Roger Taylor - The call of the sword

‘You’re right,’ he said. Then looking at his bandaged hand he nodded and, standing up, gave her a kiss on the forehead. ‘You’ve done a fine job on this,’ he said briskly. ‘Hawklan would be pleased with you.’

‘You were very lucky,’ she replied. ‘It came very close to doing you an injury that even Hawklan would have found difficult to mend. You could have been crippled for life. Now go and find that chisel right away.’

Isloman pursed his lips regretfully. ‘I don’t know what came over me,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to be young to be foolish, do you?’

As he was leaving, Tirilen spoke again.

‘Uncle. You can’t work properly today. Both your hand and your heart are too hurt. Go round the village and see what other harm has been done by this tinker’s wares.’

Isloman, his huge frame filling the doorway, looked at her steadily. She was so different now from the boisterous child she had been. More and more she’s growing like her mother, he thought, and an old hurt throbbed briefly.

His tour of the village turned into a dark pilgrimage of his own as he wended his way round the clean sunlit streets and sharp-edged houses. People came out and, without speaking, gave him things they had bought and now rejected. In the end it was four or five of them, heavily laden, who left the tinker’s wares in a pile outside the leaving stone of the village, marking it with the ancient sign for ‘Unclean’ as a warning to passers-by.

Doubtfully, Tirilen laid words on it to protect any plants and animals that might light on it. She wished Hawklan were here. She did not have this kind of skill.

Isloman looked down at the tools, fabrics and jewel-lery, even toys, and shook his head sadly.

‘Is this all we can do with them, Isloman?’ asked Ireck, his friend and an Elder of the Guild. Isloman did not answer.

‘What else can we do,’ said Otaff, another Elder of the Guild. ‘They’re tainted in ways we cannot read. Who can say what blinded us into accepting them. Perhaps when Hawklan returns he’ll know what to do. For now we must hope that the signs and Tirilen’s words protect the unwary and the innocent.’

He looked sadly at the pile. ‘This must remain here. Outside the village. To mark our shame.’

No one dissented from this unhappy conclusion, and the group dispersed slowly without any leave-taking.

Tirilen sat on a wide ledge in a room high in the castle, staring out across the countryside. Her blonde hair hung loose, shining in the bright spring sunshine. She pressed her nose against the window.

‘What’s happening, Gavor?’ she said to the raven, currently examining some fruit in a bowl on the table. He walked across to her purposefully and then flitted up on to her shoulder and peered earnestly in the direction she was looking.

‘You’re steaming up the window, dear girl, that’s what’s happening,’ he said after a moment. Tirilen glowered sideways at him.

‘Sorry,’ he said.

An insect collided drowsily with the window and lurched off into the clear air erratically. Tirilen curled up her knees and, wrapping her arms around her legs, rested her head on them.

‘Steady, dear girl,’ said Gavor, tottering at this unex-pected manoeuvre. ‘I’m used to a bigger perch than this you know.’

Tirilen smiled. ‘Yes. A lot of us are missing Hawklan in one way or another.’

Gavor did not comment. He hopped off her shoulder and started walking up and down the room fretfully. He too was unsettled by the feeling of impending change that seemed to be pervading the castle and the village. Not the changes wrought by the coming of spring, but something more elusive and subtle; something alarm-ing.

He tapped his wooden leg thoughtfully on the floor and mumbled to himself. The strange tinker and his appalling wares. Isloman injured and demented, albeit briefly. Hawklan gone. He, who never went more than a few days walk from the village. Gone on a wild trip across the mountains for no reason that he cared to state. And without him too. And that sword!

Gavor felt the clouds on his horizon. Whatever was happening emanated from that tinker surely? But the change centred around Hawklan; his friend. His friend who had gone on alone. They had never been apart before.

Temperamentally however, Gavor was not given to brooding. He regarded himself as a bird of action when times required, and this was such a time.

‘Rrukkk,’ he said.

Tirilen looked at him coldly. ‘You should eat less,’ she said.

‘I shall ignore that remark, dear girl,’ he replied haughtily. ‘That was just an ejaculation. A punctuation mark in my thoughts as it were. I’ve made up my mind.’

Tirilen was silent.

He continued, slightly discomfited. ‘I’m going after Hawklan. The poor boy’s sure to get lost in those mountains. Especially with the directions Isloman has given him.’

Tirilen’s eyes widened. ‘But he did say he wanted to go alone,’ she said, unconvincingly.

Gavor bent his head. ‘I know. But I can’t leave him. He’s going to need someone. I can feel it in my pinions. He’s so naive.’

Tirilen frowned thoughtfully, and then abruptly stood up and threw the window open. The warm breeze blew her hair about her face.

‘Yes. You’re right,’ she said, extending her arm for him to jump on. ‘Go and find him. Look after him. Watch over him.’

A tear ran down her face as she held her hand out through the window. Gavor left his perch and soared off majestically, his black wings shimmering in the sunlight.

Swooping back, he lay for a moment on the air ris-ing up the tower wall.

‘Don’t cry, dear girl,’ he shouted. ‘Gavor to the res-cue.’

He extended his wooden leg and made feints and thrusts with it as if it were a tiny sword.

‘Oops!’

His antics cost him his balance, and he dropped out of sight suddenly. Tirilen thought she caught a word she was unfamiliar with rising up from below, and then he flapped into view again.

‘And I’ll be able to practice my nightingale impres-sions in some privacy. Away from the scorn that greets me here,’ he said with great dignity.

Tirilen laughed and waved to him, and then wiped her eyes on her sleeve, briefly the little girl she had once been.

As she watched Gavor disappear from view, she could hear him whistling awkwardly, and then clearing his throat and coughing.

Two days after leaving the village, Hawklan was well into the mountains. As Loman had teased, it was further than he had ever been before, but he felt he was being urged forward rather than being drawn back, which was the feeling he had had in the past whenever he travelled any distance from the Castle.

He was on the line of the River Road, which passed through the village and went straight into the moun-tains. It had ceased to be a road as such, many miles back, and was now only a rough track, though still well formed and quite easy walking.

Coming to the top of a long steep incline, he paused for a moment, and took off his pack. Looking for a suitable place to sit, he turned round and saw spread before him the rolling farmlands and forests of Orthlund. It was an impressive and beautiful sight when seen from Anderras Darion, but here he was much higher and the air was wonderfully clear from a rainstorm earlier in the day.

He had been plodding relentlessly uphill for some considerable time and had not once looked behind. The sudden sight overwhelmed him and the Great Song of Orthlund, rich in spring harmonies, flowed up the valleys and filled him with such joy that tears ran down his sweat-stained face. From somewhere deep inside came the thought that he would fight again to defend such a land, such a people, such a balance and harmony.