The Gathandrian Trilogy 02 - Hallsfoots Battle

you. Now you and your dogs will answer to me and together we will win. The training we must go through will be hard, but not fatal, I promise you. When we are ready, the mountain people and I, the mind-enabler, will take up our places of honour in the world once more. Then all will be as it should.”

    Annyeke
    As Johan stepped through her doorway, the chill winter air swept in with him, scattering the dry remains of Annyeke’s flour over the work surface. At the same time, Simon rose, stepped to one side and gestured at the stool he’d vacated. Annyeke simply stared at Johan. He looked as if he’d been awake for many day-cycles, his blue eyes were dark with exhaustion and his clothes were not the freshest; a faint smell of stale herbs and sweat drifted around her and she stepped back, wrinkling her nose.
    “ I’m sorry, I …” Johan began but Simon shook his head, strode over to him and led him to the nearest seat while Annyeke fetched bread. Even with her back turned she could sense Johan’s colours, the very fact of him, easing through her skin—sea-blue, aquamarine, sapphire.
    “ Don’t worry,” the scribe said when Johan tried another feeble protest. “And don’t try to talk. You must eat.”
    Annyeke dropped two hunks of bread on a platter and set it before Johan. He grimaced and she understood he hadn’t actually eaten since his return to the great city. When she gestured at him, brooking no refusal, he took a hesitant first bite but then moaned and began to eat with gusto. Typical man, she thought, they forgot to eat while their minds were elsewhere and then valuable time was lost whilst they regained their strength. When would they ever learn?
    Still, while he finished the best of her bread, she was impressed that he only glanced twice at the mind-cane that hovered in the corner of the room. She and Simon had their backs to it and she couldn’t find it within herself to blame them. When Johan finished his first platter, Annyeke refilled it and he ate that, too. He refused a third plate, instead downing a beaker of springwater. Just as well, as there was no more bread to hand.
    “Thank you,” he said at last, his voice steadier than she’d anticipated. From his proximity, she knew his mind was less so, but she could not hope for miracles. Not yet, anyway.
    She nodded. There were so many things she wanted to say to this man but none of them could find their way into her mouth. Most of all, she longed to touch him, but knew if she did that once she’d never be able to let go. He was her overseer in the Sub-Council of Meditation. It would— or should—be unthinkable.
    As if he’d caught the echo of her mind, though gods and stars forbid, surely he had not, he sprang to his feet and paced towards the window before turning.
    “ I’m sorry,” he said, staring briefly at her before dropping his gaze again. “I should have been here. I…I have not been.”
    It wasn’t a great apology, though she hadn’t thought they’d needed one. The normal rules surely did not apply now. Annyeke suddenly realised that the steady blue of his aura had become streaked with jagged green and a deep abiding red, the colours of jealousy and shame. She swallowed. Was she drawing those feelings out of him? Because of the responsibility the Elders had left to her? He had no reason for it; she would give the herbs and trees from the parkland itself for the burden of this duty not to be her own, but his. But what was done had been witnessed by many. Impossible to change it now. Johan looked as if he might say something else, but the scribe got there first.
    “Well,” Simon murmured. “We may not be the most obvious of conspirators but at least we’re all here.”
    “Conspirators?” Annyeke raised both eyebrows.
    “Yes. Shouldn’t we be planning something to defend Gathandria against the mind-executioner’s next assault? Your elders were convinced that the Battle of the Western Shore was not an end to it.”
    The Battle of the Western Shore , Annyeke thought. That was already what the people were calling it. It made it sound more formal than it had been. She remembered it more as a desperate skirmish and an unlikely victory than a battle. She waited for Johan to speak but, with a slight smile, he gestured at her to take the floor.
    She rose from the table where she’d been sitting and frowned at the two men, wondering what, in the name of the stars above, her words might be and how the three of them