Roger Taylor - The waking of Orthlund

Gulda looked at Loman. He shrugged helplessly. ‘They’re barely listening to me,’ he said quietly.

‘It seems nobody wants to listen today,’ Gulda said. ‘But you’re not trying too hard though, are you?’

Loman waved the remark side. ‘I sympathize with them,’ he said. ‘And most of them need to get rid of their anger before they’ll listen to any of my ideas about what we can do next.’

Gulda looked round at the watching, restive crowd and nodded. After a moment she held up her hand for silence.

‘We’ve a problem, ladies, gentlemen,’ she said. ‘We amp;mdashor rather, Tirilen amp;mdashspoke to the Alphraan. Asked them why they’d done what they did, but they gave her no answer.’ She looked round the crowd. ‘They heard,’ she continued, ‘and some of them might have listened. But they gave no answer.’

‘No more talking then, Memsa,’ someone shouted before she could continue. ‘Not after yesterday. They’ll only listen properly when they’ve had a good hiding. We should be up in the mountains flushing them out, not debating here like a Guild meeting.’

Applause and cheering greeted this observation.

Gulda let it subside, then she looked at her adviser and nodded with exaggerated gravity. ‘I’m half inclined to agree with you, young man,’ she said. ‘But only half. The other half tells me still that they’re divided amongst themselves and that we should wait a little and let that division widen. And besides, flushing them out may present some difficult problems. Think about it for a moment. We know what they can do, but we don’t know how they do it. They use weapons quite beyond our understanding, and very effectively too, although they seem to have some difficulty in dealing with large numbers of people. But that aside, how are we going to give them a good hiding when we can’t even find them? And how are we going to fight people who make us fight amongst ourselves?’

The man looked at her impotently and offered no reply, but another pushed forward to the front of the crowd.

‘Memsa, how long should we wait then?’ he said simply.

Gulda stared at him. His eyes were anxious but de-termined. She bowed slightly, in acknowledgement of the aptness of the question then looked up into the mist.

‘You heard, Alphraan?’ she said. ‘How long? How long before we know your will?’

The crowd fell silent.

Slowly, the babble that had surrounded Gulda and Tirilen rose up until it seemed to hover over the whole camp. It was like a myriad tiny voices all talking at once and it was laced through with doubt, recrimination, regret, grief, anger, countless emotions of every intensity.

Gradually however, one sound, angry and sour, wove through the confusion turning it into a single coherent pattern that finally became one voice. ‘Leave us,’ it said. ‘Go from our mountains, and take your corrupted hearts and your corrupted wares with you. We will not allow your folly.’

‘Have you learned nothing from those wares amp;mdashHis work?’ Gulda said. ‘Or from what you’ve seen here amp;mdashour work. Or from the results of your own work? Did you learn nothing from Tirilen’s blessing?’

‘Go,’ said the voice. ‘We will talk with you no more. Go, or we will punish you further.’

Gulda’s hand shot out to silence the angry gasp that rose up from the crowd.

‘If you will not talk now, then you leave us with no alternative but to pursue you until you will talk,’ Gulda said. ‘You understand that, don’t you? The Orthlundyn, of all people, cannot be dominated.’

Silence.

Gulda turned back to the young man. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

The man held her gaze. ‘Don’t be,’ he said softly.

Then the temporarily subdued anger of the crowd broke through, and for several minutes nothing could be heard over the shouting.

Gulda stood motionless, leaving Loman struggling to restore order.

‘You’re Orthlundyn,’ he shouted over the din. ‘And would-be soldiers. You’re supposed to be disciplined and ordered. Is this how you intend to behave when we meet a real enemy? Like a quarrelsome rabble?’

The noise subsided a little, but not to Loman’s satis-faction. ‘Attention!’ he thundered furiously. His voice echoed even through the mist and the crowd fell silent abruptly.

He leaned forward. ‘Have you learned so little?’ he said. ‘We have an enemy who can use our anger as a weapon against us, and you give them all this.’ He extended his arms and shook them powerfully, fists clenched. ‘Understand. Only your discipline and your knowledge that the man or woman next to you is disciplined also, will sustain you through the terror of battle and ensure you stand any chance of walking unhurt from the field. If this is how you behave when someone opposes you just with words, how are you going to behave when arrows and stones are falling around you? When horses and angry men are charging you?’

Gulda moved to stand next to him.

‘What we will do is this,’ he continued, more quietly. ‘We’ll consolidate into three large forces, and carry out a methodical search of the mountains until we find where these people live. Then, equally methodically, we’ll take possession of their domain just as they’ve done of ours.’

A hand went up. Loman nodded.

‘If we go in large groups, and they take control, couldn’t the damage be worse than before?’ asked the questioner.

‘I don’t know,’ Loman replied. ‘But we’ll go in as the duty patrol approached camp three. We’ll go in as free of anger as we can. We’ll go in doing what we do best.’ He smiled a little. ‘Or at least, what you do best. You’ll go in like carvers. Listening to the rock song. Using your shadow vision.’ He bent forward and his voice fell almost to a whisper. ‘Full of the great silence of your craft.’ He raised a finger. ‘The Alphraan can’t use a weapon that we aren’t carrying.’

Doubt rose up from the crowd, but no one de-murred. The manner of the rescue of Tybek at camp three had been circulating freely.

‘But we don’t know where they are,’ the questioner said.

Loman straightened up. ‘The Alphraan have re-mained hidden because we’ve never looked for them,’ he replied. ‘Why should we?’ he added with a shrug. ‘We didn’t even know they existed. They probably hide the entrances to their… caves?… tunnels?… in some ingenious way.’ His voice rose. ‘But can anything be so cunning or subtle that it can deceive the shadow vision of the Orthlundyn?’

No answer was needed, but another hand went up.

‘And when we find them?’ asked the new questioner.

Loman made an airy gesture. ‘We’ll continue to reason with them until they agree to return the arsenal and leave us alone.’ He looked at certain individuals in his audience. ‘No vengeance,’ he said darkly.

Then he raised his hand to forestall any further questions. ‘I don’t know whether this is going to work,’ he said. ‘But I think it’s the best we can do, and it has a clear rightness to it. However… ’ amp;mdashHe looked round the crowd amp;mdash‘There may be a price to be paid, I can’t deny it. If any of you wish to walk away from this, then do so now amp;mdashwithout reproach. But those of you who choose to stay must accept that you’ll be under military discipline. Once committed, we’ll pursue this wherever it takes us.’

No one moved.

Loman nodded. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘All patrol com-pany leaders come to Athyr’s command post immediately so that we can work out details. The rest of you amp;mdashcarry on with your normal duties and try to think quietly about what we have to do. Try to put aside your view of yourselves as fighters and warriors about to face an enemy.’