The Questing Beast roared again but did not move. What was it waiting for? Dodinal was torn by indecision. Part of him wanted to stand his ground. Another felt compelled to attack.
The adults moved before he could, fanning out around the young, yelping and barking in what Dodinal now recognised was a feeble attempt to emulate the voice of their god, trying to herd the child-creatures across to where Dodinal waited. The young shuffled and whined and cast anxious glances at each other, and at their siblings lying broken and bleeding on the ground.
Without warning, one of the adults broke away from the rest and loped towards the slab. The Questing Beast opened its mouth and again came that hideous baying. The gargoyle creature stumbled and looked around as though uncertain of its actions, then seemed to shrug off any misgivings and continued its headlong rush. At the last second it coiled and leapt over Dodinal, landing on the farthest edge of the slab. Dodinal spun around to face it, the Questing Beast and its horde of worshippers forgotten.
The creature turned to face its kin, and then bent and thrust a hand towards Owain’s chest.
Dodinal twisted and hurled the shield, clipping the thing’s skull and stunning it. Then he lashed out with the sword and took its arm off above the elbow. The creature howled and flung itself away from him, losing its footing and falling from the slab’s edge.
A furious shrieking filled the air as Dodinal slashed through the last of the bindings and lifted Owain away from the rock. The boy wrapped his arms so tightly around his neck that the knight could scarcely breathe. He tried to put him down and push him towards the bank, but Owain refused to let go.
Dodinal spun around. The Questing Beast had still not moved, but the creatures were closing in on him, the adults now leading the way, the young following tremulously behind them.
He could not fight them all.
Dodinal lifted the blade and rested the metal against Owain’s throat. It would be kinder this way, a mercy killing. The boy must have known what was going to happen, but didn’t flinch. He was brave, no doubt about that. His mother was right to be proud of him.
The creatures were almost within reach. Dodinal smelled their foul carrion breath as they yelped and howled.
He shook his head. He could not do it. Could not take an innocent life even if it was for the best. Very well, he would take out as many of them as he could and go down fighting. At least neither he nor the boy would die alone.
The creatures stumbled to a standstill and fell silent.
Their eyes, Dodinal saw, no longer reflected the moonlight, but swum with a rich amber glow.
Tall shadows danced on the cliff face as orange light bathed the bowl, casting the stunted trees into sharp relief. Now the creatures had ceased their shrieking and hollering, he could hear the rush of the wind through the branches. Smoke, dense and choking, gusted over him, over them all.
Dodinal turned his head. The trees were now pillars of fire, and the flames were spreading. Burning tendrils reached out across the dark spaces of the forest.
Dodinal could barely draw breath, between the smoke and the child around his neck, but laughed all the same.
He had wanted a distraction. Now he had one.
The creatures immediately turned away from him and Owain, scattering, running and leaping away from the flames, making for the trees and scrambling up into the branches. They vanished into the wood, the clamour of their panic-stricken flight carrying back after they had disappeared from sight, leaving man and boy alone. The Questing Beast was gone too. Dodinal frowned, confused. It could shake the earth with each step and yet he had not heard it leave.
He felt a sharp pain as Owain pulled hard on his beard and pointed over Dodinal’s shoulder. The knight turned to look and saw that the fire had almost completed a full circle of the closest trees surrounding them. If they did not move now they would be trapped and would suffocate, or burn to death.
Neither was any way to die.
Dodinal left the shield where he had thrown it and sheathed the sword. Holding Owain with both hands, he fled across the clearing, only just outrunning the flames as they closed the circle. Earth flew up under his boots as he scrambled up the bank and raced into the forest, neither knowing nor caring which way he was heading, as long as it was away from the fire. Blistering heat toasted his neck as the trees around him were engulfed. The sound of it snapped at his heels, crackling and roaring. Even the air his hungry lungs gulped down felt hot.
Dodinal looked sharply to his left and right as he ran. Everything was alight, from the undergrowth to the crowns of the trees. He had no choice but to keep pushing blindly forward. Ahead of him, a tree burst into flame as though struck by lighting and started to lean across his path. Holding Owain tightly, Dodinal drove himself on, sprinting under the tree at the very moment it crashed to the ground, a searing blast of air washing up his back. He stumbled, but managed to stay on his feet, letting go of Owain with one hand long enough to swipe embers from his hair before they could singe his scalp.
Smoke closed his throat. He began to cough, great hacking barks, and could not stop. His eyes swam with tears. He had no sense of direction, careering blindly towards the darkness, like a narrowing passage through the turbulent light. Sparks and burning debris landed and stung his face and hands.
Then he was tumbling into space. Owain slipped from his grasp, and Dodinal tensed, bracing for impact. Instead of hard ground, he felt the shock of cold water as the lake closed around him. A roaring filled his ears. Dodinal flailed around, swallowing water, not knowing which way was up and which was down.
Then his feet touched the bottom and he pushed hard. His head broke the surface, and he gasped and coughed and threw up water. Smoke swirled and boiled around him. The fire was a fierce glow, which had spread all along this side of the lake and was now encroaching on the other.
As he watched, still spitting out water, the tinder-dry forest succumbed to the inferno, the wind harrying the flames on their way. He imagined he saw movement within the trees, pictured the creatures trying in vain to escape as death closed around them.
“Owain,” he shouted, throat raw. He thought hard, trying to remember if he had still had hold of the boy when he hit the water. If not, he could still be on the bank. “Owain, where are you?”
The water was deep even a few yards out, rising to the top of his chest. He waded back towards the lakeside, calling all the way, straining for an answer, cursing himself for a fool when it occurred to him he would not get one even if Owain had heard.
A ball of fire burst out of the forest and hurtled towards the lake, wailing like something possessed. It hit the water with a hissing plume of steam. Before Dodinal could reach for his sword a head burst up through the surface right before him, its gargoyle face rendered uglier by fire. Most of the skin had been burned away, so it was little more than a skull. It lunged at Dodinal, mouth agape; he grabbed its jaws and wrenched them apart until they snapped, then broke its neck and tossed the body aside.
Something grabbed his arm. Dodinal spun around, hand raised to strike, staying the blow when he saw with relief it was Owain. The boy was struggling to tread water and shaking badly, from fear or cold or both. Dodinal lifted him up.
The fire had leapt from tree to tree, spreading not just around the edges of the lake but rampaging through the forest until the entire valley was ablaze, turning the walls of the mountains around it into a cauldron of shifting light and shadow. The searing brightness turned the night sky to dawn, driving back the moon and stars. The roar of the fire was a thousand times louder than that of the Questing Beast.
The choking smoke was bad enough, but there were other dangers. Windblown debris rained down around them, sizzling as it plunged into the water. It was cold, too. They would not survive in the lake for long, but neither could they climb out of it with the fire raging so close to the water’s edge. The safest course of action would be to strike out for the centre of the lake where there was less chance of being struck and where the air might be clearer.