She returned his gaze, then looked down at the pan again, her mouth pouting. ‘Do you want some of this?’ she asked, dully, turning back to him.
‘Not if you’re going to burn it like that,’ he said, indicating the now smoking pan.
Marna swore, and there was a flurry of activity as meat and eggs were rescued and transferred to Gryss’s fine wooden plates and during which Marna burnt the tip of her finger.
Gryss retrieved a loaf from a cupboard and scooped up some cutlery. ‘Bring the plates through into the back room,’ he said as he left the kitchen. Marna took her finger from her mouth and followed him.
‘Eat,’ he ordered, as she placed the plates on the long table. Uneasily, Marna did as she was told. It was no celebratory feast, however, and for some time they sat silent, and ate dutifully, rapt in their own thoughts.
Then Gryss recollected himself. ‘Where’s your father and Yakob?’ he asked, guiltily.
‘Still asleep. Both of them,’ Marna replied. She gave a reluctant smile. ‘Like battered bookends, either side of Farnor’s bed.’
‘My bed, if you please,’ Gryss observed, angling like a patient fisherman to keep the smile.
But it slipped away. ‘Should I waken them?’ she asked.
Gryss shook his head. ‘Let them sleep while they can,’ he replied. Then he clicked his tongue and frowned. ‘I’m not doing too well this morning. I should have looked at Farnor before tending my own needs.’
‘He’s all right,’ Marna said, reassuringly. ‘He’s fast asleep.’
Gryss looked at her uncertainly. ‘I’ll have a look anyway,’ he decided.
He had to agree with Marna’s description as he entered his bedroom. Harlen and Yakob were draped gracelessly in chairs on either side of Farnor’s bed. Harlen’s head was slumped forward while Yakob’s was angled backwards and to one side, and his mouth was hanging open. Farnor, on the contrary, was a picture of repose.
The sight was at once funny and poignant.
Moving delicately past the two sleeping guardians Gryss sat on the edge of the bed and laid his hand on Farnor’s forehead. It was cool.
That was a relief. The lad had problems enough without going down with a fever as a result of the soaking and the shock he had had the previous night.
Farnor stirred, but did not wake.
Harlen, however, did. After mumbling a few inco-herent words he opened his eyes and blinked vacantly. Then recognition came into his face and he made to move.
‘Easy,’ Gryss said. ‘Your chairs might be comfortable to sit in, but not for sleeping in.’
The soft conversation woke Yakob, who spluttered indignantly for a moment before he too felt the protest of his limbs at having been confined in a chair for so long.
Marna raised a single eyebrow when the three of them entered the back room, bleary-eyed, unshaven and unkempt. ‘Let them sleep,’ she echoed at Gryss. He gave a disclaiming shrug.
At Gryss’s urging, the two men made an attempt at the food that Marna had prepared, but it too was little more than an exercise in satisfying bodily needs, and a dark silence soon descended on the room.
Both Harlen and Yakob, like Farnor, were in a state of shock, though Harlen was perhaps the more affected of the two. The previous night he had gone to his home and bed burdened with the knowledge that one of his friends had been brutally beaten for no apparent reason, and that a menace had come silently to the valley, like a tainted autumn mist. Whatever dreams had arisen in the wake of this, though, were as nothing compared to the nightmare to which his daughter had wakened him: a hurried dash through the village to be greeted by Gryss and Yakob with a tale that made Jeorg’s beating seem almost trivial. A tale of cruel murder and wanton destruction. The sense of menace had increased tenfold.
And it had become worse as Gryss told of Jeorg’s whispered account, concluding with his final torture by Rannick.
The notion that Rannick could be leading such men and possess such powers invoked the same response from Harlen as it had from Yakob. He had looked to Yakob for support, but all Yakob was prepared to offer was an uncertain shrug and a wary, ‘He believes it,’ with a nod towards Gryss.
‘You know the tales about Rannick’s family line, going way back,’ Gryss had countered, heatedly. ‘It’s not just a saga of foul and unpleasant temperaments, is it? There are stories of strange gifts as well. Strange enough for them to be mentioned only in whispers if they’re mentioned at all. And you should know this: of our old friends lying murdered up the road, one was smashed as badly as if he’d been hurled down a cliff. No ordinary beating did that.’ Tiredness and grief had conspired to make him almost angry with his two friends. ‘Do you think I’d be telling you such wild tales at a time like this if I didn’t have good reason for thinking they were true? Both of you are old enough to know that there’re plenty of things in this world that we haven’t the remotest understanding of. Just hear me out.’
Rather abashed following this untypical outburst, Harlen and Yakob had fallen silent and Gryss had given the true account of his visit to the castle and the injury to Farnor’s arm. He told, too, of the creature that Rannick apparently controlled, though this he attrib-uted to information given to him by Nilsson’s injured men. Some instinct told him not to speak of Farnor’s own mysterious contact with the creature. Rannick’s powers and Farnor’s gift were beyond any logic that he knew of, and opposition to them would thus be visceral rather than reasoned. Who, then, could say where it would stop if once it started? And Farnor had no one to defend him now.
In the end, seeing that Gryss was not noticeably deranged, and in the knowledge that Farnor and Jeorg could be questioned in due course, the two men had reluctantly accepted his tale.
‘Though what it all means and what we can do about it I’ve no idea,’ Yakob had concluded in despair.
Gryss, however, had forbidden any debate. ‘I can’t tell you any more than I have,’ he said. ‘You have the truth as I know it, grim though it is. Sleep on it as well as you can. We’re all too tired and upset to think clearly about anything. And tomorrow we’re going to have a lot to do.’
Now tomorrow was on them, and, despite the sunlight streaming in through the window, no light seemed to reach into the hearts of the three men.
Their silence was too much for Marna. ‘We can’t sit around doing nothing,’ she burst out, abruptly, her voice shaking. ‘We must do something.’
Yakob cast an awkward glance at Harlen and then, acidly, he said, ‘What, you stupid girl? Charge up to the castle on horseback and drag Rannick out to give an account of himself before the council?’
Marna pushed her plate away angrily, contemplated a retort, then swung around to stare out of the window. Her jaw stiffened as she fought back tears. Gryss gave Yakob a reproachful look, but Yakob merely scowled unrepentantly.
Nevertheless, the brief outburst had shattered the leaden torpor that had pervaded the room.
Harlen laid his hands flat on the table as if to push himself up from his seat. ‘This is all too much for me,’ he said. ‘But I do know we must deal with the needs of the moment. We can talk later.’ He let out a long breath. He addressed Gryss. ‘Yakob and I will go to Garren’s and make some arrangement for bringing… the bodies… back. You and Marna can stay here and look after Farnor and Jeorg.’ He stood up. ‘Some air, some activity will do none of us any harm.’ His easy-going face hardened. ‘And, Yakob, I’ll thank you not to talk to my daughter like that again, unless she gives you just cause. We’re none of us over-endowed with wisdom in the face of all this.’
Yakob coloured and his mouth opened, but he did not reply.
When the two men had gone, Gryss and Marna set about tending to their charges.
‘What are we going to do?’ Marna asked, as she helped Gryss change some of Jeorg’s bandages.
‘I don’t know,’ Gryss replied. ‘I don’t think I’ve truly taken everything in yet. I can’t even believe that Garren and Katrin are dead.’ His voice faltered. ‘I don’t seem to be able to think properly.’