Great Hall, directly ahead of him across a square. Tiers of smaller huts stood to his left and right. Behind them, tall shapes that could have been trees, but whose lives he couldn’t sense, rose into the sky. The rest of the world was lost in a tumult of white.
He leaned against the door frame and stared out, seeing not this village but another, or what remained of it. The smoke rising from the roofs of these huts became the smoke that had risen from the smouldering remnants of the village of his childhood.
With nothing to distract him, the memories of that dreadful night flooded back, as unstoppable as they were unwanted.
Dodinal did not sleep, that first night alone in the forest. Through the long hours he sat inside the hollow tree, wrapped in his cloak, shivering from cold and grief and fear, tears leaving frozen trails down his cheeks. He could not get his mother’s face out of his mind. He could still hear her groans of pain. He desperately needed to believe she was alive, his father too, but there was an unbearable heaviness in his heart because he knew they must be dead.
Eventually the sky lightened. As much as he wanted to stay here, where he was safe, he knew that to do so meant he would soon die from the cold. He felt sick, yet if he did not eat he would not have the strength to move. So he left the sanctuary of the oak and retraced his steps through the forest, moving slowly and quietly.
All he could hear was the sigh of a breeze through bare branches, the rustle of small creatures in the undergrowth, the harsh calling of crows overhead that sounded like the cries of restless spirits. He was alone.
Shivering, Dodinal pulled the cloak tighter and continued towards the village. He remained tense and alert as he ghosted through the trees, fearful his mother’s attacker might have guessed he would return and was hiding in wait for him, as doubtful as it was that a mere boy was worth his time and trouble.
The trees thinned out. He smelled burning, yet there was no smoke to be seen. The fires must have burned themselves out.
Dodinal’s mouth was dry, his hands were slick with sweat despite the cold morning air and his stomach was twisted into knots. He did not want to go any further; his mind screamed at him to turn and run until he had left the village far behind. But he could not. There was nowhere to run to and no point in living if that meant spending the rest of his life alone. Slowly, braced to flee at the slightest sound, he emerged from the forest and stared in wide- eyed, open-mouthed horror at the devastation that confronted him.
The village had gone. What had once been huts were now smouldering, shapeless heaps of blackened wood. Dodinal staggered towards them as if in a daze. Bodies lay everywhere, not all of them intact: as he drew closer, what he had taken for fallen branches were revealed as severed limbs. He wanted to look away, yet found his eyes taking in every detail.
Carrion birds fussed over the corpses, too busy feasting to make any sound other than a rustle of feathers and the wet ripping noise of beaks tearing at flesh. They did not react as Dodinal passed them by.
Onwards he crept, stepping over the bodies, peering at their clothes and faces, trying not to look into their sightless eyes. Some he recognised, others were strangers. The invaders had not been inclined to bear their fallen away for burial.
Dodinal found his father, lying on his back and opened up from throat to groin. His guts had spilled out and lay in a coiled heap alongside him. One arm was pinned beneath his body, the other was outstretched, hand still clutching his sword.
For a moment Dodinal was unable to move for the shock. This could not possibly be his father, not the big man whose fiery temper was leavened by a dry humour, who would always indulge his son whenever Dodinal begged to go hunting with him. No, it could not be.
Yet there was no mistaking him.
Dodinal’s eyes blurred with tears. His throat tightened until he was gasping for breath. The gasps became sobs and the strength left his legs, so he crumpled to his knees and stayed there, head down, tears falling from his eyes like rain until he could not cry any more. When he was done, he sat back on his heels and wiped his face dry with his cloak. His hand closed around his father’s. He prised the fingers open and pulled the sword free. The blade was heavy, but he was determined to take it with him. His face momentarily convulsed. No, there would be no more tears. No more sadness. Nothing but hatred and a thirst for vengeance.
He could not bury his father. He lacked the tools and the strength to break the hard ground. Yet somehow that did not feel important. It was fitting that this man, who had passed on his love of the forest and his huntsman’s skills to his son, should now provide food for the beasts of the wild. He would have liked that, Dodinal thought. It would have appealed to his sense of humour.
“Goodbye,” he said softly. Then, remembering the words that had been spoken when his father’s father had died, “Rest in peace.”
A sense of foreboding filled him as he searched the rest of the village. Now he had seen his father dead, it was surely only a matter of time before he found his mother’s body. But while he encountered the corpses of many women, and many children too, there was no sign of her.
Then, just when he was convinced there was no one left alive anywhere, he heard a muted groaning. He stood still until he heard the noise again; it had come from one of the huts, which was charred here and there, its roof partly collapsed, but was otherwise intact. Heart thumping, arms trembling with the strain of holding the sword, he walked slowly towards it. The door was not quite closed, but Dodinal could see only darkness inside. Using the tip of the blade, he eased the door open. A soft patter made him look down. A pool of blood that had gathered in the doorway dripped steadily to the ground.
Dodinal was too scared to go inside, afraid of what he might find, until he heard the low groaning again. Someone was alive in there. He had to help them. Taking a few deep breaths to steady his nerves, he stepped cautiously through the doorway.
What he saw next would stay in his memory forever.
A woman was seated on the floor with her back against the wall. Her head lolled. Her clothes were soaked crimson, and blood had sprayed from the deep slash across her throat and splattered the wall. He thought he recognised her, but it was difficult to be sure. Dodinal had never spent much time with the villagers or their children, preferring to be out hunting with his father. He knew they considered him strange. It had never bothered him.
A baby was sprawled like a discarded toy on the ground by her feet. Dodinal could not bring himself to look at it too closely. The dark puddle around its body told him more than he wanted to know.
As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he saw the woman had a long knife in one hand, its blade stained. She must have died fighting off those who had threatened her and her baby. Dodinal swallowed heavily. If they were both dead, who had he heard groaning?
He spun around and let out a startled yell. A man was curled up on the floor, arms around his midriff. Dodinal’s first thought was that it was yet another corpse. Then the man shuddered and a low groan escaped his lips. Dodinal took a hesitant step towards him. Then he took a step back, unsure of what to do.
The man raised his head to look at him. His face was criss-crossed with bloody slashes and his right eye socket was a ragged, empty mess. He reached out with one hand. Two of the fingers had been lopped off at the middle joint. He must have been left for dead when his wife and child had been slaughtered. Despite his own loss, Dodinal could have wept for him.
The man mumbled something Dodinal could not hear; he eased forward until he was closer but still out of reach. He did not want those bloody stumps touching him.
“Say it again,” he whispered, dry-mouthed.
The man coughed wetly and blood-flecked spittle sprayed from his lips. This time when he spoke, Dodinal heard him clearly but still could not understand a word. The man spoke the same harsh, guttural language as the giant who had taken Dodinal’s mother.
The man called out again, and Dodinal scrambled away from him. The raider began to use his ruined hand to drag himself along the floor, leaving a broad smear of blood in his wake. Dodinal backed up to the door and made ready to run.
Before he could he saw his mother’s face again, heard her agonised cries, remembered his father’s body and the coil of guts that had spilled from it. A terrible anger rose within him, and he bellowed with raw fury. A red mist descended over his eyes, and when it cleared, he was on his knees outside the hut. He had dropped the sword. It
