implored. “You have to get up. Just a few steps more and we’ll be in the woods. They’ll never find us.”
His mother pushed him away. “Go on without me.”
“No!” His vision blurred. There was a burning in his throat that had nothing to do with the smoke. “I’ll never leave you.”
She squeezed his fingers hard enough to make him wince. “I don’t care about anything other than you, son. Go. I’ll find you.”
Before Dodinal had chance to respond his mother’s eyes widened in sudden terror and he was struck a blow to the head, hard enough to knock him senseless.
When he came to, he was in a heap on the ground, face pressed into the cold earth. A ringing filled his ears and he shook his head to clear them. For a moment he was too dazed to know what had happened. Then he remembered being hit, and scrambled to his feet, looking around wildly.
A man twice as tall as Dodinal had taken hold of his mother. He had one arm wrapped around her waist and his free hand clamped over her mouth to smother her screams. He was dragging her away from the forest, towards the village. She struggled to break free, but the man was too strong. Without pausing to think, Dodinal ran at him, grabbed one of his legs and sunk his teeth into it.
The man kicked out, roaring words in a guttural language the boy did not understand. Dodinal held on with all his strength and bit down again. Blood filled his mouth. Yelling, the man struggled to shake him off and keep hold of this mother at the same time. Then he released his grip on her waist to bring his fist down hard on Dodinal’s head.
It hurt, but the boy stubbornly refused to let go. A second blow came, this one harder than the first. White light exploded behind his eyes, and his fingers loosened. Had he not let go, the third blow would have knocked him out cold. He tumbled to the earth and felt a gust of air as the man’s fist missed him by inches.
Dodinal rolled away and jumped to his feet, wiping his eyes and trying to ignore the pounding in his skull. He tensed, expecting another blow, but the man was not interested in Dodinal, only in his mother. Furious, the boy charged at him again. This time the man was ready and swatted him away like a troublesome fly. The back of his hand smacked into Dodinal’s face and blood erupted from the boy’s nose. This time it took him longer to get to his feet. When he did, his legs trembled so violently he feared he would collapse.
Yet he would not give up. Again and again he ran at the man. Each time he was halted brutally in his tracks. One of his eyes closed up. Blood from a cut to his forehead mixed with the blood streaming from his nose until his face and tunic were soaked crimson.
All the while, his mother’s struggles and muffled screaming drove him on. Finally the man finally tired of the boy’s relentless onslaughts, threw his captive to the ground and kicked her hard in the stomach to silence her and prevent her from escaping, then drew his sword.
Dodinal’s gaze flicked between the blade and his mother’s groaning, writhing form. The man tossed the sword from one hand to the other, showing off, his mouth splitting into a gap-toothed grin behind his filthy beard. He was close enough for Dodinal to see the soot and blood that smeared his face. He was huge, a man- mountain.
Dodinal’s sole hope of survival was to dash for the forest. Emotions tore him up. He loved his mother, and every part of him cried out to stay there, but he would be no use to her dead. If he could escape and lay low until the invaders moved on, he could find help and go looking for her.
The man-mountain raised the sword, and Dodinal whirled around and ran, sprinting as fast as his unsteady legs and heaving chest would allow. His feet slapped across the hard earth. Trees loomed out of the darkness, almost close enough to touch. Something whistled past his ear and an axe thudded into an oak immediately ahead of him.
Knowing how close he had come to having his head taken off spurred him on. As desperate as he was to look back at his mother, he had to watch his step to avoid tripping. The countless hours he had spent in the woods saved him, for he ran at a pace and with a sure-footedness that his pursuer found hard to keep up with.
Even when the trees closed around him he knew he was still not safe. He had to get deeper into the forest, to one of his secret hiding places. Dodinal plunged headlong into the darkness, avoiding being snared by brambles or slipping on the leafy mulch.
There was a rustle and a loud thud from behind him, and a grunt of pain. The man must have tripped. He sounded closer than Dodinal had thought.
He drove on, pushing himself hard. The sky was clear and the winter winds had torn the leaves from the branches, but the trees were so closely packed together that moonlight and stars were not enough to show the way. He knew these woods, and the warrior did not.
Dodinal had another advantage. He could see the trees even in the dark. Their life lights were everywhere; dim, like candles in distant windows. He remembered the first time he saw them. He had been very little and had thought they were fireflies, until he reached out for one and his hand scraped against cold, hard bark. When he had told his parents, they had made him swear never to speak of it to anyone. People would think he was slow in the head. So it became his secret, the lights he could see in the trees and the beasts of the wild.
He headed deep into the forest, moving with barely a sound. An echoing voice called out, taunts or threats perhaps, but it soon faded and then was gone. He was alone. Alone and cold and sick with hurt and misery. All he could see was his mother’s face, her eyes blazing fiercely as she struggled to break free from the man’s grip.
No! It didn’t matter what he should have done or what he had had failed to do. None of it would have made any difference. He could not have protected his mother. Going back to the village would only have got him killed, he was sure of it.
The certainty did not make him feel better.
He found a path and followed it. When it forked, he continued right for a while and then stepped from it to trudge through the tangle of undergrowth. Eventually, he came to an oak, ancient and massive, its life flickering and failing, with a split in its trunk barely wide enough for the boy to squeeze through. Inside it was hollow, the floor littered with dried leaves, small bones and mice droppings. Filthy, but at least it offered some shelter from the cold. Dodinal wrapped his cloak tightly around him and sat with his back pressed against the wood, hugging himself and trying in vain to stem the rising tears.
He cried until he felt empty, as hollow as the tree.
A long time later, he slept.
When he awoke he was in the hut again, flat on his back on a scratchy straw mattress, looking up at the rafters. Grey light crept in through the smoke hole in the roof. The fire crackled steadily in its pit. Otherwise there was silence.
Dodinal frowned in groggy confusion. Had it all just been a bad dream, a nightmare so vivid it had felt real?
He raised his hands. They were the hands of a grown man, not a boy, etched with scars and with skin chafed from months of exposure.
It had been a memory, not a dream.
He remembered something else. Something far more recent. The boy in the forest, the wolves. His hand reached down to his right thigh and brushed against a thick wad of cloth. The wound throbbed but was nothing like as painful as it had been.
Still, he knew he was far from well. Every bone and muscle ached as if he had been beaten. He was burning with fever and reeked of sour sweat. It could have been worse. In the woods he had been certain he was going to die. Someone had obviously tended to him, but he had no idea who. He had no recollection of being brought here.
Wherever
Exhaustion washed over him. He could not even lift his head. Just before he drifted back to sleep, he heard a rustle of movement and shuffling feet next to where he lay, and through half-closed eyes saw the boy from the woods staring down at him.
Then he surrendered to weariness and slept the dreamless sleep of the dead.
