The Endless Knot

by Stephen R. Lawhead

  Bran, sitting next to him, said, “Brother, can you not see it is food and drink of a different kind that he craves?”

  Others offered their own opinions about how best to maintain strength and vigor in such circumstances. I forced down a few bites and swallowed some mead, but my friends thought my efforts lacked conviction, and redoubled their exhortations. Calbha filled my cup from his own and insisted I drain it in a single draught. I sipped politely and laughed at their jests, though my heart was not in it.

  The feasting and dancing would continue through the night, but I could not tolerate another moment. Rising from the table, I tried to make an unobtrusive exit, which proved impossible. I was forced to endure much good-natured, bibulous advice on how to conduct myself on my wedding night.

  As I moved past Tegid, he slipped a skin of mead into my hands so that my wedding night would lack neither sweetness or warmth. “In mead is found the flavor of the marriage bed. Twice blessed are lovers who share it on this night.”

  The more garrulous seemed anxious to accompany me to the hut where Goewyn waited. But Tegid came to my rescue, urging them to sit down and celebrate the new-wedded couple’s happiness in song. He took up his harp and made a great show of tuning it. “Away with you,” he murmured under his breath. “I will keep order here.”

  Cradling the mead in the crook of my arm, I hurried across the yard to the nearby hut that had been prepared for us. The house, like the hall, had been transformed into a forest bower with fragrant pine and birch branches adorning walls and ceiling, and rushlights glowing like ruddy stars, creating a dimly pleasant rose-hued light.

  Goewyn was waiting, greeted me with a kiss, and drew me inside, taking the meadskin. “I have waited long for this night, my soul,” she whispered as she wrapped her arms tightly around me.

  Our first embrace ended in a long, passionate kiss. And as the sleeping place was prepared—fleeces piled deep and spread with cloaks— we tumbled into it. I closed my eyes, filling my lungs with the warm scent of her skin as our caresses grew more urgent, taking fire.

  Thus occupied, I do not know whether it was the shout or the smoke that first called me from the bed. I sat up abruptly. Goewyn reached for me, tugging me gently back down. “Llew . . .”

  “Wait—”

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  The shout came again, quick and urgent. And with it the sharp scent of smoke.

  “Fire!” I said, leaping to my feet. “The crannog is on fire!”

  4

  A FINE NIGHT’S WORK

  The fire is on the western side,” Goewyn said, watching the rusty stain seeping into the night sky. “The wind will send it toward us.”

  “Not if we hurry,” I said. “Go to the hall. Alert Tegid and Bran. I will return as soon as I can.”

  Even as I spoke, I heard another cry of alarm: “Hurry, Llew!” I kissed her cheek and darted away.

  The smoke thickened as I raced toward the fire, filling my nostrils with the parched and musty sharpness of scorched grain: the grain stores! Unless the fire was extinguished quickly, it would be a lean, hungry winter.

  As I raced through the crannog along the central byway joining the various islets of our floating city, I saw the yellow-tipped flames, like clustered leaves, darting above the rooftops. I heard the fire’s angry roar, and I heard voices: men shouting, women calling, children shrieking and crying. And behind me, from the direction of the hall, came the battle blast of the carynx, sounding the alarm.

  The hot, wicked flames leapt high and ever higher, red-orange and angry against the black sky. Dinas Dwr, our beautiful city on the lake, was garishly silhouetted in the hideous glow. I felt sick with dread.

  Closer, I saw people running here and there, darting through the rolling smoke, faces set, grimly earnest. Some carried leather buckets, others had wooden or metal bowls and cauldrons, but most wielded only their cloaks which they had stripped off, soaked in water, and now used as flails upon the sprouting flames.

  I whipped off my own cloak and sped to join them. My heart sank like a stone. The houses, so close together, their dry roof-thatches nearly touching, kindled like tinder at the first lick of flame. I beat out all the flames in one place only to have them reappear elsewhere. If help did not come at once, we would lose all.

  I heard a shout behind me.

  “Tegid! Here!” I cried, turning as the bard reached me. King Calbha, with fifty or more warriors and women came with him, and they all began beating the flames with their cloaks. “Where are Bran and Cynan?”

  “I have sent Cynan and Cynfarch to the south side,” Tegid explained. “The Ravens are on the north. I told them I would send you to them.”

  “Go, Llew,” instructed Calbha, wading into battle. “We will see to matters here.”

  I left them to the fight and ran to aid the Ravens, passing between huts whose roofs were already smoldering from the sparks raining down upon them. The smoke thickened, acrid and black with soot. I came to a knot of men working furiously. “Bran!” I shouted.

  “Here, lord!” came the answer, and a torso materialized out of the smoke. Bran carried a hayfork in one hand and his cloak in the other. Naked to the waist, his skin was black from the smoke; his eyes and teeth showed white, like chips of moonstone. Sweat poured off him, washing pale rivulets through the grime.

  “Tegid thought you might need help,” I explained. “How is it here?”

  “We are trying to keep the fire from spreading further eastward. Fortunately, the wind is with us,” he said, then added, “but Cynan and Cynfarch will have the worst of it.”

  “Then I will go to them,” I told him and hurried away again. I rounded a turn and crossed a bridge, meeting three women, each carrying two or three babes and shepherding a bedraggled flock of young children, all of them frightened and wailing. One of the women stumbled in her haste and trod on a child; she fell to her knees, almost dropping the infants she clutched so tightly. The child sprawled headlong onto the bridge timbers and lay screaming.

  I scooped up the child—so quickly that the youngster stopped yowling, fright swallowed by surprise. Goewyn appeared beside me in an instant, bending to raise the woman to her feet and shouldering an infant all in one swift motion. “I will see them safe!” she called to me, already leading them away. “You go ahead.”

  I raced on. Cynfarch stood as if in the midst of a riot, commanding the effort. I ran to him, shedding my cloak. “I am here, Cynfarch,” I said. “What is to be done?”

  “We will not save these houses, but—” He broke off to shout orders to a group of men pulling at burning thatch with wooden rakes and long iron hooks. A portion of the roof collapsed inward with a shower of sparks, and the men scurried to the next hut. “These houses are ruined,” he continued, “but if the wind holds steady, we may keep it from spreading.”

  “Where is Cynan?”

  “He was there.” The king glanced over his shoulder. “I do not see him now.”

  I ran to the place Cynfarch indicated, passing between burning buildings into a valley of fire. Flames leapt all around me. The heat gushed and blasted on the breeze. Everything—the houses to the right and left, the wall ahead, the black sky above—shimmered in the heat flash.

  I heard a horse’s wild scream, and directly in front of me a man burst through the bank of smoke, holding tight to the reins of a rearing horse. The man had thrown his cloak over the terrified animal’s head and was leading it away from the fire. Immediately behind him came four more men with bucking, neighing, panicky horses, each with its head bound in the men’s cloaks. Only a few horses and kine were kept on the crannog; all the rest ranged the meadow below the ridge-wall. But those we stabled in Dinas Dwr we could least afford to lose.

  I helped the men lead the horses through the narrow, fire-shattered path between the burning wrecks of houses and sheds. Once on the wider path, I retraced my steps and hurried on. Smoke billowed all around, obscuring sight. Covering my nose and mouth with th
e lower part of my siarc, I plunged ahead and came all at once into a clear place swarming with people. Fire danced in a hazy shimmer about me. I felt as if I had been thrust into an oven.

  Cynan, with a score of warriors and men with axes, chopped furiously at the timber wall. They were trying to cut away a section as a firebreak to keep the flames from destroying the entire palisade. Threescore men with sopping cloaks beat at the wooden surfaces and the ground, keeping the surrounding flames at bay, while more men with buckets doused the smoldering embers of the ruins they had reclaimed. Black curls of soot and gray flakes of ash fell from the sky like filthy snow.

  “Cynan!” I called, running to him.

  At the sound of my voice he turned, though the ax completed its stroke. “Llew! A fine wedding night for you,” he said, shaking his head as he chopped again.

  I scanned the ragged, fire-ravaged wall. “Will your firebreak hold?”

  “Oh, aye,” he said, stepping back from the wall to look at his labor. “It will hold.” He raised his voice to shout the order. “Pull it down! Pull it down, men!”

  Ropes stretched taut. The wall section wobbled and swayed, but would not fall.

  “Pull!” shouted Cynan, leaping to the nearest rope.

  I joined him, lending my weight to the effort. We heaved on the ropes, and the timbers groaned. “Pull!” Cynan cried. “Everyone! All together! Pull!”

  The timbers sighed and then gave way with a shuddering crash. We stood gazing through a clear gap at the lake beyond. “Those houses next!” Cynan ordered, stooping for his ax.

  Two heartbeats later, a score of axes shivered the rooftrees of three houses as yet untouched by the relentless encroaching flames.

  Seizing one of the rakes, I began attacking the smoldering thatch of a nearby roof, throwing the rake as high up the slope as I could reach and pulling, pulling, pulling down with all my might, scattering the bundled thatch, and then beating out the glowing reeds as they lay at my feet.

  When I finished one roof, I rushed to another, and then another. My arms ached and my eyes watered. I choked on smoke. Live embers caught in the cloth of my siarc, so I stripped it off and braved the burns of falling thatch. The heat singed my hair; it felt as if my skin was blistering. But I worked on, sometimes with help, more often alone. Everyone was doing whatever could be done.

  “Llew!” I heard someone shout my name. I turned just in time to see a pair of long horns swing out of the smoke haze. I dodged to one side as the curved horn cut a swathe through the air where I stood. An ox had broken free from its tether and, frightened out of its dim wits, was intent on returning to its pen. The stupid beast was running among burning huts, looking for its shed. Snatching up my siarc, I waved and shouted, turning the animal away. It rumbled off the way it had come, but no one gave chase. We had enough to do trying to stay ahead of the flames.

  Everywhere I turned, there was a new emergency. We flew to each fresh crisis swiftly, but with a little less energy than the one before. Strength began to flag—and then to fail. My arms grew heavy and numb. My hand was raw from the rake handle and from burns. I could not catch my breath; my lungs heaved and the air wheezed in my throat. Still, I doggedly planted one foot in front of the other and labored on.

  And when I began to think that we must abandon our work to the flames, Bran and the Ravens appeared with several score men and warriors. With a shout they swooped to the task. Within moments of their arrival, or so it seemed to me, we were working harder than ever before. Raking thatch, beating flames, smothering sparks—raking, beating, smothering, over and over and over again and again.

  Time passed as in a dream. Heat licked my skin; smoke stung my nose, and my eyes watered. But I toiled on. Gradually, the fire’s glare dimmed. I felt cooler air on my scorched skin, and I stopped.

  A hundred men or more stood around me, clutching tools, vessels, and cloaks in unfeeling hands. We stood, heads bowed, our arms limp at our sides, or kneeling, leaning on our rakes for support. And all around us the quiet hiss of hot embers slowly dying . . .

  “A fine night’s work,” growled Cynan in a voice ragged as the remains of his burnt tatters of clothing.

  I raised my head and turned raw eyes to a sky showing gray in the east. In the pale, spectral light, Dinas Dwr appeared as a vast heap of charred timber and smoking ash.

  “I want to see what is left,” I told Cynan. “We should look for the injured.”

  “I will look after the men here,” Bran said. He swayed on his feet with fatigue, but I knew he would not rest until all the others were settled. So I charged him to do what he deemed best, and left him to it.

  In the grim, gray dawn, Cynan and I stumbled slowly through the devastation of the caer. The damage was severe and thorough. The western side of the stronghold had been decimated; precious little remained standing, and that little had been ravaged by flame and smoke.

  Calbha met us as we pursued our inspection; he had been arranging temporary storage for salvaged food stocks and supplies and holding pens for horses and cattle until they could be conveyed to pasturage on the meadows.

  “Was anyone hurt here?” I asked him.

  Calbha gave a quick shake of his head. “A few with burns and such,” he answered, “but no one seriously hurt. We were fortunate.”

  We left him to his work and continued on, picking our way through smoking rubble. In the center of a small yard formed by the charred remains of three houses, we found Tegid and several women working with the injured. The bard, nearly black with smoke and soot, knelt over a thrashing body, applying unguent from a clay pot. Lying on the ground around him were a dozen more bodies: some gasping and moaning, or struggling to rise; others unnaturally still and wrapped head to foot in cloaks. Several of these cloak-covered corpses were no bigger than a bundle of kindling.

  The full weight of sadness descended upon me then, and I staggered beneath it. Cynan caught my arm and bore me up.

  Scatha moved among the living, bearing the marks of one who had walked through flames—as indeed she had. For when the alarm sounded, she had organized a search of each house on the western side. Nearly everyone was at the wedding feast, but a few—especially mothers of small children—had retired to sleep. Scatha had roused them and conducted them through smoke and flames to safety, returning again and again, until the fire grew too hot and she could do no more.

  “How many?” She glanced up quickly at the sound of my voice, and then proceeded with her work of bandaging a young man’s burned upper arm.

  “If there had been time,” she replied, “these might have been saved. But the fire spread so swiftly . . . and these young ones were asleep.” She lifted a hand to the tiny bundles. “They never woke, and now they never will.”

  “Tell me, Scatha,” I said, my voice husky with fatigue and remorse. “How many?”

  “Three fives and three,” she replied, then added softly, “Two or three more will join that number before nightfall.”

  Tegid finished and joined us. “It is a wicked loss,” he muttered. “Smoke took them while they slept. It was a merciful death, at least.”

  “But for the feast,” Cynan put in, “it would have been much worse. Almost everyone was in the hall when it started.”

  “And if almost everyone had not been in the hall, it would never have started in the first place,” Scatha suggested.

  I was in no mood for riddles. “Are you saying that this was not an accident?” I demanded bluntly.

  “It was no accident kindled the flame.” Cynan was adamant.

  Tegid agreed. “Flames arising in three places at once—the wall, the houses, the ox pens—is not negligence or mishap. That is willful and malicious.”

  Lord Calbha, coming upon us just then, heard Tegid’s pronouncement. “Someone set the fires on purpose—is that what you are saying?” charged Calbha, unwilling to believe such a thing could happen in Dinas Dwr. “What man among us would do such a thing?”

  “Man or men,” Cynan repli
ed, his voice raw from smoke and shouting. “There was maybe more than one.” He regarded the smoldering ruins narrowly. “Whoever it was knew their work and did it well. If the wind had changed we would have lost the caer—and many more lives besides.”

  The sweat on my back turned cold. I turned to those around me, silently scanning their faces. If there was a killer among us, I could not imagine who it might be. A call from one of the women took Tegid away. “Speak of this to no one,” I charged the others, “until we have had time to learn more.”

  Scatha returned to her work, and Cynan, Calbha, and I went back to where Bran and the Ravens were sifting the rubble of a storehouse. Closer, I saw that they were slowly, carefully lifting a collapsed roof-beam from a body that was trapped beneath it.

  Cynan and I hastened to add our strength to the task. Grasping the blackened timber, we heaved it up, shifting it just enough for the broken body beneath to be withdrawn. The man was pulled free of the debris and carried from the ruin, where they laid him gently down and rolled him onto his back.

  Bran’s head came up slowly, his expression grave. He glanced from me to Cynan. “I am sorry, Cynan . . .”

  “Cynfarch!” exclaimed Cynan. Falling to his knees, he raised his father’s body in his arms. The movement brought a faint whimper of a moan. The Galanae king coughed, and a thin trickle of blood leaked from the corner of his mouth.

  Calbha stifled an oath; I put my hand on the man nearest me. “Fetch Tegid,” I ordered. “Hurry, man!”

  Tegid came on the run, took one look at the body on the ground, and ordered everyone back. Bending over Cynfarch’s side, the bard began to examine the stricken king. He gently probed the body for wounds and turned the head to the side. Beneath the filthy coating of ash, Cynfarch’s flesh was pale and waxy.

  Cynan, his broad shoulders hunched, clasped his father’s hand in his and stared hard at the slack features, as if willing vigor to reappear. “Will he live?” he asked as Tegid finished his scrutiny.