Hallsfoot's Battle Read Free Page B

in jest, but Simon still
nodded. He’d heard what the disgraced elders had said at Isabella
Montfort’s burial, had an inkling of the kind of responsibility
they’d given to Annyeke before they, like Johan, had vanished. It
seemed beyond any one person’s capabilities. Now he could sense
their presence in his companion’s mind, the facts of them almost
overshadowing her, if such a thing were possible. Greatest of them
all was the First Elder, the Day-Guardian of the Wine Lands, a man
whom past sins and regrets had all but shattered. He had departed
from the city to the distant place of healing where the cypress
trees grew in abundance in order to try to save Gathandria with
prayer. That much Simon could see, although he could not understand
it. He had taken the remaining four elders with him, men skilled in
glass-making, the carving of chairs, the nurture of gardens and
parks, and one who knew the harmony of words and silence. They had
gone together in order to meditate, leaving Annyeke alone. He did
not envy her task.
    “What are you going to do?” he asked.
    Annyeke leaned back on her stool and brushed
her hand through her hair. The gesture caused some strands to
escape from her plait and she frowned. “I don’t know. I’m not even
sure what the elders meant, if I’m honest. Of course, we need to
work together as a people, try to rebuild our strength and face
Gelahn when he attacks us again. But if you ask me how in the gods’
names we’re going to do that, then I really don’t know. The elders
left me no clues. But that doesn’t mean I won’t die trying, if I
have to.”
    Watching the determination flicker over her
face and feeling the bright echo of it in his mind, Simon thought
perhaps the elders had known exactly what they were doing. It also
surprised him that she would dare to mention the mind-executioner’s
name. Hadn’t Johan warned him against doing so, since it apparently
gave their enemy an entry to the mind and a chance to ravage them?
It was obvious things in Gathandria were changing but, without any
personal sense of the land’s history, the scribe had no
understanding of how much, or how dangerous those changes might
become. But, right now, there were more urgent issues to face.
    “I hope we won’t have to die,” he said. “I’m
a scribe, not a soldier. I was hoping things might be easier once I
was here in your lands, but I can see, already, that’s
unlikely.”
    If Simon had expected the frisson of distaste
he was accustomed to from Johan when he expressed something less
than enthusiasm for an act of bravery, his expectations were not
fulfilled.
    Annyeke laughed.
    She stretched forward, gripped his shoulder
and opened her mouth to speak as the door to the outside world was
pushed open and someone who wasn’t Talus stepped onto the
threshold.
    Johan.
     
     
    First Lammas Lands
Chronicle
     
    Ralph
     
    The castle of the Tregannons is no longer his
home. He does not even need the gifting of a Sensitive to know
this. Ralph’s few remaining guards mutter in the shadows and the
stallholders have gone from the courtyard—the women, too. Not that
he has taken a woman for many moon-cycles, nor any man neither, not
since Simon the mind-dweller came to haunt him.
    Ralph thinks Simon saved him during the
battle with the Gathandrians, but he cannot be sure. His hair is
burnt, as is the skin on his arms and chest. His leg is twisted and
cannot bear his whole weight. He doesn’t remember much about how
this happened but perhaps that is for the best. It is certainly
better not to think of the scribe at all, nor about what he himself
has done. He must instead think of his people, the Lammas dwellers.
Soon the mind-executioner will return and Ralph must be ready for
him. The executioner and he have failed in their endeavours and he
does not know what his enemy will do now, nor how he might want
Ralph to help him.
    There is no other choice, but he has always
known that. The mind-executioner’s