the Chosen, were not fit to live, and who would do the same to you if they got the chance.

  And so he hit. Oh, how he hit. His weighted cudgel balanced and easy in his hand, all fatigue gone, he could do this for ever without tiring, so joyous was it.

  Noises wrapped comfortingly around him. Vicious taunting jeers from his fellows, strange gasps and moans from the enemy, struggling under their downed canvases. Then one of the sounds tore through the others to become a high-pitched and terrified voice, sobbing and pleading.

  ‘Please. No more. Please.’

  And a face filled his vision. A young man’s face. He saw the trembling, begging mouth, black in the moonlight. The voice streaming from it became a solid thing, moving to seize and bind him. It held him immobile, while the voice skewered into him agonizingly.

  ‘Please!’

  And then, more horrible by far, he saw into the eyes. Eyes that showed him the true depths of terror. Eyes that cried many times louder than the voice. ‘Let me go! Let me run away! Leave me be! Let me live.’ Young eyes. like his own!

  Forgotten emotions began to stir inside him. The face’s primitive terror reached into him and found his own cowering soul.

  He mustn’t…

  But the revelation added its own frantic fury to the irresistible killing momentum, and the weighted club with its sweet whistling song rose unbidden to erase this ghastly discord.

  Yet its last blow struck down not only the face with its drivelling terror, but also himself as it shattered his own sense of the rightness of events. The sound it made, dull and awful now, echoed through and through him, bringing to full wakefulness those burgeoning restraints and reproaches that had been too late and too feeble to prevent the deed.

  The club slipped from his hand and a cry formed within him. A cry that he tried not to utter for fear of those about him. But the cry struggled and fought. It was a live thing. He seized it and pressed down on it with his whole weight, his heart pounding. But a whimper slipped around his grip. It sounded through the flickering flamelight like a clarion. And all was suddenly silent. In his weakness, he had revealed himself as the enemy. Black, red-sashed shadows paused from their threshing and their unseen eyes focused on him, seeing into his true self. They began to close upon him.

  He shrank and shrank until he became the gaping mouth and terrified eyes that he had just crushed.

  Vredech was torn into wakefulness by the sudden ending of the dream. He gasped as he awoke, but the sound that filled his ears was of a despairing cry. Through his sleep-blurred eyes he saw Nertha bending forward over Iryn, talking, comforting. Vredech made to rise. He had to tell Nertha what had just happened.

  But something turned the soft-lit image of Nertha and her charge into a stillness, like a distant picture, subject unknown, painter unknown. He blinked as he looked at it. When his eyes opened they were filled with a bright, flickering light. He closed them again quickly, bringing his hand up for protection. Then he re-opened them slowly, allowing them to adjust to the light.

  He was standing in a forest. It was a bright sunny day, but a strong wind was buffeting the treetops, turning them into an iridescent shimmer. Rich forest scents assailed him, borne on that part of the wind that was exploring the lower reaches of the trees. He looked down at his hands, turning them over and touching his arms with them to confirm what he already knew: once again he was in two places at the same time. He was both asleep by the fire in his Meeting House, and here, wherever that might be. He stepped forward. Long fallen twigs cracked under his feet.

  As he moved away from the tree under which he was standing, he saw a familiar figure sitting on a log. He was apparently asleep, his head drooping and his arms folded across his flute as he leaned back against a tree trunk.

  Vredech waited.

  There was no sound, but the breath of the wind and the forest.

  Slowly, the Whistler looked up at him.

  Chapter 33

  After leaving Vredech and the others, Skynner had galloped to the Keeperage. Years as a Keeper had given him a cold and sceptical eye, and he had seen more than a few tricksters in his time effecting ‘miracles’ that, in the end, usually only effected a miraculous emptying of the pockets, or coffers on occasions, of anyone foolish enough to believe them.

  What Cassraw had done at the summit must be yet another piece of trickery… surely? In common with most people, Skynner accepted without question such miracles as the turn of the seasons, the rising and setting of the sun, the growing of seed into tree and flower, even the arbitrary comings and goings of the wind and the rain. These were ‘natural’. But all else, he knew, was determined by an inexorable and conspicuous law of cause and effect. What cause Cassraw had evoked to create that particular effect was beyond him, but that was no doubt Cassraw’s intention and he, Serjeant Keeper, was not going to waste time being distracted by it. The artifice would come to light sooner or later and, in any event, was irrelevant. He had a duty to cut through to the heart of Cassraw’s intentions, or as nearly as he could, because even though he could not see what they were, he could see enough to know that they were not in the interests of the public safety and the peace. And whatever game he was playing at, Cassraw’s call for the levying of the militia was unequivocally illegal. Skynner would have been within his rights to arrest him there and then, but it needed no great sensitivity to the mood of the crowd to realize that that would have been a foolish, perhaps even potentially fatal thing to attempt. He would have to advise his superiors and let them choose the time for taking a step as serious as arresting a Chapter Brother.

  The duty Serjeant looked up in surprise as Skynner strode noisily into the Keeperage, but reading Skynner’s expression, he bit back the jocular remark he was about to make, and simply pointed straight up with the comradely warning, ‘Careful, Chief’s in.’

  ‘Good,’ Skynner said grimly and headed for the stairs.

  As he drew near to the Chief Keeper’s
office, he reached the carpeted area of the building and the change in the sound of his footfalls set in motion long-imbued habits of discipline. He flattened his hair, straightened out his tunic, and began to marshal his words. Going straight to the Chief instead of through his Captain and High Captain was not something to be done lightly, but it was urgent, and as the Chief fortuitously happened to be there…

  Two or three paces gave him a handful of excuses for his directness. Once he had made those he’d have no trouble holding the Chief’s attention. He gave his uniform a final twitch outside the door, then knocked briskly.

  ‘Come in.’

  There was a middle-of-the-day wakefulness in the voice that made Skynner pause. As he reached for the door handle, he asked himself for the first time what had happened to bring the Chief in at this time of night.

  He opened the door quickly and stepped into the office.

  Someone else was there as well as the Chief Keeper. Someone sitting not across the desk from him, but in one of the comfortable chairs by the fireplace. The Chief Keeper was sitting opposite him and lying dolefully between them was a dull red and grey fire.

  Skynner recognized the Chief’s companion immediately as Toom Drommel. So that’s why he’s here, he thought. Want the old beggar on a Keeper matter and he’s nowhere to be found. Let some politician snap his fingers and he abandons home and hearth in the middle of the night to make reassuring noises.

  Well, this politician’s business could wait.