Farnor

Chapter 2

Wide-eyed and fearful, Farnor stepped back and swung his staff up to point at the rustling shrubbery.

The noise came nearer. Farnor stepped back further to give himself more space in which to manoeuvre. Whatever might be coming towards him, he knew that to attempt to flee from a predator would be to draw it after him inexorably.

The shrubbery parted.

'Rannick!' Farnor exclaimed in a mixture of anger and relief as he lowered his staff. 'You frightened me to death.'

The newcomer's lip curled peevishly. It was his characteristic expression. He ignored Farnor's outburst.

'What're you doing up here, young Yarrance?' he said, twisting Farnor's family name into a sneer.

Despite his relief at encountering a person instead of some blood-crazed animal, Farnor took no delight in Rannick's arrival. Few in the community liked the man but, for reasons he could not identify, Farnor felt a particular, and deep, antipathy to him. It was not without some irony, however, that while on the whole Rannick reciprocated the community's opinion of him he seemed to have a special regard for Farnor - in so far as he had regard for anyone. For although life had not presented Rannick with any special disadvantages, his general demeanour exuded the bitterness and envy of a man unjustly dispossessed of some great fortune. When he spoke, it was as if to praise or admire something would be to risk choking himself to death. And when he undertook a task it was as if to create something willingly, or for its own sake, might wither his hands.

'Don't let him near the cows,' Farnor's mother would say if she saw him wandering near the farm. 'That face of his will sour the milk for a week.'

He had wilfully neglected the quite adequate portion of land that his father had left him and now he earned his keep by casual labouring on the valley farms and, it was generally agreed, by some judicious thieving and poaching, though he had never been caught at such.

Worse, it was rumoured that on his periodic disappearances from the valley he was thick with travellers and the like from over the hill.

Apart from his invariably unpleasant manner however, perhaps his most damning feature was his intelligence; his considerable intelligence. In others such a gift would have been a boon, an affirmation, but in Rannick it was what truly set him apart. It gleamed with mocking scorn in his permanently narrowed eyes when they were not full of anger or malice, and it could lend a keen and vicious edge to his tongue, too subtle to provoke an immediate angry rebuke but cruel and long-lasting in its wounding nonetheless.

And, perhaps, there were other things.

Farnor remembered a soft, incomplete conversation between his mother and father overheard one night when he had crept down the stairs to eavesdrop on that mysterious world of adult life that awoke only as the children went to sleep.

'Rannick has his grandfather in him, I'd swear. He knows and sees more than the rest of us.' His father's voice, muffled.

Ear close to the door, Farnor had sensed his mother nodding in agreement. 'It's to be hoped not,' she said. 'Not with that dark nature of his. It'll do neither him nor anyone else any good.'

And that had been all. But unspoken meanings had permeated the words, and something deep in Farnor's unease about Rannick had resonated to them.

'I'm tending the sheep,' he replied to Rannick's question.

'Not doing such a good job, are you?' Rannick retorted, nudging the dead sheep with his foot and making the flies swarm upwards again. This time they did not travel far, but settled back to their noisome business almost immediately.

Farnor grimaced but said nothing. He looked at Rannick's angular, unshaven face, his unkempt black hair and his generally soiled appearance. He was like someone that Yonas might have described as a bandit or some other kind of a villain in one of his tales.

And yet, even as he watched Rannick examining the sheep, he felt that the man was not without a quality of some kind: a strange, inner strength or purposefulness. And, too, he noted almost reluctantly, that with a little cleaning up he might even be quite handsome; that he could perhaps serve as much as a hero as a villain in such a tale.

Abruptly the flies flew up again, surrounding Rannick. He swore profanely and Farnor's new vision of him disappeared. Then Rannick snapped his fingers. Or at least that was what Farnor thought he did, though the movement he made was very swift and the sound was odd... strangely loud, and yet distant. Almost as if it were in a different place.

For an instant Farnor felt disorientated: as though he had been suddenly jolted awake as sometimes happened to him when he was hovering halfway between sleep and waking. As he recovered he found Rannick gazing at him, his eyes searching him intently.

'What's the matter?' Farnor heard him say.

'Nothing,' Farnor replied as casually as he could, waving a hand vaguely. 'I... don't like the flies.'

Rannick sneered dismissively and, muttering something to himself, turned back to the sheep. Farnor noticed, however, that the flies were gone from both the corpse and Rannick. They were hovering in a dark shifting cloud some way away, almost as if they were being constrained there or were too fearful to venture closer. And he sensed that Rannick was observing him in some way, even though he seemed to be totally occupied by his examination of the sheep. Briefly, his disorientation returned.

'What are you looking for?' he ventured after a moment in an attempt to recover himself. Rannick did not reply, but bent forward and retrieved something from the sheep's fleece. He looked at it closely and then he lifted it to his nose and sniffed at it. It was a peculiarly repellent action. Farnor grimaced.

'I... I'll have to get back,' he stammered, stepping back as he felt his stomach beginning to heave. Only the fear of Rannick's mockery prevented him from vomiting there and then.

Again, Rannick did not reply. Instead he stood up and moved his head from side to side like an animal searching for a scent. Farnor felt the unseen observation pass from him.

'I'll have to get back,' he said again, continuing to retreat. 'Tell my father what's happened. He'll need to know. And the others... they'll want to hunt this thing...'

Still Rannick said nothing. He was looking to the north, still, so it seemed, scenting the wind.

Farnor turned and began to run. Not so fast as to appear to be frightened, he hoped, but sufficient to emphasize the urgency of his message. He needed the movement and the wind in his face to quieten his churning stomach. He did not look back until he knew he would no longer be able to see Rannick on the skyline.

* * * *

The farmhouse of Garren and Katrin Yarrance was little different from any other in the valley, though its stone walls were somewhat thicker than most and its thatched roof a little steeper, in deference to the fact that it was the highest farm up the valley and tended to receive more of the winter snows than those lower down.

The Yarrance family land was not particularly good but it was quite extensive, having grown through the generations as less able, or less fortunate, families had gradually given up the struggle to eke a living from those farms that were then even higher up the valley.

Land ownership, however, was not a matter of great sensitivity to the valley dwellers. Not much was fenced, and cattle, sheep and people roamed fairly freely. The valley was big enough to feed everyone who lived in it and that was all that really mattered.

In any event, technically, the land belonged to the King, being let on lease and liable to the payment of an annual tithe. This was calculated from an ancient and very arcane formula, which approximated (very roughly) to one seventeenth of the dairy produce, a nineteenth of all grains and harvestable grasses, and a sixteenth of all meat produce on alternate years except in the year of a coronation or in the event of invasion or eclipse. (There were also exemptions for some produce and special levies for others during those years in which the King and his family, to first cousin, were blessed with children or diminished by death). Root crops were exempt, as were strawberries and apples (except where grown for purposes of barter), but not raspberries or pears. All individual tithings were doubled in respect of any produce used in the making of spirituous liquors (of any character, save those used medicinally).

After that, matters became complicated.

How this fiscal wisdom had been so succinctly distilled was beyond anyone's current knowledge, and, indeed, there were only a few left in the valley who could even attempt to calculate the due tithe. And they rarely agreed on the final answer.

Not that any of this was of great concern, for just as Garren Yarrance's farm was at the extremity of the valley, so the valley itself was at the extremity of the kingdom, and not only did little or no news of kingly affairs ever reach them, neither did the tithe gatherers. Or at least they had not done so for many years.

Views were divided on this benison.

'The tithe should be collected,' said some. 'It is the King's due and if the gatherers come and there's nothing prepared, then the penalty could be harsh.'

This could not be denied and was a cause of much furrowing of brows amongst those advocating this course. Others, less cautious, thought differently.

'The King's got no need for our small...