Dodinal was too scared to go inside, afraid of what he might find, until he heard the low groaning again. Someone was alive in there. He had to help them. Taking a few deep breaths to steady his nerves, he stepped cautiously through the doorway.
What he saw next would stay in his memory forever.
A woman was seated on the floor with her back against the wall. Her head lolled. Her clothes were soaked crimson, and blood had sprayed from the deep slash across her throat and splattered the wall. He thought he recognised her, but it was difficult to be sure. Dodinal had never spent much time with the villagers or their children, preferring to be out hunting with his father. He knew they considered him strange. It had never bothered him.
A baby was sprawled like a discarded toy on the ground by her feet. Dodinal could not bring himself to look at it too closely. The dark puddle around its body told him more than he wanted to know.
As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he saw the woman had a long knife in one hand, its blade stained. She must have died fighting off those who had threatened her and her baby. Dodinal swallowed heavily. If they were both dead, who had he heard groaning?
He spun around and let out a startled yell. A man was curled up on the floor, arms around his midriff. Dodinal’s first thought was that it was yet another corpse. Then the man shuddered and a low groan escaped his lips. Dodinal took a hesitant step towards him. Then he took a step back, unsure of what to do.
The man raised his head to look at him. His face was criss-crossed with bloody slashes and his right eye socket was a ragged, empty mess. He reached out with one hand. Two of the fingers had been lopped off at the middle joint. He must have been left for dead when his wife and child had been slaughtered. Despite his own loss, Dodinal could have wept for him.
The man mumbled something Dodinal could not hear; he eased forward until he was closer but still out of reach. He did not want those bloody stumps touching him.
“Say it again,” he whispered, dry-mouthed.
The man coughed wetly and blood-flecked spittle sprayed from his lips. This time when he spoke, Dodinal heard him clearly but still could not understand a word. The man spoke the same harsh, guttural language as the giant who had taken Dodinal’s mother.
The man called out again, and Dodinal scrambled away from him. The raider began to use his ruined hand to drag himself along the floor, leaving a broad smear of blood in his wake. Dodinal backed up to the door and made ready to run.
Before he could he saw his mother’s face again, heard her agonised cries, remembered his father’s body and the coil of guts that had spilled from it. A terrible anger rose within him, and he bellowed with raw fury. A red mist descended over his eyes, and when it cleared, he was on his knees outside the hut. He had dropped the sword. It was on the ground beside him. The blade’s entire length was slick with gore. Dodinal stared numbly at his hands. They were stained red, his clothes too.
He stood and walked on unsteady legs to the doorway. Even before he reached it he could see that what had been a slow drip of blood was now a torrent. Breathing deeply, he peered inside the hut, glimpsed the glistening mess of flesh, bone and offal scattered across the floor and was immediately and violently sick.
Turning quickly away, he slumped to the ground and was sick again and again, heaving when there was nothing left inside him until his stomach felt like it was being turned inside out. He could only lie there helpless, groaning and retching, until the spasms had passed.
Then he stood and wiped his mouth. Memories flashed through his head like snatches of a nightmare that remained on waking: the man reaching out for him, the sword slashing down, blood spurting, a severed hand spinning as it fell to the floor. The blade rising and then falling. A scarlet rain filling the air…
Dodinal gagged and swallowed the searing bile that rose in his throat. He had never drawn a man’s blood before; today, he had not merely drawn it but sprayed it liberally around the hut. He had chopped head and limbs from the body and hacked the torso to pieces, using a sword that was almost too heavy for him to lift. He had not been able to control himself. It was as if someone else had inhabited his body, someone wickedly strong and utterly without pity.
Dodinal was scared and shocked by his display of unrestrained violence. He was also strangely exhilarated.
As soon as he had recovered, he continued to look for his mother. Though he searched until darkness forced him to seek shelter for the night, he never found her. Often, in the lonely years that followed, he would reflect that never knowing her fate was a worse and more enduring agony than the certainty of her death.
The knight leaned against the doorway, gazing out across the deserted village. A long time had passed since then. His life had altered in a way he could never have foreseen, but in some ways it remained the same. He had been alone then, and he was alone now, and he imagined he would ever be so. Only one thing had changed: as a youth he had lusted only for vengeance, and now all he wanted was peace.
He did not think that was too much to ask for.
Dodinal sighed and closed the door.
No, not too much to ask for. Yet it eluded him.
Suddenly feeling the cold, he lowered himself to the mattress and pulled the furs over him. There he lay, eyes open, dwelling on his past while he waited for Rhiannon to return.
FIVE
The next morning he felt strong enough to leave the hut and decided it was time he met the chieftain Idris. Rhiannon made no secret of her displeasure, arguing he needed more rest. But Dodinal’s mind was made up; he had rested long enough.
She had arrived with a bowl containing more of the nuts and berries that her people currently broke their fast with.
“Your chieftain will think I lack courtesy if I do not pay my respects, now I am recovered,” Dodinal said around the mouthful of squirrel food he was reluctantly chewing. His stomach rumbled. Rhiannon had brought him more cawl the previous day, along with some flat bread, but nothing since. “All the more so because he was courteous enough to allow me to recover in peace.”
“It was not so much courtesy as common sense.” Rhiannon stood over him with folded arms and a stern look on her face. “He knew that disturbing you before you were ready to see him could hamper your recovery. And I would have had more work to do.”
“Ah,” Dodinal grinned. “No doubt you set him straight on that. So it was not so much common sense as his fear of you.”
Rhiannon gave him a withering, thin-lipped glare. “Next time you can stitch your own leg.” But she flashed a smile that vanished as quickly as it had appeared. She was not angry, and even seemed pleased at how swiftly he was healing. Of course, that might only be because she wanted him out of her hut as quickly as good manners allowed, yet he believed she was proud of her healing abilities, for all her reluctance to speak of them.
“I’ll tell Idris you will call on him,” Rhiannon said.
Dodinal raised an eyebrow. “Is that necessary? I mean only to pay him my regards and thank him for sharing his food.”
“He will have none of that, mark my words. Owain is his only grandson and the old man dotes on him. I suspect he would have wanted you to take longer to get well. He tries not to show it, but he is enjoying having Owain spend more time with him than usual. Like me, he will be forever in your debt.”