Fortunately, the extensive debate that the Council had held and the final decision to watch and wait, had been well absorbed by the individual Councillors and thus, for the greater part, it pervaded the public breaking of the news about the intended garrison over the next few days.
Inevitably, though, the reaction of the villagers was mixed. Most naturally pondered the reasons for it, but in the absence of any great knowledge about the world over the hill their attempts foundered or became manifest flights of fancy such as Yonas the Teller might have retailed.
One or two, nodding wisely, announced that they had known all the time that something of the kind had been intended. ‘Why else would they arrive here, after all these years?’ Although it was well noted that these individuals had neglected to share this foreknowledge with their friends and neighbours prior to the public announcement.
No small number shrugged indifferently, regarding the matter as being one beyond their control and thus not worthy of serious concern.
A small minority – a very small minority – by some circuitous reasoning all their own declared that they felt reassured to have an armed force nearby because the fact that an armed force was needed nearby made them feel uneasy.
On the whole, the men expressed varying degrees of indignation – generally in the familiar security of the inn – while the women, wiser by far, fell silent or drew in sharp breaths and lifted their hands to their breasts to still the fluttering fear that rose from their inner depths to greet the news.
Few were really concerned about the positioning of a guard post down the valley. ‘Nobody ever goes down there anyway. Besides, it’ll keep any undesirable outsiders out.’ Though quite when any undesirable outsiders had last visited the valley was a question not pursued.
Gryss and most of the other Councillors found themselves occupied at length in discussing the matter, but this time Gryss was happy to be repeating the same story. The feeling that gradually spread across the village chimed with the villagers’ natures.
‘Don’t rock the hay-cart.’
‘Don’t stir the pigswill if you don’t want the smell.’
In short, leave them alone and they’ll leave us alone. The funeral knell of many a society.
Despite his relief at the reception of the news, how-ever, Gryss’s concerns did not lessen. He looked at the complacency he was helping to engender and wondered if he were not once again failing the village as he had failed them when he accepted the arrivals as tithe gatherers without comment.
After a few days, he called another Council meeting and had himself confirmed in the duty that he had already assumed, namely official representative for the village at the castle.
Not that his services seemed to be needed. There was no activity from the castle other than the occasional group of men heading down the valley, or returning. Harlen reported that their guard post was only a few tents, although he remarked also that they were patrolling widely on horseback.
Gryss merely nodded at this intelligence, though he ensured that it was repeated in Jeorg’s presence.
Marna and Farnor, now officially seconded to Gryss’s command, as it were, found they had nothing to do except pursue their everyday tasks. Gryss would glance inquiringly at Farnor when they met, but the young man had no further strange contacts to report.
Increasingly, though, Farnor kept sensing the dis-tant, unintelligible babbling that he had heard before his last contact with the creature. It tended to come to him when he was at the edge of sleep, yet it was unequivo-cally from beyond himself, he knew; it was no figment of his imagination.
For no reason that he could have given, he did not mention this to Gryss. Whatever it was, it had none of the malignity that he had felt so sharply in his contacts with the creature.
While the momentum of the villagers’ age-old ways began to reassert itself, matters at the castle were less serene.
Rannick came and went to a rhythm of his own, just as he always had, accounting to no one for anything. But each time he returned he was peculiarly elated. The men, however, were less so. They had turned to him partly out of fear, but also because he had given them a vision of the future which they had had once before, and the destruction of which had sent them out from their homeland into their present fruitless and futile wandering.
Now however, apart from manning the guard post down the valley, they found themselves without much to do. When they had stumbled on this castle, they had been exhausted, hungry and almost totally demoralized, their will sapped by the ever-present fear of retribution from the past. Now they were more secure than they had been since they began their travels, and the bonding that a common privation had given them began to weaken.
It needed no great sensitivity on Nilsson’s part to detect the growing discontent, but he was at a loss to know what to do. Rannick had bound them to the valley and, to ensure peace, Nilsson himself had effectively bound them to the castle and its immediate environs.
He taxed Rannick. ‘The men need to be occupied, Lord,’ he said. ‘They’ll go sour on us left to their own devices for too long. Sour and quarrelsome.’
Rannick, recently returned from one of his ab-sences, was sitting staring into space. He gave no indication that he had heard anything and Nilsson made to speak again, but as he opened his mouth Rannick lifted his hand.
‘Every day,’ he said softly.
‘Lord?’
‘Every day,’ Rannick said again. He looked at his hands. ‘Such things I find.’
Some inner voice told Nilsson not to inquire further. A long silence elapsed. Then Rannick stood up and turned to face Nilsson. ‘Yes, you’re right,’ he said. ‘The men will not only become sour and quarrelsome, they’ll become soft and useless if they’re allowed to continue thus.’ His face hardened. ‘And they’re of no value if they can’t fight, and fight well.’
‘Yes, Lord,’ Nilsson agreed. ‘But what…?’
‘We ride,’ Rannick said, cutting across his question. ‘We ride downland, out of the valley. Begin our journey along the golden road.’
The last remark made no sense to Nilsson, but the import of Rannick’s intention did. ‘Leave here, Lord?’ he exclaimed, unable to keep the surprise out of his voice. ‘Why?’
Rannick smiled unpleasantly. ‘To get them used to the field again, Captain. The better to appreciate this haven. And to search, to find, to take, to learn, to test our strength. Many things.’
Still little the wiser, Nilsson turned quickly to prac-ticalities.
‘As you command, Lord,’ he said. ‘How many do you wish to go, and for how long?’
‘All of us, Captain,’ Rannick replied. ‘All of us.’ He looked round at the plain stone walls and arched ceiling. ‘But not for long. There’s much to be done here when we return. This place must be made fit for our presence.’
‘All of us, Lord?’ Nilsson echoed cautiously. ‘We must leave a dozen or so to guard the place.’
‘Against what, Captain?’ Rannick said with a flicker of a malevolent laugh that chilled Nilsson. ‘The villagers? They’re less likely than ever to come up here now. And what would they do if they did? Nibble at their stolen tithe like mice?’
Nilsson had no answer. ‘Old habits, Lord,’ he said after a moment.
Rannick turned his attention back to his hands, flexing each of them in turn, then he nodded slowly. ‘Besides, I will leave a guard here that none will defy.’
Thus it was that, early the following day, the villag-ers found themselves watching the entire troop trotting noisily through the village. There was some elation at first, but it soon vanished as, in their wake, came the cold-eyed message that Nilsson had left with Gryss:
‘We’ll be back.’
Nevertheless, their departure opened up opportuni-ties for some, as Nilsson, for some reason, had chosen to tell Gryss that the entire troop was leaving on an exercise, and that nothing would be required at the castle until they returned in a few days.
‘Harlen says they’ve gone all the way downland,’ Jeorg said. ‘And left no guard posted. We mightn’t get another chance. I can leave for the capital right now, and you and the others can go to the castle and see if there are any documents there saying who they are.’
Gryss was unhappy about both ideas, not least be-cause, in an attempt to prevent Jeorg from doing anything impetuous, he had been fulfilling his promise to instruct him in the route to the capital. He had made the instruction quite leisurely, affecting to forget certain parts and spending a great deal of time referring to some very old journals that he had kept during youthful journeyings. Despite Gryss’s delaying tactics, though, Jeorg had been attentive, thorough and uncharacteristi-cally patient. And now his reasoning was sound: who could say when the valley would be left unguarded again?
‘I suppose so,’ Gryss agreed, after some protracted badgering. ‘But in the name of pity, Jeorg, take care.’
‘I’ll keep my eyes open obviously, but I’ll tell them I was coming after them to ask permission if I bump into them,’ Jeorg said confidently.
His confidence, however, was not contagious, and Gryss could not keep his anxiety from his face as he bade farewell to his friend later that day.
‘Don’t look so miserable, Gryss,’ Jeorg said. ‘We’ve planned it as well as we could. I’m no tracker, but they’re a big crowd and I don’t think I’m going to run into them by accident.’ He looked up at the sky. ‘Anyway, it’s a fine day for a ride.’
Gryss ignored the false heartiness. ‘Are you sure your wife’s agreeable to this?’ he asked, in a final attempt to deter him.
Jeorg’s confidence faltered. ‘Yes,’ he said, followed immediately by, ‘Well, no. Not really. But… it’s got to be done, hasn’t it? She’s with me.’
And that was that. Gryss stood motionless, his head forward and his shoulders hunched in tension as he watched Jeorg ride off. The sun was warm on his face and the air was filled with the scents and sounds of burgeoning summer, but inside, Gryss roared with anger. Anger at himself for what seemed to be his continuing folly in placating the villagers and allowing Jeorg to undertake this risky journey. Anger at Nilsson for being whatever he was and for bringing such dismay to this quiet and beautiful place. Anger at Jeorg for being so capable, so naive, so…
He swore to himself to dash aside such indulgence and began walking back to his cottage. It was time to move on to his next folly.
But he would do this on his own. With the vision of Jeorg’s retreating figure etched into his mind, he knew that he did not have it in him to risk any more of his friends, for whatever cause.
The searching of the castle had been hastily ar-ranged for the following day and involved Gryss, Yakob and Garren visiting the castle while Harlen, Farnor and Marna kept look-out along the valley. He squinted up at the sun to judge the time. If he set off now and rode, there would be time enough to be there and back before the light failed.
He would go to the castle now, and if he found it empty he would search it on his own.
He had reckoned without Farnor, however. More excited than he chose to admit by the prospect of the venture planned for the morrow, he had spent the afternoon watching the castle closely. He had selected a vantage point on a grassy hillock which gave him a good view and from which he could also see much of the village. Aware of his duties for the next day, he kept glancing back down the valley to the place from where it had been agreed that Marna would signal if Nilsson’s troop unexpectedly reappeared. So it happened that he saw Gryss riding along the road when he was only a few minutes out of the village.
Presuming that Gryss was intending to visit Garren, perhaps to make further arrangements for the next day, he paid little heed to him until he saw him pass by the end of the path that led to the farm. Farnor frowned. Where was he going?
Without pondering the question further, and anx-ious to impart his own new information, Farnor began a cautious descent of the steep knoll. At the bottom the slope eased and he finished the last part at some speed, startling Gryss’s horse as he burst out of the bushes in front of it.
Gryss leaned forward and seized its neck anxiously.
‘I’m sorry,’ Farnor blurted out as the look in Gryss’s eyes heralded a particularly fulminating reproach. He took the horse’s head and patted it gently.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.
Caught between concern for the fright he had re-ceived, the loss of dignity he had suffered and Farnor’s swift apology, Gryss was only able to splutter.
‘It is empty,’ Farnor said, capitalizing on this hiatus.
‘What?’ Gryss managed as the statement cut through his confused indignation.
‘It is empty,’ Farnor repeated. ‘The castle. I’ve been watching it all afternoon and I haven’t seen a sign of anyone. Nilsson was telling the truth. They’ve all gone.’
‘Oh,’ said Gryss flatly.
‘Where are you going?’ Farnor asked, abruptly.
Still unsettled by Farnor’s sudden appearance, Gryss blurted out the truth. ‘To the castle,’ he said.
Farnor’s eyes widened. ‘Why? I thought you were going tomorrow.’ He looked around. ‘Where are the others?’
Gryss stayed with the truth. ‘I decided I didn’t want anyone else involved,’ he replied.
Farnor frowned. How could anyone not be involved in discovering the truth about these people? he thought.
‘I’ll come with you,’ he said.
‘No, I don’t think so,’ Gryss began, but Farnor was already leading the horse forward. Gryss reined it to a halt.
‘No, Farnor. This is my responsibility, and I’ll carry it by myself. You stay here and keep watch for me.’
Farnor stared at him blankly. ‘If that’s what you want,’ he said after a moment. ‘But why…?’
‘That’s what I want,’ Gryss said.
Uncertain, Farnor remained standing in the middle of the road as Gryss rode off. Then he began walking after him.
A little later Gryss approached the castle gate and found a red-faced and panting Farnor waiting for him.
‘It’s much quicker over the fields,’ Farnor explained before he was asked.
Gryss looked at him pensively, surprised at the mix-ture of emotions he was experiencing. He was concerned that the boy – young man, he reminded himself yet again – was about to involve himself in something the significance of which he could not begin to appreciate. He was a little angry, too, that his categorical instruction to Farnor had been so blatantly disregarded. And yet he was glad to see him there, young, strong and fit, free of the bodily reluctance and emotional hesitancy with which old age had hemmed in his own true self. It was strange, he thought, how he found Farnor to be such a powerful support, for he had no illusions that he would be of any value against such as Nilsson in any form of combat, mental or physical.
‘For your legs, maybe,’ he replied, sourly, setting aside his musings. ‘But I thought I told you to stay behind,’ he said.
‘You did,’ Farnor admitted. ‘But there’s no point me keeping watch if you can’t hear me shouting, is there?’
Gryss raised his eyebrows significantly at this at-tempt to hold what he regarded as an indefensible position.
‘Anyway, I’m here now,’ Farnor went on. ‘Let’s go inside.’
‘I’ll go inside, young man,’ Gryss said firmly. ‘You can do as you’re told for once, and wait out here with the horse.’ He gave Farnor a look that forbade any defiance then swung down gracelessly from the horse, which skittered slightly as he jostled against it to recover his balance. Farnor took the bridle and murmured softly to the horse.
Gryss gave a terse grunt of thanks and marched over to the wicket door.
The damage that had been done to the lock when Nilsson and his men had first arrived had been crudely repaired. Gryss smiled to himself. Unused to locked doors, it occurred to him only now that all the heart-searching about coming here might well have been pointless. Was it likely, after all, he reflected, that such people as these would have left the place unlocked?
Tentatively he pushed it. To his surprise, it swung open easily.
Farnor, holding the horse and strolling slowly after him, watched his cautious approach. As the door opened and a small part of the courtyard, beyond the dark shade under the archway, came into view it seemed to him that there was something unreal about it; unnatural, even. Without knowing why, he stepped forward urgently.
‘Gryss, don’t go in!’ he shouted.
But it was too late. Gryss, after leaning in and look-ing round for any signs of life, had, almost incongruously, tiptoed in.
Immediately, the door slammed shut. The sound filled Farnor’s head like the tolling of a great bell. He clapped his hands to his ears.
The horse whinnied and reared, tearing itself free from Farnor’s loose grip. It galloped away, but Farnor did not notice. He was running towards the wicket door, drawn on desperately by the sounds which were beginning to emanate from behind it.
Then the sound of a roaring wind began to fill the air, rising and falling like some demented creature. And through it came the sound of powerful blows being struck: echoing, booming sounds, as if a giant smith were forging a huge shield. And, threading through the whole, a high-pitched shrieking.
Farnor felt his legs – his whole being – become leaden as he forced himself forward. It seemed as though the gate were at the end of a long tunnel and that it retreated from him as fast as he ran towards it.
‘No!’ he heard himself shouting distantly, partly in fear, partly in denial.
Faint though it was, the cry shattered the strange, disorientating illusion and he found himself standing before the wicket. He hammered on it frantically. The sound of his blows swelled and rose to mingle with the pounding din coming from within. Farnor felt as though he was trapped in the middle of a grotesque quarrel between two demented drummers. And still the sound of the roaring wind overtopped all with the shrill shrieking weaving in and out of the tumult.
Farnor struck three double-handed blows on the gate shouting, ‘Gryss, Gryss!’
Then, a spark of reason shone through his frenzy. He mustn’t panic, he must think. He ran his hands over the smooth, planed surface of the wicket. He tried to remember what kind of a lock it had. Surely it couldn’t have locked itself? But he could not remember clearly; too many thoughts were cascading through his mind. What was happening to Gryss? What would his father say about his neglect in allowing the old man to enter the castle alone? What would Nilsson do if he returned to find Gryss locked in there? What was that fearful noise…?
He stepped back from the gate with a view to charg-ing it.
As he did so, however, it seemed to him that the wicket was different from the gate which surrounded it. Just as the courtyard had seemed to be in another place when he had briefly glimpsed it before, so too, now, did the wicket.
It was itself, here and now, but it was also something else. Or something had been added to it. Some strange influence pouring through from elsewhere.
And it was no benign influence. It was a terrible harm. A terrible rending of reality. A terrible wound.
Farnor’s whole body shivered with fear at this un-wanted awareness. And, as if the shivering were a birth tremor, he felt something inside him awaken and cry out against this horror; something that he knew nothing of except that it could somehow staunch the wound, stem the flow that was bringing this harm.
No! this inner resolve cried.
No!
Farnor felt as though he had been suddenly jerked wide awake from a twilight doze.
He ran forward and hurled his shoulder against the door.
The wicket door burst open as he struck it and he tumbled headlong out of the sunlight and into the shade of the archway.
He rolled over and clambered frantically to his feet as if expecting to be assailed.
Still he could feel the mysterious resolve inside him setting itself against the harm that was now flowing all around.
He paid it no heed however, for, turning towards the gate, he saw Gryss staggering backwards as if he had been suddenly released from some great pressure. He seized the old man’s arm.
At the same time he realized that the noise… the harm… had weakened…
No, not weakened…
It had… moved away, as if no longer able to reach through…
Farnor turned again and looked across the court-yard. There was nothing untoward to be seen, but the sense that he had had of the yard being both there and yet, at the same time, somewhere else, was still with him though now this duality had a quality of hesitancy about it; a quality of uncertainty – like something unexpect-edly abandoned by a hitherto faithful ally.
Yet it was still there. And it was recovering from whatever had happened to it – gathering momentum. Whirls of dust were beginning to rise and scurry across the finely jointed stone slabs of the yard.
A breath of wind blew in Farnor’s face. He drew back involuntarily. It had a repellent quality to it, full of inquiry like the touch of a probing hand. Then, as if a signal had been received, the noise began to gather again. Abruptly, the dancing dust devils were scattered into a fine, stinging cloud by a powerful gust. It swirled low and shifted around the courtyard then hurled itself directly at Farnor.
He staggered under the impact. A hastily raised hand protected his eyes, but grit blew into his partly open mouth.
As he turned his face from the impact, he saw that the wicket door was starting to close.
The noise grew louder, triumphant.
Farnor tightened his grip on Gryss and unceremo-niously dragged him towards the closing wicket.
He was too slow, however. Gryss staggered, and as Farnor yanked him upright with one hand the wind gusted behind the wicket and slammed it shut, trapping Farnor’s upper arm as he lunged forward.
He cried out in pain at the impact, and then in fear as the wind began to pound into him, pressing him cruelly against the gate and pressing the wicket tighter and tighter against his arm.
Tears filled his eyes, so intense was the pain.
He tried to pull himself free, but then something struck him and he heard, ‘Push, Farnor!’ through the pain. ‘Push! Or you’ll lose your hand, and it’ll have us.
Vaguely he became aware of Gryss’s old hands grip-ping the edge of the wicket and trying to pull it open.
‘Push, Farnor!’
His vision cleared momentarily and he thrust his free hand into the gap and hooked it around the edge of the gate. Then, roaring in an attempt to take himself beyond the pain, he pushed.
The noise mounting around him seemed to exult in his cry, picking it up and returning it to him tenfold. But the awful grip on his arm eased slightly, and suddenly his shoulder was in the gap.
And then his whole body.
For an instant it seemed that the wicket would crush him utterly as the pressure behind it was redoubled. But Farnor had both arms firmly against the edge of the gate, his good one pushing with a strength he had never thought he possessed and his injured one pushing, perhaps less powerfully, but with the pain transmuted now into a fury more ancient and terrible than that which was feeding the roaring wind.
The gap widened.
‘Get out! Get out! Get out!’ he shouted, his voice hoarse with desperation.
From somewhere Gryss appeared to scramble un-derneath Farnor’s straining arms and tumble out through the gap.
No sooner was he through, than Farnor snatched his hands free and jumped. The wicket slammed behind him, giving him a final vicious buffet which sent him flailing wildly out into the sunlight. His legs made a valiant effort to keep him upright, but almost immedi-ately they tangled and he was rolling over and over on the hard-packed ground.
In his ears rang the final, deafening boom of the closing wicket.
As he came to a halt, Farnor became aware of the sound of the roaring wind fading away interminably into a distant nothingness. He became aware, too, that the strange resolve inside him was gone, leaving only a fleeting after-image. He felt oddly empty.
With the dwindling of the terrible noise, sounds of normality began to return.
But they were no solace, for the pain in his arm returned with them and it was fearful. And too, the devil’s brew of fear and anger that had given him the strength he needed was not yet fully spent. Clutching his injured arm and wincing at the pain, he twisted himself round and screamed every obscenity he had ever heard at the now silent gate. Eyes wide, mouth gaping, he screamed his defiance and rage, spewing forth not only the horrors of the moment but all the doubts and fears and resentment of the past weeks.
Then he slumped to the ground, hugging his arm miserably.
Only for a moment, though, for no sooner did he begin to become aware of the blue sky overhead than he remembered Gryss. Incongruously he felt himself colouring as he recalled the language he had just been using in front of the village elder. The embarrassment did not last long, however, as an agonizing spasm in his arm made him cry out.
Where the devil was Gryss? Couldn’t he see he was injured? Stupid old man!
Propping himself on his good arm he pushed him-self up into a kneeling position and looked around. For a moment, his vision still streaky with the tears of pain, he thought that Gryss had abandoned him. Then a nearby blur that he had thought was a rock came into focus. It was the old man, lying on the ground.
He was lying very still.