by Sam Taw
By dawn, we rested and watered the horses at a tributary to the west of the Exe and ate some of our packed food. Neither of us were in a talkative frame of mind. She stayed awake to watch over our things while I slept for a time. We were well inside our own borders, so there was little chance of attack. When I awoke, there was a crackling fire and warm porridge to gladden my aching heart.
I thanked her and ate my share, quietly mulling over the inevitability of loss when you reach such a ripe old age as I have done. The gods had taken Aebba the Wild, my niece Wenna, and my dearest slave, Jago in the span of the last cycle. Foolishly, I thought the gods would let me be after enduring so many losses in such a short space of time. I know that a deer is not the same as family, but it had provided me with such comfort.
When we had packed up ready to continue our journey, Senara wandered a little way from the fire on foot, stopping every now and then to touch the earth. “Kewri’s tracks are easy to follow; a single carthorse with no wheel lines went this way a couple of days ago. They point towards the moors.”
I watched her expression keenly. Instead of the animated features I’d witnessed the day before, she looked concerned. That was understandable. While Kewri stayed on the trails, near to homesteader’s land and small communities, he could easily be found. If he strayed onto the wide expanses of the moors, we would struggle to follow his tracks.
The scant soils of the rocky ridges left few clues about past travellers, and the boggy areas filled with liquid mud and water in a space of a night. Mounting her horse, she urged me to follow her in a north-westerly direction, taking us close to the Nine Maiden’s circle. It was when we crossed the River Taw that I remembered the reason for Kewri’s journey. He was chasing after Paega; my nephew who was brought up among the Priest Sect of our tribe. I’m not sure why I hadn’t thought of it sooner, but Paega was bound to run to the nearest stone circle in search of kin who could help him. The Nine Maiden’s circle was the closest one to our compound.
I tapped my horse’s flanks with my heel, forcing him to canter until I was alongside Senara. As soon as we were on firm ground, I began to explain my thoughts to her, but she held her hand aloft to silence me.
Stunned, I jerked my head around to see why she had stopped me from talking. Ahead of us, grazing on the heathland plants, was a large carthorse carrying all Kewri’s belongings. He was nowhere to be seen.
CHAPTER TEN
“Let’s not panic.” I said, holding my hand up to quieten her rambling chatter. “He’s bound to be around here somewhere. He’s probably relieving himself in the shrubs and his horse wandered off.” It didn’t appear to settle her down. Senara galloped off towards the small clump of bushes in the distance, leaving me to shout after her. “Don’t jump to conclusions!” She paid me no heed.
I trotted over to the huge horse and leaned over to catch hold of the reins. Pulling the huge beast closer, I checked Kewri’s bags and bundles, with a passing thought that he might have crossed paths with looters or thieves, but his meagre tin pouch and blade were all intact. As far as I could tell, nothing was missing at all, other than Kewri himself.
The mist swirled in Senara’s wake, but I could see that the closer she got to the bushes, the more her horse’s hooves sank into the boggy ground. That’s usually a sign that widespread flooding has transformed the peaty soil into a quagmire, just beneath the heather and mosses.
The pit of my stomach felt leaden. I guessed what might have happened. Wrapping the cart horse reins around my hand, I kicked my pony and steered him to a low slope just visible through the mists. If my suspicions were correct, I needed to approach the valley floor with great caution. This was not a time to go cantering off at full speed into more problems.
As I rounded the top end of the scrub, I could see Senara ahead, still mounted but at a complete standstill. The pony was above knee deep in a bog. It rocked from side to side, straining against the sucking motion dragging it down. Senara urged her pony to move on, digging her heels into the poor creature’s sides.
“Hold fast, girl. Don’t go any further!” I yelled, sliding down from my own horse and securing the reins of both mine and Kewri’s ponies to a nearby branch. “The more it struggles, the less fight it’ll have to pull itself free.” Moving as fast as I could, I snapped a long stick off the bushes and stripped all shoots from the main stem until I had a rod with which to poke the ground. Jabbing it into the moss and squelching peat, I edged as close as I dared to and squinted into the low afternoon sun.
Without the weight of Senara on its back, I figured that the horse would be better able to pull itself out without too much trouble. I returned to my pony and unpacked my longest bed fur, grumbling under my breath about the filth I would have to deal with later.
After I’d explained my plan to her, I encouraged Senara to slide down off the saddle and lay flat against the mud to spread her weight. I tossed out the fur, clutching one corner until she was able to cling to its edge. Between her efforts and mine, she crawled out of the bog just as her horse tried to buck. In frustration, her pony squealed.
“Ho there!” The voice was feeble, but deep. It was also very familiar.
Senara cuffed the dirt from her face and looked at me. “Did you hear that, Fur Benyn?”
No amount of squinting could help me see through the diffuse light of the mists, but I knew he was out there. Kewri was alive and stuck in the centre of the mire. He called out a second time, causing Senara to lunge in his direction. I thrust my arm across her chest, stopping her from getting stuck a second time.
“Kewri, is that you? It’s me, Senara, and Fur Benyn.” She wailed, sniffing back tears.
The groan I heard was muffled, as though he was gargling. “Be quick, girl. I said” Gesturing towards the higher ground. “Go around with this and mind you don’t get bogged down yourself.” I gave her the stick and fashioned another for myself, before walking the horses along the higher path through the fog. I figured that if the cart horse had wriggled free, then Senara’s pony would do the same in due course. Our priority was to reach Kewri before the mire sucked him beneath the surface into the Underworld.
When I finally got around to the other side of the mire with the ponies in tow, Senara was on her knees bawling her eyes out in desperation. Kewri was too far across the mire to reach. He fretted and gasped, spluttered and coughed as the murky liquid seeped into his nostrils.
“Keep as still as you can.” I bellowed. “The more you struggle the quicker the dark spirits will pull you down.” Grabbing Senara by the arm, I yanked her to her feet and issued instructions, hoping to Cernonnus that we had enough time to put my plan into action before Kewri choked to death.
The pair of us stripped off our tunics, leggings and capes, twisting them into make-shift ropes and tying them into one long length. Wearing only a thin shift to cover my modesty, I took the reins from my pony, attached one end of them to the clothing and fastened the other end around the cart horse.
“Kewri, listen carefully, we might only get one chance at this, do you hear?” I took his spluttered cough to mean that he understood. Backing the cart horse up as close as possible without it sinking into the mud, I looped the cloth into a bundle and threw it with all my might onto the surface of the mire. It was not close enough for him to reach. While he worked at getting his arms free, Senara and I slashed our bedding into strips and extended the rope.
My pulse throbbed inside my head, watching him thrash about, his actions slowed with the sheer exhaustion of survival. Senara took a turn at flinging the bundle of cloth. At last, her aim was true.
She stood and yelled at him, urging him to fight for his life. As his arms reached out, he dislodged an air pocket beneath him, creating bubbles that popped at the surface. Sinking much faster, the moss and peat smothered his face. Senara cried out. I held my breath. We could only see his hands and wrists flailing about trying to cling to hope.
“Get the rope closer!” I screamed, jolting her into ac
tion. With tremendous speed and agility, she pulled in our cloth bindings and tried again, hurling it right over his head.
Kewri felt the leather of the strapping with one hand and fed it into the palm of the other. When I saw that he’d bound it around his wrists, I smacked the carthorse around the rear. The rope went taut, straining at the loose connections until the knots bit tight. With gentle words of encouragement, I coaxed the horse onward until I could see the surface of the mire breaking. Gradually, Kewri’s face reappeared, streaked in the blackest sludge. He took a massive gasp of air into his lungs.
“Don’t let go!” Senara barked at him, but the giant was too exhausted and struggling for breath to reply. He was not going to let this chance to live pass by.
As soon as he was able, Kewri looped the leather strap around his back and under his arms, letting the horse take all the strain of pulling him free. How long had he been stuck in the bog? It was fortunate that we’d found him in time. Perhaps the gods had not punished us for sacrificing the white hart after all. Maybe they had greater plans in store for this gentle giant of the Dumnonii.
What a sight we must have looked; Kewri covered head to toe in stinking black filth and Senara and I stripped down to the bare essentials and soaked with tears. The poor man lay on the ground, panting and relieved. Senara threw herself on top of him, wiping his face clean of peaty water.
“I just knew you were in trouble.” She gushed. “I felt it in the pit of my gut.”
Kewri nodded and closed his eyes, planting his head down to rest. I felt awkward standing there watching their reunion, and busied myself in the reclamation of our clothes. Everything was thick with muck and filth, our bedding furs shredded and the fastenings of the reins stretched and useless. Even after a good wash in the river, the bedding was beyond repair. We’d have to return to camp without going on to look for my wayward nephew, Paega.
Senara collected some wood and stacked it up on her pony which had, as I predicted, worked itself free from the bog without our aid. While Kewri rested, we rinsed our clothes and found a suitable campsite on higher ground to build a fire. Using an old trick my mother taught me, I gathered up as many smooth stones as I could find and rested them in the embers until they were warmed through. It was a tiresome job, but with each hot stone poked out of the fire and wrapped in our fabric bundles, our clothes dried enough for us to wear.
Despite the damp and cold, Senara left us to hunt, while I gave what was left of our wrapped food to Kewri.
He looked at me with huge fretful eyes. “I am so sorry, Fur Benyn.” His mouth flapped open as if he wanted to say more but couldn’t think of the words.
“Never you mind about that. What’s done is done. You’re safe and that’s all that matters. Now eat up and gather your strength.” I knew that we were in for an uncomfortable night, huddled together for warmth without bedding or shelter. He paused for a moment, looking at the food and then at my wretched state, shivering in damp clothes.
“Go on, boy. Get it down you. Senara will bring us a couple of fat rabbits, you wait and see.” I had every faith in the scout. She could survive in the most barren of places unseen by our enemy for many moons. Truth be known, I rather admired her. Where I preferred the warmth of a home fire and the security of compound walls, she was a wild thing, formidable and untamed.
When Kewri had eaten his fill and the colour had returned to his cheeks, I ventured a question. “So, what happened? How did you get stuck and not your horse?”
He rolled his eyes. “He bucked me off. Slammed into the start of the bog and thought better of it. Didn’t give me the chance to object, just stopped all of a sudden and then threw me right over his head.”
It wasn’t a laughing matter, but I couldn’t help myself. The snort, became a titter and when I saw his melancholy turn into a chuckle, I let rip with a cackle of my own. The carthorse had the sense to avoid the mire. Pity he didn’t think to save his rider too.
When our mirth simmered down, Kewri explained that he’d followed Paega’s tracks and, like us, assumed that he was heading for the closest stone circle to find members of his own clan. Despite asking local travellers and homesteaders, he lost Paega’s trail over the stony tors and ridges. With such a lengthy head start, there was no way we would find him now. We both left the obvious point unsaid. How could we return to the island compound without Paega? The issue muted our conversation, but it hung between us like the fetid stench of offal.
I had a sudden urge to drink an unwise quantity of ale to numb all my senses to the cold and the futility of our situation, but we had none. Senara returned just as the mists started to thin out, revealing the star-filled sky. As beautiful as that was, it was not a welcome sight. The visible stars meant that we’d be in for another frosty night. Our camp site was on high ground and exposed to the elements.
Senara brought back a sizable trout, already scaled and gutted. Speared on a pole over the fire, it didn’t take long to cook, but shared three ways it made fools of our mouths. My stomach groaned for more as we settled down in a small hollow next to the fire, with Kewri in the middle and Senara and I snuggling either side of him. We had just one small hemp blanket from beneath the carthorse saddle with which to cover us and our wood supply was running low.
Half way through the night, Senara and I swapped places and loaded the last of the fuel onto the fire. I tucked in as close as I could to share Kewri’s warmth, but I was unable to sleep. My chattering teeth kept me alert and anxious until the mists formed once again to give the moor its ghostly dawn light.
With nothing left to eat and no wood with which to rekindle the fire, we drank a little cold water from our travelling bladders and saddled the horses. My innards felt like they were touching inside I was so hungry, but I said nothing. We had bigger problems to consider.
It was Kewri who broke the silence first, voicing what we’d all been thinking. “We can’t go back. Not without Paega. We must push on, no matter how hopeless the search.”
He was right, but we had to face the Chiefs at some point or we’d be banishing ourselves to live out our days on the bleak moors. Senara scraped a clod of mud from her boot on a sharp rock. “I’ve been thinking about that.” She said, peering up at me from the corners of her eyes. “Fur Benyn, do you have any tin with you?”
I frowned, wondering where she was heading with this line of thought. “I do.”
“And you could get more from the Chiefs if it was in the tribe’s best interest?”
I pulled a face and sucked in my lips, puzzled. “What have you in mind?”
She laid out her plans to us both, explaining each stage of the process in detail so that I was left with a feeling that she had a mind to suggest it all along, perhaps since before we’d even left the compound. I came up with a few potential stumbling blocks, but she had answers for them all ready and waiting.
By the time we’d mounted up and turned our horses to the east, my head was spinning with possibilities. Not that I ignored the danger in what she had proposed. Kewri agreed to anything and everything Senara said. I think he was just grateful to be alive.
We followed the worn trail east, stopping at the first homestead on our route to trade for furs and food. They had little to spare, but gave us eggs and some cheese for our tin. The main thing was that we had the means with which to keep ourselves warm. Where we were headed, we couldn’t afford to light nightly fires for fear of discovery.
Senara led the way and Kewri brought up the rear of our little procession, none of us feeling the need to chat. We stopped a few times during the day, mainly to gather what early spring shoots and leaves we could to supplement the geese Senara killed with her skill at archery. She was quite something to watch, bringing down hefty birds before they could launch themselves into the air, right from the back of her pony. Before we got close to the borderlands, she had traded most of her catch to settlers for flour and milk.
This was a woman well used to keeping her own counsel. More than a
couple of times, she forgot that we were behind her. She’d gallop off the beaten path leaving us bewildered and all alone. When the sun was low on the horizon, Senara pulled back on the reins and waited for us to draw level with her horse.
“There’s a hidden shelter not far from here with a good water supply and plenty of wood. No one knows it exists so it’s perfectly safe. We can make camp there tonight and finally get some sleep.” She caught me yawning as she said this, and grinned. “Nearly there, Fur Benyn, I promise.”
I knew her notion of nearly there. The young always think great distances are nearly there. When you get to my ripe old age, everything takes more effort. Kewri seemed to perk up at this news. He trotted after the scout smiling, leaving my old horse and me to amble along at our own pace. I figured that the longer I was in the saddle, the greater the likelihood that a good fire would be burning by the time I’d caught up.
It was when they disappeared from view and into a forest ahead that I grew apprehensive. I knew the area, of course, but I had no clue as to where this hidden shelter might be. Tapping the flanks of my pony with my heels, I sped up to where they had vanished and crossed a stream. Was this a tributary of the River Sid? Had I just passed on to Durotriges’ land?
The shade of the spring leaves cut what little sunlight was left to the day. I couldn’t make out their tracks, nor could I see more than a couple of boat lengths ahead of me. The dense undergrowth snagged and ripped at my pony’s legs, making him grumble and resistant to move ahead. We edged forward slowly, almost feeling our way through ash and oak.
“Psst!”
The sound came from my left. I craned my neck to see who was about. “Come out and show yourself.” I said, thinking that Senara was playing me for a fool.
“Shush, Fur Benyn!” She whispered, stepping out from behind a clump of young beech saplings. She waved her hands at me, gesturing for me to dismount and follow her. I was puzzled as to why she was behaving so strangely.
