The Gathandrian Trilogy 03 - The Executioners Cane

warranted. He did not want his father to watch him. Simon had not seen him since the day so many year-cycles ago when his mother had been murdered and his father had driven him away. Yes, he knew how, recently, during their long and arduous journey to Gathandria, he had told Johan everything about that day and had walked some way towards forgiveness, of a sort. But it was one thing to forgive in principle and quite another to retain the same generosity when the man who had wronged him was actually here. How he understood this now. There was a wide gap between plans for a book and the actual scribing of it. Nonetheless he did not turn away from his father’s strange perusal but gazed back into the gloom.
    One heartbeat his father was there, and the next he had continued on his slow progression towards the edge of the castle, almost without Simon noticing the change. He should go to bed, get the sleep he needed without this introspection. Tomorrow he would tell Ralph of what he had seen and warn the remaining Lammassers to take care, and he would talk to his father. He was no longer a child. He was the Lost One and he should have courage enough to face personal matters as well as more wide-ranging ones. So should it be.

    Jemelda

    She was the last one back to the old well and, as she approached, the cook could see her people hiding in the shadows, the women crouching down on the most part with the men keeping a look-out. None of them were speaking, and she couldn’t even hear the faint echo of whispering. They had obeyed her instructions to draw as little attention to themselves as possible. She hoped they had had as much success with the goods she had sent them to steal. Though steal wasn’t the word she was searching for: using what was theirs in truth would be better.
    “Is it done?” she whispered, gazing at them in turn as they parted to let her through. “Do you have what we came for?”
    “Yes,” said Thomas, his voice nothing but a low growl in her ear. “I checked with each of us as we arrived.”
    “Good. Then let us to work,” she said.
    They didn’t take long in arriving at the first of the fields, the one most often used for corn although every fifth year-cycle the men would burn the stubble and re-sow the next season for wheat or oats. Jemelda knew this was the field where the menfolk had been trying most recently to sow the poor seed left to them in the hope there might still be a harvest in the next year-cycle. In the hope that the crops, however poor the yield, might be enough to allow them to live in their homes and to rebuild their lives as best they could. She had hardened her heart to this short-term view and now she was baking a different recipe, something to nourish them all in the end. Because she understood, more than any of those she had taken so long to persuade and who accompanied her this night, that if the hope of food to come was destroyed and in such a way so none could be in doubt of it, then the people would be forced to forage in the woods and wilder meadows. Even perhaps towards the once-majestic mountain. It was war, and this was the only way she knew how to fight it, seeing as she and her people would never be soldiers, though she would do her utmost to ensure that no innocent person died for this. So she would find the scribe and his allies when they fled to search for nourishment. She would find them and she would kill them. Away from the village and perhaps parted from the bird and the cane, the murderer’s power would be weakened and she would kill him. If some of her own people were marked by the gods for death, she would have to accept that also. Then, when the threat to them all was finally destroyed, they would leave and make another home for themselves elsewhere. Away from the cruelty of memory.
    Now her people gathered round her. This close she could see they had enough supplies.
    She nodded. “Let us begin.”
    Between them it took less than the length of a summer story, perhaps even one for the children, to cover most of the field with wood, ashes and scraps of cloth. It was astounding how much of use could be found in a village devastated by war. When this was done, Jemelda scattered the fire-oil across the wintry ground, all the while praying the ancient song of burning, the song the villagers used to chant on the bitterest night-seasons:

    Let the fire-gods and sky-gods unite
    and give us the blessings of fire.
    Then may we burn up what is useless
    and