The Widow and the King

by John Dickinson

  He was flying through the air in darkness. Bush-branches crashed around him. He yelled in pain and terror. Then his body struck something big, and hard, and he had no voice to cry with.

  He rolled in the thicket. His head hummed with pain – he must have hit it on the ground, but he could not remember that. His arms were sore. His legs … He could crawl. Trembling, he clambered to his hands and knees.

  Feet were running heavily towards him on the road. Two or three of the attackers were coming, jingling with metal as they approached. The horse had vanished into the distance. Aunt Evalia could only be yards away, but he could not see her. He did not know if she was hurt, or how badly. He could not hear Raven, or Uncle Adam.

  The enemy! The enemy!

  He crouched for a moment where he was, thinking that they might miss him. Then his nerve broke and he blundered away from the road through the thickets.

  He was sure they were close after him. He thought they were crashing through the dark wood behind him. But he couldn't look, and he could barely hear against the noise of the falls. He scrambled uphill, to left and right, feeling ahead of him for the tree trunks that loomed suddenly at him out of the darkness from the distance of less than a yard. Again and again he tripped or ran into some obstacle – hard, bruising wood or tearing branches. His bandaged feet limped and stung as he forced them to carry him. His way was upwards, steeply upwards, and he was heavy on the slope and could not make himself go faster. Well before he felt it safe to stop, his legs gave up, and he leaned against a trunk on the edge of a small clearing, sobbing for breath.

  As his lungs calmed, he could listen. Beyond the long pouring of the falls and the wind in the trees he could hear faint cries lower down the woods. If there were words in them, he was too far uphill to understand them, but they did not sound as if there was fighting. Calls were being answered by other calls. The words might have been Look over there and He must have gone that way.

  The clouds moved in the sky, and the moonlight grew. He glanced around, fearfully. What he had thought was a clearing was in fact the road again. It had bent back to meet him above the point where he had left it. He could see the pale blur of its surface running among the darkness beneath the trees, curling uphill (perhaps) to his right, as it snaked on up the slope.

  He did not know what to do. Run on along the road? Or hide in the woods, putting his stones around him as the only defence he had left? He was being hunted. There were shapes and shadows among the trees. Any of them might hold a watcher. Any of the shadows might be an old man, standing only a few yards from him, in a long robe and hood; watching him with eyes in deep darkness.

  Nearby, something heavy moved. His eye caught a curved shadow, shifting against a background of trees to his right. His mind leaped at once to his nightmare, and he just managed to stop himself shrieking aloud. He started to move again, sliding as quietly as he could away from it among the trees, knowing that he was making too much noise and that he would be heard – if it had ears to hear with.

  Suddenly, a shape erupted from the bushes by the roadside ahead of him, plunging downhill to cut off his escape. He yelped, springing away from it, and collided with a tree trunk in the dark. As he staggered the thing leaped at him and flung him to the ground. Something heavy and soft was feeling at his face. It found his mouth and pressed against it.

  ‘Quiet!’ grunted a voice.

  Ambrose struggled and kicked. But the weight of the thing bore down on him and he could not free himself. Metal clinked. The thing was wearing a mail shirt, like Uncle Adam's.

  ‘Quiet, damn you!’

  Ambrose lay still, telling himself that he was only gathering his strength for another try. The grip on him eased a little.

  ‘What's happened down there?’

  It was a man's voice. Not a nightmare, but a man. Ambrose twisted to look up at the shape of his captor's head.

  ‘Come on,’ hissed the man. ‘What's happened down at the house?’

  ‘We – we've been attacked.’

  ‘By whom? How many?’

  ‘I don't know. Uncle Adam is fighting …’

  ‘Who? Your uncle?’

  ‘He's not really my uncle. But he needs help!’

  ‘Up.’

  He pulled Ambrose to his feet, and brought him out onto the road, turning him so that he faced along it to where the three-quarter moon was beginning to rise over the tree-tops along the slope. The man, who was no taller than Ambrose, peered at his face. He was wearing an iron helmet and a pale surplice over his mail. He was a knight, like Uncle Adam.

  Behind him, under the trees, the big shadow moved again. It was lighter than the darkness around it. There was a heavy, snorting noise.

  ‘Sss, sss, Stefan,’ said the knight, softly over his shoulder.

  It was a horse – the biggest horse Ambrose had ever seen.

  ‘What's your name?’ said the knight.

  Ambrose did not answer.

  The knight shook him.

  ‘What's … ? No, all right then. But what's the matter with your feet?’

  Ambrose looked down at his bandages, pale in the moonlight.

  ‘I walked from the mountains,’ he said.

  ‘That'll do. You're who I've come for. Let's go.’

  Go?

  ‘What about the house? They need help!’

  The knight looked downhill. There was a cry from below, too far off to make out any words. A smell of smoke was gathering among the trees.

  ‘That's not a fight,’ said the knight. ‘That's sack. They've fired it. I saw that as I came down the road – even before I heard you. Up, now.’

  Without letting go of Ambrose for a moment, he had steered him to the side of the great horse. It towered over the boy in the darkness, far taller than the animal he had ridden with Aunt Evalia. (Aunt Evalia! Where was she? What did that's sack mean?) The horse breathed heavily, and shifted like a mountainside that was about to fall.

  ‘Up.’

  Once again he was being lifted up the side of a huge animal. He snatched at the pommel of the saddle and hung where he was until the knight caught his foot with one hand (Ow!) and heaved him on upwards.

  ‘Sit up,’ the knight said. ‘Hold on to the saddle.’ Ambrose levered himself into some sort of a position. The saddle had a high back, as well as the pommel that he was gripping with both hands. It felt as though he had climbed into a living tree.

  ‘Steady, Stefan.’

  The knight took the reins and stood at the horse's head. For a moment he stood and did nothing. Perhaps he was listening, trying to hear through the trees and the noise of the water for other sounds in the night.

  ‘Come, Stefan, come!’ hissed the knight at the horse. The great beast moved forward, stepping at first and then breaking into a heavy trot. The man was running at the beast's head, grunting and jingling as he went. Ambrose clutched desperately at the saddle. He did not know who this man was. He did not know where they were going. Most of all, he was afraid of another fall.

  A bend in the path followed. They were making their way on up the slope beside the falls. Down to his right he could see flickers of firelight, showing through the trees where he knew the house should be. They moved backwards as the road curved and climbed on. After a little he could glimpse the fire again, to his left now, as the road wound back across the slope. It was further away, harder to see through the thickets of trees. He wondered what had happened to Aunt Evalia, and to Uncle Adam, and Raven, and whether any of them would be able to look for him in the morning.

  And what would happen to him if they could not?

  ‘Walk, Stefan,’ grunted the man. They slowed. The knight was breathing heavily. The road had got steeper. Maybe he meant to run again when they got to the top. He was looking over his shoulder again. Ambrose looked around, too. He could no longer see the fire. All sounds were lost in the roaring of the falls. But he could still smell the smoke that stole among the trees.

  Perhaps it was the smoke that
was making his eyes blur like this.

  The road curved again, and levelled. The woods opened. To his left, below the three-quarter moon, rose the flat lack shape of a high hill. To his right was what seemed to be a great sleeve of lake, running away between steep slopes. This was the way he had come yesterday, in the sunlight, hearing the falls ahead of him and thinking that at last his journey was nearly over. Now the moon rose above the darkness of Chatterfall, and the voice of the waters would never cease from weeping.

  V

  The Knight of the Wastelands

  t was weeping from the sky that woke him: rain falling in a light pitter-patter. He had been aware of it for some time before his mind rose from sleep. His body ached and his head swam. He was very hungry.

  He lifted his head. It was light. He was lying in a small space, open to the sky and bounded by walls of tumbled, blackened stone. Lank weeds rose from the ground about him. Stones and the ends of charred timbers peeped sullenly from among them.

  Slowly his mind made sense of what he was seeing. He was inside the remains of a house. There were gaps in the wall that might once have been windows and a door. But the roof was gone, and so it wasn't a house any more. Whatever had covered its floor had gone, too. There had been fire. It must have been a big one, to scorch the stones like that. Now only the lower walls were left, providing a little shelter from the weather.

  What was he doing here?

  He remembered that there had been a knight in the woods above Chatterfall. He had put Ambrose on a big horse and led him for what seemed like hours. Then they had all stopped, and the knight had told him to lie down and get some sleep.

  The horse was nowhere to be seen. But the knight was a few yards away, crouching by what must have been a hearth at the foot of a ruined chimney. He had a pot on it and was beginning to feed a fire with twigs.

  Food? Ambrose rose on one elbow.

  The knight looked across at Ambrose. He stopped what he was doing.

  Ambrose sat up with a jerk. It was him!

  It was the man who had struck Mother on the clifftop! The one she had called a wolf !

  Or was it?

  Surely this knight was much older than that man had been. His hair was lighter – partly because there was grey in it. There were lines around his eyes and cheek muscles.

  Yet it was the same face – the face on the man called Raymonde, who had come up the path to the house a fortnight ago: the same look, the same slanting brows.

  Except that it had smiled then. It had smiled widely, and the eyes had been eager, and the mouth had been full of talk and of confidences. This knight was not smiling, and he was not speaking. He was frowning. He did not seem to like Ambrose's face any more than Ambrose liked his.

  Ambrose looked at the knight and kept very still.

  At last the knight cleared his throat.

  ‘Eat first, hey?’ he said. ‘There are old strip-fields around this place. Things growing – grain, roots; maybe olives and fruit. See if you can find us anything.’

  He still did not smile, although Ambrose could tell that he was trying to sound cheerful. For the moment, Ambrose thought it best to do as he was told. So he rose stiffly, and hobbled towards what must once have been a door out of the wrecked building.

  ‘Keep your eyes open,’ the man said. ‘If anyone approaches, come quickly and do not call out.’

  Among the things piled by the knight's saddlebag was a small, triangular shield of wood. On it was painted the head of a wolf. There was also a hand holding a bar or staff across its face, but it was clearly a wolf.

  Ambrose limped out into the grey world.

  The ruined house lay in low, rolling countryside, covered with scrub and a few trees. There were indeed strip-fields around it, and orchards, all overgrown. There were no berry-bushes of the kind that had fed Ambrose for most of his journey through the hills. Twenty yards away the great, grey horse was pegged on a long rope among yellow tussocks. It lifted its head and looked at him mournfully, as if to say that he would find nothing in that direction.

  He thought of walking away across the brown land: of just walking and walking, as he had done for the last fortnight, and not coming back to the face by the fire behind him. But he had nowhere to go now. His feet hurt and he was weak. The knight had talked about food.

  The smell of onions led him to a small kitchen garden, where he also found a few root vegetables that he did not recognize. They had gone to seed, of course, but Ambrose thought they could still be eaten. He pulled them from the earth and wandered into the orchard. There were some fruits hanging from the trees, but most were beyond his reach. He looked among the grasses for windfalls that might be fresh, and found a few. He also found the remains of a goat, still tethered to a trunk. It was dry and flattened among the long grasses. The eyes were long gone, and the teeth showed from the ragged lips and skin. Someone had cut its neck nearly in two, and then had left it there. He did not touch it.

  He brought his findings to the knight, who scowled and poked among them. The man seemed to think that Ambrose could have done much better if only he had tried, but he made no move to go and look himself. He took the onions, tore the outer leaves off them, and dropped the remains into the mix of meal and water in his pan.

  Ambrose gathered the eight white stones from the ground where he had been sleeping and put them into his pouch. He wondered what he was doing here, in a wrecked house in a flat brown land where nothing useful grew. Home was gone, and Chatterfall was gone, and for the moment there was nothing but the light rain on his shoulders, and the rising hiss from the pot.

  The rain poured on, ceaselessly. He huddled into the slight shelter of the wall, as close as he could get to the flames without being in the man's reach. The broth, at least, was beginning to smell good. There had been so little to eat since leaving home.

  At last the knight removed the pan from the fire.

  ‘Well enough,’ he said.

  Ambrose reached out at once, hunger rising in him like a beast. The knight struck his hand away.

  ‘Let it cool, you idiot,’ he said. ‘Did your mother teach you nothing?’

  How could he talk about Mother?

  The knight waited for an answer, then shrugged when he did not get one. After a bit he took a knife and cut up some of the windfalls Ambrose had found, throwing away the bad pieces. They ate them in silence. Then the knight picked up the pan and began to spoon the mess in it to his own lips. Ambrose watched mouthful after mouthful disappear into that sour, stubbly face. He couldn't help thinking that Mother had always served him first – unless he was being punished.

  At last the man passed the pan over to him. He took the spoon, and gulped at it. It was just a porridge, flavoured with the onions, but at that moment it tasted very, very good. Ambrose felt it moving down inside him, warming him. He had not realized how cold he had become. So he ate every drop that he could spoon up, and then without being told took the pan to an old trough to wash it. He limped back to the knight, who offered him water to drink.

  The rain was easing, down to a few spits from the sky.

  ‘What happened here?’ said Ambrose, suddenly. Food had made him bolder.

  The knight looked around as though seeing the house for the first time. He pulled a face.

  ‘Raided,’ he said. ‘It is common enough. All this land was fought over in Tarceny's rising, ten years ago, and Baldwin's rising after that. A house like this – it is built for defence, but if you have enough force and a bit of time you can always take it.’

  Ambrose thought of the fire flickering through the trees at Chatterfall. He remembered Uncle Adam, at the door to his house; Aunt Evalia, lurching in the saddle behind him; and his mother's voice, speaking beside the pool. All the fields are wastelands, Amba.

  ‘So,’ said the knight. ‘Let's see what you're carrying there.’ He held out his hand for the pouch of stones. ‘Give it,’ he said, frowning again.

  Ambrose thought of refusing. But the kni
ght snapped his fingers impatiently and held out his hand again. Reluctantly, Ambrose passed the bag over.

  ‘They're mine,’ he said.

  ‘I need them.’

  The knight peered into the pouch. He did not seem interested in the stones, but after a moment he drew out the strip of paper with Mother's writing on it. He frowned at the writing.

  ‘That's her name, isn't it?’ He held the paper at arm's length to Ambrose, jabbing his finger at the end of the line of writing. ‘That's your mother's name.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ambrose, warily.

  The knight grunted, and handed the pouch to Ambrose. Ambrose was so relieved to get the stones back that for a moment he forgot about the letter. When he looked up the knight was stuffing it into his own pouch.

  ‘That's mine!’ said Ambrose.

  ‘It says who you are. I'll take care of it. Now, boy,’ he said, once again in that voice that tried to sound friendly when never a smile crossed his face. ‘I met your mother in the mountains a week ago. I'm here because she asked me to come to Chatterfall to find you. Now we know Chatterfall's gone, we need to go somewhere else. That will mean riding south …’

  ‘That's a lie!' yelled Ambrose.

  The knight stopped, staring at him.

  ‘She's dead!’ he shouted. ‘They're all dead! You're a liar!’

  ‘That she is not! I saw her, a week ago. She said …’

  ‘Liar!’ Ambrose screamed. ‘And it's your fault!’

  The knight looked like the man who had hit her. He was so like, he must have had something to do with him. And he saw how the knight's face whitened – how he glared at the words. For a moment Ambrose knew that he was right. Then …