Roger Taylor - Farnor

He wanted to be home desperately, both for shelter and support.

Then for a while his thoughts ceased and he simply ran; on and on, relaxed and easy, despite his concerns, until at last he came to the gate that led to his home. It was too dark now for him to see any signs of where the riders had gone and his anxiety began to return as he ran up the pathway towards the farm.

Rounding the final corner, he saw the house. A sun-stone lantern hung by the door, illuminating the yard. The empty yard.

Farnor wanted to shout with relief as half-formed images of the place filled with milling horsemen emerged from the recesses of his mind and vanished.

‘You look puffed,’ Garren said, as his son banged into the house. ‘Some irate father been chasing you from sunset watch for dallying with his daughter?’

He chuckled, until his wife shot him a menacing glance over the top of the book she was reading.

Before either could speak, however, Farnor had launched into his tale. As it unfolded, his mother laid down her book and joined her husband in staring at their son spellbound.

‘Riding up the valley, you say?’ was all that Garren could say as Farnor finished his telling.

Farnor nodded. ‘I didn’t catch them,’ he said. ‘I suppose they’ve gone on up towards the castle.’

Katrin looked nervous and Garren puffed out his cheeks and blew a long breath as he struggled to assimilate all that he had just been told.

‘Gatherers!’ he said eventually. ‘After all these years! That’s not going to go down well.’ Then the questions began to pour out. ‘How many were there? What did they look like? Why didn’t they go to the tithe barn? Why didn’t Gryss speak to them?’ And in increasing bewilderment. ‘And what in the world are they doing trailing all the way out here?’

In the small spaces between these and other ques-tions, Farnor shook his head, shrugged and managed the occasional ‘I don’t know’, until inspiration prompted him to say, ‘Gryss said he’d come along later.’

It stemmed the flow of questions, but not his fa-ther’s agitation. Garren got up and walked out of the house and across the yard. Farnor followed him, leaving his mother silhouetted in the open doorway. The farm’s two dogs emerged from their kennels and loped after them.

At the gate Garren stopped and, placing his hands around his eyes to shield them from the light of the sunstone lantern, he peered intently towards the castle. Farnor did the same but, despite the moonlight, it was too dark for anything to be seen other than the sombre shapes of the mountains themselves.

‘Do you think we should go and look for them?’ Garren said. ‘See if they need any help… food… water? If they’re as weary as you seem to think they are, they could get lost up there.’

‘They had pack horses with them,’ Farnor said. ‘They must be used to travelling through strange countryside by now if they’ve come all the way from the capital.’

‘You’re right,’ Garren said, turning back towards the farmhouse. ‘And I doubt they’d take too kindly to a stranger barging in on their camp.’

As they were crossing the yard one of the dogs growled and edged towards the gate. The whinny of a horse floated out of the darkness and slowly a tall shape emerged into the outer fringes of the sunstone lantern’s light. It was a rider.

‘Sorry if I startled you,’ came Gryss’s voice as he dismounted to open the gate. His tone was matter-of-fact. ‘Did you see any sign of the gatherers on your way back, Farnor?’ he asked.

Farnor shook his head.

Gryss reached down to stroke the two dogs, then he looked northwards. ‘I imagine they’ve gone wandering off up there, then,’ he said, turning to Garren. ‘Farnor’s told you everything, I presume?’

‘Yes, but I’m none the wiser.’

‘Nor I,’ Gryss said. ‘But I’ve had a quick word with most of the Council at the inn, and I thought I’d have one with you too before we have a formal meeting tomorrow.’

Garren smiled. It was Gryss’s normal way of dealing with such rare matters as had to be dealt with through the village’s Council. After making up his own mind, he would then persuade the elders and Council members to his way before the meeting, ‘to save time’. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes, spectacularly, it did not.

At the word ‘Council’ Farnor’s interest in the pro-ceedings evaporated. The excitement and the alarm of the arrival of the gatherers could not survive the dead hand of any Council deliberation. As the two men disappeared into the house, Farnor clicked his tongue at the dogs and clambered over the gate. After his dash from the village and his father’s interrogation, a quiet moonlight walk would help him clear his thoughts.

The two dogs scrabbled under the gate and ran after him, tails wagging.

As he walked, the dogs came and went, running twenty paces for his every one and generally terrorizing the nocturnal wildlife. At the roadway he debated for a moment and then turned left, northwards.

A short walk would bring him to the top of a rise from which, during the day, more of the castle would be visible. Perhaps he might be able to see some sign of a camp – distant fires burning, perhaps even voices carried through the still night air.

When he was about halfway up the rise the two dogs bounded up to him once again. Abruptly they stopped and, lowering their heads, began to growl.

‘What’s the matter?’ Farnor asked, crouching down between them and following their gaze.

Ahead, the road ended as a black hummock against the moonlit sky where it topped the rise. Trees on either side waited, motionless.

Then, slowly, the black hummock began to change shape.

Farnor’s eyes widened in terror as the silhouetted crest of the rise ahead of him changed into moving, swaying life. Visions of the sheep-worrier, monstrous and malevolent, emerging from some dark and terrible lair for vengeance against its pursuers rushed in upon him before he had time to think more calmly what might be happening.

Though his legs were trembling in readiness for flight, no instruction reached them and as the shadow grew Farnor remained transfixed, his arms around the hackled shoulders of his dogs. He could feel the vibration of their growling, but all he could hear was the sound of his own heartbeat pounding in his ears.

The shadow continued to grow, then:

‘Ho, you there!’

The voice cut through the internal din of his terror.

Part of him queried, me? Another part advised a hasty retreat. But yet another at last identified the eerie shapes ahead. They were riders, he realized with relief. The gatherers returning, presumably.

‘Yes?’ Farnor said, in a voice that surprised him by the absence of tremor.

‘Come here.’

‘What do you want?’

The shadows shifted. ‘Come here!’ the voice re-peated irritably. It sounded unusual and there was an inflection in it that Farnor did not like.

For a moment he again considered fleeing, or, more correctly, slipping away. This was his land and he knew it intimately, by day or by night. He could disappear into it on the instant and make his way back to the farm in secret to draw Gryss and his father into this strange happening.

The thought of this option calmed him.

But then, he reflected, what had happened?

Nothing, (he glossed over his initial terrified re-sponse), except that he had been addressed by a stranger who was certainly benighted and almost certainly lost. Further, the stranger was a gatherer, a King’s man whose goodwill might prove important over the following days. He would get short shrift from either Gryss or his father if he abandoned such a man by running off into the night like a frightened child.