by Simon Lister
She had sat among the laughing group just as the refrain started again. Cerdic started them off with a simple introductory beat on his shield then Cei began singing to Trevenna. The song revolved around the accusation that Arthur’s sister was, without any doubt, the ugliest witch in the West Country and that no matter what she was prepared to offer prospective lovers in the way of riches none would succumb to her desires. Everyone joined in the chorus despite Trevenna liberally pelting everyone with handfuls of snow. The song ended with the witch casting vengeful spells against the young man who had callously refused and scorned her. The group around the fire laughed as Trevenna leapt on top of Cei and rubbed more snow in his face.
That had been the last day of their respite for even as Trevenna pummelled Cei, the abandoned Ethain had climbed one of the tall trees on the edge of the copse and was looking out onto the moonlit white plains that they had already traversed. He had just wanted to make sure they were not being pursued, but in the distance, perhaps ten miles away out on the plains, there they were. A slow moving group, little more than a black dot on the white landscape and they were heading straight for the trees.
He had rushed straight back to the camp and kicked snow over the fire as he stammered out the news that appalled him so much. The laughter had stopped suddenly and they were packed and on their way once more heading to the East.
The land they were now travelling through with such haste was flat and the masking snow rendered it almost featureless. Clumps of trees were rare and although they crossed streams and riverbeds they did not know it as the deep snow covered all.
Ethain rode ahead every time they approached one of the sporadic copses and climbed the highest tree to see if the Adren still pursued them across the plains. Every time the answer was the same and while the Adren drew no closer, neither did they fall any further behind. Under moon or stars their trail was easy to follow, there was no way they could disguise the passing of ten horses across the white plains.
Their previous attitude seemed almost carefree to them now and they withdrew into themselves, fighting their own personal battles with the cold and fatigue as they alternated between riding and leading their horses across the winter terrain. They kept their stops for rest as short as possible and as the days of pursuit lengthened desperation stole secretly back into their hearts and Ethain’s world turned black once more.
Cei felt his hope beginning to drift away again. He could think of no way to shake off the distant but relentless pursuit. Ethain’s best guess was that over two hundred Adren followed them. Cei was not to know that Ethain had doubled his true estimation, just to be on the safe side. They could not turn and face them, yet they did not seem to be able to out-distance them either. Their journey into the Shadow Lands of the enemy was hopeless indeed if they took with them a small Adren army hard on their tracks.
They had been watching the stars gradually disappear in the West for the last few hours as heavy cloudbanks rolled towards them. Finally the first flurry of fresh snow began to reach them, borne on the wind from the northwest.
Cei called a quick halt and as they sheltered behind their horses to take a fast meal of near frozen dried meat and fruit, he talked quietly to Merdynn.
‘We can’t do it can we?’
‘It’s looking less promising, and it wasn’t very promising to start with,’ Merdynn agreed, sucking on a strip of meat in an attempt to thaw it. He had already privately resigned himself to the impossibility of their task but felt that Cei had to make that decision for himself.
‘It’s just not possible to travel in this land in winter,’ Cei said, looking for agreement from Merdynn, as he was still unwilling to forsake Arthur’s plan.
‘It couldn’t get a great deal more difficult,’ Merdynn agreed.
‘And it looks like a snow storm is about to settle on us.’
‘True, that’ll make it a great deal more difficult. Being buried in snow and all.’
‘At least it’ll cover our tracks.’
‘All trace of us more like.’
‘So you agree then?’ Cei finally asked.
‘Absolutely,’ Merdynn said, finally swallowing the meat, then added, ‘What to?’
Cei stared at him, concerned for the old man’s mind. ‘To abandoning this venture and heading for those Breton villages you mentioned.’
‘We can certainly try. I don’t suppose it’ll make much difference if we freeze to death heading east or if we freeze to death heading west. Matter of preference I suppose.’
Cei gave up on the conversation and told the others that they were going to head west. They had turned now and hopefully by the time the Adren arrived here, if they carried on in the growing storm, and no one doubted they would, their tracks would be obliterated and no sign would remain that they had turned from their course.
So where they had been travelling eastward they now turned their faces to the flying snow and with their horses strung together with rope, trudged through the storm heading southwest almost doubling back on themselves. Once they felt they were clear of the Adren they would veer to the northwest and make for the Breton land that only Merdynn among them had ever visited before.
Tiredness turned to exhaustion as they crawled across the landscape, the wind and snow constantly seeking to drive them backwards. Cei refused to call a halt despite two serious appeals for a rest, one from Aelfhelm and one from Trevenna. Now that his choice was made, he was determined to make it work and that meant putting as much distance between themselves and the Adren before they realised they had lost the trail. Cei hoped that when they made their inevitable discovery his riders would be far enough away to be free from further pursuit.
The hours passed in agonising exertion as they fought through the deep snow that was drifting across the plain. It hid gulleys and ditches and those in the lead, despite their broad snowshoes, would suddenly find themselves chest deep in a drift with their horses bucking and thrashing beside them. It became a stumbling, exhausting, frozen nightmare. Without stars or moon they had no points of reference for navigation and Cei prayed that the wind from the West had not veered or changed direction. He kept them facing into it and blindly hoped they were making west.
Occasionally he would stop and wait as the line of bent, stumbling figures and struggling horses slowly passed him. The bundled figures, made bulky by the thick winter clothing, would appear out of the swirling storm with flecks of snow thick in the air around them and clinging to their backs and shoulders in a white outline. Cei would exchange a few words with each but the wind and exhaustion made talking nearly impossible so he tried to gauge their state by their frozen faces and their bearing.
Two of the group were struggling more than the others. They were all struggling but Ethain looked to be on the point of collapse and Leofrun had passed by Cei without seeming to realise he was there. He was more worried about Leofrun, a slight woman in her twenties who was lightning fast with her sword but who lacked the strength of her companions and it was beginning to show. Cei knew her well, as he did his whole war band, and knew she would not give up or ask for help. She had a stubborn and independent streak that was not uncommon among the warriors but it was leading her beyond exhaustion and Cei feared she would carry on staggering behind the others until she died, then and only then she might allow herself to fall behind.
Ethain had nothing like her resolution but he was stronger. He did not feel like it though and as the interminable hours passed and the storm raged around them he felt like curling up in the snow and drifting away. It became an increasingly attractive idea to him and the thought of a relatively painless and numb death began to compare favourably to the possibility of dying in agony with his guts spilled by a curved Adren sword. His feet were already numb to the cold but the aching in his thighs and calves sent white-hot jolts of pain up his body every time he lifted his feet from the deep snow to take another step. He clung to the stirrup of his horse as it too battled through the storm and forced himself
to take one laborious step after another.
Two thoughts kept him going. They were heading away from danger and not into it, for the first time since leaving Caer Sulis. And the second was Leah. Someone had mentioned to him or he had overheard, he could not remember which, that she had been with Herewulf for the last couple of months. He had not realised that and had thought back to see if he could recall them being together in that way but he had been too preoccupied with his own safety to notice others’ coming’s and going’s. He felt his ego being bolstered every time he thought about Leah choosing him after being with a man like Herewulf. He did not realise that he had appealed to her because he was the opposite of everything that Herewulf had been. It was a pity that Herewulf had died, he thought, but it was an ill wind that blew no good. Even this ill wind that drove into his face was at least masking their escape from the Adren pursuit.
He found a small reserve of renewed energy at the thought of meeting up with Elowen, Tomas and Morveren with the strapping Leah on his arm. He did not know that Elowen and Tomas were already dead and he had yet to learn that Leah’s affections were quickly given and just as quickly taken away. Ethain was no doubt a fool but Leah was not playing him as such, everyone knew that was just how she viewed life. Everyone that is, except Ethain.
Leofrun finally collapsed. She simply could not make her legs do her bidding any longer. It took several minutes for Roswitha, who was slogging along behind her, to notice the unusual grooves in the snow in front of her. She raised her eyes from the snow immediately in front of her and looked up. Leofrun, hands still grimly grasping a stirrup, was being dragged through the tracks of the others by her horse. Roswitha ran through the deep snow in an awkward high-stepping gait and passed the word forward to stop, then returned to Leofrun and gently unclenched her hands from their clasp.
She laid her down in the snow as the others circled their horses to provide some protection from the snowstorm. Cei and Trevenna knelt down beside the prone and motionless Leofrun. Only her eyes were visible through a narrow strip in the wrappings about her face and they looked glazed and unfocussed. Clearly she could not go on. Cei looked around at the others and realised she was not the only one. Ethain was on his knees in the snow, sitting back on his heels with his head hung down, looking for all the world as if he were asleep.
They had been on the go for more than forty straight hours and they all looked as if they were at the limits of their endurance. Cei had no real sense of how far they had travelled during those hours but in all that time they had not passed any place likely to give them shelter, at least none that he had seen. He weighed up what options there were. They could secure Leofrun to her saddle and let her horse carry her but she would certainly die from the cold before they could find any place to shelter from the storm. Or they could wait here until the storm blew itself out but there was a fair chance they could all die from exposure before the storm died. He worried that they might not yet be far enough away from the Adren and was afraid that once the storm ended they might find their pursuers still within sight or still on their trail.
He turned his face to the flying snow and lowered the wraps from his face hoping the blast of ice on his bare skin might clear his mind to other options. He knew he could not send others onwards to hunt for shelter, they would never find each other again in the blizzard that raged across the plains.
He looked at Trevenna who leant across to him and shouted in his ear, ‘If we carry on we’ll die one by one!’
And if we stay, he thought, we’ll die together. He reached a decision, better to die together than alone, if die they must. He fetched his heavy axe from his horse and shouted to the others to cut an ice cave. Swinging his axe into the snow he started to dig a hole with Trevenna shovelling the loosened snow with her shield to form a bank on one side of the excavation.
The others joined in and they dug down deeply and quickly so that within an hour they had formed an open sided cave facing east, just big enough for them all to crawl into. Their horses stood in the lee of the cave with the dugout snow now forming protective wings and a growing overhang developed as the storm drifted more snow onto the roof of the hastily built cavern.
Trevenna and Roswitha tried to revive Leofrun while the others wrestled their gaunt horses to the ground at the entrance to the shelter and they crowded together, man and beast sharing the heat that might keep them alive. Once they were out of the wind and free from the flying snow, Cuthwin rationed out some of the remaining feed for the horses. They had been weakened further by the journey through the storm and were already close to starvation.
The blizzard continued outside and the cavern threatened to close around them as the snow accumulated around the mouth, gradually narrowing it. Every now and then someone would leave the relative warmth of the group and taking an axe, cut back the encroaching snow. Cei lit a tallow candle and placed it in a dug-out hollow above him. If the flame went out then they’d know they would be dangerously low on fresh air.
Leofrun was still suffering from the cold despite those clustered around her attempting to warm her up. She had revived enough to be talking to those lying against her but she was doing so in a disjointed often incoherent way. Cei wondered if they were losing her but could think of nothing else to do that might help her.
With the horses and warriors crammed tightly into the ice cave the temperature had slowly risen, not by much but coupled with being beyond the grasp of the wind they began to feel less frozen and heavy fur gloves were thrown off as feeling was rubbed back into nerveless fingers. Ice began to melt from beards and rigid faces regained some expression as they began talking once more.
Despite this apparent revival Cei knew that they were all exhausted. Now that they had stopped he prayed that the storm would keep up so that they could rest for a few hours. Aelfhelm was reminding everyone to keep working their muscles to prevent them from stiffening but the response was desultory so he lumbered to his knees and went round them one by one forcing them to flex and straighten tired leg muscles.
Only Merdynn seemed to be in reasonable shape. His beard still held fingers of ice and his deeply lined, leathery face and long bony hands had taken on a patchy blue colour but his eyes were clear and his voice was free from any trembling. Cei had known Merdynn since he was a child and was not wholly surprised by how well the old man seemed to be coping. Even his warriors now seemed to accept that Merdynn was just utterly different. It seemed to them that he wore his years like a mountain does, scarred, cracked and worn yet likely to stand forever and that his energy was like that of a river, a ceaseless flowing of something as insubstantial as water and yet it would eventually carve out great valleys. Unable to understand how this could be they put it down to a clever cunning on Merdynn’s behalf, a cunning that had cheated the gods and their weapon of Time and having explained it as such, thought no more about it. Even Leah had mostly dropped her superstitions about him, regarding him, foolishly, as an aged father with the power to protect them.
They drifted into an exhausted, fitful sleep and Ethain repeatedly awoke thrashing about, convinced the Adren had found their cave and were pouring through its dark mouth. His fears proved groundless but Cei’s fears for Leofrun were realised when Trevenna gently woke him to tell him that she had died. He felt guilty about her death; he could accept the deaths of those lost while fighting the enemy but he was unable to forgive himself for losing one of his riders to the winter. Trevenna told him that her death was painless and peaceful but Cei could not shake the conviction that it should have been avoidable, perhaps if they had stopped earlier, not pushed quite so far or quite so hard.
They laid her at the mouth of the cave and wrapped her in her cloak then divided out her supplies and weapons. The others insisted that Ethain take her sword, it was far superior to his with a better balance and much lighter. He took it feeling like a fraud and sat as far from the body as he could but his eyes kept returning to the prone form outlined on the floor of the entrance.
He consoled himself with the thought that while there were only eleven of them left alive now, he was one of them and they were heading for safety.
The storm showed little sign of abating. Every time the wind dropped and the blizzard lessened Cei would go outside and gauge whether or not they could carry on but they were merely lulls and the wind would quickly renew its malicious scathing of the desolate winter landscape forcing Cei back inside to wait and fret.
Ethain tried talking to Leah to take his mind off the dead body guarding their cavern but she was uncommunicative and unusually sullen. He gave up and retreated back into himself, armed with one more anxiety to feed his unhappy mind.
Trevenna kept the restless Cerdic occupied with playing endless games of dice while Aelfhelm massaged his aching knee and talked quietly to Merdynn, asking him questions and trying to learn as much as he could from the old man. The others lay among the resting horses and slept as best they could. Cei drifted in and out of sleep as he waited for the storm to pass.
He waited for two days and then the wind suddenly stopped. The abrupt silence woke those sleeping and they looked at each other in confusion wondering what sudden noise woke them. Cei quickly left the cave, having to crouch to pass through the entrance, which had become more tunnel-like with the accumulation of snow.
Thick, heavy snow was still falling from the darkness above but the wind had died to a whisper. He clambered up onto the top of their cave and even in the poor visibility he could see that their tracks were unsurprisingly completely buried under a clean and undisturbed layer of fresh snow.
He returned to the others and they spent the next hour taking a meal and readying themselves and their horses for another long journey. Cei was once again hoping to be able to put more distance between themselves and the Adren while the falling snow could still cover their tracks.