I became aware that this was not actually the case. Someone was watching me. There was no malicious intent but there was something else. A real, deep and fundamental desire. It wasn’t someone - it was something. It was an animal. I could tell that it was hungry but its fear of me, a man, was overcoming its desire to eat.
This was odd. Why would an animal be unable to feed itself? The countryside was teeming with life - with prey and with vegetation. I probed as gently as I could, so as not to disturb whatever it was. It was young, I learned. Its mother was no more. She was unresponsive. She had gone cold. (In short, she was dead.) This animal was the last of the litter. The others were still and cold as well. (What happened, I wondered.) This animal - a male, I discerned - had been hiding down a hole when whatever it was happened. (He had been learning how to hunt, then.) He had been lying in wait for someone else from the litter and was going to jump out on them. But no-one came. So he went back to the den and they were all still. Then they became cold. They didn’t move, no matter how much he licked then and nibbled. He was hungry. He was on his own and he couldn’t hunt very well on his own. The man was there and the food smelled good and I wanted it. He looked straight at me and said something I did not understand. Come on out, I won’t hurt you, I called. He raised his hand to his mouth, miming the act of eating. Come on and eat, he said.
And out he came. It was quite a large dog - a wolfhound. A young one, not full grown. He came forward with his head almost touching the ground, his body bending nearly 90 degrees as his back end tried to overtake the front. He was whimpering and almost dragging itself the last few feet towards the fire. I put out my hand but that was a bit too much for him, just yet, so I scooped out some stew onto a plate; it was too hot for the moment so I put it on the ground between us, but nearer to me. He could smell it but he wouldn’t come too close, not yet. It would be cruel to subject him to too much torture like that, so I poured a little water into the bowl, to cool it down. It was pretty much unpalatable for a human, as a result, but a dog would almost certainly wolf it up. I got up and moved a few feet away, leaving the plate behind. The young hound was torn between hunger and fear. Its head swung away and then turned back, the tongue lolling out as it seemed to taste the air. Back and forth, back and forth. Then it could resist no longer. It slithered on its belly across the last, short distance to the plate and tucked in, ravenously. It ate the lot in seconds. And looked up at me. It wanted more.
“You will make yourself sick.” All it did was whine. It looked at the empty vessel and licked its chops. I sighed and came to get the bowl. The dog leaped to its feet and sprung back. I held my hands up and apologised for the sudden movement.
“If you want more, you will have to let me take the bowl.” I picked it up and scooped some more stew into it and, as before, added some water to cool it down. After placing the bowl back on the ground I retreated, back the other side of the fire. He dived in again and the dish was empty in a couple of minutes. Once more he looked at me, expectantly; clearly, he was ready for more. I smiled and shook my head.
“No more for now. Let that lot settle. Maybe something in the morning.” He emitted something I can only describe as a pleading sigh - the sort a child makes when it is denied something it is really, really yearning for. “No. You will make yourself sick.” I pictured what I meant in my mind and sought to project it over to him. He snorted with disappointment and then settled down, head on paws.
“If you’re still here tomorrow I’ll maybe let you have some more,” I said. I got my bedroll together and went to sleep, fully expecting that he would be gone in the morning.
Chapter Seven
Wolf
He wasn’t.
I was awoken shortly after dawn by the thump of something being dropped right by my head. I sprang to immediate wakefulness, with a dagger in my hand, and relaxed. The noise had been the made by the bowl the dog had been eating out of last night. He had dropped it right by my head and was now sitting down, looking at me expectantly. Then the bowl, then at me again. I didn’t know whether to smile or curse. It was quite funny that the dog had woken me this way and it would only take a moment to spoon out some more stew into the bowl and give it to him. He would have eaten it happily, hot or cold. But I knew that I had to make clear who was boss, who was the leader of this particular pack. I had seen the damage that could be done if a dog was allowed to believe that it led a human family, rather than being in the lower echelons.
So I growled off-handedly and went to prepare some breakfast for myself. Anything at all - just so long as I ate first and established the pecking-order. I found some dried meat and tore chunks off it, which I chewed ostentatiously, in full view of the dog. When he started to walk up to me I spoke sharply, to discourage him. I then prepared some water and two nosebags of oats for the horses. Finally, I retrieved the remains of last night’s stew and put it into the bowl for Wolf, as I had decided to name him. He sat, straining and eager for a word of encouragement and bounded over when I gave him permission. The fact that he responded to orders looked like he had received some training, which would mean that he wasn’t a wild thing. I gently probed his mind while he was eating.
The pack I had pictured in my mind, from the impressions I had previously gained, was actually a human family. How large was difficult to tell; dogs are not very good at numbers. He thought of one as his mother and an uncertain number of children as his siblings. There was at least one very small child - a baby. Wolf looked pretty well cared for, so it probably wasn’t very long since whatever the incident was that had resulted in their deaths. As he was finishing off his food I gave the matter some thought. He was probably from not far away. Should I take the time to investigate and see if there was anything to be done? There almost certainly wasn’t, in all truth. The dog had tried to rouse them, without success. It would really be nothing more than a diversion from my true quest, whatever it was. So I really should…
Ach, to hell with it. I would try and find out where the dog had come from and see if there was anything to be done. He wanted another serving - I gave it to him and waited while he finished. Then I took a closer look at him. His pelt was well cared-for and generally in good condition. He had picked up a few scratches along the way, which it would be a good idea to attend to. I dug out some antiseptic salve from my medicine bag and called him over. He was nervous but I got into his mind and showed him what I was going to do. He sat patiently while his scratches were cleaned, as gently as possible, then dried and sealed over with the salve. While doing this I probed in order to find out where he was from, and maybe get an idea of how far he had travelled. He couldn’t come up with a map; dogs don’t think like that, but he had a very clear memory of scent trails. He knew where he was from and I was confident he could lead me back. Once the wounds were dressed and the horses were saddled, I told him that he was to lead us back to his home.
It was a twisty route. A couple of times he ran into thickets that the horses and I could not pass. We made our way around them, one way or another, and found Wolf waiting for us on the other side. One diversion was at least a mile but, by then, he knew what was going on and was prepared to exercise patience. Not that he wasn’t pleased to see us; he was, leaping and bouncing around as if we had been to hell and back. Once he was calmed down we resumed the trail and after the best part of the day, he came to a stop at the edge of the woods. His nose was twitching, searching out scents. I got that he had identified a lot of familiar smells but there were things that made him uneasy - or even upset. He emitted a low growl and dropped his head. Not in a supplicant or submissive way, but in a hunting mode.
“Easy now,” I said. “Let me have a look. Sit and wait.” I dismounted and cautiously approached the edge of the wood, moving from tree to tree and using as much cover as I could, to shield me from anyone who might be watching. Especially if they had hostile intent. When I scanned the area I could detect no human activity - not close by, anyway. There were animals of various typ
es; chickens, a cow - that was pretty much it, except for the indication of scavengers.
I stepped out of the woods and was met by a scene of carnage. It was far from the fist massacre site I had encountered but the slaughter of farmers and their families always turned my stomach, more than pretty much anything else. Farming people are generally peaceful and so make easy pickings for marauding gangs. This farm had been well and truly marauded and the perpetrators had made no effort to conceal what they had done. The initial impression was that there were bodies everywhere. There weren’t, in fact - fewer than a dozen, all told. But each one had at least three arrows sticking out of it. There were two young women, whose skirts had been pulled up above their waists. An older one who -
Suffice to say, her legs were covered with dried blood.
A man who, by his build, was probably around my age had been tied to a wheel. It was hard to be precise about his age because of what had been done to his face. There were bloody sockets where his eyes had once been. That was probably crows, who had most likely got to work after he was dead - I certainly hoped so. But his face had no skin on it and it was definitely not crows that had done it. Not unless they had learned to use knives and had developed a penchant for precise flaying of human skin. It was as if someone had wanted a mask, the edge had been cut so carefully. If there was any mercy in the world it would have been done after he had been killed. Not that the scene displayed any evidence of mercy at all.
A few crows were still at their work, as were some other, ground-borne scavengers. I waved my arms and called on them to leave and most of them hopped a few paces away, at least. A pair of foxes let off their work at the bowels of a couple of corpses and scampered back off into the woods. A badger decided to be a bit more resistant and growled gutturally as I approached. Although what it was doing made my gorge rise, I didn’t want to kill the beast - it had its place in the world and was not acting out of malice - but I was moved to give this dead family as decent a burial as I could. The sight and sound of their entrails being consumed by the beasts of the forest was more than I was prepared to endure. I called Wolf over and he seemed to feel the same. I threw a few stones at the badger, Wolf let fly a hail of barks and cousin Brock decided to leave. Wolf chased the rats and a few crows away - a task that would be unending. The question now was: how to best dispose of the departed.
I looked around at Wolf’s old home. It was a very humble farm compound, with buildings on all four sides and gates at either end. The better-made buildings had stone walls up to the height of a short man, and thatch over. Some - most, in fact - had already been burned. The remains of a couple of barns and a hut offered the best hope for something decent. While Wolf sat guard and occasionally chased off adventurous crows and rats, I dragged the bodies into the wooden hut. It was amazing that it had survived; perhaps the marauding band had got bored, waiting to see the full result of their handiwork. Apart from a handful of chickens and a cow, all the animals had gone and there was no evidence that they were in any of the surrounding fields. Maybe they had been busy with their rustling. And their rape, and their needless torture. Women of anything remotely like childbearing age had all been defiled. The men had had their gonads cut off. Where they had gone was anyone’s guess. Possibly taken as trophies but more likely tossed contemptuously aside, and consumed by scavengers once the gang had gone.
The corpse of a child was particularly upsetting. It had been disembowelled, and not by the sort of animal that knew no better. The edges of the wound were clean cut. There was also the indication that it had been speared - to what end, I could hardly imagine.
What sort of savage would do such a thing?
I shook my head to clear it, as I went about my work. I didn’t really have to think very hard to identify the kind of creature that would descend to this. In battle, one of the commanders’ main tasks was to control the savagery that mass fighting unleashed. Men naturally find it hard to kill another human being - the first time. Thereafter, a combination of bravado, terror and something from the depths of human nature made bloodlust and abominable slaughter seem acceptable. No-one was immune; I had felt it myself; it had nearly overwhelmed me, and others, including people of very senior rank or nobility, who thought themselves above that kind of thing. No-one is. The savage beast lurks within everyone who walks the planet.
The difference is that, while most people are appalled at what they discover they are capable of doing, some relish it, even embrace it. The trio of ambushers from the day before (was it really only yesterday?) were among that number - but they were amateurs, compared to whoever did this. Did I regret what I had done to them in their turn? No. They were well set on the path that would have taken them to these depths.
The old woman was pretty hefty; she had accumulated quite a lot of the fat of the land on her own person. Otherwise, they were as you would expect to find in a small farm settlement. Full-grown men with strong arms and chests; adolescents in the process of putting on muscle. The likely wife of the flayed farmer, older than her years, worn down by childbearing. Two more, younger women; a small child and the baby. It was a dozen, in fact. A round dozen.
Once all the bodies were in the hut I placed thatch around the pile and gathered loose wood from around the place - there was plenty of it, both partially burned and untouched by any flame. When I could get nothing more in, I prepared four torches of thatch, bound on to redundant fence posts or whatever else would serve. It took me a little while to get a flame to take in a small pile of prepared kindling but it did eventually catch. I lit the torches and placed them around the hut, one at each cardinal point of the compass. As I had reminded the Irish monk, Dougald, I was a Druid, back then. I was trained and qualified to conduct a funeral service. As the walls of the hut caught fire and the flames started to shoot towards the sky, I held my arms out, looked to the sky and to the Earth, the Sun and the Underworld, then to the North, the East, the South and finally to the West, to the Lands of the Blessed. I commended their souls to the safe keeping of the spirit guides of the dead and wished them safe journey to the Orchard. Wolf, his task completed, sat quietly and attentively, his nose twitching as he caught all the smells of departure. He whimpered a little and bowed his head. Once I had finished the brief service I patted him on his chest.
“We had best be on our way, Wolf,” I said. “That fire can be seen for miles around. It will attract attention and we don’t want to be here when it arrives.” I turned towards where the horses were waiting, just inside the woods. Wolf whined a little and looked up at me. “I must leave; I have no choice. You can stay here if you want to but I have to say - there is nothing for you now. They are all gone.” I began to project an image of what I meant but there was no need; he had got the message. He cast another look at the burning hut, turned back to it, barked a short farewell, and followed me up the slope. I mounted Sage and the four of us left, back into the thicker forest, the way we had come.
Chapter Eight
Refreshment and Recreation
It would be great to be able to say that the next stage of my journey passed without incident. Unfortunately, that was never likely to be the case.
The era of Pax Romana, the Roman Peace, was 200 years in the past and there was no sign yet of the emergence of a power that would bring order to the fractured continent of Europe. There were parts that were relatively peaceful and where something reminiscent of Roman Law prevailed, where a man could be reasonably confident of having a fair trial before honest magistrates - who were either above being bought or, when bought, stayed bought. Either would do; at least you would know where you stood. Even if such a paradise existed somewhere, it was unlikely to be found in the kingdom of Neustria, whose territory I was in the process of crossing. It had a weak king in the boy, Clovis - still a few hundred miles away, hopefully - and enough intrigue to fill a few Byzantine courts. Appointed and self-inducted nobles were more interested in growing their power than in upholding the king’s rule. Nevertheless,
a reward for the return of the royal treasury - or that part of it that Onion was carrying - would have raised interest in anyone who found out about it. Officially. If they didn’t know about it - officially - and they happened to encounter it, well then - all the better for their own treasuries, and for their ambitions.
In short, even those who didn’t know they were looking for me, were looking for me.
Which is why I avoided settlements, as far as I could. But it was impossible to avoid them completely. Some were situated on the sole river crossing for miles in any direction. Some were perched between a mountain and a river. And some I had to travel through because I needed provisions. Apples, where I could find them; flour for bread; wine; oil; and so on. And I had more basic needs as well. I may have been a Druid priest but I was still a man - and I wasn’t a monk. And I was at about the end of that particular tether. From time to time, a close human relationship was necessary. Maybe temporary, probably quite short and possibly conducted on a commercial basis. A reasonably-sized town would likely have a tavern or an inn with some friendly company in it. But before then, what was I to do with the treasure? I could always just drop it off somewhere and leave it to be found but I would like to think it would go to a good cause or two. Or three. Or several. Until then, it was my responsibility to look after it. I was not so much the owner of the fortune as a custodian, looking after it for future generations.
Lockeran (Prince Ciaran the Damned Book 2) Page 6
