The Circle of Stone: The Darkest Age

by A. J. Lake

  ‘It is the best lead we have,’ Cluaran agreed. ‘But not at once – tomorrow, when we can see where we’re going. We might as well spend the night here.’

  Edmund and Cluaran laid out their bedding and supplies under the trees on the unburned side of the clearing. Cathbar insisted that Elspeth should practise with the new sword while the dim light lasted, and she could find no reason to refuse. To begin with it was hateful to hold the thing, it felt so alien to her, and she was slow and clumsy, giving way before the captain’s feints and failing to get any blows in herself. After a mere dozen exchanges, Cathbar knocked the sword from her hand entirely.

  ‘No, no!’ he cried in exasperation. ‘You’re fighting like a . . . like a beginner! Try again.’

  ‘You might try switching hands,’ put in Edmund, who had been watching. ‘Your right hand must still be sore.’

  Elspeth took up the suggestion gratefully. The new blade still felt strange and unwieldy in her left hand, but the sense of wrongness had gone. She began to make progress, and by the time darkness fell, Cathbar pronounced that she would do fairly. Cluaran extinguished their tiny cooking fire before they slept; without the massed bodies of yesterday’s travelling companions around them, it would be a cold night, but Elspeth hardly cared. At least there was no snow here. She felt exhausted, and gladly dropped on to her blanket beneath the trees, lying close to the others for warmth.

  They were woken in the night by shouts. Elspeth opened her eyes, shivering, to see the leafless branches above her swaying in the wind, and a thin moon in the black sky over the clearing. Cathbar was already on his feet, and Edmund was sitting up, his face pale, eyes closed, searching.

  ‘There are several of them,’ he said quietly. ‘Men with knives, attacking something . . . or someone.’ He pointed through the burned trees, and added, ‘Very close.’

  They crept across the clearing and among the charred trunks, with Edmund leading the way. It was only twenty paces before he stopped, pointing – but Elspeth could see the men herself.

  There were seven of them, all big, all in heavy furs and armed with knives. They were in a small clearing made by toppled trees; charred, stripped trunks surrounded them. A rickety handcart lay overturned nearby, its contents spilled over the ashy ground, but the men were paying it no attention. They were bending over something small and moving. One of them spoke, his voice jeering.

  ‘Cut his head off; that’ll free it!’

  The other men laughed. From the ground between them, Elspeth caught a flash of bright hair in the moonlight as the small figure twisted away from them. A voice rose, thin and pleading – a child’s voice.

  Elspeth had the new sword in her hand and was rushing forward even as Edmund lunged to hold her back.

  Chapter Five

  Elspeth! No!

  Edmund choked back the words, letting out only a strangled gasp as Elspeth dashed forward. She was on the men almost before they could turn, aiming a vicious blow at the knife-arm of the nearest. The man reeled away, clutching his arm and yelling, but two of his fellows had turned on Elspeth in an instant, lunging at her with their hunting knives. Even in the darkness they could see their assailant was smaller than them, and they laughed as she swiped furiously at them, and darted back out of range into the trees. Edmund could see that the sword’s greater length would be no advantage here: the trunks might be charred and dead, but they were still solid. He drew his own small knife, but before he could run to Elspeth’s aid he was grabbed roughly by both shoulders.

  ‘Idiot!’ Cathbar growled in his ear. ‘You want to get yourself killed too? Use your bow!’

  Already, Cluaran had loosed a shot at one of Elspeth’s assailants. The man fell among the dark trees with an arrow in his back – but in another moment all the remaining bandits had surrounded Elspeth, lunging forward to slash at her with their knives. As she whirled and swung at them, the men closest to her danced back among the dead trunks, jeering, while the others closed in.

  It had taken Edmund a moment to ready his bow. He shot at the same time as Cluaran – but one arrow glanced off a tree and went wide, while the other hit a man’s shoulder, leaving him still on his feet. The bandits were an indistinct mass of darting, shouting figures among the black trunks, with Elspeth hidden in their midst – they would have to go in close to rescue her.

  ‘Stay where you are and keep shooting!’ Cathbar hissed at both of them – and leapt forward, roaring.

  ‘This way, men! One silver for every head you take!’

  He had felled one bandit before he finished speaking. The other men froze, looking wildly around them for more attackers – and at that moment Edmund fired his next arrow. He caught one of them full in the chest, hearing at the same time the whirr of Cluaran’s bow by his ear.

  He could not tell what became of the final arrow. In the dark, it seemed the robbers had not seen the fall of their first comrade; had still thought themselves attacked only by a girl. Now, faced as they thought with a band of armed men, they turned and fled. Three were left dead on the ground, and more were wounded, judging by the sounds as the others crashed away through the trees.

  Elspeth was on her feet, breathing hard. There was blood on her sword and a long rip in her fur jerkin, but she seemed to be unhurt.

  Cathbar strode to her and took her by the shoulder, but when he spoke his voice was cold. ‘That was a stupid thing you did, girl. Stupid and dangerous: it put us all at risk. I gave you that sword to protect yourself: not to run into fights you can’t win. If there are more battles ahead you follow my orders, do you hear?’

  Elspeth’s flushed face had turned white, but she nodded.

  ‘Good,’ Cathbar said. ‘Now, we can’t ask these dead men whether they are in league with Loki but we can see what you’ve rescued.’

  He was lying curled on the ground where the robbers had abandoned him: a young boy, dressed only in overshirt and leggings, with rags tied around his feet instead of boots. He curled himself up tighter as they approached, shaking with muffled sobs. Elspeth knelt down beside him.

  ‘Don’t fear,’ she said in Dansk. ‘The men have gone, and we won’t hurt you.’

  Slowly the boy raised his head. He was about seven or eight years old, Edmund guessed; thin and wiry-looking. His face was streaked with dirt under a mop of light, unruly hair. His eyes, still wide with fear, looked very dark against his pale skin.

  ‘We want to help you,’ Elspeth told him. ‘Do you have any people we can take you to? Your family?’

  The boy shook his head, moving his lips as if feeling for the right words. When he spoke it was in a terrified whisper.

  ‘No one . . . they’re all gone. Lost in the fire.’

  Elspeth had instinctively put out her hand to him. At his words she drew it back as if the touch had burned her, and her eyes filled with tears. Edmund saw her lips move: Ioneth!

  ‘This is his doing,’ she said fiercely, turning to Edmund. ‘He’s killed them – burned everything – just as he did to . . .’ She turned back to the boy, who was still watching her with huge, frightened eyes.

  ‘Come with us,’ she told him, her voice gentle again. ‘We’ll find a safe place for you.’

  ‘With us!’ exclaimed Cluaran, behind them. ‘For how long?’

  ‘Until we find someone to take him in,’ Elspeth replied hotly. ‘We can’t leave him!’

  ‘We can’t take him far, either,’ Cluaran said. ‘Back to the road, perhaps. His people, if he has any, live close by: he can’t have walked any distance with those rags on his feet. And we have very far to go, Elspeth. A child will slow us down.’

  ‘Then leave me here with him!’ Elspeth retorted.

  The child’s face was starting to crumple. Edmund felt a rush of compassion for the little waif. ‘I agree with Elspeth,’ he said. ‘We can’t leave him alone: he’s too young, and the bandits could come back.’

  ‘Just until we find someone to take him, then,’ said Cathbar. After a moment, Cluaran nodded.


  It was close to morning – already the sky was lighter, though the faint moon was masked by scudding clouds. They had taken the boy back to their campsite, but none of them felt able to sleep again, so Edmund and Cluaran took their bows and went hunting, leaving Elspeth and Eolande to care for the child, while Cathbar kept guard.

  ‘Do you think the boy lives here, in the forest?’ Edmund asked, as he and Cluaran made their way through the ash-dusted trees on the unburned side of the clearing.

  ‘If he did, he could be useful to us: show us where he’s come from, and perhaps where the fire started.’

  Edmund was shocked. ‘Is that all you can think of – how he can help us? He needs the most help himself!’

  ‘And we’ll give it.’ Cluaran’s tone was serious. ‘We’ll find his parents, if they’re to be found – and if not, there will be those who’ll take him in. But he’ll not be the last orphan we meet, Edmund. If we can’t find Loki – if we can’t stop him – the world will be full of orphans soon enough.’ He walked in silence for a while, then turned back to Edmund. ‘And our first step is not to die of hunger ourselves. So get busy, lad, and find us a deer.’

  It was only rabbits that they found, but they came back in the pale light before sunrise with three of them, enough for a good-sized breakfast. Elspeth and Cathbar had a fire going in the centre of the clearing, with a trench scratched around it in the dirt to keep it from spreading. No more snow had fallen, and sitting around the small blaze, toasting his meat on two sticks, Edmund felt some of the chill leave him.

  The boy was fast asleep, curled up as close to the fire as he could safely get. He had told Elspeth a little about himself before he slept: his name was Wulfstan – Wulf – and he did not live in the forest. His parents were traders, Elspeth said.

  ‘He said they travelled and sold things, and they came through the forest some days ago. I think they visited settlements among the trees. It was hard to understand him; he was very scared – but I think he may not even be from around here. He doesn’t seem to know the language well.’

  They had brought the broken pieces of Wulf’s handcart with them. It had contained nothing but a blanket, a water flask and some food supplies; most of them ruined by their spill in the dirt. ‘He said he took the cart and ran when the fire started,’ Elspeth explained.

  ‘We’ll find his people,’ Cathbar said gruffly. ‘Or find what happened to them.’

  The boy woke while they were scattering the fire, and ate his share of the rabbit with a speed that suggested he had not eaten for days. His terror seemed to have lessened: he looked warily at Edmund and the two men, but spoke to them readily enough.

  ‘You killed the bad men,’ he said to Cathbar, through a mouthful of meat. ‘I stay with you now.’

  Edmund saw what Elspeth had meant about Wulf’s speech: he spoke Dansk with an odd, lilting accent, as though the language were strange to him, and sometimes looked blank when he was asked questions. But he had clearly taken to Elspeth, and when she rose to fetch her blanket from the tree where it had been airing, he jumped to his feet, still chewing, to help her roll it up.

  ‘I can help,’ he insisted. ‘Let me, Elsbet!’

  Elspeth, smiling, moved aside. To Edmund’s surprise, the child rolled the bulky cloth quite neatly. Wulf was clearly used to life on the road; perhaps he might not slow them so very much. But he was thinly dressed for winter. His overshirt was ragged and far too large for him: it slipped over his shoulder as he worked, showing a thin metal chain around his neck. The thing looked poorly made, but Wulf pulled his shirt protectively over it, and Edmund remembered with a shudder that the bandits had been preparing to kill the child to get it.

  Elspeth had seen where he was looking. ‘He told me that little chain came from his father,’ she whispered to him. ‘It’s all he has left.’ And her eyes darkened with pain.

  They moved off not long after sunrise, heading into the path of burned trees. Some still had branches attached at crazy angles; others had been stripped bare by the fire and stood like the spears of a ghostly army. Many others had fallen. The ground was covered in ash, rising in clouds around their feet at every step, and a haze hung in the air above them, blotting out the sky: there was no colour but grey. Elspeth kept close to the little boy, and Cathbar and Cluaran were talking in low voices. For the first time in days, Edmund found himself walking beside Eolande. The Fay woman paid him no attention, but to his astonishment he saw that her normally expressionless face was full of sorrow. From time to time she held out a hand to one of the trees, touching its bark with the light caress of a mother afraid to wake a sleeping child.

  ‘Are they . . . will any of them grow back?’ he asked her, but Eolande just looked at him vaguely, as if his voice were no more than a bird-call.

  The damage to the trees grew worse as they walked on. Soon, the stripped trunks became stubs no more than man-high; then low stumps, their tops smeared with white ash. Around their feet the ash was now ankle-deep. At the front of the party, Cluaran and Cathbar stopped.

  ‘This was no fire set by bandits, although they may have taken advantage of those that managed to escape,’ Cluaran said, pointing.

  It was a hundred paces ahead of them, but clearly visible through the stumps: a great circle of blackness. The ash had piled like snow around its edges, drifting downwards into the pit with each breath of wind. It was wider than the black hole they had seen in Grufweld’s forest, and there were no stumps around it: the place had been a clearing when the fire hit it. The sad heaps of ashes within the circle gave way to charred wooden beams at the edge: this had once been a settlement.

  Elspeth had come up beside him and stopped, her eyes wide with horror. Beside her, Wulf scuffed with his feet in the ash as if it were snow. Elspeth reached down to touch something among the blackened debris at the circle’s edge – then recoiled and turned away, grabbing at the child as she did so.

  ‘Come away, Wulf,’ she said, and her voice shook.

  Edmund fought back sickness as he looked down. The thing Elspeth had seen was a charred human bone.

  ‘It’s still hot,’ Cathbar muttered. From the drifting ash around the pit, wisps of smoke rose into the cold air. ‘He did this; no question of it.’

  Elspeth was standing at the edge of the clearing with her back to them, her shoulders shaking as she gripped the boy’s hand. Eolande stood beside them, rigid and stony-faced.

  ‘How many . . . ?’ Edmund could not get the words out. ‘How many people would have been here?’

  ‘Twenty, maybe,’ Cluaran said softly. ‘There’s space for a dozen huts, I’d say.’ He turned away. ‘It would have been quick,’ he muttered.

  ‘He must have come down as a fireball, and then . . .’ Cathbar looked around. ‘Where did he go then?’

  No path had been smashed through the trees. The black, levelled stumps stretched around them in all directions, giving way to taller trunks in the far distance.

  ‘Edmund?’ Cluaran called – but Edmund was already searching: casting his mind around for any sign; any flicker of life. Nothing. Apart from themselves, it seemed that the whole forest was dead. He cast further, finding only a few small creatures hiding in deep burrows or fled into water. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘There’s nobody.’

  Elspeth had come over to him again, the child trailing behind her. ‘We should look for Wulf’s parents,’ she said. She bent down to the boy. ‘Wulf,’ she said, ‘can you remember anything about where your family was when the fire started?’

  The boy thought. ‘There was a river,’ he said.

  Edmund cast his eyes back to the creatures that had been looking at the water: a small bird, perching nervously on a clump of reeds; a vole or water rat, submerged to the nose, watching the bubbles and flecks of white ash as they floated past its whiskers. He opened his eyes.

  ‘It’s this way,’ he said.

  They found a stream-bed first, dried to a channel of cracked mud. Further along the mud became sti
cky, interspersed with a few damp pebbles, but they had not yet reached water when they came to the remains.

  There were two heaps of ash, at the stream’s edge, one of them covering a blackened end of wood that had recognisably been a plank. Edmund froze, as he spotted several teeth littering the ash piles. He also noticed that the ground was speckled with streaks and blobs of dull colour.

  ‘Metal,’ said Cluaran, kneeling to look at the blobs closely. ‘This might have been a brooch or ring: brass, with a blue stone. That long one could have been a knife: cheap ware, to have melted so easily.’ He stepped back. ‘They must have been here to trade with the forest dwellers,’ he said, ‘and the fire caught them before they could reach the river.’

  Wulf was staring at the little heaps in silence. These must have been his father’s wares, Edmund thought, and wondered at the child’s calmness. Elspeth moved close to Wulf as if trying to comfort him, but the boy did not move or cry: he seemed not to understand.

  The trees at the stream’s edge were burned stubs as far as they could see. As they made their way along the channel again, every fallen trunk in the distance filled Edmund with dread – but they made no more sickening discoveries.

  The mud in the stream-bed became sluggish liquid, then a trickle of water. The endless ash beneath their feet began to mix itself with brown earth . . . and then Cluaran stopped with an audible breath of relief, and Edmund followed his gaze upwards to see undamaged branches, already in bud, at the top of a blackened trunk. At the same moment, he heard the distant noise of water flowing over stone.

  He found himself almost running as they followed the sound. And then it was ahead of them: a real river, not wide but deep; the trees on the far bank untouched by the fire.

  It was Eolande who reached the water first. She had been walking at the back, so silently that Edmund had forgotten her, but at the sight of the river she gave a cry – the first sound they had heard from her in days – and rushed to kneel at the bank. She dipped her hands in the water and threw a shower of gleaming drops over her head and face. Edmund saw now that she was covered with a white film of ash – all of them were. Cluaran put a dusty hand on his mother’s shoulder.