“He lay in his bed for weeks. He was the toughest of men, my Elwyn, but night after night, he would cry out with the pain of it. When the end came, the tears I wept were as much of gratitude as loss. I could not bear to see him suffer. Does that sound selfish to you?”
“Not at all,” he said softly. “No man deserves to die that way, let alone a brave man like your husband.”
“Thank you,” she said, getting up from the bench. “Now perhaps you can understand why I will always be in your debt for saving Owain. Without him, I would have no reason to live. And I suspect it’s also why he is so desperate to be around you all the time.”
“Because I remind him of his father?” To his surprise, Dodinal found the idea did not sit uneasily. After all these years, he still could not think of his own father without an aching sadness.
“Because he needs someone to look up to.”
Uneasy, Dodinal cleared his throat. “Then he would be better off looking up to others. I am hardly a shining example.”
“Oh, I think you are. You just haven’t realised it yet.”
She turned abruptly and took her cloak from the peg, a clear indication there was nothing further to be said on the matter. “Now, remember what I told you. Try to sleep if you can. I’ll bring whatever food can be spared, when it is ready.”
Time passed maddeningly slowly once she had left. Dodinal tried to sleep, but the tumbling thoughts in his head kept him awake. Finally he could tolerate it no longer; despite Rhiannon’s admonitions, he pushed the furs away and set about getting to his feet.
He did so slowly and carefully, using the wall for support, not wanting to risk tearing the stitches that bound the wound shut. Even then it was not easy. When he was finally standing, dizziness overcame him and he had to wait for it to pass.
Once his head was clear, he tested his right leg, putting as much weight on it as he dared. Satisfied it would not collapse under him, he took a few tentative steps past the fire. A pot of simmering water was suspended from an iron tripod over it, and a smaller pot stood in the ashes at the edge, containing what looked like the muddy remnants of the poultice. He shuffled across to the door, overwhelmed by an impulsive desire to see, feel and smell the outside world.
The wind threatened to tear the door from his grasp. It buffeted him, making his hair and beard dance. Cold cut through the light clothes he wore, and which he now suspected had belonged to poor doomed Elwyn. Snow blew into his eyes, concealing much of what lay beyond the doorway. Through the swirling haze he could see the Great Hall, directly ahead of him across a square. Tiers of smaller huts stood to his left and right. Behind them, tall shapes that could have been trees, but whose lives he couldn’t sense, rose into the sky. The rest of the world was lost in a tumult of white.
He leaned against the door frame and stared out, seeing not this village but another, or what remained of it. The smoke rising from the roofs of these huts became the smoke that had risen from the smouldering remnants of the village of his childhood.
With nothing to distract him, the memories of that dreadful night flooded back, as unstoppable as they were unwanted.
Dodinal did not sleep, that first night alone in the forest. Through the long hours he sat inside the hollow tree, wrapped in his cloak, shivering from cold and grief and fear, tears leaving frozen trails down his cheeks. He could not get his mother’s face out of his mind. He could still hear her groans of pain. He desperately needed to believe she was alive, his father too, but there was an unbearable heaviness in his heart because he knew they must be dead.
Eventually the sky lightened. As much as he wanted to stay here, where he was safe, he knew that to do so meant he would soon die from the cold. He felt sick, yet if he did not eat he would not have the strength to move. So he left the sanctuary of the oak and retraced his steps through the forest, moving slowly and quietly.
All he could hear was the sigh of a breeze through bare branches, the rustle of small creatures in the undergrowth, the harsh calling of crows overhead that sounded like the cries of restless spirits. He was alone.
Shivering, Dodinal pulled the cloak tighter and continued towards the village. He remained tense and alert as he ghosted through the trees, fearful his mother’s attacker might have guessed he would return and was hiding in wait for him, as doubtful as it was that a mere boy was worth his time and trouble.
The trees thinned out. He smelled burning, yet there was no smoke to be seen. The fires must have burned themselves out.
Dodinal’s mouth was dry, his hands were slick with sweat despite the cold morning air and his stomach was twisted into knots. He did not want to go any further; his mind screamed at him to turn and run until he had left the village far behind. But he could not. There was nowhere to run to and no point in living if that meant spending the rest of his life alone. Slowly, braced to flee at the slightest sound, he emerged from the forest and stared in wide-eyed, open-mouthed horror at the devastation that confronted him.
The village had gone. What had once been huts were now smouldering, shapeless heaps of blackened wood. Dodinal staggered towards them as if in a daze. Bodies lay everywhere, not all of them intact: as he drew closer, what he had taken for fallen branches were revealed as severed limbs. He wanted to look away, yet found his eyes taking in every detail.
Carrion birds fussed over the corpses, too busy feasting to make any sound other than a rustle of feathers and the wet ripping noise of beaks tearing at flesh. They did not react as Dodinal passed them by.
Onwards he crept, stepping over the bodies, peering at their clothes and faces, trying not to look into their sightless eyes. Some he recognised, others were strangers. The invaders had not been inclined to bear their fallen away for burial.
Dodinal found his father, lying on his back and opened up from throat to groin. His guts had spilled out and lay in a coiled heap alongside him. One arm was pinned beneath his body, the other was outstretched, hand still clutching his sword.
For a moment Dodinal was unable to move for the shock. This could not possibly be his father, not the big man whose fiery temper was leavened by a dry humour, who would always indulge his son whenever Dodinal begged to go hunting with him. No, it could not be.
Yet there was no mistaking him.
Dodinal’s eyes blurred with tears. His throat tightened until he was gasping for breath. The gasps became sobs and the strength left his legs, so he crumpled to his knees and stayed there, head down, tears falling from his eyes like rain until he could not cry any more. When he was done, he sat back on his heels and wiped his face dry with his cloak. His hand closed around his father’s. He prised the fingers open and pulled the sword free. The blade was heavy, but he was determined to take it with him. His face momentarily convulsed. No, there would be no more tears. No more sadness. Nothing but hatred and a thirst for vengeance.
He could not bury his father. He lacked the tools and the strength to break the hard ground. Yet somehow that did not feel important. It was fitting that this man, who had passed on his love of the forest and his huntsman’s skills to his son, should now provide food for the beasts of the wild. He would have liked that, Dodinal thought. It would have appealed to his sense of humour.
“Goodbye,” he said softly. Then, remembering the words that had been spoken when his father’s father had died, “Rest in peace.”
A sense of foreboding filled him as he searched the rest of the village. Now he had seen his father dead, it was surely only a matter of time before he found his mother’s body. But while he encountered the corpses of many women, and many children too, there was no sign of her.
Then, just when he was convinced there was no one left alive anywhere, he heard a muted groaning. He stood still until he heard the noise again; it had come from one of the huts, which was charred here and there, its roof partly collapsed, but was otherwise intact. Heart thumping, arms trembling with the strain of holding the sword, he walked slowly towards it. The door was not quite closed, but Dodinal could see only darkness inside. Using the tip of the blade, he eased the door open. A soft patter made him look down. A pool of blood that had gathered in the doorway dripped steadily to the ground.