Roger Taylor - Caddoran

‘Thyrn.’ He spoke softly. ‘I know you’re afraid. We’re all afraid. It’s understandable after what we’ve been through. But you’ve done well. You’ve run with us, hidden with us, eaten and slept with us. Done better than many a Senior Cadet.’ He paused and searched into Thyrn’s eyes for signs that he was being heard. But he could read nothing.

‘We’re safe here for the moment. Safer than we’ve been since we started. But we have to think what to do next. And to do that we have to know why we’re running.’ He became confidential. ‘I don’t want you to break your Caddoran Oath. I wouldn’t ask you to do that. I know it’s very important to you. But we’ve all got to help one another. Even if you don’t want to help yourself, think about your uncle. He…’

A hand on his shoulder stopped him.

‘No,’ Nordath said firmly. ‘He’s had nothing but that off his parents and his teachers all his life. Let me speak to him.’

Hyrald looked into the unfocused eyes again. He felt guilt well up inside him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, patting Thyrn’s arm. ‘I made a mistake.’

Nordath took Hyrald’s place in front of the immobile young man. Rhavvan made an impatient gesture and strode off. Hyrald motioned Adren after him.

Nordath’s hand fluttered uncertainly, then, a little awkwardly, he put his arms around his nephew. ‘Go where you’ve got to go, Thyrn. Come back when you’re ready. We’ll be here, waiting for you. We’ll take care of you.’

Equally awkwardly he released him and stood up, rather self-consciously.

‘We will take care of him, won’t we?’ he said to Hyrald.

Only years as a Warden prevented Hyrald from showing his doubts as he met Nordath’s gaze. It had occurred to him more than once in the days immediately following their flight from Arvenshelm that perhaps surrendering Thyrn might be a way of having the Death Cry against him and the others lifted. He was honest enough to admit that it was only the unexpected ferocity of the response to the Death Cry that had prevented him from doing this. As they had moved further away from Arvenshelm, the clamour and urgency had lessened but the day-to-day needs of hiding and surviving had remained, and the option of surrender had faded away as the group gradually became five instead of three and two.

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘We’ve taken care of you so far. We won’t stop now.’

But some time later, as he abandoned Nordath to his vigil and joined Rhavvan and Adren on top of a nearby rise his mind was awash with doubt.

‘Why so fierce?’ he said. Rhavvan frowned and Adren looked at him blankly.

‘Why were the crowds so fierce when the Death Cry was announced? If we hadn’t been warned – given that little extra time – we’d have been…’ A sideways cutting action of his hand finished the sentence.

Rhavvan shrugged airily. ‘Not everybody loves a Warden,’ he declared mockingly. ‘The ordinary Cry doesn’t exactly bring the best out in people, does it? You know how long it takes us to get the streets quiet after one.’

Hyrald looked down at Thyrn and Nordath by the ramshackle shelter, then at the surrounding landscape. The view beyond the shelter was restricted by gently hilly terrain, lush with trees and shrubs, but in the other direction the colour gradually faded until it ended in the pale line of the dunes. In a dip between two of them, Hyrald could just see the bright line of the sea. It was good here. Open, undisturbed, even the air was different – so very different from the soiled and oppressive streets of Arvenshelm. Yet too, it was frightening. It was empty and lonely. It left him feeling exposed and vulnerable, thrown totally on his own resources. And the glint of the distant sea at once lured him and repelled him, filling him with vague images of great and alien spaces.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, returning to his friends. ‘It wasn’t just the ordinary mob. It was as though…’ he searched for the words. ‘… as though something fearful had been released. There was a real bloodlust in those we saw when we were hiding in the Old Park.’ He shivered at the memory, then he became thoughtful. ‘I wonder how many people got killed in all that, in the general crush, by mistaken identity?’

‘Not to forget the score-settling. There’s always some of that in any Cry. I should imagine a lot were hurt. It’s just one of those things. Anyway…’ Rhavvan threw a suddenly cheerful arm around Hyrald’s shoulders, making him stagger. ‘What’s the problem? People are bastards at the best of times, you know that. Whack you as soon as look at you if they thought it was to their advantage. They have to run amok from time to time. It’s enough for me that we got away.’

‘You’re cynical.’

‘I’m a Warden, and I see people for what they are.’ A jabbing finger emphasized his point. ‘As do you, normally.’

‘Maybe,’ Hyrald conceded reluctantly. ‘But there was still something more. Worse than I’d have expected – realist or no.’

‘You’re right.’ It was Adren. ‘I hadn’t thought about it until now, but it was worse than the usual mob that comes out for the Cry – much worse.’

Rhavvan threw up his hands, dismissing the two of them.

‘It’s been brewing for months,’ she went on. ‘Perhaps years.’

‘What has?’ demanded Rhavvan, increasingly exasperated.

‘Trouble,’ Adren replied simply. ‘Year on year since I joined there’s been more violence and discontent. And we’ve had more drunks, more beatings, more crowd flare-ups, more everything this last year than ever before – you know that. It’s as though there’s something in the air – like a storm coming.’

‘Horse manure,’ Rhavvan declaimed. ‘That’s all there is in the air – horse manure. And the warm weather always makes people fractious.’ He slapped the purse on his belt. ‘A nice heat-wave’s always good for business. More overtime, more fines, voluntary contributions, and the like.’ He laughed.

The sound should have lightened the mood of the group a little, but the clink of coins in Rhavvan’s purse had a dull, funereal timbre to Hyrald, reminding him that money was of no value to them now. Here it was only something more to be carried – another burden. And Adren was unconvinced by Rhavvan’s airy analysis.

‘There’s a restlessness about,’ she insisted doggedly. ‘I don’t know what it is, but something’s falling apart. And all this business about the Morlider and what’s going on in Nesdiryn hasn’t helped. In fact, I think that’s…’

A loud cry from Nordath cut across her.

It was Close of Moot. Early today. The last few grains of sand in the hourglass which stood by the Throne of Marab had to be encouraged on their way by a surreptitious flick of Striker Bowlott’s middle finger but if anyone saw, no one was interested in raising any elaborate procedural points about it. As usual, most of the Senators were only too anxious to be away to fulfil their various social and business commitments. Being a representative of the people was demanding work.

The current speaker froze, gaping in mid-word and mid-gesture as the end of Bowlott’s staff struck the floor. An audible sigh of relief passed around the Moot Hall, dappled with the sounds of various Senators waking suddenly. The doleful peal of the Moot bells carrying the news through the corridors of the Palace seeped into the hall.

As he always did at close of Moot, Bowlott sat motionless until the sound of the bells faded into the general mumbling background of the hall, then his beady eyes scanned the noble and expectant assembly two or three times before, very slowly, he began to lever himself upright. Krim’s deputy creaked forward to take the cushion that had been supporting Bowlott’s head, lest it slip forward and mar the dignity of the occasion by entangling itself in his robes like a workman’s pack, or by slithering down behind him and nudging his backside. It was a heavy cushion and its urging had more than once caused Striker Bowlott to waver unsteadily on his footstool at this juncture.