by Paul Lewis
Madoc etched a map in the snow with his spear point. “We are here. The villages are here, here and here.” He made three marks, one to the northwest, the other two to the northeast. “There are others, but too far away to travel there and back again inside a day.”
“And each of the three has had children taken?”
Madoc nodded. “Two of them lost one child apiece. The other had two taken. Once their people realised what had happened, they kept their children inside and posted guards. No more were taken.”
“And were any of the missing children found, dead or alive?”
A long sigh. “No.”
Dodinal walked to the forest edge. He needed a moment alone so he could think without interruption. With no tracks to follow, a search seemed a hopeless cause, yet he was certain where they needed to go. Even when he tentatively cast his senses out and found nothing, he remained in no doubt.
It could not be mere coincidence.
He returned to the waiting men. They watched him approach with curiosity and apprehension. “We head north,” he said.
“North?” Madoc was doubtful. “We could set out in any direction and be no more certain we are on the right path.”
“Do you not heed your instincts when you hunt?” Dodinal asked. He waited for an answer, but none was forthcoming.
Finally it was Idris who spoke. “If Dodinal says north, then north it is. I trust his instincts as I would trust my own.”
“Very well,” Madoc said. “It is decided.” He called out orders to his men. Three of them stayed with him. The remainder returned to the hut, to protect their people. “A smaller group travels faster. Between us, we will find anything that is there to be found.”
Dodinal glanced up at the cobalt circle of sky above the clearing. They had four hours of daylight left, five at best.
The men were pensive as they prepared to move out. Dodinal was not of the Christian faith, he did not concern himself with Heaven and Hell. He had often escaped to the Church of St. Stephen during his time in Camelot, but only because it was the one place where he could find peace. Here, though, so far from civilisation, it would be easy to believe in gods and devils. Some still followed the old religion. He might not share their beliefs, but he understood their fears. Even Gerwyn looked anxious. The air of arrogance had gone. If anything, his expression was that of a man with much on his mind.
They set off, fanning out as they advanced to sweep a wider area of ground, looking for anything untoward. Afternoon sunlight had burned away the worst of the cold; before long, Dodinal was sweating beneath his cloak. He took it off and slung it over his shoulder. The snow still lay thick on the ground, but if this weather lasted it would not be there for long. He would not be sorry to see the back of winter, even if the onset of spring brought him closer to a decision he would not relish having to make.
His stomach rumbled. Dodinal cast his senses outwards, hoping in vain that the milder conditions might have enticed game to return. He could still taste the venison they had feasted on. The thought of fresh meat made his belly ache, so he turned his thoughts elsewhere.
An image of Rhiannon came to mind. He smiled, despite the grim nature of their task. That she might not feel the same about him as he had come to feel about her was something he did not want to dwell on. It was not only possible, but likely; while she had been kind, even affectionate, there had been no hint of anything deeper.
“Over here!” a voice cried out, tearing Dodinal away from his thoughts. Looking across, he saw Hywel away to his left, crouching and examining the ground. The other men hurried over, then waited for Dodinal, who was the last to arrive.
“What have you found?” the knight demanded.
Without waiting for an answer, he crouched alongside Hywel, tugging thoughtfully at his beard as he tried to make sense of what he saw; tracks that, to inexperienced eyes, would have appeared as little more than a confusion of churned-up snow. Dodinal, however, saw with eyes that pierced the secrets of the wildwood.
What strange tracks they were. He reached down and ran his fingers slowly around the edge of the imprint closest to him. Such was its size and shape it could have been made by a man, but a man whose feet were deformed. The print was curved, as though the foot was badly twisted, and it possessed only three toes.
“You have seen this?” he said quietly to Hywel.
The tracker nodded. “It could have been someone who had lost two toes in battle, or to frostbite.”
“It could,” Dodinal conceded. “But that does not explain this.” He indicated another print. It too was curved; the only difference between it and the first was this one had six toes.
Dodinal straightened, so he could follow the course of the tracks leading away from them, northwards into the depths of the forest. He counted eight pairs, all displaying similar deformities. One set was noticeably deeper and better defined than the rest. He nodded. One of the eight had been carrying something heavy enough to have driven its weight further into the snow. “Neither does it explain why they would be running around barefoot in this weather.”
“There’s something else,” Hywel said, looking back nervously. “There are no tracks behind us. They start right here.”
Dodinal grunted, struggling to accept a truth that defied logic. The evidence was plain to see. The tracks started in the middle of nowhere. For all his scorn of the men’s talk of devilry, the knight nevertheless found himself gazing at the cloudless vault overhead. It was indeed as if something had come down from the sky. Something that walked like a man but on feet that were not quite human.
“Well?” Madoc demanded.
Dodinal chose his words carefully, not wanting to spread alarm. “We have their tracks now.”
“Men?”
Dodinal nodded, far from convinced. “Eight of them. One was carrying something. I suspect it was your missing boy.”
Madoc brightened. With no blood trail, it was possible the child might still be alive, making it all the more vital to find him. Dodinal looked up again, not out of anxiety but to study the light.
“We have perhaps three hours left to us. If we have not overtaken them by nightfall we will have to give up the search. We cannot track if we cannot see.”
“What? But we cannot give up!” Madoc sounded aghast.
Dodinal frowned. They had given their word they would help, and he would not halt the search until the very last moment, but they could not stay overnight. Idris had left armed men behind and given instructions for the young to be kept indoors at all times. While there was nothing to suggest their village was at risk — no sign of any tracks, strange or otherwise — the chieftain had taken no chances while he was away.
It had disturbed Dodinal greatly to hear of children elsewhere being stolen. The raiders were on the move. There was no way of predicting how far they would travel. He would not rest easy until he was back with Rhiannon and Owain. “I am not suggesting you give up the search,” he told Madoc, with quiet authority. “We will help you for as long as we can. But no longer than that. We have our own people to consider. Surely you would no more expect us to abandon them than we would expect you to abandon yours to help us.”
“Of course not.” Madoc slumped. “Believe me, we are truly grateful for any help you can give us. So let us make haste while we can.”
They set off again, moving swiftly now they had a trail to follow. Dodinal kept a tight grip on the spear, although at the first sign of trouble he would want his sword in his hand.
An hour passed, then two. The sun eased down the sky, and a sound like rain filled the air. Water dripped from branches as the ice began to thaw. Where it drummed on the ground, the snow started to melt, a sure sign that spring was at last upon them.
Then the trail suddenly ended, the tracks vanishing as abruptly as they had appeared. Dodinal raised his hand and the men came to a halt alongside him.
“What is it?” Idris asked. Dodinal pointed. “Ah. I see.”
Madoc w
ent to push past them. “What kind of man can appear out of nowhere and vanish just as easily, eh? You say there is an explanation for everything, Dodinal. Explain that.”
Dodinal put a hand on his chest to hold him back. “I cannot.”
“Then let me pass. I will find the answers you cannot give.”
“No,” Dodinal said softly. “If there are answers to be found, I will find them. Stay here. The less we disturb the snow, the better.”
“Do as he says,” Idris advised. “He knows what he is about.”
Madoc’s lips tightened into an angry line but he gave way.
Dodinal drove the point of his spear into the hard ground and unsheathed his sword. He made his way slowly to the point where the trail abruptly ended, next to a small, snow-covered rock.
His eyes scanned the forest for movement, but the woodland was populated only by the long swaying shadows of the trees. Sweat broke out on his forehead and he impatiently wiped it away. He did not believe in devils. Even so, there was something unarguably wrong here, something out of kilter with the natural order. He could try to deny it for as long as he drew breath, but he had learned years ago never to deny his instincts.
He drew close to the rock. The tracks did not peter out. They simply stopped. Beyond the last print, the snow, while thinner on the ground than it had been, was unbroken. The forest stretched away before him. Nothing had passed beyond here. If Dodinal had been religious he might have fallen to his knees and prayed for guidance. But he was not, and so could rely only on intuition and his senses.
While he contemplated the tracks, his eyes were drawn to the rock, streaked dark beneath its melting white coat. For a moment he had no idea why it captured his attention. Then it was as though his eyes had suddenly opened. His heart drummed and his breathing turned ragged. He put the sword away and reached out until he could place his hand on the rock. It was soft to the touch.
There was a sick feeling in his stomach, for he already knew what he would find. Sure enough, when he gently pushed, the rock shifted and tumbled over, sending up a cloud of snow as it collapsed. An arm unfurled to show a child’s hand, clenched into a fist. More snow skittered away to reveal an unruly mop of dark hair.
Footsteps hurried towards him and he waved them back, wanting to spare Madoc and his men. The boy was a stranger to Dodinal, yet even so the sight of his frozen body, curled up as though he had fallen asleep, was almost unbearably sad.
His eyes burned and his vision blurred. Dodinal reached down and lifted Wyn in his arms. The boy felt as light as the snow covering him, as if his departed soul had taken with it the weight of all he had been.
Madoc, face distraught, took the child from him. The chieftain set off, taking great striding steps back towards his village, his men falling in around him. Dodinal followed at a respectful distance, Idris and the others behind him. Not a word was spoken.
When they reached the village, Madoc was immediately surrounded by people, the women keening their grief and men surrounding him, wanting to take the boy. He refused their help and disappeared inside his hut, his people hurrying in after him.
“We’d best wait here,” Idris said. “This is a private moment.”
They loitered outside the hut for an age, while the shadows thickened around them. Dodinal, still shaken from the shock of finding the child’s body, wandered from the clearing to the edge of the forest, where he prowled restlessly. Through the trees he could see fires being lit in pits dotted here and there around the village. A sentry stood guard outside the main hut, but otherwise the place appeared deserted. No defences other than the fence, one man and a few desultory fires. Little good they would do against something that could appear and vanish at will, that could take a child, snuff out its life and discard it like a broken plaything.
Nothing could bring the boy back. But there were questions Dodinal would have answered before they left this place, which they must do, despite the tragedy in which they had become unwitting players. Soon, though, there would come a time of reckoning. If that meant his quest for peace had to wait, then wait it must. Whether he liked it or not, Dodinal was a knight. He had sworn to protect the innocent. He would not allow such cruel deeds to go unpunished.
8Arthur’s questionable chivalry is a recurring theme in both the Morte and the Second Book. From giving orders to have every newborn baby in the kingdom drowned, to his brutal conquest of Rome, to his pragmatic refusal to confront Lancelot over his conduct with Guinevere, Arthur strongly demonstrates Malory’s anxieties about the impossibility of a truly chivalrous life.
TEN
Madoc’s hut was so crowded that there was barely enough room for Dodinal. But when people saw him enter with a look as dark as the encroaching night on his already fearsome face, they moved aside to let him pass. He made his way to the table in the centre of the hut on which the child’s body had been placed, wearing the clothes he had been found in, arms folded across his chest.
He looked to be asleep, at peace.
A woman sat on a chair beside him, elbows on the table and hands clasped together, lips moving as she whispered a prayer. Her eyes were closed. Tears had left trails like glistening scars down both cheeks. A man stood trembling behind her, a hand on each of her shoulders, either to comfort her or to prevent himself from collapsing. He looked up at Dodinal with swollen red eyes.
“It was you who found him?”
Dodinal nodded.
“Then my wife and I thank you.” The man’s voice quivered with barely suppressed emotion. “To have lost him forever …”
He broke off, unable to continue.
Dodinal said nothing. There were no words in the world that had meaning at a time like this. He could not begin to imagine the torment Wyn’s parents had suffered when their boy had gone missing. Even then, they could have at least held out hope that he would be found alive, however unlikely that was. Now, that hope had been dashed; there was nothing left to shield them from the unbearable burden of grief. When Dodinal had lost his parents, and for many years after, he had been certain there could be no worse feeling. How wrong he had been. A child’s pain at the death of a parent was nothing compared to a parent’s suffering at the death of a child.
He looked around. The villagers were standing two and three deep around the table, Madoc prominent at the front. Idris, Gerwyn and the three hunters were at the back, looking uncomfortable. All were there to honour the dead, as was Dodinal, but he had other reasons for intruding. “May I look at him?” he said softly.
The woman ceased praying and raised her head, seeing Dodinal for the first time. In the hut’s shadowy interior, her eyes were black pits. “Who did this?” she hissed. “Who did this to my boy?”
“I don’t know,” Dodinal answered. “I’m sorry.”
Without asking her consent a second time, the knight leaned over to take a closer look at the boy. He was around the same age as Owain, maybe a year or so older. Dark brown hair framed a pale, thin face. The child’s eyes were closed, his mouth partly open. There were no rips or tears in his clothes and no visible wounds on his body. No trace of blood either.
Dodinal turned away. He had seen all he needed and had no desire to see any more. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, feeling the emptiness of the words even as he uttered them. Then he gestured towards Madoc and made his way to the door. Idris and his men quickly fell in behind. looking glad to escape.
Once outside, Dodinal breathed in deeply. The last time he had seen a dead child was after the Saxons had destroyed his village, and there had been many dead children then. In life they had shunned him for being different, but in death they were just victims. They had not deserved their fate, no matter how cruel they had been to him, just as Wyn had not deserved his. “Whoever took the boy was careful not to harm him,” he said, as much to himself as the others. “There were no signs of violence. Not so much as a scratch that I could see.”
Madoc nodded tersely. He looked on the verge of tears. In a community thi
s small, any death would be hard felt, let alone the death of one so young. “They wanted him alive. They could not have known the child was sick. He has… had… always been frail. His chest was weak. Sometimes he struggled for breath. The shock…”
“The shock of it would have stopped his heart.” Dodinal spoke the words that Madoc could not. “And then, once they realised he had died, they abandoned him and left him where he lay.”
“Whoever they were,” Idris said. “We still have no idea.”
“Neither does it explain the tracks,” Hywel added.
Dodinal stared into the forest. They were in there. Far away by now, no doubt, but those who had taken Wyn and the others before him were in there somewhere. And who was to say they were done?
“I have been thinking about that,” he said. “Ellis told us it was like they had come down from the sky. He was not far wrong, though he did not know it. They used the trees.”
Madoc pulled a face. “Used the trees? How?”
“Consider it. They came into your village as if out of nowhere. They took the boy. The tracks vanished again.” Dodinal gestured towards the darkening wood. “They moved from tree to tree while they carried him, keeping off the forest floor to leave no trail. Once they were far enough from the village to leave you with no means of following them, they returned to the ground to move faster.”
“That is nonsense,” Madoc argued. “No man can move through the trees that swiftly, let alone eight of them.”
Dodinal rubbed his eyes, feeling suddenly weary. It had been a long hard day and its outcome had drained him of strength. “There is no other possible explanation, aside from your devils. And I have no time for them.”
He made no mention of the strange twisted footprints he and Hywel had found, and for which he had no ready explanation. To do so would only deepen the atmosphere of dread and despair that already blighted this place.