the blade must surely break. He hated himself for failing, for letting down the people he had sworn to protect. He hated Arthur, too, for making him take the oath to begin with. Dodinal had not sought knighthood. But neither had he refused it.
Now he would give anything to turn his back on it.
He hurled the sword away and wiped his eyes. Blood and ash and sweat smeared the back of his hand. Then he slid to the ground and sat with his back against the tree, elbows resting on his knees, and held his head in his hands. Men called out to him. Dodinal did not call back. He was too troubled to want anyone near him. It was the first time in his life he had failed. He hated the feel of it. Anger, despair and inadequacy battled for supremacy inside him. He raised his head to stare into the inky darkness of the forest. There was a good chance Owain and the girl were alive; whatever those things were, the children were no good to them dead.
Perhaps there was time to save them, and redeem himself.
Even if there was not, he would go after them regardless. He would not suffer the creatures to live. Not after what they had done and would doubtless continue to do. They would continue probing south, attacking village after village, unless they were stopped.
So he would stop them. They did not deserve to live.
Dodinal nodded solemnly. His mind was made up.
He got to his feet and retrieved his sword from where he had thrown it. Then he set off for the village to say his last farewells.
FOURTEEN
The men did not find him; he found them. He could have passed them unseen had he wanted to — certainly he was in no mood for conversation — but his fight was not with them, and he had no reason to treat them discourteously. Even so, when they asked him what had happened, he gruffly informed them the creatures had gone. With that, he fell silent and did not speak again until they reached the village.
Rhiannon paced anxiously at the gates. Her shoulders slumped when she saw Dodinal had returned alone.
“Owain is gone. I’m sorry,” he told her. The words sounded woefully inadequate. “It was too fast for me.”
“What do you mean, gone?” Rhiannon’s voice had risen in pitch. She was close to hysteria. Dodinal did not blame her.
He reached out and held her by the shoulders. When he pulled her towards him, she resisted briefly and then collapsed into his arms as his words hit home. “I know it’s hard,” he murmured into her ear. “But don’t despair. Owain is alive. He is strong, not like the child they took from Madoc’s village. You have to be as strong as he is.”
She pulled away from him, beating both fists hard against his chest, her voice rising to a shout. “And what good is it to me to know he is alive after those…
Her voice broke and she hit him again and again, putting all her strength into each blow, screaming in denial. Dodinal said nothing, did nothing to stop her, waiting for the storm to pass, until she lacked the strength to strike him and the screams had dwindled into sobs.
Then he held her tight and pressed his face to her hair and whispered: “Owain is alive. I will get him back, I swear.”
She did not resist when he led her through the gates. The guard’s body was gone. The ground was stained black.
He steered her past the Great Hall, now completely alight.
The firelight painted a picture of hell.
Bodies, battered and bleeding and not all of them intact, lay where they had died. Wives and husbands knelt alongside them, crying and wailing their grief, whispering prayers, holding the fallen even while torn flesh cooled and broken limbs stiffened, as though they could hold on to the life that had been extinguished.
Someone must have taken the children to a place of refuge to spare them further trauma, for there were none to be seen. Many of them were now orphans. Not all of them would yet know it.
Idris had been moved, his body placed before the smouldering remains of his home, with his arms crossed over his chest. His head rested on a folded cloak, his hair arranged to conceal his shattered skull. His sword and shield had been placed next to him. Two men with spears stood, one each side of his body, a guard of honour. Dodinal held back his grief at the loss of a man he had come to regard as a friend. There was too much to do.
Villagers flitted through the smoke, comforting the bereaved and gently separating them from the bodies. Now the initial shock had worn off, the living were taking care of the dead, carrying the fallen to a place out of sight where they could be readied for burial.
Ordinarily the dead would need to be buried soon so as not to attract predators and vermin. Now there was no need to hurry. It was too soon after winter for flies, and in this abandoned wilderness the corpses would not attract so much as a single carrion bird.
Now Dodinal understood why this was. It had nothing to do with the weather, as they had assumed. The wild beasts had not gone south to survive the winter, but had fled there, scared away by the gargoyle creatures that swept through the forest like a plague.
Dodinal hailed a passing woman and asked her to accompany Rhiannon to her hut, not wanting her left alone. But Rhiannon would have none of it and insisted on seeing to the wounded, since she was the village healer. Dodinal did not try to stand in her way. Far from it; he felt that with her work to distract her, she was less likely to spend the night fretting over her missing son, even if there was no distraction great enough to keep him far from her thoughts.
So he left her to it and wandered through the village, giving out words of condolence or reassurance to the survivors, who wandered around helplessly, unsure of what to do in the absence of any clear leadership. He had no desire to interfere in their affairs, but with Idris dead and Gerwyn yet to return, he felt he should guide them, for their sake and not his own.
As he walked, he searched for familiar faces. Eventually he found one, gratified to see Hywel, the quietly- spoken tracker, among those who had embarked on the grisly task of carrying the dead to the hut where their mortal remains would be stored overnight. Its original inhabitants were presumably among the lost.
There was no preamble. Each man understood what had happened. Neither felt the need to speak of it, only of what should be done. “They will start digging at first light,” Hywel told him, taking a break from his grim duties to walk the perimeter with Dodinal so they would not be overheard. “What happened here tonight… people have yet to come to terms with it, let alone consider what will become of us after the burials. Idris is dead. His son is his heir, but no man here will accept Gerwyn as their
“Until tonight they only took children by stealth,” Dodinal said. “Then word spread, and villages started keeping their children indoors. The creatures will not give up. Direct confrontation was inevitable.
“We were unlucky. We were the first. But we hurt them. They will be in no hurry to return. You have nothing to fear.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Hywel said. He stopped and looked up at the moon. Another two days and it would be full. “Idris did not know you for long, but he held you in great respect. As do we all. We would do well with you to guide us through the hard days ahead.”
“You honour me.” Dodinal remembered how he had laughed off Rhiannon’s suggestion that he might one day take over from Idris. So amusing then, so tragically prescient now. “But I will be leaving come dawn. The children are alive. I will find them and bring them home. I made a promise to Rhiannon and I intend to keep my word.”
“Then I will leave with you, if you will take me.”
Dodinal shook his head.
Hywel scowled. “Those things were like nothing I have seen before. You know what they did. They tore our people limb from limb, yet we failed to kill even one of them. You are a great warrior, but you would not stand a chance alone.”
