clouds away and sending the temperature plummeting. Dodinal hesitated by the broken gates long enough to tighten his cloak and pull the hood over his head. The sword hung in its scabbard from his belt, and he clutched the spear that Idris had gifted him in his right hand. One way or another, he would put it to use before he returned. With one last look at the cluster of huts he headed out of the village.
A sense of belonging swept over him when he entered the forest. He had spent most of his life with branches overhead, heavy with leaves in the summer and starkly bare in the cold months. Yet as he progressed south through the woodland, the snow-white ground dappled with shadows, he was overwhelmed by a strangely terrible feeling. Something was indistinctly wrong in the forest. It was utterly still, and that should not be. There was not so much as the raucous call of a scavenger crow to break the silence.
At least here, the snow was thinner on the ground. Dodinal made swift progress. Soon the sun rose, revealing a brilliant blue sky. It was bitterly cold, but he kept warm by moving steadily, not once stopping to rest. He had no need to, now he was fully recovered. Even if he had, there was no comfort to be found in the frozen wilderness, and he lacked the means to make a fire. And as he pressed on, the ghosts of another forest and another time came back to haunt him.
The boy Dodinal could not bring himself to spend his nights among the dead in the ruins of his village. His hut was among those damaged but still standing, and he returned to it to gather what belongings he could carry. His vision blurred as he stepped inside, and a chasm opened in his chest. Everyone he loved was gone. His life had turned from one of uncaring innocence to one of unbearable misery within a matter of hours. Dodinal bit down on his lip to stop himself crying.
There would be no more tears, not ever again.
He put the sword on the table and collected anything he thought he could use, piling it onto a fur that he tied into a bundle and slung over his shoulder. Then he picked up the sword and went back into the forest, hastening to the hollow tree that had become his home. He dumped the bundle inside it before returning to the hut for more furs and his mattress, which he dragged behind him to the oak.
Not daring to light a fire inside the hollow, he gathered branches and used his father’s flint and steel to start one just outside it. While he was worried the smoke could attract unwanted attention, he had no choice; without the fire’s warmth he would not survive another night.
He filled his stomach with some of the meat and fruit he had salvaged and sat wrapped in his cloak close to the fire until his eyelids grew heavy. Then he crawled inside the tree and slept on his mattress with furs heaped on top of him, just as he always had.
This was how his days and nights passed. Each time he ran out of food he would return to the village and scavenge what he could, returning to the tree to eat by the fire until darkness fell and he slept. He would try not to look at the dead, whose bones the scavengers and carrion birds had by now almost picked clean.
Finally, when there was no more food, Dodinal set a snare the way his father had done. Having searched for and found hare tracks he broke off a sturdy yet flexible branch and sharpened both ends, driving each end deep into the ground on either side of the tracks to form an arch. From it he hung a length of gut whose end he tied into a noose. Once a hare’s head passed through the noose it would tighten around its neck, killing it.
That evening, dozing before the fire, he saw a small light move through the darkness. Through closed eyes he followed the hare’s progress as it loped along the track where he had set the snare, and was then snuffed out.
Dodinal ate well that night.
Days passed, then months. Remembering everything his father had taught him, he grew into an accomplished hunter. His gifts meant he always knew where to find game, and his presence did not disturb it. It was as if the animals saw him as one of their own, a creature of the wild. When summer arrived and a putrid stench arose from the village he knew it was time to move on. He could not live inside a tree forever. Besides, he was growing at such a rapid rate it was becoming a squeeze getting in and out of the hollow. This did not worry him. He had all summer to find somewhere else.
He had to make one last journey home, to find clothes, as those he wore were becoming too small for him. So foul was the smell that he was forced to cut off a strip from his cloak to bind around his nose and mouth. The tracks of scavengers covered the ground and flies picked their way leisurely across the bony corpses. Dodinal changed his old clothes for some of his father’s and fled for the trees, never to return.
From that day he wandered the forest, sleeping under stars and hunting whenever he was hungry. He learned which plants could be eaten safely and which would make him sick. Each year when the leaves changed colour and fell, he would fashion a shelter roomy enough to light a fire in and there he would spend the winter.
As he grew taller and stronger, he found work in the settlements and farmsteads he encountered on his travels. Ploughing, sowing, harvesting… he laboured for food or for clothing, which was quickly worn through.
And so his time passed, uncomplicated and untroubled, until the day came when he heard the sound of fighting.
The knight snapped out of his reverie. There was a deer close by. Its life did not burn brightly; the animal was either injured or sick. That made no difference to Dodinal, for meat was meat and his mouth watered at the thought of it.
He stole through the trees, closing on his prey. It was a large roe buck, moving away but slowly enough for Dodinal to be confident it had not caught his scent. It had been attacked by some predator, leaving one of its hind legs lame.
Dodinal raised the spear to his shoulder, ready to strike the moment he was close enough. If he threw it from this distance, he could easily miss and the deer would be gone in the blink of an eye. It could outrun him, bad leg or not. He might not get another chance to track game for a long time.
It stopped to lower its head, nosing through the snow in search of food. Dodinal crept up behind it until it was almost close enough to touch, but as soundlessly as he moved, the deer somehow sensed him; it suddenly lifted its head and looked around, startled. Before it could run from him, Dodinal lunged forward and rammed the point of the blade deep into its shoulder, driving it towards its heart.
The deer bucked violently. The spear was torn from Dodinal’s hands as it bolted, racing through the forest with an almost comically lopsided gait. He followed at a slow pace. There was no reason to hurry. The deer was dead but did not yet know it.
Sure enough, he found its body after a few minutes. He wrenched the spear from its side and wiped the blade clean in the snow. Idris would doubtless be pleased to hear the weapon that had served him so well for many years could still put meat on his table.
Butchery done, he picked up the gutted carcass, hoisted it over his shoulder and set off for the village. The deer was heavy, but Dodinal was strong and tireless, all the more so with the prospect of fresh meat that night spurring him on. As long as his luck and the weather held he would be back by late afternoon.
EIGHT
The Great Hall was uncomfortably hot, as much from the mass of bodies that had gathered inside to celebrate as from the fires that burned day and night. Smoke made his eyes sting, and it was difficult to hear anything above the excited chatter of voices as the villagers welcomed the stroke of good fortune that had come their way after so many months of hardship.
The venison had been spit-roasted and stripped from the bone before being shared out between them. There was not much to go around, but Dodinal heard no complaints. Every last scrap of meat had been devoured but the air was still rich with the smell of it.
The chieftain’s great hound lay contentedly near the fire, front paws outstretched as it chewed and crunched on a bone. The rest of the deer carcass would be boiled into a broth, its skin fashioned into clothes, stitched together with its sinew. Nothing went to waste here.
Dodinal had again been given pride of place in the chieftain’s chair at the head of the table. Idris, Rhiannon and Owain sat nearest to him on the benches. Gerwyn was there too, sulking in his chair. It did not escape Dodinal’s notice that the younger man’s lips and chin were glistening with grease; he might resent Dodinal eating
