Roger Taylor: The call of the sword

With an elegant flourish he produced a shimmering cloth, and with practiced hands laid it out on the ground, hopping round it jerkily and flicking out creases here and there. Then another and another, pausing only to wink broadly at one of the silent, gathering crowd, and to expose two bright white rows of teeth shining in his brown, wrinkled face. It was a smile that few could resist.

Then he plunged into his voluminous pack and waited for a moment with his arms immersed, sweeping his smile across his entire audience. With a slight movement of his head, he mimicked their own involun-tary craning curiosity. The adults reflected his smile knowingly back at him and the children laughed, the strangeness of the man beginning to fade. The Orthlundyn were reserved, but neither unfriendly nor inhospitable.

Abruptly, there were more flourishes, and even more frenzied activity, and all manner of things started to appear on the three cloths. As they appeared, so the reserve of the crowd faded further, and as people started to gossip and point, so the tinker started to underscore his actions with a jerky stream of staccato chatter delivered in a high creaking voice that seemed to fit his creaking shape.

‘Here, ladies. Laces from the north and the south. Ribbons woven and dyed by the Eirthlundyn over the Great River.’

He draped the laces around the necks of the women, and whirled the coloured ribbons high and twisting into the air, as he twisted himself in and out of the crowd.

‘Not many Eirthlundyn left now, but they know how to adorn their women,’ he noted more confidentially to the men. ‘And, ladies. These perfumes.’

Small crystal bottles appeared from various myste-rious pockets in his tattered tunic, and like the ribbons and laces they were handed around indiscriminately. He looked pensively at one.

‘Such a journey to bring these to you, dear ladies; such a journey as you could not imagine. From rare hot lands that burned and wrinkled my skin to its present delicate leathery hue. And what it did to my feet, I must walk on, but we need not dwell on. And my pocket. Ah… But I was ever foolish in such matters, and their women kept so fair and beautiful in that terrible sun. How could I resist? Only the women of Pedhavin are worthy of such treasures I thought, and here I am with the most subtle and fragrant perfumes you will ever know.’

Then again, confidentially. ‘With these, no man will be able to resist you, ladies.’

As the hubbub of the crowd grew and the women started to dab themselves with perfume and hold the ribbons and laces against one another, heads cocked critically, the tinker deftly isolated the men like a sheepdog cutting out sheep from a flock.

‘For the ladies, gentlemen, the finery and the frip-pery, but for you… ‘ More plunging in the pack. ‘For you… ’

Chisels and knives and all manner of tools ap-peared.

‘Steel such as you’ve never seen. Edges that even your Pedhavin stone won’t easily turn. Careful, sir. When Derimot Findeel Dan-Tor says edge, he means edge. You’ll lose your finger and not even know it’s gone.’

‘Hawklan will put it back on for me,’ laughed the young man who was holding the knife, and his friends joined in. However, he eased the knife back into its carved leather sheath very carefully.

‘From Riddin sir, the leather. The finest leather you could possibly find. No one works leather like the Riddinvolk.’ Then he rested his hand on the young man’s arm.

‘Hawklan, sir? Who is he?’

The young man turned and pointed up the hill to the castle.

‘Our healer. That’s his castle up there.’

‘His castle?’ said the tinker, eyes widening. The young man nodded.

‘Ah,’ said the tinker with a great exhalation. ‘I was going to ask you whether the great lord might allow me in to show my humble wares to his servants, and you tell me that this splendid castle houses only a healer.’ His voice became almost contemptuous. ‘A mixer of herbs and stitcher of gashes.’ He shook his head. ‘Orthlund is a strange place.’

An older man caught his eye. ‘We have no lords in Orthlund, tinker… Derimot,’ he said in a friendly, but firm tone. ‘No man holds sway over another here. Hawklan had the key to open Anderras Darion when he came, and he speaks nothing of his past, so we respect his wish. He’s a most exceptional healer. And much loved.’ He looked significantly at the tinker who was still for a moment before bowing his head and twisting it round to look up at the man.

‘Had the key when he arrived?’ he said quietly. The man nodded.

Then, like a wave returning down the shore to the sea after lingering at the storm line, the tinker burst into movement again.

‘I meant no offence, sir. I’m much travelled, and not all healers are deserving of honours by any means. In other lands, such a castle would house a most mighty Lord, with many servants, and… ’ he winked, ‘many needs.’

So Derimot Findeel Dan-Tor flitted through the crowd gathered around his three cloths, gangling like a huge, amiable and multi-coloured spider. Chattering endlessly, bartering and bantering, as soft hands tested linens and silks, and soft eyes looked knowingly as rare perfumes were bought. Chattering, as brown, experi-enced hands examined chisels and sickles, and brown voices asked cautious questions, carefully trying to hide the desires bred from the love of the land and the love of the carving that saw fulfilment in the glitter of the shining tools.

But nothing was hidden from Derimot Findeel Dan-Tor. Least of all the tall blonde girl who whispered something to her large, brawny companion and then ran off towards the Castle Road, clutching the tiny golden trinket she had just bought.

Tirilen was the daughter of Loman, the castellan of Anderras Darion. She was born in the same year that Hawklan had come out of the wintry mountains with Gavor in his arms, and opened the long sealed castle.

Not as tall as Hawklan, she was nonetheless tall for a woman, and tended to look even taller because she stood at once erect and relaxed. Her long blonde hair was normally bound by a single ribbon, but occasionally it would fly free, and then she would subject it to an endless sequence of unnecessary groomings, running it through her hands and teasing it this way and that, before sweeping the whole back with a toss of the head.

Her eyes slanted slightly and their blue was like a reflection of the spring sky, while her straight and rather narrow nose overtopped a straight and rather narrow mouth. A mouth that could become tight and resolute with grim determination, or peevish and pouting if she were caught in some misdemeanour that perhaps provoked her father too far.

Now she was a quiet, alert young woman, but for most of her young life she had behaved like a riotous twelve-year-old boy and had been the continual despair of the women of the village charged by Loman with her education into womanhood since the death of her mother. Tirilen looked and moved like thistledown in the breeze, but in her time she had hitched up her skirts and waded into the river to tease the slumbering fishermen, scrambled and run across the rocks like a rabbit in rowdy games, and routinely knocked the heads of any of the local boys who showed signs of becoming unusually tender. Generally she had shown little inclination to behave in anything approaching a ladylike manner.

Loman was a stern and solid man, with a strong sense of justice and integrity which he shared with most of the Orthlundyn. He had frequently castigated his daughter when taxed by the village women, but he had had little heart for it, and Tirilen had only to smile and put her arms around him to ensure she could carry on as usual. Since her earliest years he had recognized his own independent temperament housed in his wife’s frame, and he took solace from the knowledge that while she knew of his love and affection she would come to no great harm, nor do any, and he would keep her as a friend as well as a daughter when life eventually eased them apart. They had always been happy with one another and were more so now.