Roger Taylor: Farnor

‘From over the hill, young Farnor,’ he said. ‘Off a trader from a land far, far away. Could hardly under-stand a word he said, though he managed to wring a rare price from me for it. Said it would protect me… I think.’ He chuckled at his youthful folly, then lifted up the ring and gazed at it. ‘Worth it, though. It took my fancy and it’s a fine piece of work.’

‘And a fine piece of iron,’ Garren added, reverting to practicalities. ‘Those lines are as sharp as they ever were.’

Gryss nodded. ‘Indeed they are,’ he said, his voice suddenly distant.

A brief awkward silence hung over the group, then Gryss said, ‘Anyway, what brings you to my humble cottage, with the prospect of a dark journey home ahead of you? No broken limbs by the look of you. And you’re not a man for picking quarrels with your neighbours.’ He hunched forward and stared at Farnor. ‘Toothache, perhaps?’ he said.

Farnor edged behind his father a little.

Before Garren could reply, however, Gryss stepped back and beckoned them inside. As they followed him through a small hallway and into a room at the back of the cottage, the old dog trundled forward again, sniffed at each of them and gave another dutiful bark before retiring, apparently for the evening by its demeanour, to a basket in the corner.

Gryss waved his visitors towards a bench by a long, well-scrubbed table. He sat down opposite them and looked at them expectantly.

‘Farnor was checking the sheep for the tithe when he found another one worried,’ Garren said, without preamble. ‘I think we’ll have to get a hunt together.’

Gryss frowned. ‘Tell me exactly what you found,’ he said to Farnor.

Farnor told his tale for the second time.

Gryss’s frown darkened. ‘It sounds like the others and it sounds bad,’ he said. ‘It’s something big all right, and it looks as if it intends to stay. I’ll have a word with Rannick when he appears, see if he saw anything that Farnor might have missed, then we’ll have to organize a hunt as you say.’

As they left Gryss’s cottage Farnor let his hand run over the iron ring again. Though he could not see them clearly in the dying daylight, he could feel the etched lines, fine and hard; the strange touch of the world over the hill. Heroic deeds captured in fine craftsmanship. Perhaps not everything out there was darkness and suspicion, he thought, unexpectedly.

Gryss’s parting words to his father interrupted his reverie. ‘Don’t send him out alone again, Garren,’ he was saying. ‘And don’t go out alone yourself.’

Deep in the cold darkness, a black-in-black shadow stirred uneasily.

Mingling with the scents that had returned with it was one it had known before. Long before… if it had ever known what time was.

With it came the desires that it had known before. Desires that it had long forgotten… if it had ever known what memory was. Ancient, black desires that fulfilled its heart and made it whole… it understood desires.

The scent came.

And went.

Elusive. Tormenting.

Deep in the darkness came a low, menacing growl that had not been heard for countless generations.

The prospect of a hunt might have been a source of some irritation to the adults of the valley, but to the young men and the boys it offered the prospect of considerable excitement although the former affected a haughty indifference to it.

And even the men were making little effort to keep their faces stern as they gathered a few mornings later at Garren’s farm with their various dogs and a motley assortment of weapons. There were pitchforks, spades, hatchets, billhooks, even a rusty old sword or two and, of course, the inevitable bows. There were also more than a few ale jugs in evidence.

Gryss looked at them dubiously and then laid down the law sternly.

‘No bows,’ he declared.

There were injured protests.

Gryss gave his reasons without any concession to the finer feelings of his audience.

‘There’s not one of you could hit a cottage end from ten paces, sober. The last time bows went out on a hunt we lost the dog we were after and brought down two beaters and three ewes.

It was somewhat of an exaggeration but not entirely unfair. With all their needs being well met from their farming, hunting skills were generally not required by the valley people.

Denials rose among the continuing protests.

Gryss met them full on. ‘Half of you don’t know which hand to let go of,’ he expanded heatedly.

Hackles rose even further and rebellion seemed imminent. Gryss’s eyes narrowed and his shoulders rose as if he were about to push a large weight. Then he seemed to concede and, swinging his pack off his shoulder, he began rooting around in it.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to argue with you, but…’ He pulled a long-bladed and lethal-looking knife from his pack and squinted knowledgeably along its edge. Then he breathed on it and slowly and deliberately whetted it on his sleeve. ‘If I’m going to be gouging arrows out of people…’ He made a laboured, scooping gesture with the knife as he laid emphasis on the word ‘gouging’. ‘Then I’ll be needing this. And…’ He turned to Garren. ‘Lend me one of your boring irons and some good dry kindling would you, Garren? Or, better still, a few sunstones if you can spare them so that we can get some real heat. It’s always best to seal those big wounds in the field. Better a little discomfort than bleeding to death on the way home.’

Interest in archery waned abruptly, as did the pro-tests, and soon the bows and quivers were leaning against the wall of Garren’s farmhouse.

Gryss allowed himself no victory celebration, but turned immediately to the next skirmish. ‘And you needn’t think you’re coming, Marna,’ he said, pointing a curved arm over the heads of the group. ‘I can see you there, trying to be inconspicuous.’

The small crowd parted to reveal a black-haired figure with what could have been a handsome face had it not been for its defiant glowering and a mouth wavering between a grim line and a pout. There was expectant amusement among the crowd and even the dogs fell silent.

Gryss threw up his hands in despair. ‘Look at you in those clothes!’ he said. ‘You look like a boy, for heaven’s sake. You should be home cleaning your father’s house, mending, cooking…’

The girl interrupted him with an angry gesture. ‘The house is clean, nothing needs mending and my father’s downland cutting reeds,’ she said, her voice as defiant as her appearance.

‘He wants to cut a thick one and lay it across your backside,’ Gryss muttered, though very softly. ‘Yes. And I’ve got to look him in the face when he gets back,’ he went on, louder. ‘I don’t want to be telling him his daughter’s been savaged by some wild animal.’

‘What’s going to savage anyone with all you around?’ Marna retorted, her tone witheringly dismis-sive. ‘It’s only some stupid dog we’ll be chasing.’

Gryss cringed inwardly. Having had no mother that she could recall, and a gentle, slightly lost father who was as compliant as the canes he wove into baskets and stools, Marna was wild, outspoken and prodigiously self-willed. That she was also large-hearted and generous in her nature served only to make her more difficult to deal with when she chose to stand her ground.

‘You’re not coming,’ Gryss declaimed, with as much an air of finality as he could muster, though, as ever with Marna, he could feel the argument slipping from him. ‘It’s too dangerous.’

‘It’s only a dog , for pity’s sake, Gryss,’ Marna reiter-ated. Her look darkened further. ‘You don’t want me along because I’ll probably find it while you’re all swilling ale. The only chance of me getting hurt is through one of you falling on top of me.’