CHAPTER

6

)By midmorning Bran, Iwan, and Brother Ffreol had begun the long, sloping ascent of the ridge overlooking the Vale of Wye. Upon reaching the top, they paused and looked down into the broad valley and the glittering sweep of the lazy green river. In the distance they could see the dark flecks of birds circling and swooping in the cloudless sky. Bran saw them, and his stomach tightened with apprehension.

As the men approached the river ford, the strident calls of carrion feeders filled the air-ravens, rooks, and crows for the most part, but there were others. Hawks, buzzards, and even an owl or two wheeled in tight circles above the trees.

Bran stopped at the water's edge. The soft ground of the riverbank was raggedly churned and chewed, as if a herd of giant boar had undertaken to plough the water marge with their tusks. There were no corpses to be seen, but here and there flies buzzed in thick black clouds over congealing puddles where blood had collected in a horse's hoofprint. The air was heavy and rank with the sickly sweet stench of death.

Bran dismounted and walked back toward the road, where most of the fighting had taken place. He looked down and saw that in the place where he stood the earth took on a deeper, ruddy hue where a warrior's lifeblood had stained the ground on which he died.

'This is where it happened,' mused Brother Ffreol with quiet reverence. 'This is where the warriors of Elfael were overthrown.'

'Aye,' confirmed Iwan, his face grim and grey with fatigue and pain. 'This is where we were ambushed and massacred.' He lifted his hand and pointed to the wide bend of the river. 'Rhi Brychan fell there,' he said. 'By the time I reached him, his body had been washed away.'

Bran, mouth pressed into a thin white line, stared at the water and said nothing. Once he might have felt a twinge of regret at his father's passing, but not now. Years of accumulated grievances had long ago removed his father from his affections. Sorrow alone could not surmount the rancour and bitterness, nor span the aching distance between them. He whispered a cold farewell and turned once more to the battleground.

Images of chaos sprang into his mind-a desperate battle between woefully outnumbered and lightly armed Britons and heavy, hulking, mail-clad Ffreinc knights. He saw the blood haze hang like a mist in the air above the slaughter and heard the echoed clash of steel on steel, of blade on wood and bone, the fast-fading shouts and screams of men and horses as they died.

Looking toward the wood to the north, he saw the birds flocking to their feeding frenzy. Squawking, shrieking, they fought and fluttered, battering wings against one another in their greed. Grabbing up stones from the riverbank, he ran to the place, throwing rocks into the midst of the feathered scavengers as he ran.

Reluctant to leave the mound on which they fed, the scolding birds fluttered up and settled again as the angry stones sailed past. Stooping once more, he took up another handful of rocks and, screaming at the top of his lungs, let fly. One of the missiles struck a greedy red-beaked crow and snapped its neck. The wounded bird flopped, beating its wings in a last frantic effort to rise; Bran threw again and the bird lay still.

The hillock was covered with brush and branches cut from the thickets and trees along the riverbank. Pulling a stick from the pile, Bran began beating at the flesh eaters; they hopped and dodged, reluctant to give ground. Bran, screaming like a demon, lashed with the branch, driving the scavengers away. They fled with angry reluctance, crying their outrage to the sky as Bran pulled brushwood from the stack to lay bare a massed heap of corpses.

The stick in his hand fell away, and Bran staggered backward, overwhelmed by the calamity that had taken the lives of his kinsmen and friends. The birds had feasted well. There were gaping hollows where eyes had been; flesh had been stripped from faces; ragged holes had been wrested in rib cages to expose the soft viscera. Human no longer, they were merely so much rotting meat.

No! These were men he knew. They were friends, riding companions, fellow hunters, drinking mates-some of them from times before he could remember. They had taught him trail craft, had given him his first lessons with blunted wooden weapons made for him with their own hands. They had picked him up when he fell from his horse, corrected his aim when he practised with the bow, and along the way, taught him much of what he knew of life. To see them now with their empty eyes and livid, blackening faces, their ruined bodies beginning to bloat, was more than he could bear.

As he gazed in mute horror at the confused tangle of slashed and bloodied limbs and torsos, something deep inside himself gave wayas if a ligament or sinew suddenly snapped under the strain of a load too heavy to bear. His soul spun into a void of bloodred rage. His vision narrowed, and it seemed as if his surroundings had taken on a keener, harder edge but were now viewed from a long way off. It seemed to Bran that he gazed at the world through a red-tinged tunnel.

There was another hill nearby-also crudely covered with brush and lopped-off tree branches. Bran ran to it, uncovered it, and without realising what he was doing, climbed up onto the tangled jumble of bodies. He sank to his knees and grasped the arms of the corpses with his hands, tugging on them as if urging their sleeping owners to wake again and rise. 'Get up!' he shouted. 'Open your eyes!' He saw a face he recognised; seizing the corpse's arm, he jerked on it, crying, 'Evan, wake up!' He saw another: 'Geronwy! The Ffreinc are here!' He began calling the names of those he remembered, 'Bryn! Ifan! Oryg! Gerallt! Idris! Madog! Get up, all of you!'

'Bran!' Brother Ffreol, shocked and alarmed, ran to pull him away. 'Bran! For the love of God, come down from there!'

Stumbling up over the dead, the monk reached out and snagged Bran by the sleeve and hauled him down, dragging the prince back to solid ground and back to himself once more.

Bran heard Ffreol's voice and felt the monk's hands on him, and awareness came flooding back. The blood- tinged veil through which he viewed the world dimmed and faded, and he was himself once more. He felt weak and hollow, like a man who has slaved all night in his sleep and awakened exhausted.

'What were you doing up there?' demanded Brother Ffreol.

Bran shook his head. 'I thought… I-' Suddenly, his stomach heaved; he pitched forward on hands and knees and retched.

Ffreol stood with him until he finished. When Bran could stand again, the priest turned to the death mound and sank to his knees in the soft earth. Bran knelt beside him, and Iwan painfully dismounted and knelt beside his horse as Brother Ffreol spread his arms, palms upward in abject supplication.

Closing his eyes and turning his face to heaven, the priest said, 'Merciful Father, our hearts are pierced with the sharp arrow of grief. Our words fail; our souls quail; our spirits recoil before the injustice of this hateful iniquity. We are undone.

'God and Creator, gather the souls of our kinsmen to your Great Hall, forgive their sins and remember only their virtues, and bind them to yourself with the strong bands of fellowship.

'For ourselves, Mighty Father, I pray you keep us from the sin of hatred, keep us from the sin of vengeance, keep us from the sin of despair, but protect us from the wicked schemes of our enemies. Walk with us now on this uncertain road. Send angels to go before us, angels to go behind, angels on either side, angels above and below- guarding, shielding, encompassing.' He paused for a moment and then added, 'May the Holy One give us the courage of righteousness and grant us strength for this day and through all things whatsoever shall befall us. Amen.'

Bran, kneeling beside him, stared at the ground and tried to add his 'Amen,' but the word clotted and died in his throat. After a moment, he raised his head and gazed for the last time on the heap of corpses before turning his face away.

Then, while Bran bathed in the river to wash the stink of death and gore from his hands and clothes, Ffreol and Iwan covered the bodies once more with fresh-cut branches of hazel and holly, the better to keep the birds away. Bran finished, and the three grief-sick men remounted and rode on as the cacophony of carrion feeders renewed behind them. Just after midday they crossed the border into England and a short while later approached the English town of Hereford. The town was full of Ffreinc now, so they moved on quickly without stopping. From Hereford, the road was wide and well used, if deeply rutted. They encountered few people and spoke to none,

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