‘Is there anything else you haven’t told us?’ Garren asked.
‘I haven’t told you anything,’ Gryss equivocated. ‘I just wanted to discuss these concerns with you, quietly and without fuss away from the Council. I might be fretting about nothing, but…’
He left the sentence unfinished and the room be-came silent.
Jeorg blew out a noisy breath. ‘Well, we can talk ourselves hoarse here without being any the wiser,’ he said. ‘It seems to me, like you said, that the only way we’ll find out for sure is for one of us to go to the capital and ask someone in authority. And to go quickly, before they put up their… guard post or whatever it is.’
Harlen made to speak, but Jeorg, gathering momen-tum, ploughed on, ‘You can tell me the way, Gryss, and I can get the wife to say that I’m sick with…’ He shrugged. ‘Something. I’ll leave that to you as well, you’re the healer. Then…’
Harlen coughed and waved his hand. Jeorg scowled at the interruption.
‘It might be too late,’ Harlen said, his round, genial face, uncharacteristically lined. ‘I was some way down the valley this morning, early on, by the river, and about a dozen or so riders came through. They had pack horses with them.’
Gryss swore.
Jeorg bridled. ‘Only a dozen?’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ll sneak past them. They can’t watch the whole of the valley.’
Gryss waved him silent. ‘No, no,’ he said deter-minedly. ‘It’s too risky. You’ll need a horse, amongst other things, and you’re not going to be able to sneak anywhere with that.’ He frowned. ‘Whatever else he might be, our Captain knows his job. Makes sure we can’t leave even before he tells us about it.’ He swore again.
The others watched awkwardly. Gryss was not given to such outbursts.
‘I could say I hadn’t heard about it,’ Jeorg said, still clinging to his idea.
‘Not if you’re caught sneaking through,’ Gryss said a little petulantly. ‘And if you walk straight into them, they’ll just turn you back anyway. And Nilsson did say there’d be punishment for anyone trying to leave without permission.’
Jeorg’s mouth worked briefly but no further protest came forth.
‘Over the tops?’ Gryss said, half to himself.
All four shook their heads and Gryss himself dis-missed the notion as soon as he spoke it. That would be far too dangerous; and no chance of taking a horse.
‘He’s got us,’ he said, his jaw set. ‘We’re trapped.’
The room fell silent again. Gryss’s dog made a snuf-fling noise and rolled over with a thud.
‘Then all we can do is watch and wait,’ Yakob said. ‘I agree with what you said before, Gryss. Whatever they are, Nilsson wants us to think they’re King’s men and if we behave as though they were then we’ll probably find out more about them than if we start doing anything reckless.’ He looked significantly at Jeorg who, fortu-nately, was looking the other way.
‘It could be that I’m worrying about nothing,’ Gryss said, reverting unconvincingly to Yakob’s first remark.
‘It could indeed,’ Garren said. ‘But equally you could be right. There’s a lot we’ve taken for granted. Questions that we should’ve asked can’t be asked now. It’s a fair assumption that no one will be allowed to leave and it’ll be too risky to try to sneak out, so there’s nothing else we can do but watch and wait as we decided in the Council meeting.’ He leaned forward. ‘But we five must keep in touch. Meet regularly to discuss developments. And we must keep our ears open for the feeling in the village.’
Jeorg scowled at this conclusion. ‘We should do something,’ he said heatedly. ‘Not just mope around waiting for something to happen. I’d still like to have a go at getting to the capital.’
Gryss looked at him intently. Jeorg was a robustly practical man and inaction was against his nature. To forbid him to leave the valley would be to store up some future problem almost inevitably.
Cautiously, he said, ‘No, Jeorg. Not yet at least. We must get more idea of what’s actually going on.’
‘The longer we leave it, the worse it might get,’ Jeorg retorted. ‘If they’ve already set up a guard post it could be a small fort next.’ His eyes widened. ‘They might even ask us to build it,’ he added indignantly.
‘No, Jeorg,’ Gryss said. ‘We none of us here must do anything without telling the others.’ He did not wait for any agreement to this idea. ‘By all means think about leaving, Jeorg. I’ll tell you the way to the capital, such as I can remember of it, and we can decide what you’ll need, and what tale you’ll have to tell, so that everything will be ready if you get the opportunity to go. But don’t do anything without discussing it with us first. Is that agreed?’
Taken aback by this sudden vigour on Gryss’s part, Jeorg gaped. ‘I… I suppose so,’ he stammered.
Gryss looked at the others. They all nodded, Garren smiling a little at Jeorg’s discomfiture.
‘And we keep this discussion, all our discussions and ideas, to ourselves,’ Gryss declared with an air of finality.
No one disagreed, and the meeting broke up. Before they parted, Gryss spoke to Harlen and Garren.
‘I’d like to take Farnor and Marna partly into our confidence,’ he said. ‘They’re both sensible children…’ He gave a guilty shrug. ‘Young people, I suppose I should say, these days. And they can wander about – run messages more inconspicuously than we can. And they’ll pick up more things than we would – gossip and the like.’
Garren gave him an arch look. ‘Well, Farnor’s been spending more time here than on the farm of late, so I suppose it’d hardly constitute a change,’ he said.
Gryss’s hands fluttered apologetically at this blunt-ness, then he decided to let out at least part of the truth.
‘Farnor and I have spent a lot of time talking about Nilsson and his men,’ he admitted. ‘He came to me of his own accord with his doubts about them after we’d been up there the first time. He’ll work things out for himself when he hears the news, and I think he’d be better off knowing he could turn to you as well as to me.’
Garren looked hurt. ‘He can turn to me any time about anything,’ he said. ‘He didn’t have to come running to you.’
‘He didn’t come running to me,’ Gryss said reassur-ingly. ‘It just happened in the course of conversation, as it were. Don’t reproach him for it. I’ve always been a bit of a grandfather to him, and there’s things you can tell your grandparents that you can’t tell your parents.’
‘I suppose so,’ Garren conceded, colouring slightly. ‘And if he’s already bothering about what’s happening, then I’ve no objection to him knowing what we think. To be honest, it’ll make things easier at home. He’s become rather elusive recently.’
Gryss turned his attention to Harlen. Getting a young man involved was one thing, a girl – a young woman – was another…
But Harlen was, if anything, relieved. ‘I can’t pretend to be happy about it,’ he said. ‘But Marna’s been talking along the same lines as you almost since these people arrived. I think it’d be a good thing if she knew you thought the same. I’ve been concerned that she might end up doing something foolish.’ He hesitated. ‘We get on well together, but… we don’t always talk as well as we should about some things. It’s difficult… she needs a woman about the house, really. Someone she can talk to properly.’
‘I understand,’ Gryss said. ‘At least I think I do. On the whole I think I understand women less now than I did fifty years ago, but I know she loves you as much as you love her.’
Harlen nodded. ‘She’s also headstrong and stub-born,’ he said. ‘If it came into her mind to do so, she wouldn’t think twice about marching up to the castle and demanding to see some letter of authority from the King.’
Gryss could not help but laugh, albeit self-consciously, at Harlen’s manner. ‘So you don’t mind her helping?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I do,’ Harlen replied with some force. ‘But, no, tell her what you want and with my blessing. She’ll go her own way anyway.’
A little later, Gryss stood at his front door and watched his visitors departing. Idly he fingered the iron ring, feeling the lines of the etched figures sharp beneath his touch. The bell tinkled as he tugged the chain, and a faint, sleepy bark drifted down the hallway. Handling the ring reminded him of Nilsson’s almost angry question when he had visited him a few days earlier. No preamble, no subtle introduction to the subject, just, ‘Where did you get this ring from, old man?’