by Paul Lewis
He closed his eyes and cast out. There was no wildlife within reach of his senses. Had something driven the beasts and birds away? What could do such a thing? No great predator, or else he would have sensed it. A forest fire, then, or some similar calamity? There was no other explanation.
He cast north and his senses brushed against… something. Not a life-light. Rather it was as if his mind had encountered the opposite; a great and terrible darkness. Dodinal had never known its like before. While he could not even guess what it was, it felt ancient and warped, so unnatural that his senses recoiled. He shuddered, feeling suddenly cold inside, despite the warmth of his cloak.
He returned through the broken gate, and from there to Rhiannon’s hut. Other than the crump of his feet through the frozen crust of snow the silence was absolute.
Once indoors he warmed his hands by the fire and picked at the remains of the stew Rhiannon had brought earlier. He had not felt hungry then and did not feel hungry now, as if the slender pickings of the past few days had shrunk his appetite along with his belly. He had grown soft in Camelot, but wandering the wilderness had made him lean again. Now his ribs and cheekbones appeared as sharp as blades.
He yawned, out of boredom rather than tiredness. He needed a distraction. But what? Unlike Owain he could not occupy his mind with a few trinkets. But that gave him an idea. He went back out long enough to find what he wanted in the wood store, then returned to the hut and found Rhiannon’s knife.
When she visited that evening, Dodinal was pleased to see she had brought Owain with her. “I have something for you,” he said to the boy. He knelt before him and held out his hand. Resting on his palm was a small wooden carving of a wolf. “Go on, take it. Unlike the wolves we encountered, this one will not bite. But I hope it will remind you of me and our adventure in the forest.”
After glancing uncertainly at his mother and receiving a nod of encouragement, Owain reached out and took it. He peered at it and gave Dodinal another of his rare smiles, then threw his arms around the knight and hugged him briefly before scurrying over to the table. Taking out the pouch, he emptied its contents onto the tabletop and set the wooden wolf down amongst them.
“That was nice,” Rhiannon said. “Very thoughtful.”
Dodinal busied himself with tending to the fire.
During the days that followed, he fell into the habit of walking around the village every morning and afternoon. Each time he left his sword in the hut; he had no need of it and it was something of an encumbrance. The worst of the storm had passed. Although the sky was laden with slate-coloured clouds there was only the occasional flurry of snow. Yet there was no respite from winter; the air remained bitterly cold, the ground icy beneath its thick covering of white.
One afternoon he went again to the cleared area beyond the palisade. Reluctantly he cast his mind northwards. There was nothing. He began to make his way back up to the village, feeling relieved.
As he reached the broken palisade, Gerwyn stepped through one of the gaps, one hand on the sword in his belt. Dodinal reached for his own and silently cursed its absence.
“Best you go back the way you came, traveller,” Gerwyn spat. “We have barely enough food to feed ourselves.”
“I thank you for your advice,” Dodinal responded pleasantly. “But I have no intention of going anywhere for now.”
Gerwyn glanced back. Dodinal followed his gaze. Gerwyn’s two friends, the brothers who had sided with him in the Great Hall, waited on the other side of the fence. They, too, were armed, and glared at Dodinal with unconcealed animosity. If it came down to a fight it would be three men against one. But of course he could not allow it to come to that. In the heat of combat he might lose control.
He could disarm them. Yes, they carried swords, but it was unlikely they would have had much cause to use them. Dodinal, though unarmed, was battle-hardened and had brute strength to call upon. He might have to break the odd bone or blacken a few eyes, but at least these three would still be breathing when it was over.
He drew himself up to his full height. A flicker of unease crossed Gerwyn’s face when he realised he had to crane his neck to meet Dodinal’s eyes; his head was roughly level with Dodinal’s chest.
“If you want me to leave, then I will leave. But not until I have said farewell to Rhiannon and your father.”
“There’s no need for that. Just go while you still have the chance.” For all the bravado of his words there was uncertainty in the younger man’s tone, the subtlest hint of a tremor.
“Not without my sword. I will fetch it and then leave.”
Dodinal laced his fingers together and, stretching his arms out, flexed them until the joints popped, shockingly loud in the stillness of the late afternoon.
Gerwyn took a step back towards the fence. His friends backed away a little, too, sharing nervous glances.
As they edged away, so Dodinal stepped towards them. Gerwyn’s back came up against the palisade and he looked around until he located the gap and hurried through it. Dodinal continued his slow advance until he was inside the village with them.
“Well, here we are. Now, my friends, if you will kindly step aside, I will fetch my sword and the spear your father so generously gave me and pay my respects to him before leaving.”
Gerwyn looked a little desperately at his friends, and they looked back helplessly at him. They would be torn between anger, frustration and fear; wanting to take Dodinal on yet sensing they were no match for him, as much as their youthful pride was loathe to admit it.
Finally Gerwyn’s shoulders slumped. “Stay, if you want. I no longer care. But remember, each morsel of food that passes your lips is denied the women and children of this village. I trust that rests easy on your conscience… assuming you have one.”
He spat on the ground and stalked off towards the Great Hall, his two friends falling in behind him without a word.
Dodinal relaxed. He had avoided bloodshed, which was good, but now he had given Gerwyn even more of a reason to hate him, by facing him down in front of his friends. Dodinal would have to watch his back. There was no telling what the chieftain’s son might do.
He looked up into the turbulent sky. When all was said and done, Gerwyn had spoken the truth. He was a burden on these people. He could not leave until the thaw came, yet to stay meant depriving them of food that was rightfully theirs.
There was only one answer. He hurried back to Rhiannon’s hut.
He would take to his bed early. Tomorrow he would be up with the dawn.
SEVEN
The sky was dark, but streaked with light to the east. A wind had picked up during the night, driving the clouds away and sending the temperature plummeting. Dodinal hesitated by the broken gates long enough to tighten his cloak and pull the hood over his head. The sword hung in its scabbard from his belt, and he clutched the spear that Idris had gifted him in his right hand. One way or another, he would put it to use before he returned. With one last look at the cluster of huts he headed out of the village.
A sense of belonging swept over him when he entered the forest. He had spent most of his life with branches overhead, heavy with leaves in the summer and starkly bare in the cold months. Yet as he progressed south through the woodland, the snow-white ground dappled with shadows, he was overwhelmed by a strangely terrible feeling. Something was indistinctly wrong in the forest. It was utterly still, and that should not be. There was not so much as the raucous call of a scavenger crow to break the silence.
At least here, the snow was thinner on the ground. Dodinal made swift progress. Soon the sun rose, revealing a brilliant blue sky. It was bitterly cold, but he kept warm by moving steadily, not once stopping to rest. He had no need to, now he was fully recovered. Even if he had, there was no comfort to be found in the frozen wilderness, and he lacked the means to make a fire. And as he pressed on, the ghosts of another forest and another time came back to haunt him.
The boy Dodinal could not bring himself to spend
his nights among the dead in the ruins of his village. His hut was among those damaged but still standing, and he returned to it to gather what belongings he could carry. His vision blurred as he stepped inside, and a chasm opened in his chest. Everyone he loved was gone. His life had turned from one of uncaring innocence to one of unbearable misery within a matter of hours. Dodinal bit down on his lip to stop himself crying.
There would be no more tears, not ever again.
He put the sword on the table and collected anything he thought he could use, piling it onto a fur that he tied into a bundle and slung over his shoulder. Then he picked up the sword and went back into the forest, hastening to the hollow tree that had become his home. He dumped the bundle inside it before returning to the hut for more furs and his mattress, which he dragged behind him to the oak.
Not daring to light a fire inside the hollow, he gathered branches and used his father’s flint and steel to start one just outside it. While he was worried the smoke could attract unwanted attention, he had no choice; without the fire’s warmth he would not survive another night.
He filled his stomach with some of the meat and fruit he had salvaged and sat wrapped in his cloak close to the fire until his eyelids grew heavy. Then he crawled inside the tree and slept on his mattress with furs heaped on top of him, just as he always had.
This was how his days and nights passed. Each time he ran out of food he would return to the village and scavenge what he could, returning to the tree to eat by the fire until darkness fell and he slept. He would try not to look at the dead, whose bones the scavengers and carrion birds had by now almost picked clean.
Finally, when there was no more food, Dodinal set a snare the way his father had done. Having searched for and found hare tracks he broke off a sturdy yet flexible branch and sharpened both ends, driving each end deep into the ground on either side of the tracks to form an arch. From it he hung a length of gut whose end he tied into a noose. Once a hare’s head passed through the noose it would tighten around its neck, killing it.
That evening, dozing before the fire, he saw a small light move through the darkness. Through closed eyes he followed the hare’s progress as it loped along the track where he had set the snare, and was then snuffed out.
Dodinal ate well that night.
Days passed, then months. Remembering everything his father had taught him, he grew into an accomplished hunter. His gifts meant he always knew where to find game, and his presence did not disturb it. It was as if the animals saw him as one of their own, a creature of the wild. When summer arrived and a putrid stench arose from the village he knew it was time to move on. He could not live inside a tree forever. Besides, he was growing at such a rapid rate it was becoming a squeeze getting in and out of the hollow. This did not worry him. He had all summer to find somewhere else.
He had to make one last journey home, to find clothes, as those he wore were becoming too small for him. So foul was the smell that he was forced to cut off a strip from his cloak to bind around his nose and mouth. The tracks of scavengers covered the ground and flies picked their way leisurely across the bony corpses. Dodinal changed his old clothes for some of his father’s and fled for the trees, never to return.
From that day he wandered the forest, sleeping under stars and hunting whenever he was hungry. He learned which plants could be eaten safely and which would make him sick. Each year when the leaves changed colour and fell, he would fashion a shelter roomy enough to light a fire in and there he would spend the winter.
As he grew taller and stronger, he found work in the settlements and farmsteads he encountered on his travels. Ploughing, sowing, harvesting… he laboured for food or for clothing, which was quickly worn through.
And so his time passed, uncomplicated and untroubled, until the day came when he heard the sound of fighting.
The knight snapped out of his reverie. There was a deer close by. Its life did not burn brightly; the animal was either injured or sick. That made no difference to Dodinal, for meat was meat and his mouth watered at the thought of it.
He stole through the trees, closing on his prey. It was a large roe buck, moving away but slowly enough for Dodinal to be confident it had not caught his scent. It had been attacked by some predator, leaving one of its hind legs lame.
Dodinal raised the spear to his shoulder, ready to strike the moment he was close enough. If he threw it from this distance, he could easily miss and the deer would be gone in the blink of an eye. It could outrun him, bad leg or not. He might not get another chance to track game for a long time.
It stopped to lower its head, nosing through the snow in search of food. Dodinal crept up behind it until it was almost close enough to touch, but as soundlessly as he moved, the deer somehow sensed him; it suddenly lifted its head and looked around, startled. Before it could run from him, Dodinal lunged forward and rammed the point of the blade deep into its shoulder, driving it towards its heart.
The deer bucked violently. The spear was torn from Dodinal’s hands as it bolted, racing through the forest with an almost comically lopsided gait. He followed at a slow pace. There was no reason to hurry. The deer was dead but did not yet know it.
Sure enough, he found its body after a few minutes. He wrenched the spear from its side and wiped the blade clean in the snow. Idris would doubtless be pleased to hear the weapon that had served him so well for many years could still put meat on his table.
Butchery done, he picked up the gutted carcass, hoisted it over his shoulder and set off for the village. The deer was heavy, but Dodinal was strong and tireless, all the more so with the prospect of fresh meat that night spurring him on. As long as his luck and the weather held he would be back by late afternoon.
EIGHT
The Great Hall was uncomfortably hot, as much from the mass of bodies that had gathered inside to celebrate as from the fires that burned day and night. Smoke made his eyes sting, and it was difficult to hear anything above the excited chatter of voices as the villagers welcomed the stroke of good fortune that had come their way after so many months of hardship.
The venison had been spit-roasted and stripped from the bone before being shared out between them. There was not much to go around, but Dodinal heard no complaints. Every last scrap of meat had been devoured but the air was still rich with the smell of it.
The chieftain’s great hound lay contentedly near the fire, front paws outstretched as it chewed and crunched on a bone. The rest of the deer carcass would be boiled into a broth, its skin fashioned into clothes, stitched together with its sinew. Nothing went to waste here.
Dodinal had again been given pride of place in the chieftain’s chair at the head of the table. Idris, Rhiannon and Owain sat nearest to him on the benches. Gerwyn was there too, sulking in his chair. It did not escape Dodinal’s notice that the younger man’s lips and chin were glistening with grease; he might resent Dodinal eating the village’s food but had no problem with the village eating his.
Neither had Dodinal’s gift softened his disdain. Gerwyn would not speak directly to him, and scowled whenever Dodinal spoke. There was no doubt he was still fuming at being humiliated in front of his friends. Dodinal did not care. He had friends of his own now.
It was starting to feel like home.
Villagers gathered around the table or sat with their backs against the walls, basking in the heat of the fires, laughing as they picked meat from their teeth. At first they had been nervous in Dodinal’s presence, but as the evening wore on and ale had flowed, they had slowly relaxed around him. Many even thanked him for what he had done. The children regarded him with outright reverence. A few adults plucked up the courage to ask questions, but Idris shooed them away. Looking around the hut, Dodinal was in good spirits. He had helped to lift these people’s hearts, for a while. Tomorrow they would return to their relentless struggle. Spring had still not arrived
“So, then,” Idris bellowed, leaning forward as though his voice was not already loud enough
to ring in Dodinal’s ears. “When will you hunt next, my friend? Now we have the taste of fresh meat in our mouths, we hunger for more. Oh, and next time I will come with you. Between us we can carry more than you can manage alone.”
Dodinal’s expression was doubtful. “There is still little game to be found. I was lucky. The deer was lame. We might have to travel days, weeks possibly, before we find more.”
“Then we travel for weeks or days.”
“And if the storm returns?” Dodinal challenged. “No man could survive those conditions, not without fire and shelter. If we are caught in another blizzard, it would be the end of us.”
“It could well be the end of us if we do nothing.”
Idris was determined not to give up without a fight. Dodinal wondered what he could say to convince him to abandon the idea, when Rhiannon spoke up.
“You should listen to him.” She was seated across from Idris, Owain at her side. The boy had his elbows on the table and rested his chin on his hands. He looked lost in his thoughts. “Remember how close he was to death when we found him? Dodinal is a man who has spent much of his life in the wilderness. He knows what he’s talking about. If he has concerns, you would be wise to heed them.”
“Siding with the stranger over your own brehyrion?” Gerwyn asked, his mouth curled into a sneer.
Rhiannon’s blue eyes flashed. “Stop behaving like a child. It is not a question of siding with anyone. It’s common sense.”
“You’re right, as always,” Idris boomed, laughing with indulgent affection. “We have enough supplies to see us through the next few weeks and surely by then this bloody winter will be over.”
His mood was more optimistic than it had been when he had walked Dodinal back to the hut.
