Roger Taylor - Ibryen

Rachyl swept aside his demand for silence. ‘We can’t not fight!’ she burst out. ‘We’ve got to…’

‘We’ve got to do nothing!’ Ibryen said angrily. ‘Just listen, as I’ve asked. This isn’t going to be easy for any of us to accept, but understand, we’ve no choice. We change or die .’ Rachyl seemed set to continue her protest but Ibryen allowed her no opportunity. He was with his old instructor again – understanding dancing about him, solid yet elusive. He spoke as his thoughts formed. ‘Change, in the form of a random assassin, has intruded on the Gevethen. Let them cope with that as they may – the greater disruption Hagen’s death causes, the more likely that mistakes are going to be made. Those few knife blows won’t bring the Gevethen down, but they’ll have shaken the entire edifice of their power, just as the Dohrum Bell shakes the Citadel tower. If we continue as we’ve always done – a spring offensive – moving out, raiding and harrying, then that consistency, that normality, will help to support them while they recover. But if suddenly we’re not there, and rumours are flying around the city that an attack is to come from some unexpected direction and that Hagen’s death was planned as part of it, what then?’

The argument unsettled Rachyl, but she clung on. ‘We could tie up part of the army, leave them fewer men to purge the city with.’ She dismissed this herself as soon as she spoke it, however. The Gevethen’s army was no skilled fighting force, but it was large. Whatever happened in the mountains it was unlikely that it would have any serious effect on the numbers available to purge the city. Added to which was the fact that the purging was under way now. Any venture that the Count’s followers could mount would be weeks away. She shifted ground. ‘And what do we do if they come looking for us?’

‘Let them come,’ Ibryen replied off-handedly. ‘We watch and wait, as always, but that’s all. Obviously if they look like coming too far we’ll intervene. But we’ll fight them defensively. Like a token force, left behind to guard a camp. Let them do the attacking. They’ll not like that in this terrain.’

Defeated for the moment, Rachyl picked up a piece of bread and began slowly breaking it up. ‘But…’

‘But how are we going to overthrow the Gevethen if we do less than we’re already doing?’ Ibryen finished her question. Feeding herself with small pieces of bread, Rachyl gave a soft grunt of agreement.

Ibryen’s mood darkened. He spoke carefully. ‘While you were away, we travelled this same ground many times.’ He indicated Marris and the Traveller. ‘No logical conclusion is to be found. So we are faced with two choices – despair and die – or pursue a course of action that has no apparently logical basis.’

Rachyl’s eyes were fixed on him, thumb and forefinger slowly rotating an almost non-existent piece of bread into her steadily grinding front teeth. Hynard was sitting very still, his head craning forward intently as though to miss some tiny detail of what was being said would plunge him into darkness. Neither spoke.

Ibryen continued. ‘This has been a desperately long day. We’re all such a distance from where we were when we woke this morning. An assassin brought change to the Gevethen, the Traveller has brought it to us. And what’s been unmade can’t be remade.’ He forced himself back to the subject that he was evading and tumbled into it. ‘I intend to go with the Traveller up into the peaks to try to find the source of the sound that drew him here and the source of the strange call that’s been disturbing me these last few days.’

‘What!’ Rachyl spat crumbs. Hynard gaped.

Ibryen hung on to the reins of his tale with grim determination. ‘Marris will take command in my absence and you will pursue the tactics that I’ve just outlined. Company commanders will be…’

‘Are you crazy, Ibryen?’ Rachyl spluttered standing up. She filled the small room like a thunder cloud. Her earlier softening towards the Traveller vanished instantly. ‘You can’t go wandering about the mountains with a complete stranger, looking for some vague… noise.’ She gesticulated violently. ‘What are you going to do if you find it? Shout the Gevethen out of the country?’ She swore and threw down the crust that she was waving incongruously at the Traveller. ‘He’s probably heard some rutting animal, and you’ve probably got indigestion,’ she diagnosed. ‘And we’ve still no idea who he is. He might well have come from the south, but that leaves us none the wiser about why he’s here.’

‘Sit down, Rachyl.’ Ibryen’s quiet tone brought her to a blustering halt but she did not sit. Ibryen turned to Hynard expectantly.

‘I think Rachyl’s raising some valid questions,’ Hynard said unsteadily after a momentary hesitation. His attempt at diplomacy warmed Ibryen.

‘I understand your concern, Rachyl,’ he said. ‘Marris has already been over the same ground with me at length… great length.’ He had hoped to be conciliatory, but her looming presence made him frown. ‘Will you sit down, please. This room’s too small for you to flail about in.’

Replying with a scowl of her own, Rachyl sat down but perched herself bolt upright on the edge of her chair so that she was only marginally less intimidating than she had been standing. ‘Whose idea was this?’ she demanded, loath to concede anything further.

‘Mine.’ It was the Traveller who spoke. His tone was unexpectedly serious. Rachyl’s hand shot out, its extended forefinger moving between Ibryen and the Traveller while she struggled to find words to express the realization of her worst fears.

Ibryen took the initiative. ‘What’s he going to do, luring me up into the mountains, Rachyl? Murder me? I told you, he could have done that already when he first spoke to me.’

Rachyl moved effortlessly to her next thrust. ‘The way he can climb he could just abandon you and be off to the Gevethen with everything there is to know about us here.’

‘He could have left any time he wanted to.’ This time it was Marris who spoke. He gestured to the Traveller as Rachyl faltered again. ‘Show them.’

The Traveller pulled a sour face.

‘Show them,’ Marris insisted. ‘Rachyl and Hynard are nothing if not realists. Cut through all this blather, we’re wasting time.’

‘What do you mean, he could have left?’ Rachyl asked indignantly of no one in particular.

The Traveller looked at Ibryen for support but found none.

‘Marris is right,’ the Count said to him resignedly. ‘I know you don’t like doing it, but they’ll grasp the significance of what it means at least as fast as we did and then we’ll be able to get on. Do it.’

Hynard’s eyes narrowed suspiciously during this exchange, but Rachyl was becoming increasingly agitated. Half-standing, she levelled her finger at the Traveller again but spoke to Ibryen. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if he…’

The Traveller opened his mouth slightly. Ibryen was vaguely aware only of a faint humming but Rachyl stopped abruptly and sat down with a thud, her eyes glazed and fixed. Hynard started turning towards her then he too became still.

‘What have you done?’ Ibryen said, suddenly concerned. ‘That’s not what happened to me.’

‘Nor me,’ Marris added.

‘This is less distressing to me, if you don’t mind,’ the Traveller said haughtily, his voice echoing oddly. ‘And also kinder to them. Besides, the circumstances are different. And the materials I have to work with. Go and stand behind them.’ This instruction was given to Marris in a tone that brought him immediately to his feet and carried him across the room. As he moved behind the two cousins, they were themselves again. Hynard finished turning towards Rachyl while she completed her declaration, ‘… tries any fancy tricks on me, don’t think either his age or your protection will…’ She stopped and blinked. ‘What the…! Where’s…?’