same.
He had wanted a distraction. Now he had one.
The creatures immediately turned away from him and Owain, scattering, running and leaping away from the flames, making for the trees and scrambling up into the branches. They vanished into the wood, the clamour of their panic-stricken flight carrying back after they had disappeared from sight, leaving man and boy alone. The Questing Beast was gone too. Dodinal frowned, confused. It could shake the earth with each step and yet he had not heard it leave.
He felt a sharp pain as Owain pulled hard on his beard and pointed over Dodinal’s shoulder. The knight turned to look and saw that the fire had almost completed a full circle of the closest trees surrounding them. If they did not move now they would be trapped and would suffocate, or burn to death.
Neither was any way to die.
Dodinal left the shield where he had thrown it and sheathed the sword. Holding Owain with both hands, he fled across the clearing, only just outrunning the flames as they closed the circle. Earth flew up under his boots as he scrambled up the bank and raced into the forest, neither knowing nor caring which way he was heading, as long as it was away from the fire. Blistering heat toasted his neck as the trees around him were engulfed. The sound of it snapped at his heels, crackling and roaring. Even the air his hungry lungs gulped down felt hot.
Dodinal looked sharply to his left and right as he ran. Everything was alight, from the undergrowth to the crowns of the trees. He had no choice but to keep pushing blindly forward. Ahead of him, a tree burst into flame as though struck by lighting and started to lean across his path. Holding Owain tightly, Dodinal drove himself on, sprinting under the tree at the very moment it crashed to the ground, a searing blast of air washing up his back. He stumbled, but managed to stay on his feet, letting go of Owain with one hand long enough to swipe embers from his hair before they could singe his scalp.
Smoke closed his throat. He began to cough, great hacking barks, and could not stop. His eyes swam with tears. He had no sense of direction, careering blindly towards the darkness, like a narrowing passage through the turbulent light. Sparks and burning debris landed and stung his face and hands.
Then he was tumbling into space. Owain slipped from his grasp, and Dodinal tensed, bracing for impact. Instead of hard ground, he felt the shock of cold water as the lake closed around him. A roaring filled his ears. Dodinal flailed around, swallowing water, not knowing which way was up and which was down.
Then his feet touched the bottom and he pushed hard. His head broke the surface, and he gasped and coughed and threw up water. Smoke swirled and boiled around him. The fire was a fierce glow, which had spread all along this side of the lake and was now encroaching on the other.
As he watched, still spitting out water, the tinder-dry forest succumbed to the inferno, the wind harrying the flames on their way. He imagined he saw movement within the trees, pictured the creatures trying in vain to escape as death closed around them.
“Owain,” he shouted, throat raw. He thought hard, trying to remember if he had still had hold of the boy when he hit the water. If not, he could still be on the bank. “Owain, where are you?”
The water was deep even a few yards out, rising to the top of his chest. He waded back towards the lakeside, calling all the way, straining for an answer, cursing himself for a fool when it occurred to him he would not get one even if Owain had heard.
A ball of fire burst out of the forest and hurtled towards the lake, wailing like something possessed. It hit the water with a hissing plume of steam. Before Dodinal could reach for his sword a head burst up through the surface right before him, its gargoyle face rendered uglier by fire. Most of the skin had been burned away, so it was little more than a skull. It lunged at Dodinal, mouth agape; he grabbed its jaws and wrenched them apart until they snapped, then broke its neck and tossed the body aside.
Something grabbed his arm. Dodinal spun around, hand raised to strike, staying the blow when he saw with relief it was Owain. The boy was struggling to tread water and shaking badly, from fear or cold or both. Dodinal lifted him up.
The fire had leapt from tree to tree, spreading not just around the edges of the lake but rampaging through the forest until the entire valley was ablaze, turning the walls of the mountains around it into a cauldron of shifting light and shadow. The searing brightness turned the night sky to dawn, driving back the moon and stars. The roar of the fire was a thousand times louder than that of the Questing Beast.
The choking smoke was bad enough, but there were other dangers. Windblown debris rained down around them, sizzling as it plunged into the water. It was cold, too. They would not survive in the lake for long, but neither could they climb out of it with the fire raging so close to the water’s edge. The safest course of action would be to strike out for the centre of the lake where there was less chance of being struck and where the air might be clearer.
But Dodinal was not a strong swimmer, and he suspected the boy was not either. They would drown before they froze to death. Then again they would suffocate or be roasted alive if they stayed here. The heat was almost unbearable. He had to take his chance in deep water. He turned his back on the forest and forced his way out into the lake, by now so cold that he could barely feel anything.
Owain’s fingers dug into his arm with surprising strength, and Dodinal looked back sharply. A tree, ablaze from root to crown, slowly toppled towards them, flames fanning behind it as it fell. There was no time to move out of its way. Holding his breath and clutching the boy as tightly as he could with numb fingers, he dived and kicked hard until he was flat on the lake’s weed-infested bed.
There was a flash of orange light, instantly snuffed out, and a percussive blow that sent him tumbling helplessly through the churning water. Somehow he managed to keep hold of Owain, and when the turbulence subsided, he pushed his feet hard against the bed. His head broke the surface and he lifted the boy clear, and they held each other while the fire raged around them and the lake glowed like molten copper.
He felt a bump against his shoulder: the remains of the tree, blackened but soaked through. It was too thin for them to sit on, but they could use it to get away from the fire without fear of drowning. “Here,” he said, lifting Owain towards it. “Hold on with both hands. When I tell you, start kicking.”
They made for the centre of the lake, Dodinal warming from the exertion. The eddying wind blew the smoke from the surface, and he and the boy could breathe easier. He decided they might just as well head south now, towards the mountain path, rather than wait for the fire to burn out.
They passed countless bodies on the way, bobbing facedown in the water around them. It seemed the creatures had never learned to swim. Dodinal watched the corpses float by with grim satisfaction.
The inferno took little time to consume itself. Old and dry, the trees burned fiercely and were soon spent. As the firelight dimmed, flickered and was extinguished, the wind dispersed the remaining smoke overhead and the moon and stars reappeared. Dodinal squinted towards the shore: even by moonlight, he could see that almost nothing of the forest remained.
He steered them shoreward. They waded out onto dry land, staying close to the waterline, warmed by the charred ruins as they walked. Embers peered like glowing eyes in the darkness. The smoke was fairly thick here, the acrid stench of it filling their nostrils. Dodinal cast wary glances around. It was almost beyond belief that anything could have survived, but not impossible. He and the boy were proof of that.
They reached the path without incident. He was both surprised and gladdened to find the girl Annwen waiting there. Owain seemed as pleased to see her as she was to see him. When asked, she admitted she had been too scared to try to escape the valley alone.
“I walked halfway up the path and then I hid behind a rock,” she said as the three of them sat close to the smouldering forest, making the most of its fading heat. “I was cold. When I saw the fire I hurried back down; I was worried about you, about both of you. When there was no sign of you, I was certain you had both perished. And then I saw you walking out of the smoke. It was like a miracle.”
Miracle. Not long ago Dodinal would immediately have dismissed such an idea as nonsense. Now he was not so certain.
It was certainly a stroke of good fortune that Owain’s little pouch of memories had included his father’s flint and steel, for Dodinal had carried nothing with him with which to start a fire. It was strange, he thought, how the world could turn on such small matters. If Owain had not wandered off into the snowbound forest in the first place, Dodinal would not have had to save him from the wolves, and he would never have encountered Rhiannon or her people, several of whom he had come to regard as friends.
“You’re sure no creature came by here?” he asked, for the third or fourth time. He had to be certain.
