Roger Taylor - Farnor

‘Thank you very much,’ he muttered to himself sarcastically.

Then, pulling a rueful face and rubbing his behind gingerly, he took the reins of his horse and followed Nilsson through the door.

He could not have said what he had expected to see within the castle walls, though what he saw was without doubt an anticlimax. A few men were wandering about carrying pitch torches, and the fitful light of these was sufficient to obliterate the moonlight that flooded into the courtyard while illuminating little.

Nilsson spoke to someone then turned to Gryss. ‘This way,’ he said, taking the man’s torch.

Another rider took Gryss’s horse from him and he set off after Nilsson towards a nearby building. As they entered it Gryss noticed that the door was damaged; it had been forced open. He frowned, then realized that probably all the locks were rusted solid by now, and tired soldiers at the end of a long journey would not be looking to spend time delicately greasing and manipu-lating old door furniture before they could get in and rest, especially if some of them were ill.

Inside, Gryss found himself in a large antechamber with several passages leading from it. Nilsson looked around for a moment, uncertain which way to turn. Gryss pointed to a door under which a light was showing. Nilsson grunted and pushed the door open.

It led into a small hall lit by a dozen or so torches. The smoke from them was acrid and had filled the high ceiling like winter cloud. Around the hall, men were lying almost as if they had been dropped like so many sacks of meal.

Nilsson inclined his head towards the men. ‘That’s them,’ he said curtly. ‘Get them on their feet if you can. We can’t carry passengers.’

Gryss looked at him sharply, shocked by the harsh-ness of his tone. Reproaches came to his mouth but he left them unspoken, knowing that he knew too little about these people to stand in judgement over them. He turned to his charges.

It was not easy examining them by the light of the torches. ‘Have you no lanterns?’ he asked at one stage. There was no reply, but Nilsson brought his torch closer.

Crouching, Gryss moved from one man to the next, looking into eyes and mouths, feeling brows and taking pulses, testing limbs and generally prodding and poking. The replies he received to his few softly spoken questions were answered haltingly with the same accent as their captain’s.

When he had finished, he straightened up with a grunt of discomfort and turned to Nilsson. ‘As far as I can tell after such a short examination, whatever else might be wrong with them, these men are suffering from severe exhaustion. Make sure they get a good night’s rest and I’ll come back and look at them more thor-oughly tomorrow.’

Nilsson glowered at him and then at the men. His lips pulled back in a snarl to reveal tightly clenched teeth. Gryss wondered if that was what he had assumed to be a smile as they had ridden together through the darkness.

‘You mean they’re malingering because they’re tired?’ Nilsson said. His jaw was tense and the snarl still lingered nearby. For the first time since they had met, Gryss looked properly at the man. He was taller than average and heavily built, with a slight thrusting slouch to his shoulders that gave him a menacing appearance. A full face, that would in time probably become jowled, was marked by deep-set lines and his eyes added to the sense of menace he exuded by their searching coldness.

And the brief snarl had made him look peculiarly savage.

Gryss felt afraid.

He sought safety in reason. The man’s a soldier, he told himself quickly. And a captain at that. A man with responsibilities and one used to imposing his will on others in order to fulfil them. And, too, one capable of using extreme violence when need arose. What else should I expect to find in him except a fearsome, perhaps cruel determination?

And he’s a foreigner, came the afterthought. A spe-cies of stranger necessarily much more… unusual… than even those fellow countrymen from over the hill. Some unease in his presence was inevitable. The conclusion gave him a little comfort.

‘No,’ he replied. ‘They’re not just tired, they’re physically exhausted. Their bodies are ceasing to work properly. You might get them on their feet by using brute force, but it’ll only be a matter of time before they fall over again and then they’ll be unable to move no matter what you do.’ He did not add that given such encouragement his men might also be galvanized sufficiently to cut their captain’s throat. Exhausted or not, and his patients or not, Gryss still found them as unsavoury looking a crowd as they had been when they rode through the village.

Nilsson seemed inclined to disagree, but Gryss pressed on. ‘You don’t look too good yourself, Captain,’ he said starkly. ‘How long have you been riding?’

‘Too long,’ Nilsson replied without hesitation, taken unawares by the question.

Gryss sensed a pain underneath the flat tone of this response and, despite the man’s demeanour, reached out to take his arm.

‘Your diligence does you credit, Captain,’ he said. ‘But I’m sure the King wouldn’t want you and your men driven into the ground just for the gathering of his tithe.’

Nilsson’s expression became puzzled. Gryss began to speak more carefully again, presuming that the Captain had not understood properly. ‘He wouldn’t want you to work so hard for him that you fell ill. Especially as I imagine our small tithe won’t make much difference to his revenue.’ He became avuncular. ‘Good grief! No one can even remember when the tithe was last collected from here. Your taking a day or so to rest and recover your strength isn’t going to make any difference after all these years, is it?’

The possible answer to this rose frighteningly in his mind once again. ‘There is no great need, is there? A war or something?’ he added anxiously.

As Gryss had spoken, Nilsson’s look of bewilder-ment had been replaced by one of shrewd-eyed calculation, and this in turn had given way to one of studied blankness. He was silent for a moment after Gryss had finished.

‘No, no,’ he said suddenly with a shake of his head, as if he had just recalled the question. ‘No… war. Just…’ He finished with a casual shrug.

Gryss reflected the movement in a shrug of his own. ‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘you must stay here and rest until your men are fit again. It won’t be too long, I’m sure. Only a few days.’ He gazed around at the smoky hall with distaste. ‘I’m afraid I’ve no idea what rooms there are in the castle, but there must be plenty better than this. I wouldn’t bother disturbing your men now, let them sleep. But perhaps tomorrow you can find something more comfortable.’

Nilsson’s eyes were fixed on Gryss. ‘We don’t have enough food to allow us to stay here,’ he said.

‘I’m sure we can come to some arrangement about any food that the King’s tithe gatherers might need.’ Gryss made his reply airy, though he was pleased that he had remembered to keep a note of impending barter in his offer.

Nilsson nodded and moved towards the door. Gryss took this to be both an acceptance of his suggestion and an end of his visit.

‘I’ll come back tomorrow,’ he said.

As he was about to open the door it swung towards him and two men entered. He stepped aside to let them pass then made to leave. As he moved, one of the men shot a questioning glance at Nilsson and Gryss felt a powerful grip close about his arm. He gave it a tug, but knew immediately that no effort he could muster would free him. Alarmed, he turned to Nilsson.

The Captain was engaged in an urgent conversation with Gryss’s captor that ended abruptly in a stern, almost vicious command from Nilsson, which, though Gryss did not understand their language, obviously meant, ‘Let him go!’ with a strongly implied ‘or else’. It was obeyed only after the second utterance, and the release was as rough as the seizure. Independent of this, however, Gryss deemed it advisable to remain where he was until Nilsson spoke to him directly.