Marna tapped her fingers impatiently on her knee as she waited.
‘How did you get here?’ Gryss demanded suddenly.
‘They watched until the search party went back to the castle, then they brought me to where I could reach the top fields on my own,’ Marna replied.
‘Where are they now?’ Gryss asked.
Marna shook her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘They wouldn’t tell me. They said it was in case Nilsson found me and I told him about them.’
Gryss looked at her closely. ‘You don’t seem too offended by that,’ he said, gently taunting.
Marna grimaced. ‘A day or two ago I might have been, but not now,’ she said. Then, with an effort, ‘More’s happened than I’ve told you about.’
Gryss frowned. The comment confirmed the pain that he could feel underlying her every word. ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’ he asked.
Marna shook her head vigorously. ‘Perhaps one day,’ she said. ‘When this is all over.’
‘Whenever you want,’ Gryss said. ‘But it may be some time before that happens. What can four people do against Rannick and Nilsson? Storm the castle?’
Marna’s manner changed and she looked at him like a parent about to admonish a child for an offence that was so serious that shouting and summary punishment were out of the question. ‘I was with them, Gryss,’ she said. They’re real soldiers. Real.’ She slapped her stomach to confirm the depth of her inner certainty about this declaration. ‘And they move like shadows. They brought me, and the horses, through ways over the tops that I never dreamed existed. And they’d never been here before. They just… see things. And they pay attention to such details.’ She nodded reflectively to herself, then, with quiet, but deep assurance, ‘I told you, they know about the power that Rannick has. It frightened them more than it ever has us, and still they’ve gone on to fight him. Gone, on their own, because they knew they hadn’t the time to get the help they needed. But they’ll do something that’ll be neither foolish nor futile, and, at the least, they’ll hurt him badly in some way.’ She leaned forward and her voice became urgent. ‘And they’ll do it soon. Very soon.’
‘I don’t suppose they told you what they were going to do, either, did they?’ Gryss said.
Marna shook her head. ‘No, but they were very in-terested when I told them that Rannick sometimes rides out alone to the north. I think if they get the chance, they’ll try to ambush him.’
‘They made quite an impression on you, I gather,’ Gryss said.
‘Yes,’ Marna replied simply.
‘And?’ Gryss caught the note in her voice.
‘And whatever it is they’re going to do, we can’t let them do it alone,’ she said.
Gryss looked at her, almost fearfully. There was no youthful petulance or impatience here. He could still sense the presence of a frightened and lost young girl, but this was fluttering at the edges of a stern resolve. She was unequivocally not the Marna of even a few days ago. He resisted the temptation to question her about those parts of her journey that he knew she had kept from him. ‘What can we do?’ he asked, trying to keep any hint of defeatism from his voice.
Despair flared into Marna’s eyes momentarily, only to be swept aside. ‘Be ready,’ she said, clenching her fists. ‘Just be ready to help them, protect them, if anything starts to happen. Not be frightened of the unknown.’ Before Gryss could interject any reservations, she ploughed on. ‘I’ve been thinking. Everyone who we’re certain is with us can go up to Farnor’s place tomorrow. If we’re asked, we can say we’re starting to rebuild it for whoever it’s to be granted to. There’s plenty to do there that’ll warrant a crowd carrying axes and hammers and the like, without causing any alarm. And from there, we can arrange to watch the castle. And to move, if we have to, if anything starts to happen. We don’t even need to tell anyone why we’re really there.’ She hesitated. ‘In fact we mustn’t tell anyone else why we’re there. We’ve too few good liars.’ She frowned thoughtfully. ‘We’ll tell everyone it’s just what it is. A ploy to watch the castle. To see if we can find out how well they guard it, how many new people are arriving, whether they ever send patrols to the north; anything that might be useful later on!’ She nodded her head, satisfied.
Gryss’s eyes widened in surprise. His mind filled with doubts and hesitations but they foundered against both Marna’s determination and the simple practicality of her suggestion. He felt a long-suppressed anger and resentment bubbling up through the confusion of his thoughts. And too, guilt. Had he acted with such plain common sense at the very outset and, say, questioned Nilsson and his troop, perhaps none of this horror would ever have come to pass. It was no new thought, but it tormented him no less for that. Indeed it had grown worse with time, as, rippling out from that first wrong action, had come so many others: small, day by day acts of appeasement and quiet acquiescence to Nilsson’s and thus Rannick’s will. Even though such deeds were done ostensibly as a cover for the organizing of more forthright action, they distressed him pro-foundly, not least because of the example they set to the other villagers.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You’re right. It’s a good idea. I’m sick of doing nothing except fret over ever more futile plans.’ He stood up. ‘Jeorg, I think, should know what’s happened. But I agree, none of the others. I’ll tell your father you’re safe but not where you are. And you’d better keep well out of sight.’ He lifted down his cloak from a hook. ‘I’ll start things moving right away. Delays have won us nothing in the past, and with a bit of effort I should be able to get a… working party… to the farm before noon tomorrow.’
When he had gone, Marna locked the door behind him and doused all the lanterns. Then she curled up in the chair and waited.
Chapter 22
The following day was cloudy and overcast, but to Marna’s considerable relief it did not rain. Where a group of people working in the sunshine might not have been unduly conspicuous, a group working in the pouring rain would be highly so.
She was awake before dawn after a night tormented by confused desire-laden dreams of Rannick and terrifyingly vivid images of her struggle with the man she had killed. The latter in particular had started her upright, sweating and gasping, and they came some-times even when she simply closed her eyes. It helped only a little that Aaren had told her to expect such a reaction to her ordeal.
Moving silently about the cottage, she packed some food, left a note for Gryss, and then used the morning twilight to cover her journey to the Yarrance farm. Studiously she tried to move the way that the four newcomers moved, for despite the danger and urgency of their mission, they had made a point of instructing her where they could.
While her endeavours were hardly skilled, she had instinctively picked up some of their sense of inner stillness, and she found that she both saw and heard many things on the short, familiar journey that she had never noted before.
Despite the horror of the destruction of the Yar-rance farm, the ancient momentum of the valley’s ways had seen the livestock rapidly moved to several different farms for care until such time as Farnor might return, or a decision be made by the Council about the disposition of the property and goods. No one, however, had known what to do with the various household items that were immediately salvageable from the wreckage of the farmhouse, and, with a strange mixture of care and embarrassed haste, they had been put into one of the undamaged store sheds.
Marna paused as she reached the open gate to the farmyard. In the dawn gloaming, the scarred and broken farmhouse looked both sinister and vengeful, with its charred rafters dark against the dull sky and its shadowed windows like sightless eyes. She hesitated for a moment, nervously, then, avoiding looking at the house, she slipped quietly across the yard to the shed.