Jeorg was mumbling to himself as the four of them trooped cautiously into his room. Marna gasped in dismay. Jeorg’s eyes and mouth were puffed and swollen, while the rest of his face was scarred with bruises and deep, livid cuts.
‘Rings,’ Gryss said, proffering his clenched fist and answering the question before it was asked. ‘Heavy rings.’
Yakob and Harlen shared Marna’s dismay and looked from Jeorg to Gryss and to each other. Already powerless to do anything to help their friend, they now suffered the further indignity of not even knowing what to say to one another.
‘He’s trying to speak,’ Yakob whispered, angling his head to catch meaning from the apparently incoherent noises that Jeorg was making. ‘Did he tell you anything before? What they did, or why they did it?’
Gryss shook his head. ‘He’s been mumbling and muttering the whole time,’ he said. ‘Most of it’s been meaningless, although I did get the feeling he was trying to tell me something important. I doubt he’ll have anything to say now. A few more minutes and he’ll be fast asleep, and likely to remain that way until this time tomorrow.’
Then, as if to give him the lie, Jeorg’s swollen eyes opened painfully and searched the room. For an instant they were full of fear then they fell on Gryss and the fear became relief. It was followed by a look of urgency. Jeorg’s hand slowly raised itself to reach out to the old man, and his cracked lips began to open.
Gryss pushed Harlen to one side and moved to the bedside. He took the hand gently. ‘Lie quiet, Jeorg,’ he said softly. ‘It’s over. It’s all over. You’re back with your friends. You’re safe.’
But the urgency did not leave Jeorg’s face and his hand clutched at Gryss’s sleeve, trying to pull him downwards. Gryss bent and brought his ear close to Jeorg’s mouth.
Then Jeorg’s hand went limp, and Gryss straight-ened up.
‘What did he say?’ Yakob asked.
Gryss shrugged his shoulders, and began fussily adjusting Jeorg’s pillows. ‘I couldn’t catch it,’ he said. ‘And he’s fast asleep now, so we’ll have to wait until he wakes tomorrow. See if he remembers what it was then.’ He turned to Yakob. ‘He can’t tell dream from reality at the moment, anyway,’ he said.
But Marna caught his eye and he flashed her a swift and mute appeal. Say nothing. For she had seen his face when he was affecting to adjust Jeorg’s pillows; he had been struggling to compose his features.
She had not heard Jeorg’s message, though.
‘It’s Rannick, Gryss. It’s Rannick. He’s leading them. He’s leading Nilsson’s men.’
Chapter 28
Later that night, Gryss sat drowsing in a chair by the side of Jeorg’s bed. He stirred and muttered something as a subdued knocking drifted into his vague dreams. It was followed by a low, dutiful bark from his dog.
The knocking came again, followed this time by a more querulous bark. Gryss’s dreams wavered and began to slip back into the echoing inner darkness from whence they had come. His eyes opened uncertainly.
The knocking was turning into a persistent tattoo, though it was still subdued and discreet. For a timeless moment, the sound mingling confusingly with the fading remnant of his dream, Gryss decided that Jeorg was trying to rise from his bed. The prospect brought him sharply to wakefulness. As both his vision and his mind cleared, however, he saw that Jeorg was still asleep and motionless.
The knocking intruded again. It was coming from the front door and, though soft, it was quite relentless. Frowning, Gryss levered himself up out of the chair and stiffly made his way along the hallway.
Well, he thought, whoever it was, at least they had wit enough not to go clanging the bell with a sick man in the house. His frown deepened at the thought even as he opened the door. Who knew there was a sick man in the house? Apart from…
‘Marna! What are you doing here at this time of night?’
Marna ignored the welcome and stepped in, easing Gryss to one side. ‘What did he say? What did Jeorg say?’ she demanded, bluntly, at the same time reaching down to stroke the dog.
Gryss’s frown turned to unhappy confusion as it invariably did whenever he had to deal with Marna in one of her ‘forthright’ moods.
‘Come in,’ he said, unnecessarily, as he closed the door.
She looked at him impatiently. He motioned her towards the back room. ‘Answering your question about how he is, he’s still asleep,’ he said caustically. ‘As was I,’ he added darkly, endeavouring to regain a little authority. ‘And he’s no different now than he was when you left, whereas I am markedly more weary.’
Marna coloured at the rebuke, but her demeanour remained unchanged. ‘What did he say?’ she insisted, though less stridently. ‘It upset you, I could tell that. And you lied to my father and Yakob about it.’
A memory returned to Gryss of Farnor once com-plaining that Marna could ‘talk a hole in a stone’ the unrelenting way she would pester and badger to gain information when she was so inclined.
‘Sit down, Marna,’ he said, with increased firmness. ‘And tell me the reason for this urgency.’
Marna did as she was told, folding her hands in her lap demurely. The action was entirely unconscious and the incongruity of it made Gryss smile.
Marna scowled at him in response, and he raised a defensive hand before she spoke. ‘You reminded me of your mother for a moment,’ he said, then he waved the matter aside. ‘Tell me why you’ve come back to torment me with your curiosity tonight instead of waiting until tomorrow?’
Marna looked uncharacteristically uncomfortable. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I just had to. I’ve got the feeling that all the time we do nothing, they…’ She hesitated, and flicked her hand roughly northwards. ‘… up there, will get stronger and stronger. They’ll be able to do anything they want to us. Turn us out of our houses, destroy our fields, turn us into slaves… anything. And we’ll be powerless.’
Gryss could not keep the distress from his face. ‘That’s a stark vision, Marna,’ he said. ‘And nothing they’ve done so far indicates they’d want to do that. Don’t forget, for all our suspicions, they may still be King’s men.’
Marna almost snarled a denunciation of this notion. ‘King’s men, my behind!’ she said, angrily. ‘Are all you men completely blind?’ She raised her clawed hands in front of her, her arms quivering with tension. It was an oddly male gesture. ‘Can’t you… feel… what they’re like? Can’t you sense what they’re up to? Do you have to wait for them to kick in your door and take your goods before you realize something’s wrong?’
Despite himself, Gryss found his own temper begin-ning to flare in response to Marna’s rebukes. ‘I can feel lots of things I’m not happy about, Marna,’ he said heatedly. ‘And there’s plenty of things been happening of late that I can’t begin to understand. But unhappiness and not understanding don’t tell me what’s wrong, or what I should do.’
Caught between Gryss’s logic and her own passions, Marna clenched her teeth and banged her heels on the floor. Almost as soon as it appeared, however, this childish outburst faded and Gryss found himself looking into the concerned and determined eyes of an adult.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I feel so helpless. It’s as if I’m the only one who can see what’s happening, and it’s all so… dangerous, so frightening. Couldn’t you see it, feel it, when they were at the green, walking slowly past you, with Jeorg hanging between Yakob and my father?’
Just as her previous angry tone had stirred Gryss’s anger, so now her quieter and more compelling manner calmed him.
‘Perhaps I was too close to it,’ he said.
There was a silence between them for a long mo-ment, then Gryss said, ‘They’d have killed me, Marna. Killed me with no more thought than treading on an ant. I looked into their eyes and I could tell that.’ He paused. ‘And I fear you’re right about both them and their intentions, though I don’t know how someone so young could have arrived at such a grim conclusion so quickly. They’re never King’s men, and the longer we do nothing about them the more they’ll gain power over us.’