Arthur scarcely touched a bite. He kept leaping up from his place beside me on the bench, wanting to dash off to see to his horse, or his tack, or his spears.
'Eat, lad,' Pelleas told him once and again. 'There will be nothing more for you until supper.'
'I cannot eat, Pelleas,' Arthur complained. 'I must see to my horse.'
'Your horse can wait. Now, eat what is before you."
'Look! There is Cai! I must speak to him!' He was up and away before either of us could stop him.
'Let him go, Pelleas,' I advised. 'You are trying to hold back the tide with a broom.'
After eating, we assembled in the foreyard, where the horses were ready and waiting. The day had dawned grey and chill, the mist thick and damp – a raw foretaste of the long bleak winter ahead. The hound handlers – six men, each with four dogs straining to the leash – strove to calm their animals and keep them from getting tangled with the others. The yard stank of wet dog and horse. Everything boiled in a fine, convivial confusion, excitement heightened by keen anticipation.
The horses stamped and snorted impatiently as the hunters lashed their spears into place. The younger boys darted here and there, teasing the dogs and setting them barking. And the women, who had come to see husbands and sweethearts away, challenged their menfolk with good-natured taunts to bring home the biggest boar or stag, or failing that, a hare for the pot.
Pelleas and I were to ride with Ectorius, and we found him near the gate, conferring with his master huntsman – a bald crag of a man called Ruddlyn, who, it was said, could scent a stag before the stag could scent him-no mean feat, surely, for even I could smell him quite plainly. The huntsman wore a coarse leather tunic through which two great bare hairy arms were thrust; his legs were stout as stumps in tall, hair-covered boots. Ruddlyn and Ectorius were talking about the weather.
'Na, na,' Ruddlyn was saying, 'this liath will clear before long. This be just a piddling; pay it no mind. The valley runs will be clearing by the time we reach them. The mist will not last, I tell ye.'
'Then sound the horn, man,' Ectorius told him, making up his mind at once. 'It is a sin to keep the hounds back any longer.'
'Aye,' agreed Ruddlyn, who lumbered off, unslinging the horn from around his neck.
Our horses were before us, so up we mounted. Ectorius, grinning, his face wet from the misting rain, saluted the eager hunters. 'My friends! We are assured of a fine day. We have had a good summer, so the runs are full of game. The day is before you. I give you a good hunt.'
Just then the master huntsman sounded his horn – a long, low, braying note that set the hounds bawling in reply. The gate swung open and we all surged out onto the track.
Lord Ectorius' hunting runs lay hard by Caer Edyn to the northwest, for there the forest crowded close. Beginning in the glen of the Carun River, the runs followed the stream into the forest for a goodly way before dividing.
On the right hand, the trails continued a slow easy ascent into the hills and bluffs above the Fiorthe and Muir Guidan to the east; the left-hand trails bent westward, rising sharply to meet a steep and treacherous rock ridge that marked the beginning of the harsh and lonely region known as Manau Gododdin.
The deep-folded land was dense with oak and ash, the undergrowth thorny briar; the uplands and hilltops were gorse and heather clinging to bare stone: a rough land. But the hunting was unmatched.
We rode to the glen, allowing the more eager parties to speed on ahead. At the entrance to the run the first pack was loosed, and the baying hounds dashed away, slavering, the scent already burning in their nostrils; the first group of hunters raced after them.
'Let them fly! Let them fly,' shouted Ectorius. 'Myrddin, Pelleas! Stay close to Ruddlyn and he will find us a rare prize. You have my word on it.'
We continued on, the glen ringing with the sound of hounds and hunters. Cai and Arthur passed us, whooping like the bhean sidhe as they plunged headlong through the Carun and gallopped into the forest.
'I used to ride like that,' remarked Ectorius, shaking his head and laughing, 'but stare at an empty board once or twice and you soon learn to rein in your high spirits. Oh,' he chuckled again, 'but it was great fun.'
Ruddlyn arrived just then, dismounted, and, taking the leashes of the five dogs he had with him – big, black, square-muzzled brutes all – he wrapped all five leather straps around his hand, saying, 'I have seen a fair-sized stag further on. It would be worth saving the hounds for him.'
With that he was off, running with the dogs, his stout legs carrying him with surprising speed through the brush-choked trails. Curiously, the dogs did not yelp, but trotted stiffly, heads down, tails straight.
Ectorius saw my wondering glance, and explained, 'He has them trained to silence. They never give voice until the animal is sighted. We get much closer that way.' He lashed his horse and started after the huntsman and his hounds.
Pelleas followed and I came after, leaning close to our mounts' necks and shoulders to avoid low-hanging branches. The trail was dark and damp; mist seeped along the still air. Gradually, the sound of the other hunting parties receded, muffled and muted by the dense forest growth.
Ruddlyn, moving with the quickness of his dogs, soon disappeared into the murk of the dim, tunnel-like trail ahead. We rode after him, slashing through the pungent bracken that clung to us as if to hold us back. In no time, our horses were streaming water from the withers down and our clothing was soaked through.
The trail veered always to the left, and I soon understood that we were following one of the western runs into the craggy hills of Manau Gododdin. On we chased, the sound of our passing muted by the heavy, damp air.
We caught Ruddlyn in a clearing where he had halted to wait for us. Hardly winded, he stood with his dogs around him, face to the low, leaden clouds above. 'It will clear,' he announced.
'What have you found?' asked Ectorius. 'Is it the stag?'
'Aye.'
'Will we see it soon?'
'Right soon, lord.'
With that, he turned and strode away once more. The ground, I noticed, began to rise and in a little while the forest began to thin somewhat. We were beginning the climb to higher ground; the trail became more uneven.
The pace was not fast, but I kept my eyes on the trail, alert to any obstacle there. In the chase, even small dangers – a jagged stone, a fallen branch, a hole in the ground – can mean disaster if unheeded.
I had been lulled by the running rhythm of Ruddlyn's ground-eating pace when I was jolted by the sudden sharp sounding of the hounds. I jerked my head up and, just ahead, saw Ruddlyn pointing into the brush, the dogs straining at the leather, snouts raised to heaven.
I looked where he pointed and saw the reddish blur of a disappearing deer. An instant later, the dogs were loosed and flying to the chase, Ruddlyn with them.
'Hie!' cried Ectorius. 'God bless us, we have a fight on our hands! Did you see him?'
'A very lord of his kind,' shouted Pelleas, snapping the reins. His horse leaped after the dogs.
I followed, exulting in the chase, the wet wind on my face, the spirited baying of the hounds in my ears. The forest thinned. Trees flashed by. The horse and I moved as one, leaping felled logs and rocks, surging through the brake.
Once and again I glimpsed one or another ahead – now Pelleas, now Ectorius – as the forest sped by in a grey, mottled haze. The trail rose more steeply now. There were stones and turf-covered hillocks all around. We fairly flew over these, rising all the while.
All at once we broke cover; the forest fell away behind us. Ahead rose the steep, many-shadowed slopes of the rock ridge. In the selfsame moment, the clouds shifted and, standing in the centre of a single shaft of shimmering light, head high, regarding us casually… a magnificent stag – enormous, perhaps the largest I have ever seen. A dozen or more points on his antlers, his mane thick and dark across heavy shoulders, his sides solid and his hindquarters well muscled – a true Forest Lord.