Galriff

Galriff, Captain Galriff, is the head of the city guard of Tal'gard in the Sürgün Günlükleri ("Exile Chronicles") campaign. Elderly, tired-looking and easy in manner, he told Kemp Corvus that he remembered him as a child, having once served his family, and what he recalled fitted Kemp's own memory of the guards of those days. For the sake of the help Kemp's father had once given him, he offered his support.¹²

The city guard

The city guard of Tal'gard is not a legion unit. Baron Vermont described it as a guild-like body of paid guards financed by the noble families, not a true military force. Another drow besides Ephorus worked for the captain: a tavern keeper at first took Ephorus for him, and changed his manner when told he was someone else.³²⁴

On Rainer

Galriff reported that the rebel commander Rainer Karga had entered the city disguised as a refugee a few hours before the company, and that his guards, given a description, had searched for him without success. Smugglers used the old, breached eastern walls, and much smuggling went on around Kuyubaşı; he thought Rainer must have friends in the city who sheltered him. A search for costly medical supplies in the back streets behind the Kuyubaşı inn suggested someone wounded was hiding there.⁵⁶⁷

He said Rainer had roamed the region for a year, beating the court duellists of important families, who kept their defeats quiet so that his name was little heard. Taxes had not been lowered during the famine, and people had suffered; Rainer won followers by leaving alone those who did not stand against him, keeping his word, sharing out food, and robbing a tax wagon eight months before and giving the money to the people. Young men who joined him came back as trained soldiers, and formations, shield walls and orderly retreats were no common mercenary's work. The townsfolk, in his view, were loyal less to any cause than to money and the winning side; for all its crime the city was generally quiet.⁸⁹⁷²

The night of the escapes

Late one night Ephorus came to the guard post and had the captain woken, asking him to strengthen the watch around the bank and the tax house and to look out for prison escapes. Galriff said there had been no reports yet, and that the castle and the guard posts kept separate cells. The next morning he reported three escapes, a tax dodger, a thief and a deserter, and warned that others might have gone unrecorded; nothing had happened at the bank or the tax house. Rainer, he said, had passed through a district gate in the night with some twenty men, and the five guards there had been too afraid to stop them. Fearing that they would be punished under the new decree against helping rebels, he asked Kemp to pardon them.¹⁰¹¹¹²

Kemp ordered the five guards into the legion's custody to learn soldierly discipline, the final decision to come later. Galriff questioned the justice of expecting them to die in a fight they could not win, while the legion officer Malecris held that they should have fought and died. As one young guard was led away, he cried in fear that his brother had been killed as a deserter, and that people should fight for what they believe, not out of fear.¹³¹⁴¹⁵

The five were neither executed nor released, but kept in training with the legion. When the company's proposal of lifelong support for the families of guards who died on duty was accepted, with the baron ready to bear the cost himself, Galriff announced it to his men. The guards are paid servants who must meet the cost of their own lodging and food.¹⁶