Roger Taylor - The waking of Orthlund

Yrain lowered her eyes briefly, but when she looked up her face was resolute. ‘Frankly, I couldn’t care less about what they think of us,’ she said. ‘If they can’t understand what we’d be trying to show them, then they must be particularly stupid, so who needs their good opinion?’

There was some nodding of heads amongst the small audience at this forthright observation.

‘Besides, Memsa,’ she continued. ‘We’re supposed to be learning how to defend ourselves. We’re supposed to be making up for the years of neglect that eventually allowed creatures from Narsindal to march into our country unseen and unopposed, and commit murder. We can’t let these people treat us thus amp;mdashdeny us access to what’s been entrusted to us for such work.’ She glanced awkwardly at Loman. ‘So far, for all some of the training has been harsh, it’s been so much theory. Now, we have to act, and act as an army amp;mdashdeal with a real practical problem. If we take some knocks, we take some knocks, and that’s it. We’ll be the wiser for it. But we can’t sit and do nothing. It would be a betrayal of Hawklan… of ourselves… everything.’ She looked around, her face agitated. ‘And for all we know, these Alphraan might be in league with Narsindal in some way. This action they’ve taken could be part of some deeper scheme.’

Several members of the group shifted uncomforta-bly at this suggestion. Gulda leaned forward and rested her head on her long hands, folded over the top of her stick. Then, in an echo of Loman’s earlier sentiments, Yrain finished. ‘The arrogant little devils have no conceivable right to do what they’re doing.’

Several voices spoke up in agreement.

‘And if they try to prevent us?’ Gulda repeated, when the talking died down. ‘Start attacking our training parties?’

Yrain frowned. ‘They haven’t done us any real harm so far,’ she said.

‘Except murder,’ someone said.

‘No,’ Yrain said, wincing slightly as she twisted round in her seat to look at the speaker. ‘When we first met… encountered them… with the children, they admitted two of the deaths and said they regretted them. We were helpless so they’d no need to make any such admission, and they sounded sincere enough to me.’ She turned back to Gulda as if for confirmation. ‘They said the deaths were the result of our own actions. I know it’s no justification if they were interfering in some way to disturb concentration, but all the… accidents… happened to our people when they were doing difficult, dangerous, climbs.’ She paused, hesitant to move too quickly past the shades of their dead friends. Then, almost apologetically, ‘But there’s no need for anything like that in what I’m suggesting. Really we’ll just be lumping everyone’s basic survival training together and bringing some of the ordinary training up into the mountains. If we keep away from too dangerous places, my feeling is that they won’t be able to harm us even if they wanted to.’

Gulda lifted her head to speak, but Yrain, anxious to commit her every resource before execution, continued. ‘And if they do attack us in some way, then we’ll learn more about them, and what they do. And if we put a large number of groups in all at once, we’ll perhaps get some measure of their strength.’

The room fell silent as Yrain finished. All eyes turned to Gulda. She looked around. ‘What do you think?’ she said.

The debate was brief. Yrain’s sentiments chimed with most of those present. Despite a strong desire to ‘punch arrogant noses’, the dominant feeling was that far too little was known about this unexpected foe, and some form of peaceful probing was essential.

‘I agree,’ Gulda concluded. ‘We’ll get on with it straight away.’ She raised a warning finger. ‘But maximum safety though. Lots of good communication, observers, pre-arranged meeting places, etc, etc. I need hardly remind you that they succeeded in making a group of our better students miss an entire mountain. We must all be very alert. Whatever else they might be, they’re capable of some subtlety.’

As the meeting broke up, Gulda signalled to Yrain. The girl, supporting herself on a stick, limped across to her, her thin face suddenly anxious.

‘Tirilen said it would be all right to come,’ she be-gan, before Gulda could speak. ‘The stick takes the weight off my foot… and Athyr helped me,’ she added hastily.

‘Sit down,’ Gulda said.

Without taking her eyes off her nemesis, Yrain nervously lowered herself onto a nearby chair. Gulda sat down opposite her and rested her head on the end of her stick again. Loman eyed her carefully, prepared to act as champion for the girl if need arose.

‘Well done, Ysain,’ Gulda said. ‘That was nicely reasoned and a step in the right direction.’ There was sufficient reservation in Gulda’s voice, however, to prevent Yrain’s relief overwhelming her concern, and she kept her eyes fixed on Gulda’s face.

Gulda continued. ‘This is going to involve some drastic changes to our training schedules,’ she said. ‘And I want you to work with Loman here on the details. We must treat this affair as being most urgent. I want the new schedules ready by this time tomorrow, designed for immediate implementation.’

Loman raised his eyebrows. ‘That’ll be difficult,’ he said. Gulda shrugged. ‘Just do it,’ she said simply. ‘You’ve defined the problem clearly enough yourselves. We’re in the dark, and we’re virtually defenceless. Yrain’s idea is sound and we’ve got no real alternatives.’ Her face became grim. ‘We don’t discuss it, but you know as well as I do that at any moment, a rider could come down from the north and tell us that the absence of so many weapons has changed from being an inconvenience to being a disaster. Just bear that in mind if you get the urge to go to sleep tonight.’

Loman nodded. ‘What will you be doing?’ he risked.

Gulda looked at him narrowly. ‘I’m going to prepare some touches of my own,’ she said. ‘To see if I can find a wedge for Yrain’s hammer to drive into the split in our neighbours’ opinions.’

Clutching the black sword protectively to his chest, Isloman stared up blankly. Then he screwed up his eyes as if to penetrate some particularly obscure shadow. A torch moved, and Hawklan’s face came clearly into focus. He was flanked on the left by Dacu, tense and concerned, and on the right by Tirke, shocked and obviously struggling to keep control.

Briefly it occurred to Isloman that they were all dead and in some mysterious afterworld, but before he could fully register the scene, a familiar voice sounded gleefully by his ear. ‘Get up, dear boy, get up. You’re not hurt. He’s back. He just woke up and chased them all away.’

‘Hawklan?’ Isloman whispered, his voice sounding odd in his own ears after the noise of the Alphraan and the deep silence he had woken to. ‘You’re awake. How do you feel?’ The remark seemed incongruous, but nothing else seemed to be able to get past the welter of emotions suddenly filling him.

‘Fine. And you?’ came an equally incongruous re-sponse. Without replying, Isloman took an offered hand and struggled shakily to his feet.

For a moment he simply stared at Hawklan in the torchlight, then, with an action that had become almost a reflex over the past weeks, he reached out and placed his hand on Hawklan’s brow.

‘Where’ve you been?’ he asked, still struggling to quieten his mind at this seemingly miraculous devel-opment.

Hawklan smiled slightly at the gesture and then shrugged. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘All the time. But other places as well… I think… involved and not involved.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t really explain. It was like a strange fragmented dream. Not unpleasant… but not good.’