Dodinal raised his eyes to the brightening sky and sighed long and hard. He could stop him if he wanted to. But even if he knocked Gerwyn down, he would just get back up again. He was a man on a quest of his own now. There would be no standing in his way.
“Why don’t you wait until after your father’s funeral?”
“My reasons are similar to yours. You want to be gone before Rhiannon wakes, because of your feelings for her.”
“I have no feelings for her,” Dodinal interrupted testily, the words sounding false even to his own ears. He turned and walked away. Again Gerwyn pursued him.
“Yes, you do. She has feelings for you, too. It’s clear to see. That is why you leave while she sleeps: if she were to walk out here now, you would have second thoughts.”
“No, I would not,” Dodinal said, although he wondered if, despite having sworn to find her son, his resolve would falter if she did come hurrying after him. “Besides, you still have not answered my question. Why won’t you wait until after your father’s funeral?”
“Because I would be shamed to stand among the villagers while they paid their last respects.” Gerwyn dropped his head. “I do not deserve to be here, not until I have redeemed myself by bringing Owain home. I could not bring myself to look Rhiannon in the eye.”
Dodinal studied him for a moment, searching for any hint of insincerity or duplicity and finding none. Short of killing him, there was no shaking him off for now. Gerwyn may be an ass, but he did not deserve Dodinal’s sword run through him. Fine, then. Let them walk together, if that was how it had to be. Dodinal could always lose him in the wildwood if he began to get on his nerves. “All right.”
Gerwyn smiled. He went to speak, but Dodinal forestalled him. “As long as you keep your mouth shut. If you annoy me any more than you have done, I will not be responsible for my actions.”
He lifted the sword half out of his sheath, then let it drop back.
The smile faltered. When they passed through the gates, Dodinal understood why.
Waiting for them were Gerwyn’s two friends, the brothers whose names he still did not know. They carried spears and had swords in their belts. Like Gerwyn they had packs as well as bows, and quivers, bristling with arrows. There, too, was Hywel the tracker, and with him was Emlyn, who had the surest aim of all the village’s hunters. Both men were armed and carrying packs of their own.
“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded, although the meaning was all too apparent. They had planned it well in advance.
“You were prepared to travel in company,” Gerwyn answered, flashing his teeth in a nervous grin. “So what difference does it make if one man travels with you or several? You have nothing but the clothes you stand in and the weapons you hold. You could not even start a fire. Between us, we have everything an expedition needs. Well, except food. But we will hunt. We will not go hungry.”
Dodinal doubted that, but otherwise Gerwyn’s words rang true. Having lost his pack, he was woefully equipped for the journey.
“Besides,” Hywel said, looking somewhat sheepish, “Idris was our brehyrion. We all respected and loved him. We have come to respect you, too. We will not let you fight this battle alone.”
“Then it’s decided,” Gerwyn said. “There is safety in numbers. We will be safer as a group than we would be going it alone.”
Dodinal’s grumbles were half-hearted. He really had intended travelling alone, but had not rated his chances of success very highly. He was just one man. The creatures had torn through the village. Twenty dead, almost a third of them women, many more badly injured.
The odds were still against him, but not, now, quite as heavily as they might otherwise have been.
“Well, seeing as you’re all here, we might as well set off,” he growled. Giving Gerwyn a last baleful look, he also saw a way of turning the situation to his advantage. If the young man did make it back with the children, the villagers would doubtless be less reluctant for Gerwyn to take over from Idris. So he leant forward to whisper to Gerwyn. “I’ll track, you lead. Show these men you have the courage to become brehyrion.”
Gerwyn jerked his head back in surprise. Then he nodded.
As they set off towards the forest, Dodinal paused to look back at the sleeping village. He was struck by a sudden premonition he would never pass this way again.
SIXTEEN
They moved at a steady pace, driven by a sense of urgency but wary of tiring themselves out too quickly. Tendrils of mist rose from the ground as if the land itself were sending guardians to walk with them. Gerwyn led, with constant glances over his shoulder towards Dodinal to make sure he was heading north. The knight either nodded or subtly gestured left or right if they had drifted off course. If Gerwyn possessed any tracking skills at all he would only have had to look up to see what direction they needed to travel.
The creatures could move at will through the trees and so must know which branches would take their weight. But their instincts were not infallible; branches that looked strong may have been weakened by disease or age. Some of them had been left hanging loose or had snapped off and fallen to the ground.
Of course, Gerwyn saw nothing of this. He was a hunter, but his prey was only ever to be found on the ground, not above it.
Soon after they left the village, the trail of damaged branches petered out and vanished. Dodinal was not unduly concerned. He kept his eyes on the forest floor. Sure enough, it was not long before he found a single set of tracks; the burned creature’s spoor.
He said nothing. The others only had to know which path to follow. When he looked around, his companions were oblivious to the trail. All save Hywel. He nodded briefly to show he had not missed it. Dodinal smiled; he would have expected nothing less of such an accomplished woodsman.
Time passed. Shadows fled the forest as dawn gave way to early morning sunlight. The travellers spoke little, aware of the need to conserve their strength, and breath, for the long journey ahead. Along the way, however, Dodinal learned that Gerwyn’s two friends were named Tomos and Rhydian. They were brothers, as he’d assumed; indeed, so similar were they in looks that he found it difficult to tell them apart. Not that it mattered. They were so jittery around him that they walked a good distance away, speaking only between themselves and to Gerwyn, and even then in lowered tones.
As the sun climbed the sky, the day became pleasantly warm. The air carried more than a promise of spring. Dodinal walked with his cloak carried over his shoulder. He wondered if Rhiannon was awake, and whether she had forgiven him for leaving while she slept.
He wondered, too, what she would make of Gerwyn’s absence, and what words might be said at the brehyrion’sfuneral. But there was no gain in thinking about that. At least the villagers were in good hands. If anyone could get them fed and sheltered, it was Rhiannon.
Around them were the first true signs of the new season: green buds speckled the branches, and daffodils, snowdrops and bluebells pushed up through the ground, filling the air with their scent.
Memories of the hard winter just past were already fading. All that was missing was the birdsong that usually greeted the season. Its absence was jarring and wrong, as if Dodinal had looked down to find he had no shadow.
“I expect you’re in a bad mood with us.” It was Hywel. He had fallen in beside Dodinal, as had Emlyn. The knight had been too lost in his reverie to notice their approach.
“What? Why?”
“For not letting you travel alone.”
Dodinal shrugged. “Say nothing of this to Gerwyn or his friends, but I’m glad to have company, even though it is not the company I might have expected. I suspected you might impose your presence upon me, whether it was wanted or not.”