Whistler [A sequel to The Chronicles of Hawklan]

by Roger Taylor

  It was not in the nature of most Madren to argue with their Preaching Brothers and as his message passed along, so it was obeyed, albeit slowly.

  Scarcely had Vredech spoken, however, than the noise from the square rose again. This time it was an unmistakable mixture of fear and anger. Hastily he stood in his stirrups to see what the cause was. He thought he had a fleeting glance of Keepers’ uniforms milling about urgently in the square ahead but any consideration of that was swept aside by what appeared to be a wave moving through the crowd towards him.

  It took him a moment to realize that it was the people at the front of the crowd turning and trying to flee back down the street. And a new noise was added to that coming from the square. It was the sound of screaming. Vredech froze as the consequences of this sudden flight dawned upon him, but his horse had no such future judgement to burden it and it reared instantly in an attempt to free itself from the obstacles that were impairing its own flight. Vredech was a reasonable horseman, so he managed to retain his seat though he could do little to prevent his horse from colliding with those immediately around him. As he struggled to control it he had a vivid impression of many things happening simultaneously. A tide of wide staring eyes, gaping mouths and flailing arms, was surging down the street towards him. He saw Nertha wrestling with her own mount. Remorse and guilt flooded through him, but he had no time to dwell on it for the full impact of the flight from the square struck him at that very instant. His horse staggered sideways, frantically scrabbling to keep its feet on the cobbled street. He could feel the awful impact of bodies being crushed and buffeted by it. Then, like a tree being slowly uprooted by a swollen torrent, it sank, almost gracefully, into the surging mass of fleeing people.

  Vredech just managed to clear the stirrups and swing his leg away as the horse toppled on to its side, but he had no chance of keeping his balance. Closing his eyes, wrapping his arms protectively about his head and rolling himself up tightly, he tumbled helplessly under the feet of the crowd. For a time he knew nothing except the fear that was consuming him. Blows pounded him from every direction and his ears were filled with a terrible, continuous screaming. Then a particularly violent impact burst his grip open. His hands touched something hard, then his face was pressed roughly against it. The touch, gritty and slightly warm from the day's sun, brought some semblance of awareness back to him. He opened his eyes. He had been thrown to the edge of the crowd and was being pressed against a wall. The movement of the crowd rolled him along it a little way, but also gave him the impetus to recover his balance. As he did so, someone crashed into him and fortuitously thrust him into a shallow doorway. Gasping with effort, he seized a stout wooden door handle as an anchor and thrust out a leg to wedge himself between the reveals of the doorway.

  Looking round, he saw a horror far worse than anything he had encountered or imagined over the last few weeks. A horror that lay not in fantastic manifestations of supernatural mysteries or primitive evil, but in the very ordinariness of the people who were fighting and screaming to flee the street. People, some of whom he recognized, seemed to have lost every trait that they would have claimed marked them as civilized. They were punching, clambering over and crushing underfoot anyone whom they could not hurl aside in their desperation to be out of this suffocating melee.

  The horror was made even worse for Vredech by the certain knowledge that the awful will of the crowd was possessing him also. But for the pure chance that had thrown him to one side and allowed him to rise, he knew that he, too, could well have been at the centre of that striving mass.

  'Stop! Stop! For mercy's sake,’ he shouted, but his voice was just one more drop contributing to the flood of sound filling the street. Something bumped into him. He almost lashed out at it but, looking down, he saw a child, its face tear-stained and bloody. Quickly he seized it by the collar and thrust it alongside him, placing himself between it and the press of the crowd as well as he could.

  'Stay there, you'll be all right,’ he bellowed. The child clung to his leg.

  Nertha! Where was Nertha?

  The thought struck him as windingly as a well-aimed fist and he almost lost his grip on the doorway. He looked down the street but could see nothing above the heaving confusion of bodies. Anger and desperate shame filled him. Nertha was no fragile blossom, but if she had gone down under this...

  She had come back to support him in his hour of need and he had led her into this crushing turmoil with his foolishness. The thought was insupportable.

  'No!’ he roared. He felt the child's arms tighten about his leg, but could not risk releasing his own grip to comfort it.

  Then, almost as suddenly as it had started, the stampede was over.

  People who had been clamouring and fighting were suddenly free of each other.

  There was a brief, disbelieving silence, then new sounds rose to fill it; the sound of the painful return of individual consciousness to those who had just been mindless elements in the fleeing herd. Sobbing reached Vredech first, then a gradual chorus of awful noises like a ghastly descant: ranting, frantic cursing, shrieking, and a terrible litany of shouted names as people began to search for children and spouses, and whoever else had been with them when they ventured into this awful, narrow chasm.

  And Vredech found himself the focus of many eyes.

  'Brother ...'

  'Brother ...'

  From all around.

  Arms stretched out to him in appeal.

  Nertha, in the name of pity, where are you? he called silently, his heart rebelling against these demands.

  'Brother ...'

  The voice came from the child, still clinging to his leg. As he glanced down he looked straight into the child's frightened eyes, and into the fearful hearts of its parents, wherever they might be. His own grief was overwhelmed. He was a Preaching Brother. He took the respect that these people offered his kind, he guided them where he could and he stood as a personification of the will of Ishryth as proclaimed by the church. Now, above all, his personal concerns must be set aside until those of his flock had been attended to.

  He bent down and gently prised the child's hands free, then lifted it up.

  'Don't be frightened any more,’ he said. ‘It's all over now. Put your arms around my neck, you're heavy.'

  Then he stepped out of his tiny stronghold.

  * * * *

  Standing in the PlasHein Square, Skynner looked about him in disbelief. Faintly, his mind was turning over the consequences that must surely flow from this event, but these thoughts could make no headway through the struggle he was having just to bring himself to believe what had actually happened.

  He pointed a shaking hand towards a line of young men who were sitting cowed, sullen and manacled at the foot of the small grassy ramp that sloped up toward the PlasHein.

  'Put them in the PlasHein cells for now,’ he said, his face tense with restrained fury. ‘We'll deal with them later.'

  Someone began a small protest. ‘The PlasHein cells aren't really suitable for ...'

  He stopped as Skynner's gaze fell on him. ‘Lock them up,’ the Serjeant said, with grinding slowness. ‘And get back here at the double. We need everyone we've got to sort this out.'

  Then, like Vredech, the momentum of a lifetime's dedication to duty made him dash aside all his personal reactions and plunge into practicalities. He gave his felled Captain a cursory look, then, satisfied that he was only unconscious, stepped over him and began striding through the remains of the crowd in search of his scattered men. Father, physician and judge in one, he supported the failing, fired the weary, and cured the lame with such alacrity that within minutes he had gathered together all of his men who were capable of standing and brought them to some semblance of order.

  'You—Town Physician and fast. Just tell him what's happened and do as he tells you. You—Keeperage, straight to the Chief. Stop for no one. I want every available man here five minutes ago. The rest of you, in groups. Do what you can for the
injured. And get this crowd under control. If anyone's not looking for someone specific, pack them off home on pain of arrest. If they are, get a name and bring it here. And if any of them are up to helping, send them here as well. Albor, you see to that, will you?'

  Albor was leaning heavily on a colleague. ‘I'm not sure I can,’ he said feebly.

  Skynner scowled at him. ‘I'm sure,’ he said brutally. ‘Get on with it. You can fall over later. I've got someone I want to see.'

  He did not wait for any remonstrance, but turned and strode off through the crowd towards the gates of the PlasHein. Reaching them, he found the manacled youths standing in a bedraggled line while the Keeper into whose charge he had given them was arguing with a man who appeared to be the leader of a group of uniformed men currently lined up across the gateway, long axe-headed pikes held determinedly in front of them.

  Though quite old, this individual carried himself with the arrogant posture of a man well used to the wielding of petty power. He wore a uniform like that of the men at his back, but his was smarter and more ornate. It was similar in many ways to the Keepers', except that it was marginally more colourful—a narrow red sash here, an emblem there, a touch of golden tracery, and it was tailored from generally superior material. These men were the GardHein, official guards to the PlasHein. Constitutionally they were a very ancient group, existing long before Canol Madreth had been known by that name and even throwing mythical roots back to the time of the final worldly confrontation of Ishryth and Ahmral. Then they were said to have stood shoulder to shoulder, ringed around their unarmed lord, who was rapt in deep concentration, fighting his own unseen battle against Ahmral, while Ahmral's great army broke like waves against their shields and pikes. It was one of the great epic tales of the Santyth. Now, the GardHein was, in effect, an hereditary sinecure, a ceremonial group whose charge of protecting the PlasHein and the Heindral was largely unnecessary. Apart from the need to restrain the occasional over-excited Heinder or agitated petitioner, there was little for them to do other than perform their formal patrols about the building and its grounds.

  Skynner wasted no time in determining the niceties of the dispute between the Keeper and the GardHein officer. ‘I told you to get this lot locked up, didn't I? What's the delay?’ he demanded.

  Before the Keeper could speak, the officer replied. ‘The PlasHein cells can't be used for street brawlers,’ he said haughtily. ‘I'm surprised you even suggested it, Serjeant. I'm sure you've got perfectly adequate cells of your own at the Keeperage.'

  Skynner clamped his teeth together tightly to still his immediate reaction to the officer's tone, but it was impossible. ‘I have indeed, sir,’ he said, his voice low and ominous. ‘Unfortunately there is a slight problem in the square here, and in the surrounding streets, which needs all the men that I have left and more. Might I respectfully suggest that as your men caused this, the least they can do is stop hindering my men in the performance of their duties.'

  The officer stiffened and his face reddened with anger. ‘Do you know who you're talking to, Serjeant?’ he said, with heavy emphasis on Skynner's rank.

  'I know exactly who I'm talking to,’ Skynner thundered. ‘I'm talking to the jackass whose orders caused this, and I'm not going to waste any more time. People are lying injured out there. Now stand aside and let my man get these louts locked up or, better still, have one of your own men do it.’ He drew his baton as he was speaking. One of the guards stepped forward slightly as if to come to the defence of his officer. Skynner flicked his baton into his left hand then, stepping around the head of the pike, seized the shaft with his right. The move was unhurried but fast, and a sudden jerk unbalanced the guard and brought him to his knees with an incongruous, ‘Ooh!’ A further jerk pulled the pike free from his failing grip and Skynner swung it up and dropped it heavily on top of the line of now-wavering pikes. The sudden weight disrupted the line completely and several pikes were dropped. Skynner meanwhile had dragged the fallen guard to his feet. ‘Get these people locked up,’ he said, speaking inches from the man's face. ‘Then take yourself over to my man there and start helping him sort this mess out.’ Skynner's grip on the throat of the man's tunic prevented him from even glancing at his officer. He nodded shakily and croaked something. Skynner released him and pushing the officer to one side turned to the others. ‘The same applies to you, too. Get out there and help.'

  'I protest!’ the officer began, his face now scarlet with indignation. ‘You've no authority to ...'

  'Shut up,’ Skynner said quietly, placing the end of his baton on the officer's chest. Then he turned and walked away from him.

  * * * *

  From a wide recessed window on the second floor of one of the PlasHein towers, Privv stood amid a group of Heinders and PlasHein officials watching the scene at the gate as he had watched the whole affair. While his face showed dismay, his true reaction was one of unalloyed pleasure.

  'This is magnificent,’ he said silently to Leck. ‘Look at those bodies. There must be dozens injured. Children as well.'

  'There's some dead,’ came the reply, uncomfortable.

  'Better and better. This could sell my Sheets all over the country, let alone in Troidmallos. These are good times, Leck. Good times.'

  'Unless you're one of the crowd,’ Leck replied darkly.

  'Where are you now?’ Privv asked.

  'On one of the balcony windows in the Debating Hall,’ she replied. ‘There's still a lot of members here, including Drommel if you want to talk to him.'

  Privv thought for a moment. Looking over the square, slowly being organized by Skynner and the other Keepers, it seemed unlikely that anything else of significance was likely to happen. Drommel, on the other hand, might prove extremely interesting.

  'I'm coming down,’ he said. ‘Keep your eye on him.'

  Thus as Drommel emerged from the debating chamber, leading a wedge of other Witness Party members, his first sight was of Privv bearing down on him. He held out a hand to ward him off. ‘I can't talk now, Privv,’ he announced urgently. ‘I've only just heard what's happened outside. It's dreadful.'

  Privv nodded understandingly. ‘The youths who started the disturbance in the viewing balcony were part of the crowd that came here to support your cause,’ he said, matching the tall man's stride and fending off the others who were obviously unhappy at seeing their leader thus accosted.

  'It's to be hoped that the Castellans will take due note of the support for our cause among the people, but behaviour such as occurred in the viewing balcony is not acceptable.’ Quickly, he added, ‘I'm sure it was not the wish of those people who came to support us, although I can understand the frustration of people at having to stand by and watch a government dithering as the Castellans are doing, about the protection of our citizens abroad.'

  'You'll be asking for a Special Assize so that those responsible can be brought to account?'

  Drommel looked flustered. ‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘But ...'

  Then his fellow party members finally succeeded in coming between him and Privv and he was swept away through the main doors of the PlasHein while Privv found himself stranded in the entrance hall. It did not matter. He could weave more than enough around Drommel's few words. He walked slowly to the door and looked out across the devastation that had been wrought by the panicking crowd. Momentarily he lapsed into genuine curiosity. ‘Did you see exactly what happened?’ he asked Leck.

  'I certainly did,’ Leck replied. ‘And it was very interesting.'

  Privv was taken by her tone. ‘Interesting?'

  'It was almost as though the whole thing had been organized.'

  'That's hardly a revelation, is it?’ Privv declared. ‘The Witness Party have been squeezing this Tirfelden business for all it's worth. They're not going to get another chance like this for years. Their efforts and my Sheets were bound to draw a big crowd today.'

  'I didn't mean that,’ Leck retorted impatiently. ‘I meant the disturbance inside t
he PlasHein and the trouble at the gate.'

  'Explain,’ Privv said, intrigued.

  'Did you see who started the fight inside?’ Leck asked.

  'No,’ Privv admitted. ‘There was just a lot of shouting and abuse, then uproar—struggling bodies everywhere.'

  'As if it might have started in two or three places at once?'

  Privv pondered for a moment. ‘I suppose so,’ he said eventually.

  'Well, when the GardHein were bundling them all out into the square, they ran straight into a hail of stones. Stones, Privv. Where do you find stones around here unless you bring them with you?'

  'Go on.'

  'Then people began pushing through the crowd to join those who'd just been thrown out, and there was a great scramble in the gateway. It really did look as though the crowd were trying to storm the place.'

  'And the GardHein captain panicked and ordered his men to lower pikes and charge?'

  Denial filled him. As did Leck's memory of the event, so engrossed was she in recalling it to develop her argument. ‘No, that's the point. He wasn't even there. His men managed to get the gate clear, then they lined up to block the gate and began picking up their pikes. But they didn't charge.'

  The scene unfolded in Privv's mind and he watched it as Leck described it.

  'As if someone had given an order, the men who'd been doing the fighting suddenly all turned and ran into the crowd, shouting, “They're charging. They're charging.” The rest was inevitable. Skynner's men couldn't do anything. They were too few, too scattered, and taken completely by surprise.'

  Privv was silent for some time. ‘Now, that is interesting,’ he said. ‘But who'd want to do such a thing? Not the Witness Party, for sure. Nor any of the others. I can't see any benefit to be gained.'