On the instant, there was the rasping hiss of half a dozen swords being drawn.
Marna let out a scream of alarm, and Yakob and Harlen shouted, ‘No!’ simultaneously and moved to intervene.
Gryss himself froze, his face suddenly pale and with much of his anger turned to fear as he looked at the ring of points and grim, purposeful eyes that he now centred. Slowly he turned to Nilsson.
‘To cut the ropes,’ he said weakly.
Nilsson stared at him for a moment and then nod-ded to one of the riders. Without taking his gaze from Gryss, the man leaned across and, by pulling a single cord, released the ropes that were securing Jeorg.
With difficulty, because his hand was shaking so much, Gryss replaced the knife in his belt.
The swords around him gradually withdrew, and Yakob and Harlen came forward hastily to help him lift down the unconscious Jeorg.
‘Gently, gently,’ Gryss said, fussily, dithering now and obeying some deep instinct to make himself seem innocuous and innocent while he tried to recover from the shock of the sudden response of Nilsson’s men. Their clear intent had terrified him, not least because of its simple casualness. There had been no hesitation. He knew that he would have been given no opportunity to plead a case had he made any reckless movements; no chance to smile and shrug the incident off with the good humour that was his stock in trade with everyone in the valley. These men were stony-eyed strangers, quite indifferent to the fate of some stupid old country bumpkin. Katrin’s words rang loud in his head: ‘They’re fighting men. Used to brutality, to stabbing and killing… There’s none in the whole valley could stand against any of them and hope to live.’
Jeorg groaned. The sound gave Gryss something to focus on, and his fear began to fade. ‘What have you done to him?’ he asked again, though more circum-spectly.
‘Shown him the consequences of disobeying an order,’ Nilsson said, starkly summarizing his previous reply. ‘He can consider himself more than fortunate that he’s not dead. Make sure that everyone understands this, Har Grysstson. We’d prefer to work with your friendship and cooperation, but it’s not essential by any means and a few dead by way of example will be of no consequence in the design that’s being worked here.’
And without further comment he spurred his horse on.
The three men, supporting the limp form of their friend, stood motionless as the column passed, like a grim parody of royal dignitaries receiving a formal military salute. Indeed, some of the riders did offer mocking salutes as they rode by.
Gryss was chilled not only by Nilsson’s callousness but by the aura that seemed to pervade the whole troop.
‘They’re not the same men that arrived here at Dal-mas,’ Harlen had said, and Gryss understood now what he meant. Those men had been broken and dispirited, these were alive and vigorous, though there was a quality to their vigour which repelled him – an unnatu-ralness.
Almost demonic.
The thought startled him, but he realized it was accurate.
‘Bandits.’
The whispered word was Marna’s. She had come out from the shelter of the tree and was looking after the retreating column. ‘Not in a mountain’s age could they ever have been King’s men,’ she added. She wrapped her arms about herself fearfully and shivered.
‘Come on. We shouldn’t be standing here. Jeorg’s in a bad way. Let’s get him home and seen to, quickly.’ Harlen’s words cut through the paralysis that seemed to have gripped the little group.
Gryss started a little. ‘No. My cottage is nearer,’ he said. ‘I can look after him better there.’
‘Who’s going to tell his wife what’s happened?’ Ya-kob asked, awkwardly.
‘I will,’ Gryss replied reluctantly, after some hesita-tion. ‘But not yet.’
He glanced around the green. Nilsson’s men had both entered and left in comparative silence, and no one had ventured into the rain to discover them. Jeorg’s return had apparently gone unnoticed.
That, at least, was fortunate, Gryss thought.
That same dark good fortune remained with them as they made their way to Gryss’s cottage and they reached it without being observed, softly whispering words of support and encouragement to their injured and occasionally conscious friend.
As they entered the cottage, Gryss’s old dog, as if sensing the mood of the group, remained silent, confining its welcome to an encouraging wag of its stump of a tail.
Despite his burdens, Gryss bent down and stroked its head affectionately. Then he motioned Yakob and Harlen to a room at the front. ‘Take him in there, get those wet top clothes off him carefully and put him on the bed,’ he said. ‘I’ll get my things.’
That done, Gryss set about his examination of the injured man. The others, having done all that was asked of them, could do no more than sit and wait in the back room.
It was a difficult, restless interlude: Yakob and Har-len silently pondering the implications of what had happened and beginning to assess the extent of their own responsibility for Jeorg’s condition; Marna oscillating between the childish urge to flee to safety that the presence of her father invoked, and the adult will which responded to the secret compact she had with Gryss and Farnor. A compact in which she had found a new sense of purpose even as she had watched Nilsson’s men standing, menacing and alien, by the village green. Despite her own fears, an awful resolution was begin-ning to grow within her that sooner or later she would have to oppose these men.
And hanging like a grim spectre in all their thoughts was the sudden and shocking appearance of swords in response to what could only have been an innocent gesture by an old man. Violence in the valley was rare, and when it did occur it was usually due to over-indulgence at the inn and confined to incompetent fisticuffs. Not infrequently it contained no small element of outright farce for the onlookers. The possibility of using knives and swords against people existed only in the distant safety of Yonas the Teller’s tales. It was unthinkable in the real world where people tended and slaughtered their own meat; everyone knew only too well what keen, sharpened edges did to flesh and sinew.
Eventually the vigil ended and Gryss came in to them. He struck a sunstone to reveal them all blinking in its sudden light.
‘How is he?’ Yakob and Harlen asked together.
Gryss motioned Harlen out of his favourite seat and sat down heavily, at the same time waving an apologetic hand for his discourtesy. He looked tired and grim.
‘How is he?’ Harlen asked again, softly, as if fearing the answer he might receive. ‘What did they do to him?’
‘He’ll be all right… I think,’ Gryss replied. There was a tremor in his voice, as if he wanted either to weep or to roar with anger. ‘There are bruises all over his body,’ he went on. ‘All shapes and sizes. His arm’s broken and two of his ribs. I won’t know what happened to his insides for a day or two, but there’s no sign of any damage there at the moment.’ He put his head in his hands. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said. ‘They must have beaten him with fists and feet and sticks and… who knows what? Why, for pity’s sake? Why? All they had to do was send him back.’
‘They did it to frighten us. To show us they have the power to do whatever they want to us.’ It was Marna speaking. ‘And they did it because they like doing things like that,’ she added.
The three men turned to her. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, girl,’ Yakob said, though his sternness was shot through with uncertainty.
Marna glowered at him. ‘There’s nothing ridiculous about it,’ she burst out. ‘If they’d wanted to kill him, they’d have done it and left him out there, over the hill. No one here would ever have found him. They wanted…’
‘Can we speak to Jeorg?’ Harlen asked Gryss, loudly, at the same time raising his hand to end his daughter’s angry tirade before it took full flight. Yakob looked both indignant and relieved.
‘You can have a look at him,’ Gryss replied, ignoring the tension in the room. ‘But we mustn’t disturb him too much. He’s in a lot of pain and I’ve given him something to ease it and something that should be sending him to sleep soon. The more time he can put between now and being fully conscious again the better.’