Nilsson waved the question aside almost irritably.
‘Is there something strange about Rannick?’ he asked abruptly, blurting out the question.
Farnor stood very still.
‘Strange?’ Gryss queried, momentarily taken aback.
Nilsson shifted uneasily on the bench. ‘Has he any unusual… skills? Ways with… animals, people? Anything…?’ He left the word hanging.
Gryss’s eyes narrowed. ‘Not that I’ve ever seen,’ he replied straightforwardly. ‘But I don’t really know what you mean. Rannick’s an awkward and unpopular character. The kind of man who lives in bitterness and who dies miserable and alone or on the end of some-one’s sword through a quarrel he’s provoked. That’s all I can tell you.’
Nilsson looked as if he had further questions to ask, but he remained silent.
Gryss watched him closely. ‘I did caution you that the valley to the north has an evil reputation,’ he said. ‘Maybe old women’s tales, maybe not. But has anything happened up there that might bring problems to the rest of us here in the valley?’
Farnor, his unease persisting grimly, tightened his grip on the door jamb, as Nilsson stood up suddenly. His bulk dominated the room and ended any further debate.
‘No,’ he said bluntly. ‘Nothing’s happened that con-cerns you, but I do need to find this Rannick. Will you show me where he lives?’
Farnor shrank back into the hallway. What had begun as a small excitement, escorting this king’s man through the night, had abruptly begun to turn into a nightmare, and his dominant wish now was to return home in the hope that the resurgent memories would once again fade away.
‘He won’t be there,’ Gryss said.
‘Nevertheless,’ Nilsson insisted.
‘Whatever you wish,’ Gryss said, standing up with a disclaiming wave of his hands. ‘I’ll show you with pleasure.’
As the trio emerged from the cottage, Gryss issued his customary command, ‘stay’, to his sleeping dog, and gave Farnor’s arm a sustaining squeeze. Catching his eye, he flicked a glance towards Nilsson’s back and raised his forefinger to his lips. Farnor nodded an acknowledgement. He had had no intention of saying anything anyway, but Gryss’s silent injunction was comforting.
‘It’s not far,’ Gryss said, as Nilsson made to untether his horse. ‘We can walk.’
Rannick’s cottage was a countryman’s ‘not far’ how-ever, and it took them some time to reach the narrow, twisting lane that led to it. The lane was bounded by overgrown hedges. Long brambles snaked out of the undergrowth to catch on clothes, and branches hung low brushing the heads of the passers-by. Gryss’s lantern threw a tunnel of light through the darkness that was brought alive by the moths and night insects dancing in it. The odd small animal scuttled away in a flurry and, beyond the light, tiny bright green or red eyes occasionally shone briefly and then blinked out.
Nilsson swore softly as a large bramble tangled in his long coat.
‘Rannick’s neglect, I’m afraid,’ Gryss said. He looked regretful. ‘He could have done very nicely out of this little plot if he’d wanted, but…’ He let out a small sigh and left the sentence unfinished.
Eventually they reached a gate at the end of the path. Like the path, it bore signs of long neglect and as Gryss tried to open it it slipped from his hand and fell over with a weary groan. He shook his head as he stepped over it. The small garden it led into was as overgrown as the path.
‘Mind where you put your feet,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t like to hazard what might be lying about under this lot.’
He held up his lantern and the light from it illumi-nated the cottage. The thatched roof was battered and dishevelled, the walls were stained where rainwater had seeped through the thatch and run down them. One window was crudely boarded up while the others, and the door, were unpainted and obviously rotten.
Nilsson picked up a stick and began beating aside the straggling plants that were growing across the remains of a once ornamental path that led to the door. Reaching it, he struck it violently with the edge of his clenched fist.
The sound fell flat in the dense foliage of the garden.
There was no reply.
‘He’s not there,’ Gryss said with some impatience.
Nilsson tried the latch. The door swung open. He stepped back hastily as if suspecting an ambush. ‘It’s not locked,’ he whispered to Gryss.
‘Why should it be?’ Gryss asked, moving past him and going into the cottage. Nilsson followed.
‘Rannick,’ Gryss shouted. ‘It’s Gryss. There’s some-one wants to see you.’
Again there was no reply. ‘I told you,’ Gryss said. ‘He’s not here.’
Nilsson began wandering around the cottage, casu-ally inspecting the many odds and ends that were littered about. Farnor, who had discreetly followed the two men inside, felt an unexpected sense of outrage at this intrusion, though at the same time he felt reassured by the substantial presence of this soldier amid the unpleasant aura that pervaded Rannick’s home.
And there was something unpleasant about it, he decided. Something other than the dirt and squalor. Something… Gryss’s word for Rannick’s family came back to him. Something tainted.
He stayed near the door.
Abruptly Nilsson wrapped his arms about himself and shivered. He muttered something in his own language and then, without further comment, strode out of the cottage and across the garden. Gryss and Farnor followed hastily.
Nilsson did not speak as they walked back to Gryss’s cottage, other than to issue a terse command to the effect that if Rannick was seen he was to be detained.
‘Detained!’ Gryss exclaimed. ‘I can’t do that, I ha-ven’t…’ He flapped his arms ‘… the authority.’
‘You’ve mine now,’ Nilsson said starkly. ‘See it’s done. And send me word at once.’
Gryss did not argue, but his posture as they walked on showed that he was deeply disturbed.
‘I’ve some work needs doing tomorrow, Farnor,’ he said as Farnor clambered up on to Nilsson’s horse. ‘If your father can spare you first thing?’
There was a subtle urgency in his manner which Nilsson did not note.
‘I’ll ask him,’ Farnor said. ‘I’m sure it’ll be all right.’
Where the journey from the farm to Gryss’s cottage had been tinged with excitement, the return was leaden with a brooding darkness. Though whether this was Nilsson’s manner or whether it was a result of his own revived memories of the creature and the strangeness he had felt in Rannick’s cottage, Farnor could not have said. Nevertheless, he was more than a little relieved to slide down from the horse at the end of the path that led to his home.
‘No point you coming further,’ he said, as cheerfully as he could. ‘It’ll only disturb the dogs again.’
Nilsson may have grunted a reply, but Farnor did not care. All he wanted was to be away from the man and to be surrounded by the security of his home.
As Farnor disappeared into the darkness Nilsson urged his horse forward then let the reins hang loose, allowing the animal its head.
Faithfully it carried him, rapt in thought, through the starlit darkness along the castle road.
And then it stopped suddenly.
Nilsson started out of his reverie. He frowned. They were still some way from the castle. He spurred the horse on.
It would not move.
Nilsson’s teeth showed faintly in the darkness as again he used his spurs on the animal, then:
‘Captain Nilsson.’
A voice came out of the darkness.
Instinctively he reached for his knife. A plot by some of the men disgruntled by his decision that they should go north, or at his orders for them to leave the village unmolested?
Yet he knew that was not so. Such plots invariably cast their shadows forward to anyone with eyes sharp enough to see them, and he had been nothing if not sharp-eyed for many months now. And there was a quality about this voice that resonated through and through him. Memory after memory rose like spectres out of the dust of his long and wilful forgetfulness.
He drove his spurs savagely into the horse’s flanks. The animal quivered in distress, but still did not move.