The Savage Knight

see you. I will tell you where to go.”

“Thank you. You have no idea how important this is.”

“Save your breath for Idris,” the knight growled. The man nodded hurriedly and fell silent. He did not speak again until they arrived at the Great Hall. Dodinal opened the door and nodded him inside. As he stepped across the threshold, the man staggered and his legs gave way; Dodinal caught him before he collapsed.

“Who in God’s name is this?” Idris demanded, leaping to his feet as Dodinal lowered the stranger to the bench. Gerwyn did not move from his chair, and watched proceedings unfold through half-closed eyes. By contrast, Owain was staring wide-eyed at the stranger. Dodinal was well used to that look.

The man gasped out a name, Ellis, but was too weak to say anything else. Rhiannon hurried away, returning with a beaker of warm ale. The man held it in his hands to heat them and then gulped down its contents, shivering as the brew drove the worst of the cold from his bones. Wiping the back of one hand across his lips he gasped: “Thank you.”

Rhiannon nodded and returned to her seat.

“What brings you here?” Idris demanded. “Sneaking about in the night like a common thief?”

“We need your help,” Ellis said. His voice was hoarse and his breathing ragged. Water trickled down his face and dripped onto his chest as the ice in his dark hair and beard melted in the heat. If he had not stumbled across the village, if his calls had not been answered, he would have perished before much longer. Now his skin, almost blue when Dodinal had helped him inside, bloomed a vivid red.

“What do you mean by we?” Idris was too much the good host for belligerence, but there was clear suspicion in his voice.

“I come from a village half a day’s walk north of here.”

Dodinal straightened, his interest piqued. He was still bothered by the memory of that troubling presence in the north.

“Your brehyrion?” Idris demanded.

“Madoc.”

“I know him. A good man. You say you need our help. Explain.”

Ellis fidgeted nervously. “Something has taken our children.”

He looked at them and there was unmistakeable suffering in his eyes. “Two now. Vanished, as if they had never been there. Not one of mine, thank God, but my sister lost her only daughter.” His voice caught and he struggled to continue. “We searched, but… nothing.”

Rhiannon gently took the beaker from his unresisting hands and brought him more ale, and they waited in silence while he drank it. Even miserable Gerwyn seemed to have taken an interest, sitting up in his seat. Knowing him as he did, Dodinal suspected this was less out of concern for missing children than at the prospect of an intriguing tale.

He caught Rhiannon staring meaningfully at him. Owain could so easily have been lost that fateful night in the woods. Although the boy appeared none the worse for his encounter with the wolves, Dodinal felt this conversation was perhaps one he should not overhear. He need not have worried; when he looked down at Owain, the child had placed his head on his hands on the table and was asleep.

Once he had composed himself, Ellis told them his story. The first child to disappear was his sister’s daughter, a beautiful blonde girl named Angharad. She had been playing with her friends in the woods at the edge of the village. It had been the summer of the previous year, when the days were long and heavy with heat.

The children had been taught not to stray too far, and dutifully returned home as dusk fell. Only then was it was discovered that Angharad was not with them. Men were quickly summoned and the forest searched in all directions until darkness defeated them. They returned the next morning, this time with hounds. There was no scent of the child to be found, nor of any predator.

“My sister harboured hopes that one day she would return,” Ellis said, eyes seeing something far away. “It broke her. Madoc made the forest out of bounds to the children after that. We found no trace of wolves, but something must have happened, though we know not what. Children do not just blow away like smoke.”

His tale continued. The months passed. Life moved on, until winter came and the food became scarce in Madoc’s village, as it did in every settlement along the borderlands. Men hunted, but found no game. The struggle to survive pushed the tragedy of Angharad to the back of their minds. They had thought no more of it, until last night.

A frail and sickly boy named Wyn had been stricken by a coughing fit. His mother had sent him to the wood store, thinking the air would clear his lungs. Wyn had kissed her on the cheek and she had placed one hand on his face just before he left.

It was the last time anyone saw him.

“Was the snow still falling?” Dodinal asked.

“Yes. Very little, but it still lay deep on the ground.”

“Were there tracks?”

A frown etched lines into Ellis’s forehead. “Yes, but that’s the strangest part. The boy’s tracks were clear, leading from his hut to the store. Then there were other tracks. Strange tracks. They appeared as if out of nowhere in the woods, came into and out of the village. When they reached the forest again… nothing. They vanished.”

Idris leaned forward. “They just stopped?”

“In the middle of a drift.”

The old chieftain brought a meaty fist down on the table so hard, Dodinal half expected Owain to wake up. The boy, however, was too far gone to have heard or felt anything. “Impossible!”

“That’s what we thought, too. But the proof was there before our eyes. Or, rather, it wasn’t. The tracks were there and then they were gone. The snow all around was unbroken. Again, we searched for as long as we could, but we had no idea which way to look. The cold drove us back. By next morning the snow had filled in what tracks there had been. It was like the spirits had made off with him.”

“Enough of that,” Dodinal snapped. There was a rational explanation for everything. He had no time for those who blamed the gods or spirits for their tribulations. They were hiding from the truth: every death, every tragedy or misfortune in the world was down either to uncaring nature or to the cruelty of man.⁷

“I’m sorry,” Ellis stammered. “But if you had been there and seen it with your own eyes then you would have felt the same way.”

“Perhaps so,” Dodinal said softly, reminding himself that the man had suffered personal tragedy as well as a hard and exhausting journey. “But you say you need our help. If you have searched and not found the boy, I fail to see what more we can do.”

“Everyone believes whatever took Wyn, took Angharad as well, and they are scared it will happen again. They are afraid to leave their huts and will not let their children out of their sight. We need help to hunt down whatever took Angharad and the boy and put an end to it.”

“But why us?” Idris asked. “I know Madoc and he knows me. We have shared stories and flagons of ale at the gatherings. We have respect for each other, but we’re far from close.”

Ellis shook his head. “It’s not only you. He has sent a man to every village within a day’s walk to seek their help. I would have been here hours ago, had I not lost my way. It was pure good fortune your…” — he eyed Dodinal nervously, not certain of the big man’s status — “your friend here found me when he did.”

Idris eyed him for a moment, chewing his lip. “Very well,” he said. “We will help with the search. God knows, we have nothing else to occupy our time. We leave at first light.”

Ellis looked ready to argue, to press the case for leaving there and then, but common sense prevailed. Any man who went out into the woods at this hour was as good as dead. Even in his anguish, he understood dead men were no good to anyone. “Thank you.”

“You will stay here as my guest,” Idris said. “We have little to share but what we have, we will share with you.”

“I will go with you,” said Dodinal. “I know the forest and can track better than any man. Believe me, that is no idle boast. If something out there has taken your children, I will find it.”

Shortly afterwards he returned to Rhiannon’s hut, where he tended to the fire all the while deep in thought.

He had come to believe he might have found peace, out here in the wilderness. He had come to hope there