The Savage Knight

you’d make up your mind!”

“He’ll get used to the idea once he’s had enough time,” Hywel said. He reached out and held Dodinal in a tight embrace. Then he let go and stepped back. “It has been an honour to know you. You say you will return to our village; I look forward to that day.”

“As do I,” Dodinal said. He looked at Gerwyn and put one hand on his shoulder. “You have done your father proud. You will make a great brehyrion, especially with Hywel around to guide you. Look after Rhiannon for me.”

Gerwyn nodded, unable to speak.

The children were hovering nearby, and Dodinal crouched by them. “You were very brave,” he said to Annwen. “I am glad I was able to save you. Now go and wait with the others.”

The girl hugged him briefly, then skipped off towards the two men, leaving Dodinal alone with the boy. “Walk with me a moment,” the knight said, and led him away. Once they were out of earshot, he stopped and knelt at Owain’s side. “I know you talk to your mother. Tell her that I love her and I will see her again one day soon. Tell her I hope she understands what it is I have to do.”

Owain stared at him with unblinking eyes. He nodded.

“Good. Thank you.” Dodinal hesitated, aware that Gerwyn and Hywel were watching him intently. Perhaps they were wondering what he was saying, that he couldn’t say in their hearing. “Now, before you return to the others and head off home, there is something I want to ask you. Something I have to know.”

The boy watched him without expression.

“I’ve been thinking,” Dodinal said, not sure how to frame the question without sounding like a fool. “I’ve been thinking about the way everything happened. About how everything worked out.”

He struggled, lost for words. The idea had come to him on the trek out of the mountains. At first he had shrugged it off as ridiculous, but the more he thought about it the more convinced he became.

That Dodinal had tracked down the creatures and slain them was not down to chance. There had been an influencing force guiding his every thought and deed. That force had not been fate or fortune, but an eight-year-old boy. It was Owain who had wandered into the forest and, later, gone in pursuit of Annwen. He had deliberately exposed himself to danger, trusting in Dodinal to save him.

Owain had been aware of the presence of Ellis and of the scouting creature, before anyone else, even before the dogs.

Then, as the creatures were taking him from the cave, he had torn the pouch from around his neck and left it for Dodinal. Were it not for the flint and steel, the knight could not have started the fire.

No, there were too many coincidences for Dodinal’s liking.

Rhiannon’s mother had been a seer. Rhiannon was not. Could it be the gift had been passed on to her son instead?

Owain leant in close to put his mouth by Dodinal’s ear.

“Yes,” he whispered. He smiled and put a finger to his lips.

Then he turned and ran towards the forest.

Dodinal laughed and followed after him. He would say farewell to his friends, and then he would be on his way. If he headed west, he could be at the coast before nightfall. A change of scenery would do him good. He had spent too much time in the forest, and he would be a happy man if he never had to climb a mountain again.

He sensed the wildlife returning. In the sky above the forest a hawk soared, and fell like a stone as it sighted prey.

There would be other battles to fight, he felt certain. Perhaps it was too much to hope that a man such as he would ever find peace.

But he was at peace with himself. And that would do for now.

¹³The Penecostal Oath, which Arthur insists his knights swear when he first forms the Round Table, in Book I of the Morte. The Oath does not explicitly require the knights to seek out injustices, although it enjoins them “to give mercy unto him that asketh mercy,” and to “always to do ladies, damosels, and gentlewomen succour.” Dodinal is far from the only knight to interpret this by actively questing for opportunities to do both.