Again Madoc gazed around at his assembled men, then glanced at Dodinal. Dodinal gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. “I hear what you say,” Madoc told the grieving father. “You have the right to avenge your son, and so you will come with us. As for the rest of you, you will remain here, to work on the fortifications and defend the village if there is need of it.”
Once he had finished speaking, the men wandered off and returned to their tasks without a word of protest. None of them had volunteered to join their quest. If anything, they had looked relieved when they were told they must stay. Dodinal bore them no grudge. He could understand their fear.
Madoc and Gwythyr went briefly inside the chieftain’s hut. When they emerged, they were burdened with shields, weapons and packs. Wyn’s father made no effort to bid farewell to his wife, shaking his head firmly when Madoc suggested it. Dodinal was no stranger to the hatred that smouldered inside the man. It did not allow for sentiment. Gwythyr would want to be away without delay or hindrance.
They departed without fuss or goodbyes, Dodinal picking up the trail almost as soon as they had crossed the village boundary. The forest echoed with the sounds of labour. It would not be long before the defences were complete. He hoped they were not put to the test before Madoc returned. He suspected the village would stand or fall depending on whether the chieftain was there to help defend it.
The afternoon passed uneventfully. They stopped to rest only briefly for, by unspoken agreement, all seven men were keen to push on and take advantage of the daylight hours. Once night fell, they would have to pitch camp.
After a time they began to hear a rumbling in the distance.
“We’ll not go hungry tonight.” Madoc gestured vaguely ahead of them. “The river’s half an hour away, maybe less. Good fishing.”
Dodinal smiled sadly as a memory came to him, of Idris dismissing fish as food for babies and the very old, for the toothless. Like the effusive chieftain, he, too, preferred the taste of meat. But even fish was better than nothing, and they had to eat. Men did not fight well, or march well, on empty stomachs.
The roaring grew louder the closer they got to the river, until it was like the roar of a gale through the trees and they had to raise their voices to make themselves heard. Finally they emerged from the forest onto the wide bank of a raging torrent, the clear water swollen with snow-melt, foaming and turbulent, alive with eddies and swirls as it swept past them. The spray quickly soaked them through.
The far side of the bank was an unbroken wall of forest, mirroring their own. Dodinal sensed the land there was bereft of game too, yet even had it teemed with wildlife, it would have been cruelly out of reach. They had no way of crossing the river. They dared not even attempt it. Dodinal was consoled by the realisation that the creatures could not have crossed it either.
The constant rumble and rush was deafening, but their ears soon became accustomed to it as they proceeded upriver along the bank. The ground was rocky, the going firm underfoot, but even so, they made sure not to wander too close to the edge. After the melting snows, the water was almost level with the top of the bank, where the earth had turned to slippery mud. A man who lost his footing would be swept away to certain death.
Dodinal remained within the forest to follow the trail, catching glimpses of his companions beyond the tree line. The creatures had followed the straight path of the river until its course ahead of them veered eastwards, when they had moved away from it, relentlessly heading north. Dodinal called out to the men and hurried to catch up with them. “They left the river behind them. We must do the same.”
Hywel squinted up at the sky. By now the sun had lowered until it appeared to touch the treetops, lengthening the shadows around them and turning the air so cold that their breath plumed misty white. “Better to wait until morning, maybe? We won’t be able to follow their trail much longer and at least there’s fresh water to be had here.”
“Where there’s fresh water there’s fresh fish,” Madoc added, rubbing his stomach in a slow, circular motion.
There were indeed fish. Dodinal could sense them. He pulled a face but said nothing.
It was agreed they would establish a camp while there was some daylight left. Given the stiff, damp breeze that blew off the river they decided to return to the forest.
Once they had chosen the site of their camp they split up, with Dodinal, Gerwyn, Emlyn and Hywel gathering firewood and the other four taking their spears to the river’s edge. Madoc and Gwythr knew this territory well while Tomos and Rhydian professed to be as adept at catching fish as they were hunting game. Dodinal had his doubts but let them go; they only needed so much firewood.
“How are you two going to catch anything with those?” Gerwyn taunted them as they carried their spears towards the river, a friendly grin on his face.
“It takes a lot of skill,” Madoc answered mock-indignantly. “What you have to do is stand perfectly still until the very last moment… then shove your spear in and hope for the best.”
They left, laughing, and went about their chores. Soon there was a fire blazing within a circle of stones, a stack of gathered branches heaped alongside it to ensure they would not get cold.
Dodinal had even more reason to be thankful these men were with him. He had been left so poorly equipped after his encounter with the wolves that he lacked the means to start a fire.
The wood they had gathered was green, unseasoned, spitting and smoking in the flames. But that was all for the best: to Dodinal’s mind, fish came closest to being palatable when flavoured with smoke.
At dusk, Madoc and Gwythyr returned to the clearing. Between them they clutched enough fat trout, strung together on a cord, for the men to have one apiece. Too hungry to wait for the brothers to come back, they scaled and gutted the catch and threaded the fish onto sharpened sticks over the fire.
Oil dripped from the fish as they cooked, sizzling and flaring as it struck the flames. The aroma of cooking trout made them salivate. They ate once the skin was blackened and peeling, blowing and sucking on their fingers as they burned them in their haste.
Although he usually disdained fish, and it was far from enough to satisfy his hunger, it was Dodinal’s finest meal in a long time. He devoured it quickly, picking over the last of the flesh carefully until there was nothing left but head, tail and bones.
He tossed the remains away and stretched his arms over his head, stifling a yawn. Dusk had given way to dark; the moon was rising and the sky was ablaze with stars. The air began to cool rapidly. He pulled his cloak tight around his shoulders. It had been a long, tiring day. He suspected they would all want to sleep early so they could rise and leave early come the morning. For all their levity, they had not once lost sight of their purpose.
Then Rhydian stepped into the camp, holding a brace of trout in one hand and his spear in the other, water dripping from the blade like rain. He looked around the fire. A frown creased his forehead.
“Where’s Tomos?”
“We thought he was with you,” Hywel answered.
Rhydian looked anxious. “I haven’t seen him. He complained all the best spots had been taken, said he would find a good place a little way downriver. I was watching the water, but I looked up now and then to see how he was getting on. When I left there was no sign of him. I thought he had returned here.”
Dodinal got to his feet, suddenly uneasy. There could be any number of reasons why Tomas had not returned. He could have gone into the woods for a piss or to empty his bowels. Perhaps he, too, hated the taste of fish, and had taken his spear into the forest, hoping to outdo the rest of them by returning with game. Or he could have fallen in. That was as likely as an explanation as any, though not one Dodinal wanted to entertain after witnessing so much bloodshed.
“We have not seen him,” he said. “But we’ll find him. Probably squatting behind a bush with his trousers around his ankles.”
The men laughed at that, even Rhydian, but the laughter sounded empty and forced, as though they all feared the worst.
They gathered their weapons and followed Rhydian as he led them downriver to the place where he last saw his brother. The earth was soft, and it was plain to see where Tomas had stood, spear in hand, waiting to skewer the fish. A trail of boot prints led further along the bank. Perhaps he had decided to try his luck elsewhere, having failed at the first attempt. They looked around and called out, but their efforts to find him were in vain.
Finally Dodinal sighed deeply. “Rhydian, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but it looks like your brother must have fallen in.”
