‘To my cottage,’ Gryss replied. ‘Then Marna can fetch her father. And for the rest of this night we talk and we cling to one another and we try to look into the darkness that’s come amongst us.’
Chapter 31
Footsteps clattered along the stone corridors of the castle, some running, some walking, some firm and determined, others hesitant and fearful. They beat a random, shifting tattoo which threaded its way through the other sounds that filled the castle that night – the sounds that marked a disorder that was teetering perilously near to outright panic. Orders were shouted and disputed, voices were raised in angry quarrels and, too, in laughter, though it was brittle and hard-edged; voices cried out in pain and distress, some pleading, some agonized. Doors creaked and slammed, furniture was overturned, horses whinnied and screamed and pounded their stable walls with violent hooves.
Nilsson sat motionless at the heart of this din, hear-ing it all, but scarcely heeding. The task of gathering together and calming the men he had curtly delegated to Saddre and Dessane as he had swept the collapsing Rannick on to his horse and dashed with him at full gallop back to the castle.
It had been no easy task for his two lieutenants, not least because they themselves had been badly shaken by the events at the Yarrance farm; not the slaying of Garren and Katrin, which meant little to them, but the unnerving and explosive destruction of the house.
‘Do it!’ he had thundered at them, bringing to bear the full power of his dark personality in an attempt to replace the terror of the immediate past with terror of the immediate present. ‘Do it. Round them up. Crack whatever heads need cracking, but do it or we lose everything. I’ll tend to the Lord.’
He had crushed ruthlessly any signs he felt rising to the surface of his own inner quaking at what had happened. He had seen worse, albeit many years ago, and his constant solace when standing near the heart of such events remained with him: it was happening to someone else!
But now this eerie yokel had spent himself in some way. Nilsson cursed to himself inwardly as he stared fixedly at Rannick, lying silent on the bed. His only consolation lay in the steady up and down movement of Rannick’s chest. Whatever else he had done, he hadn’t killed himself.
Which was good and bad fortune, he found himself thinking. Still a part of him urged him to take a knife and end this monster now, before his overweening ambition took him too high too fast, and invoked some other mysterious power in opposition that might bring them all down like proud oaks blasted by lightning. One stroke could end him now, and he and his men could flee to the north as had been his original intention.
But the greater part of him was well fortified against such urgings. What if this ‘illness’ were merely feigned as part of a testing on Rannick’s part? Or if his flesh were in some way protected and would turn the point of any lunging blade? Both such things he had known. And, too, what of the creature that Rannick seemed to control? Would it flee, howling and lost, back to whatever pit it had emerged from at the death of its master, or would it come crashing amongst them lusting for bloody vengeance?
Nilsson had many and strong defences ever ready to protect him from his wiser self.
He watched Rannick’s steady breathing and sought other consolations like a nervous parent. Perhaps in fact Rannick was only in a deep sleep. All of them had been tired after the last few days’ activity: the long, hard riding, the rough sleeping, the raid on the village in the adjacent valley, then the business with that oaf of a villager and finally all this.
His hopes waxed and waned. This was no ordinary sleep. He had shaken him as roughly as he dared, and called his name. But there had been no response. Hesitantly, he had lifted the eyelids, but that had told him nothing. Nothing except that though his body seemed to be asleep, Rannick’s eyes were terrifyingly alert in their fixed gaze.
Out of habit, Nilsson composed his face into an expression of anxious concern to avoid the possibility of his true feelings being visible.
Loud voices in the passage outside roused him from his reverie. Angrily he stood up and went to the door. The source of the noise were two men remonstrating with Dessane. One of them was Bryn, the man who had had such a narrow escape from the creature when he had ridden with Haral’s ill-fated group. The other was Avak. That meant trouble.
‘We’re off,’ Avak was saying as Nilsson emerged from Rannick’s room. ‘This… Lord’s a lunatic. It’ll go the same way it went before. Next thing you know there’ll be a sodding great army marching along the valley looking for us.’ His manner became contemptu-ous. ‘And our precious Lord, by the way, won’t be able to do anything about them, but he’ll save his own neck. Gallop off somewhere, just like…’
‘Enough!’ Nilsson kept his voice low, as if, paradoxi-cally, he wished to avoid disturbing Rannick, but its power stopped Avak in full flow.
‘Nobody’s leaving,’ Nilsson went on, still quietly. ‘We stick together. We make our decisions in congress. That’s the way we’ve survived this far, and that’s the way we’re going to continue. If you or anyone else wants to leave, then the congress will decide.’
His tone was full of a calmness that should have warned the two men, but they were too preoccupied with their own fears to notice.
‘To hell with that…’ Avak began, but his protest was cut short as Nilsson’s fist swung up and struck him squarely on the jaw. So swift, direct and unannounced was the blow that Avak had an incongruously surprised expression on his face as he fell to the floor.
Bryn swore, and moved around the fallen body as if to confront Nilsson.
This time it was Nilsson who was surprised. Avak he could always expect problems from – he was too clever by half. But not Bryn. And, normally, the administration of a little summary justice on the leader of any distur-bance had a salutary effect on his followers. That this did not appear to be the case here he noted as being potentially very serious.
This consideration, however, did not hinder him as he moved to deal with the continuing opposition. He raised his clenched fist as if to strike Bryn in the face. Automatically, Bryn raised his hands to protect himself, at which point Nilsson’s foot shot out and delivered a jarring kick to his shin. Bryn doubled up immediately with a loud cry of pain. As he did so, Nilsson’s raised hand came down and seized him by the scruff of the neck. Then, twisting to one side, Nilsson drove Bryn’s head into the wall.
‘I’m sorry, Nils,’ Dessane said, hastily, as Bryn slith-ered to join Avak on the floor. ‘I tried to stop them coming here, but you know Avak. I don’t know what…’
Nilsson ignored his excuses. ‘How many more?’ he demanded.
‘Not many,’ Dessane managed, after a little hesita-tion. ‘And most of them will listen to reason.’
Nilsson held up his hand for silence and inclined his head to catch the sounds drifting along the passage. He frowned, then cast an anxious glance at the door of Rannick’s room.
‘They’re just shouting the odds, Nils, that’s all. Get-ting it out of their systems,’ Dessane said. His voice fell. ‘That panic in the yard frightened the hell out of me, I’ll admit.’
Torn between his vigil by his stricken Lord and the need to be amongst his men, keeping this incipient rebellion under control, Nilsson bared his teeth like a trapped animal preparing for a final charge. Dessane discreetly took a short pace backwards ready to flee.
‘Frightened,’ Nilsson muttered with a snarl. ‘I’ll frighten them. Too long without proper action, that’s the trouble. They’ve all ridden in battle and most of them have seen the power used worse than that, haven’t they?’ He kicked the fallen Avak. It eased his mood. ‘Get these two old women out of here, Arven. And remind the rest of them who the Lord’s anger was directed at. The time to be frightened is when it’s directed at them. And if any more of them are thinking about leaving, remind them of our rules and the punishment for disobeying them. We stay together until we have a congress that says otherwise.’