by Roger Taylor
Dilrap acknowledged the comment with a brief nod but said nothing. Halson, still flushed, and slightly breathless, arrived back. ‘I've attended to that ... sir,’ he said. ‘But I don't know...’ His manner was that of one about to disclaim responsibility, but he stopped in mid-sentence. Dilrap was quite surprised that his attempt at a menacing look should prove so effective.
'I don't want to have to tolerate any more of this reluctance on your part, Captain,’ he said. ‘It verges on insubordination. Confine your comments solely to practical matters that will help get this City back to normal.'
'Sir.’ Halson snapped to attention and his face went blank. That's better, thought Dilrap. That the man had had the wit to retreat into his traditional emotionless Mathidrin shell showed at least that he was gaining control over himself.
'Good,’ he said. Then signalling to Alaynor and the Captain to follow, he walked back to the palace entrance, the wind tugging at his robe, ‘Captain,’ he said. ‘I want you to send messengers to the Guild Master and the City Rede. Tell them that rescue operations are to be coordinated from here. Ask them to send their best people over together with any maps, plans, lists of craftsmen etc. Whatever they think will be useful.’ Halson nodded. ‘Just wait a moment,’ Dilrap added, looking purposefully around the palace entrance hall. ‘Alaynor, I'll work from the Lords’ antechamber but we'll need somewhere where the injured can be treated and where the lost and homeless can be fed and housed for a day or so...'
'The Old Kings’ Halls,’ Alaynor suggested. Dilrap nodded. ‘Yes, they'll do. Gather up what servants you can find and make a start on that. Captain, send a couple of your men with her to help. They're to do whatever she says,’ he emphasized.
Pausing to look at the disordered crowd outside, he frowned. ‘We have to get these people off the streets,’ he said, half to himself. ‘Captain, as soon as you've organized messengers and men for Alaynor. I want you to send out some of your men as Cryers to the main squares, or wherever there's a large crowd. They're to ask people—ask, mind you, not tell—to go home unless they can help with the rescue work or with nursing the injured, in which case they're to come here first. Tell them ... bulletins will be posted here, and...’ He waved his arms vaguely. ‘...the Guild Moot House and the Rede's Hall as information comes to hand.'
Halson hesitated. ‘I'll have to get mounted patrols to act as Cryers, sir. I've already had reports of troopers being attacked by the crowds.'
Dilrap looked thoughtful. Good for the crowds, he thought briefly, but he let the thought pass. He could relish it later. ‘If you go out mounted and in force it'll turn chaos into mayhem,’ he said. Then in the wake of his first irreverent thought came a second one, appropriate for the occasion and quite elegantly malevolent in character. ‘You should find some High Guard liveries in the Westerclave, Captain,’ he said. ‘Have your men wear those. Providing they keep their mouths shut and watch their manners they should be all right. Tell them to move at the double. That should avoid too many questions.'
Halson's jaw tightened slightly, but he nodded reluctantly. Dilrap twisted the knife. ‘And don't forget the Royal Sash,’ he added, ‘if they're going to look like High Guards on palace duty.'
* * * *
Dilrap looked up from the map spread out on the table as he heard the door slam. It was Urssain, and he was angry. For a moment Dilrap quailed inwardly at the sight, then he stood up and hitched his gown back on to his shoulder.
'Excuse me,’ he said to the various people gathered round the table with him, ‘I'll join you in a moment. Please carry on. You know what to do.'
Then he moved quickly to intercept the approaching Commander and, taking his elbow, deflected him into a side room.
'What in thunder's name are you doing, Dilrap?’ Urssain shouted as the door closed.
'Doing?’ said Dilrap, wilfully innocent.
'Commandeering my men,’ Urssain banged his chest in emphasis. ‘And dressing them up to look like High Guards.'
Dilrap was surprised at the belligerence of his own response. ‘I'll tell you what I'm doing, Commander,’ he said in a vicious whisper. ‘I'm saving our necks, while you're playing Mathidrin politics. And don't shout. In case you didn't notice, that's the City Rede out there. And the Guild Master. And a cohort of their senior officials. The last thing they need to see now is us arguing and playing palace intrigue.'
Urssain clenched and unclenched his fist, but before he could speak, Dilrap continued, his voice still low as if for fear of eavesdroppers. ‘I know I need you more than you need me, Commander,’ he said. ‘I'm not stupid, and you've made it quite clear. But he...’ The word was mouthed rather than spoken, and accompanied by a nervous look over his shoulder, ‘needs neither of us.'
Urssain opened his mouth to speak, but again Dilrap forestalled him, his voice now urgent. ‘I know I wasn't with him when all this happened, but I've looked into his eyes, Urssain. I don't know who or what he is, but I know he could obliterate us with a mere thought if the whim took him. And this City in disarray could provoke just such a whim. He has power enough to control it without our help.'
Most of Urssain's anger seemed to drain from him suddenly, though a growling residue remained.
'You should've found me and asked,’ he said, almost sulkily. Dilrap straightened up, his face open and apologetic. ‘Commander, there wasn't time,’ he said. ‘The situation was deteriorating by the minute. I had to act. I'm sorry I had to put your men in High Guard livery, but I had to get messages across the City and you know as well as I do they'd never have got through the streets otherwise.'
He stepped forward and took the Commander's elbow again, confidentially. ‘Don't worry,’ he said. ‘People won't remember clearly out of all this confusion. And if they do, so what?'
Urssain's lip curled as he weighed Dilrap's comments. The man was right. There would be no future for him, perhaps of any kind, if he had to go running to Dan-Tor for help in quietening the City, and neither he nor the Mathidrin were remotely suited to dealing with this kind of emergency. True, Dilrap's abrupt assumption of authority would cause some morale problems, but that he was capable of dealing with. Besides, the men had better be taught to treat the man with a little more respect if he was to do his job in future.
He nodded to himself. No harm was going to come of all this after all. Dilrap was proving to be more valuable than he had thought, but he mustn't let him know it. He'd proved to be deceptively capable today; he could be dangerous if he developed any ambition other than that of staying alive.
* * * *
Towards the end of the day, the wind fell and the sky cleared, allowing the setting sun to flood red through the streets. Long hazy shadows increased the alien strangeness of the City's new appearance. Dilrap came out of the Lords’ ante-room and walked across to the main entrance. Dust grated under his feet. Standing at the top of the steps, he looked out again at the destruction Oklar had wrought. His two new avenues were still bustling with desperate activity, but at least the panic and tumult had ceased and there was some aura of organization about the scene, albeit rough and ready.
Lines of torches had been rigged along both sides of each swathe, wandering indiscriminately through the sharp straight shadows cast by the setting sun. Where digging was continuing around individual buildings, the torches came together in tangled watchful clusters and together with the bobbing firefly lights of the torches carried by individuals, they gave the intense red twilight almost an air of Festival.
Looking up a little, Dilrap could see a clear evening sky as through a fine brown gauze. He wiped his mouth; he had been tasting dust all day. Just looking around the Palace told him it would be a long time before it was all removed, but seeing it hovering in the air made him think it might begrime the City forever.
He moved to one side to allow two of the Rede's men to carry in a casualty. Would they never end? All these people crushed and maimed by falling masonry and panicking crowds. Halls throughout the city were
full of the injured and the homeless. Alaynor had organized that magnificently, though Dilrap admitted guiltily to a twinge of regret that she had allocated one of the Kings’ Halls to the dying and the most severely injured.
It was a correct decision, the hall being more spacious than the City's main sick house nearby, but ... the noises ...
With an effort he dismissed the memory. He was no healer. He could do nothing other than what he had. He'd used his skills to ensure that hurt and healers were brought together as quickly as possible along with such medicines and other comforts as could be had, but still ...
He leaned against the door jamb. No buts, he thought. What price would not any of those poor souls now pay just for the simple privilege of standing unaided and pain free, feeling cold stone against their faces? Just being here he had all that life could offer him, for all the terrors and trauma of the day, and the hazards of the future.
He looked again at the torchlit work dwindling into the distance, and then at the busy but reasonably ordered activity going on around him.
What flexible creatures we are, he thought. As individuals we break and buckle, but as a whole we simply sway, move with the wind, and then swing back to accept whatever new circumstances have arisen.
And what a wind had blown today! It had blown away the valued heritage of generations and ushered in an age the nature of which could only be described as unbelievable.
How could it have happened so quickly? The King, risen whole again only to be cruelly cut down. The Queen and Eldric fled, Dan-Tor suddenly revealed by the hand of a mysterious Orthlundyn as a creature of legend, and laying waste great stretches of the City in his pain and rage.
And the result? Ordinary people picking up the remains. Seizing and holding tightly their own fears for the sake of others. Rushing to familiar places to pick up familiar tools, then soiling precious clothes, heaving and sweating, burying old animosities and rivalries as they dug out friends and strangers alike.
And me? Dilrap's thoughts turned to himself. He had defied his King and then witnessed his murder, faced the gaze of Oklar and survived his spleen, taken control of Mathidrin officers and troopers and organized them. And now?
Now, he was tired. Tired and glad of it, because his work was not yet finished. It would probably be some hours before he could rest for more than just a few brief minutes and by then he would be exhausted. Now he could remain immersed totally in the needs of the present. The very horrors of the day had given him the opportunity to put time between them and his full realization of them. A strange irony. Had the City not been torn apart, he would have retreated to his chambers to tremble and shake himself into who knew what state of terrors, thereby demonstrating his worthlessness and virtually ensuring his extermination. Now, he was something different. He had made some kind of a decision without realizing it.
He looked down and watched his foot idly making patterns in the dust. His fatigue was protecting him still, he knew, numbing him against the reality that was to come. He may yet prove inadequate for the role he had apparently chosen, but he saw no other choice. He would learn. Had he not silently aided the Queen for months? The memory came almost as a surprise to him.
Abruptly, in its wake came another, older memory of his father cutting down a tree on their country estate. The tree had been diseased and had to be removed for the sake of its neighbours. On some whim his father decided to tackle the job himself and Dilrap remembered being sat down by his mother to watch him while she pursued the mysterious household tasks that mothers pursued. Dilrap remembered vividly the cruel accuracy of his childish perceptions.
Almost from the first stroke it became apparent that the task was not going to be as easy as his father had envisaged. The axe bit only slightly yet succeeded in jamming itself. Dilrap watched as his father passed through many moods and learned many things as he laboured painfully at this unfamiliar task. Overall however, had been a daunting determination, at first smiling and vigorous but later increasingly grim. Finally it had happened. One, two, three strokes of the axe and with a slight groan the tree was falling, crashing down and bouncing slightly as it hit the ground. And there was his father, reluctantly triumphant.
Dilrap nodded to himself. The City had not fallen suddenly at all, nor had he suddenly discarded the worst excesses of his old dithering self. Dan-Tor had chopped silently and relentlessly at the City for years, but he too had learned little by little how to lie and deceive to protect the old ways.
Dilrap remembered also that the tree stump had sprouted again the following year and been a regular hazard to the unwary at night-time.
* * *
Chapter 6
The setting sun swept a bright yellow light across the undulating plains of Orthlund, casting the long, deep shadows beloved by the Orthlundyn. It washed through the streets of Pedhavin and in its slow progress released those secrets that had been hidden within the village's carvings to await its special touch.
Many of the villagers were walking the rambling streets and watching the changes being wrought by the shifting sunlight. Some were gazing in admiration at the work of long-dead masters; others were looking critically at their own work or that of their neighbours. A few young apprentices were being marched round to examine some of the ‘classical features that can—pay attention—that can be obtained, with care, in this special light.'
High above, in one of the towers of Anderras Darion, Tirilen shaded her eyes and peered down at the village. She could see the little block of apprentices moving through the streets like a tiny phalanx of infantry, cutting its way relentlessly through the browsing villagers, just as they in their turn cut through the streaming light of the sunset to make their own moving shadow-forms.
The sight brought sad thoughts to mind. Her uncle, Isloman, head askew, looking at some grotesque shadow he was casting on the uneven ground, and chuckling to himself. Then, alongside the worried sadness of that memory, the darker, more frightening image of the Orthlundyn training for war. And training very effectively, the Castle grounds ringing with the practice of swordsmanship, archery, and many other forms of combat. People being selected for special training and disappearing for days on end out into the country or into the mountains. Areas of land that had been tended for generations by loving hands being churned and broken by marching feet, as cavalry and infantry training developed apace.
And the injuries she had learned to treat! She grimaced. It needed little imagination to extend the injuries that resulted from the accidents of over-enthusiastic training into those that must occur in the grim, hate-filled reality of combat. And there was worse.
Healers must enter into the pain, Hawklan had said, but there was pain and pain. The pain of a broken limb or an accidental sword gash was bad enough, but the pain of a mother whose son had fallen to his death in the mountains, or the pain of considering where this work was leading: they were different.
Everything was changing. Everybody was changing. She herself was different in a way she could not begin to fathom. And her father, Loman ... She turned away from the window and looked down at him sleeping soundly if somewhat ungraciously on a nearby couch. He had changed too. He was a little leaner in the face and such small layers of fat as had decorated his massive frame had turned into muscle many months ago, and ...
Loman opened his eyes wide as if he felt Tirilen's gaze on him.
And he was different inside. Younger, more alert somehow. More sensitive, yet harder. Like everything else, he seemed to be ... waking. That was it. Waking. The people, the Castle, even the Great Harmony of Orthlund seemed to be more alive.
'What's the matter, Tirilen?’ he asked, his face concerned.
'Nothing,’ she said, shaking her head, slightly embarrassed. Then, deftly, she swept her loose blonde hair back into a single shining mare's tail and tied it with a green ribbon.
Loman watched this little ritual of avoidance and raised his eyebrows knowingly. Tirilen shrugged. ‘Well. Everything, really,’ she c
onceded.
Smiling, Loman swung himself into a sitting position, stretched and then stood up. ‘Everything, eh?’ he echoed in a slightly mocking tone as he joined her at the window. Tirilen did not respond to this gentle probe but turned to look out again over the sun-swept village and plains.
Loman's face became more serious and he gazed at her solemn profile for a little while before he too looked out into the warm twilight.
Castellan of Anderras Darion and a smith by calling, he did not have the deep shadow-lore of his brother, Isloman; but he was no mean carver and he had enough to appreciate the long clear-cut shadows below him. He nodded. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Isloman would've been out prowling the streets tonight, wouldn't he? Finding shapes and patterns that the rest of us are too blind or too oblivious to see.'
Tirilen's mouth suddenly pinched tight and her face twisted. She was on the verge of tears. Loman put his arm around her and gently led her back to the couch.
'Come on, healer,’ he said. ‘Sit down and talk.'
Loman had noticed Tirilen's manner growing quieter over the weeks but had been uncertain how to deal with it. In any event, like everyone else, he had had precious little time to look to anything other than the myriad new tasks that circumstances had brought down on him. Awkwardly he had watched his daughter quell her mounting unease with her own tasks of the moment, promising himself that he would speak to her soon.
Now, however, a natural lull had entered into both the training programmes and the farming that sustained the Orthlundyn, and Loman saw in Tirilen's impending tears, a release for both of them. He pulled her head down on to his shoulder and handed her a rather soiled kerchief.
She wiped her moistening eyes and then looked at the kerchief with amused resignation. ‘Well,’ he conceded, ‘I suppose some things never change.'
Somewhat to Loman's surprise however, Tirilen's tears never came, and her solemn mood passed almost immediately, as if the small letting of moisture had released all the pressure that was there. ‘I'm sorry,’ she said, unnecessarily. ‘It was just the long shadows made me think of uncle Isloman ... and then Hawklan ... and then...'
