Roger Taylor - Farnor

‘Tain’t fair!’ This surly comment received even more support than the previous one.

Gryss slapped his hands on his chest. ‘Don’t tell me about it,’ he shouted with exaggerated injury. ‘There were more than a few things I had my eye on for tomorrow, I can tell you.’ He became more serious. ‘But if you think you can’t keep your mouth shut, then go home now and lock yourself in until it’s over. Do you understand?’

His firm manner and common sense stilled the noisier complaints and people began to turn to practicalities.

‘What are we supposed to do?’ a woman called.

‘Nothing,’ Gryss decided on the spur of the moment.

‘The official procedure, as I recall it, is for the barn to be unsealed in the presence of the chief gatherer, an elder and something like at least ten villagers.’ He paused and scratched his head. ‘And then for the sunstone to be lowered and used to light up the inside.’ He nodded to himself. ‘Yes, that’s it… I think. Anyway, I’m sure one of the gatherers will be only too happy to tell us.’

‘Where are all these outsiders going to stay?’ some-one asked. He was a stocky, ill-shaven man with a round, heavy face and black hair that clung closely to his skull.

Gryss threw up his hands. ‘Let’s deal with one thing at a time, Jeorg,’ he said impatiently. ‘Most of them will probably be soldiers. I imagine they’ll have… tents… or something.’ He levelled a finger at his questioner. ‘And don’t go calling them outsiders. At least not in their hearing. They’re the King’s men and don’t forget it. Apart from any problems with the tithe, the less stir we make the more likely we are to be forgotten again in the future.’

Jeorg curled his lip derisively, but Gryss’s last point was a sound one. The elder turned to Farnor. ‘You and the others get back to the hillock and act as look-out for us. We’ll come down to the end of the village to meet them when they’re a bit nearer.’

Farnor and his friends needed no urging; the arrival of the elders allowing them to let excitement begin to dominate their initial alarm.

Gryss watched them striding down the hill talking noisily to one another. Some of the younger ones were running ahead to see who could be first to reach the top of the hillock. He found himself re-organizing the future Dalmastide activities. A sunset watch like it was once, supposedly? With a prize for the first sighting of the gatherers? Or a race to the hillock for the young ones? A feast to greet the gatherers? He dismissed that one immediately. It was important to make their visit routine and unmemorable.

But truly he felt empty. Shock and grief, he diag-nosed, at this unexpected loss.

The thought, please don’t let it be war, surfaced again in his inner silence, and he realized it had been repeating itself over and over, underlying all his other thoughts since he had arrived like the drone on a sinister bagpipe colouring the lightness of the dance with its ominous monotony.

For something momentous must have happened if the King suddenly needed his tithe from this small and distant valley, and had sent so many gatherers to collect it. Nearly a hundred, did Farnor say? And he could think of nothing other than war. Surely the celebration of a royal wedding or birth, or the mourning of a royal death would not warrant such an action? For a moment it occurred to him to send after the young folk, to call them back and tell them to hide lest the gatherers brought with them such dark news and its inevitable consequence: a calling of the young men of the land to arms.

Memories that he had long buried emerged to heighten his anxiety. Memories of beggars wandering the streets of a town near the capital city of the land. Beggars with limbs missing and faces scarred by long-healed but dreadful wounds. Old soldiers, he had been told. Ignore them.

He felt shame still that he had heeded this advice.

Grimly he crushed the memory and sought to follow his own advice: one thing at a time. Whatever night-mares he might choose to torment himself with here, the reality would be on them soon enough.

The crowd had fallen silent, as if the young people had taken all the noise and energy with them. Gryss was once again the focus of attention. ‘We might as well follow them,’ he said, turning away and setting off slowly down the hill. The group drifted after him, like an uncertain funeral procession.

The general mood was little changed when they reached the end of the village and began to spread out into a well-worn patch of land much used by the children.

A variety of indignant and defiant noises had reached Gryss’s ears from the menfolk as they came to terms with the prospect of losing Dalmas bargains, but he let them pass without comment. Better spat out now and into the ears of friends than when the gatherers were here.

Jeorg was the last defender of this position. Scowl-ing, he planted himself firmly in front of Gryss. ‘They’d better be here by sunset,’ he said. ‘Or the tithe’s ours.’

Gryss stared at him. ‘You’ll be telling them then, will you?’ he said. ‘All one hundred of them? All one hundred soldiers and officials?’

The women were quieter, infected, Gryss suspected, by the same concerns as himself. It was ironic, he had mused more than once in the past, that of the two sexes the one best suited to cope with change and upheaval was the one that valued security the most. They would be watching, thinking, learning, even if they were not aware that they were doing it. And their very presence would be quietly curbing the more foolish excesses of the menfolk.

When Farnor and the others came back, the crowd spread out on both sides of the road to hear their news.

‘They’re a funny looking lot,’ Farnor said, self-consciously. ‘Not like I imagined soldiers to be at all.’

Gryss laid a hand on his arm which he hoped felt reassuring.

Then the first riders appeared around a bend in the road some distance away and Gryss stepped to the front of the crowd. He had no idea what formalities, if any, had to be observed when greeting the King’s tithe gatherers, so he decided that simple courtesy would be his best approach when first contact was made. That, and a willingness to apologize and explain any short-comings in the welcome that was being offered.

He began forcing his mouth into a smile.

Slowly the riders approached, swaying shadows against the darkening landscape. Gryss squinted, trying to bring them more clearly into view, but it was not until they were almost upon him that he began to understand Farnor’s comment.

Apart from the beggars, the only soldiers he had ever seen were those performing formal duties, guarding public buildings or marching in ceremonial parades. Those had been dressed in colourful, braided liveries and armed with polished swords and pikes with finely etched blades and intricately carved handles and grips.

The new arrivals, however, were dressed in all man-ner of attire, and carried about them all manner of arms: swords, maces, axes, bows, spears, pikes, and no two of them alike. Indeed, more than a few carried weapons which had obviously been farm implements at one stage. Further, Gryss noted, they were, to a man, scruffy and unkempt. Some were bandaged and others, his healer’s eye noted, looked far from well. There was a wildness about them that somehow he had not expected.

And their horses were no better, he noted in pass-ing: ill-groomed and lifeless.

He set aside the questions that their appearance raised. They were after all on active service, as it were, and far from the capital and their homes. And, for all he knew, perhaps some communities had chosen to argue about the need to pay the tithe. It would be foolish indeed to imagine that this valley was the only one that had been remembered after such a long time.