There was a general muttering of, ‘No.’
‘Do any of you disagree with this strategy?’ He lifted his hand before anyone could speak. ‘I give you fair warning that once you’ve agreed to these orders, it’ll be death for any man who disobeys them. I’ll kill him instantly… or worse.’ There was a long silence before he spoke again. ‘Now, does anyone disagree?’
This time the voices were louder. Nilsson looked slowly over his audience once more, then, with a wave of his hand, dismissed them.
As they dispersed, Nilsson returned to his table. ‘That includes you two as well,’ he said to Dessane and Saddre. ‘Whatever chance has thrown this our way, it won’t happen again and I’ll allow no one – no one – to jeopardize it. Do you understand?’
Both men nodded, well sober by now.
‘How long do you think we’ve got here?’ Saddre asked, anxious to redirect his leader’s menacing mood.
‘Quite some time, I’d think,’ Nilsson replied. He indicated Dessane. ‘According to the tales we’ve both heard, hardly anyone ever comes to this valley and no one ever leaves. They seem to have everything they want here.’ He paused and became pensive for a moment as if the remark had stirred something within him.
‘And what if the real tithe gatherers arrive?’ Dessane asked.
‘It’ll be the first time in living memory, according to that old healer,’ Nilsson replied dismissively.
‘But…?’ Dessane let the doubt hang in the air.
As each of them knew, Dessane’s remark about the tithe gatherers was in reality a reflection of another, rarely spoken-of concern.
Nilsson screwed up his face as if in pain. As he him-self had acknowledged, the chance that had brought them to this valley and to this reception verged on the miraculous, and the benefits should not be lightly risked; indeed they should not be risked at all. ‘I suppose we could mount lookouts down the valley,’ he said, almost reluctantly. ‘It’s just that I’d rather keep all the men here, where we can see them. Once they’re out there they’ll do something stupid for certain.’
‘Small groups. Three or four. Good men,’ Dessane suggested. ‘We’ve enough for that.’
‘Perhaps,’ Nilsson said, then motioned the two men away.
After they had left, Nilsson sat for a long time in the deserted hall. Around him lay the debris of the celebra-tion like the aftermath of a small riot. The ale he had drunk lay heavy on his stomach and he knew that it fogged his perceptions to some extent. It did not worry him too much; he had many years ago learned to drink heavily and still maintain his lethal fighting capacity. Indeed, as a protection against former ‘companions’ he had trained himself to become more savage and unrestrained in drink than he was when sober. And as he had tempered this with heightened cunning, a fearful reputation had grown up about him.
What he had not trained himself to cope with was the dark melancholy that would sometimes seep into his thoughts when, as now, he was alone after such revelries.
A melancholy that would turn everything about him into so much dross, and whose bitter taste would rule him utterly until such time as it chose to pass. Only the lethargy that it brought to his limbs prevented him from purging himself of this clinging inner miasma by some act of monstrous violence; a fact of great benefit to his companions, had they known it, for Nilsson was not of a suicidal or even a self-reproaching disposition.
Now darkness reigned inside his motionless form. Darkness full of anger and bitterness at the one he had followed and who had betrayed him; at the chain of violence and mayhem that he had forged and that had led him here; at those pursuing him. From this jaun-diced perspective, even the chance turning that had brought him so fortuitously to this valley, with his men on the verge of mutiny, was seen as being little more than his rightful deserts, an ordained reward as acknowledgement of simply the rightness of his being.
His dead eyes drifted over the scene around him, sullying it even further: scattered tables, overturned chairs, smoking lamps, the whole strewn with uneaten food and splattered with spilled ale and vomit.
Not even the stacks of produce so easily taken from the village brought a respite to his soured vision. Rather they tarnished it further with their silent implication of effort and toiclass="underline" assiduous, willing, patiently applied toil to gain a desired and beneficial end.
He put his head in his hands. The patient, if wary, good nature of Gryss and Garren and the others he had met, the well-tended fields and animals, the well-built and cared-for houses and cottages rose like gorge in his throat.
All this should be his. Yet he did not want it; knew he could not have it. For though it could be destroyed on a whim it was not such as could be given; it was something derived from within and through years of quiet endeavour.
He did not want it.
He could not have it.
The thoughts circled maliciously, taunting him, seeing themselves and knowing themselves to be both true and false.
Many sounds drifted through the echoing corridors of the castle that night. Shuffling, restless, creaking, muttering. Men talking, crying, laughing in their stupefied sleep. Men groaning with surfeit. Men disgorging surfeit.
No one heard the solitary cry that came from the dining hall as Nilsson saw briefly into his own soul.
Chapter 13
Life in the valley began to settle back to normal after the tithe had been transported to the castle. Although the valley dwellers were quite capable of sustaining petty quarrels for months, if not years, this was largely a superficial trait used, as much as anything, both to vary and to confirm the soundness of the texture of their everyday existence.
Patient, farming people living lives that were founded deeply and wisely in the ways of nature and which knew and danced to the slow rhythm of the seasons, they showed a true measure of reality when need arose. From the moment the gatherers had been identified for what they were, the villagers had begun to relinquish their emotional ties to the goods gathered in the tithe barn. After all, the justice of the matter lay squarely with the gatherers and, when looked at squarely, it concerned only a few odds and ends that would be grown again next year.
Thus, although the initial grief at the loss of their Dalmastide bargains was sharp and the keening voluble, there was little true pain and the noise faded quickly. Indeed, the dominant feeling soon became one of relief that they had in fact dutifully gathered the tithe and not been caught unprepared by the arrival of the King’s men.
And, too, it could not be denied, there was frothing on the surface of their lives a certain… excitement… at these new arrivals; new topics to be raised around the table, at the fireside and, of course, in the inn.