The Gathandrian Trilogy 01 - The Gifting

call the wars of the mountains and even in the current battle situation, the mountain people have been regaining their strength. Preparing themselves for the ordeal to come.”
    “What ordeal?” Simon frowns. “Is it to do with the enemy?”
    “Yes, but I cannot tell you everything now. You will know soon enough. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said so much.”
    “Why not? Why can’t you tell me? Why should the entire burden be yours alone? I may be not the companion you and your sister would have chosen, but I can help you. If you’ll let me.”
    Johan doesn’t speak. For a moment, he grips Simon’s arm. The honesty and willingness in the other man’s thoughts take all his words away. Opening his mouth to respond—though only the gods know what that response would have been—he realises it is already too late.

    Isabella
    She feels his nearness. Gelahn is here, almost at the door. And Hartstongue is not ready for what her brother wants him to do. He is trapped here, on the mountain, like a gravel-shrew in a housekeeper’s cage. Her heart beats faster and she can feel her breath swift on her tongue.
    When this is over, Isabella hopes Johan will forgive her. She knows he will.
    Sensing something, the boy runs to the scribe, who holds him tightly. The scars on the side of his head, from where Hartstongue had rescued him, throb crimson against the snow.
    “It’ll be all right, little one,” the scribe murmurs. “You’re safe.”
    She cannot help shaking her head, hiding her smile, and Hartstongue falls silent.
    Johan leaps to the cave entrance. His black hair is swept back and his face flushed.
    “Quickly,” he says. “We must go. Now. ”
    “Go where?” Isabella replies with a shrug. “There’s nowhere to go. We cannot run. Not now. We must take what is coming with the courage to bear it. Perhaps it will not be as we fear.”
    He pays her no attention. Instead, he pulls the cloak from his shoulders and across the fire she has been trying to light for warmth. And as a guide to Gelahn. In the snow it can be difficult to track thought, though her master needs no help. It is simply a gesture. Now the feeble flame gutters and dies, and the chill of the mountain envelops them again.
    “What you are thinking is impossible, Johan,” she says. “You know that.”

    Johan
    The sound of his sister’s words brings his urgent movement to a sudden halt. The need to go, to try for the mountain air now and see if the scribe can win through in spite of it all dissipates into the icy air. He is thinking like a fool. He should be leading his people to safety, not hesitating, torn between wild hope and certain defeat as he is. For a few tense moments, silence dwells amongst the four of them, and Johan feels the threat outside at his very core. Worse than all this, he who has spent a lifetime knowing what to do and when to do it, he whom the elders trusted for that, is without a plan or a means to escape.
    “Is it the enemy?” Simon says. “Is it Ralph?”
    “Yes,” Johan replied, cursing the scribe’s heart-weakness that is surely drawing the enemy even faster to them. “Yes, it is as you say. Your presence with us—even though that is as it should be, for now—brings us all into a swifter danger. Your Overlord makes our enemy find us all the more easily.”
    He knows he is speaking simply in order to gain time for logical thought, but can find none. What to do next? By the gods, he does not know. Simon stares at him. Isabella reaches for him, but the scribe gets there first.
    His hand grasps Johan’s tunic collar and he raises one quizzical eyebrow. Even in the midst of what Simon must surely realise is a crisis, Johan cannot help admiring his wit in what he says next. Perhaps that, too, is a kind of courage. “Surely the two of you can magic up a solution? You’ve done it before after all. Don’t tell me you’re saying we’re finished. Not after all this, by the gods.”
    Johan closes his eyes. Yes, that is indeed what he is saying. “Isabella’s right. It’s impossible for us—for you—to take this part of the journey now. None of us is ready.”

    Isabella
    Hartstongue is finished. Even her brother knows that now. He cannot escape Gelahn. The mountain has trapped him and soon, oh soon, she will see Petran again. Isabella can hardly stomach the wait. Still the scribe is speaking.
    “We have to be ready,” he says. “Whatever it is out there, Johan, however much power the enemy has, we