There were certain rules that must be followed when Bridei went out alone. He could climb Eagle Scar, as long as he was careful. He could traverse the woods as far as the second stream to the south. He was not permitted to approach the settlement or to venture on foot to the wilder reaches of the forest, where he had stumbled on the Vale of the Fallen. When he asked Donal why not, the warrior simply said, “It’s not safe.” Because Donal invariably showed both common sense and kindness, Bridei accepted this rule. He suspected it had something to do with the Good Folk. Besides, there were his father’s parting words, never to be forgotten: Obey, learn. He wandered the tracks, climbed rocks and trees, found a badger’s lair and an eagle’s abandoned nest and a frozen waterfall of fragile, knife-edged filigree. He met not a living soul.
That changed abruptly one afternoon as he was making his way home from a hunting expedition. Well, perhaps not really hunting; he had his bow over his shoulder and his little knife at his belt, but he did not really intend to use either. He’d killed a rabbit not so many days ago, but Donal had been with him then. Much to Bridei’s relief, his shot had taken the quarry cleanly; there had been no need for the knife. Bridei, a child who had a great deal of time for thinking, knew it could have been different.
Today he had brought his weapons because it made sense to have them, that was all. Didn’t Donal and the others always carry a wee knife in the boot? All Bridei had wanted to do was go up as far as the birch woods and sit on the stones by the big waterfall, the one they called the Lady’s Veil, and watch for the eagles. The mountains wore caps of early snow, and the waters of the lake reflected the pale slate of the winter sky. The calls of birds were mournful, echoing across the distant reaches of the forest in lamenting question and answer. Perhaps it was the cold that made them cry so; how would they find food in winter, with the berries shriveled on the brown-leaved bushes, and the sweet grasses carpeted in snow? Perhaps they simply cried to make a music fit for this grand, empty place. Winter must come, after all; the wild creatures knew that as Bridei did. Winter was sleeping time for the earth, dreaming time, a preparation for what was to follow. That had been one of Broichan’s earliest lessons. At such a time, a boy should be open to his imaginings, to voices that might be stifled by the clamor of busier seasons. There was learning to be gained from all things: especially from dreams.
The Lady’s Veil was not frozen; its fall was too heavy, its face too open to allow the ice a grip. Pools at the base were fringed with tiny crystals and the ferns were frosted. Bridei scrambled up the rocks to the top. He stood awhile watching the sky, but the eagles did not pass over. He practiced his one-legged stance, wondering which of his eyes saw truer than the other. After a while his feet began to go numb and his ears to ache despite the sheepskin hat, and he gathered his bow and quiver and set off for home. Ferat could be relied upon to have hot oatcakes available on such a day, and Bridei was hungry.
Beside and below the waterfall a granite outcrop marked the hillside; around it clustered holly bushes, glossy-leaved and dark. Bridei was perhaps two paces along the track at the base of the rocks when he heard it: a snapping, small, insignificant. He froze. Something was there, not far off under the trees, something that had gone quiet as he had. Something following him; stalking him. A boar? A wildcat? Bridei’s heart began to thud a warning. His feet wanted to run. He was a fast runner for his size; it wouldn’t take him long to get down to the stone dike that bordered Broichan’s outer field, where there was a guard. His whole body felt ready for flight. His mind said no. What if it was the Urisk? The Urisk didn’t need to run. Once it saw you, once it wanted you, it stayed with you like a shadow, however quick you were. The only way to escape was to trick it: to stand so still it couldn’t see you. Bridei was good at standing still.
Then the cracking twig became a footfall, not furtive at all now, and he turned his head to see a man clad all in brown and gray, a man not so easy to spot in the winter forest, and the man had a hood with eyeholes over his face and a bow in his hands with an arrow aimed straight at Bridei’s heart.
No time to run; no place to hide. He would not scream. He would not beg for mercy, for he was Bridei son of Maelchon, and his father was a king. He reached for his bow, backing slowly against the rock wall as his assailant moved closer; he could see the fellow’s finger on the string, and knew above the clamor of his heart, above the clenching tightness in his chest, that this warrior’s purpose was death. The stone was rough behind him, full of chinks and crevices lined with soft, damp patches of moss. Part of the earth; part of the heartbeat . . . As the man’s finger tightened on the string, Bridei slipped backward between the folds of stone and into the dim security of a tiny, narrow cave. He squeezed his body against the back, trying to get out of sight, out of reach.
Outside, the man cursed explosively and at length. Bridei waited, trying to remember to breathe. A sword came, angled through the narrow gap, slashing up and down, reaching, probing, seeking. Bridei pressed back, making himself small. The sword hacked, stabbed: it seemed the owner could not maneuver it into the position he needed, for the gap itself was too slight. Bridei wondered, now, how he had ever managed to get through.
“Godforsaken druid’s get!” a voice muttered. “Smoke, that’s what we need . . .”
Then there were other sounds, and Bridei knew the man was gathering twigs, leaves, bracken, things that would burn. Most of it would be damp; still, Bridei had seen Broichan’s fires, started with no more than a snap of the fingers, and he moved cautiously in the narrow space so he could get a sliver of view. The man was indeed heaping material at the base of the rocks, his movements quick and purposeful. There was no point in calling for help. If this warrior was canny with a flint, thick smoke would fill this tiny chamber well before any guard could run up the hill from the fields. If he didn’t want to die in this hole or walk out to certain slaughter, Bridei would just have to save himself.
In the tight confinement of the little chink in the rocks, he struggled to set an arrow to the string. His hands were shaking and there wasn’t room to draw the bow fully. The man was kneeling now, perhaps already making fire. As a target, he was too low. The knife: Bridei could use that as he had seen Donal and the others do for sport, tossing it in a spinning arc. He’d never actually tried it, but that wasn’t to say he couldn’t. Bridei set the bow aside, reached for the knife’s hilt. There would be one chance, one good shot at it, when the man had lit his wee fire and stepped back to admire it. One shot. Then he supposed he would have to leap out somehow, flames and all. Perhaps the leaves would not burn. Perhaps he would miss the target. No; he was a king’s son.
A thread of smoke began to rise at the cave’s entry and a pungent smell wafted into the dim interior, making him want to cough. The thread became a ribbon, a plume, a small cloud, and all at once there was a crackling. The gray-clad assassin rose to his feet and turned, exposing his back for a long moment. Bridei sighted, balanced the weapon and threw even as the sound of running feet came to his ears, and a shout in a familiar voice. As the knife spun, satisfactorily, through the thickening pall of smoke, a form came hurtling across Bridei’s vision, a furious, long-limbed form that crashed into the gray-clad man, removing them both from sight. The knife had disappeared. Bridei shrank back. Flames crackled before the gap, men shouted, metal clashed. There was a strange gurgling sound that ended in a rasping sigh. The flames began to die down; someone was stamping out the fire. Someone was saying, “You’ve killed him.” The little cave was full of smoke; Bridei’s eyes stung, his nose itched, his chest was heaving with the effort not to cough. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his lips tight. Wrong; he had got it wrong. Someone was dead. His knife had killed someone. Probably Donal. Donal had come to rescue him, and instead of waiting as he should have done, Bridei had thrown the knife without looking properly; without assessing the risks as Donal had taught him to do. He had done something truly bad and now he was shaking and crying like a baby, he could not seem to s
top himself.
Voices, outside. “He’s done for, all right. Snapped his neck. Worthless scum.”
“Better to have kept him stewing; could’ve got the truth out of him, who sent him, who’s paying him. Why’d you—Donal?”
Then a shuffling sound, like someone trying to get up and not making much of a job of it. It was getting harder and harder not to cough. Bridei needed to sniff; his nose was running like a stream in spate.
“What’s this, man? You’re bleeding like a stuck pig! Did the fellow wing you?”
“It’s nothing. A scratch. Go after the others and be quick about it!”
Feet on the path, many of them now, and jingling metal, and then silence. Or almost silence; Bridei could hear breathing, his own, snuffling with tears, and another’s, somewhat labored. Donal was alive.
“Bridei?” It was little more than a whisper. “Are you somewhere near, lad? Answer me, curse it!”
Donal sounded strange. Perhaps he was angry. A warrior would not have hidden like a coward, and hit the wrong target, and then shed tears over it. Bridei found himself unable to move, unable to speak.
“Bridei!” Donal was attempting a shout. Bridei could see a little bit of him now, his shoulder in the familiar old leather jerkin, and the other hand clasped over it, and blood oozing between the fingers. “Bridei, you foolish wee boy, if you’ve gone and got yourself killed I’ll—I’ll—” The warrior’s voice faded; Bridei had never heard him speak like that before, as if the life were draining out of him quicker than sand through a glass. Bridei edged forward, slipping out between the rocks, stepping over the smoldering heap of leaves and twigs to stand, small and still, by Donal’s side. He tried not to see the form of that other man lying not far off with his head on a strange angle. Donal was sitting on the ground; his eyes were closed and his face was the color of last week’s porridge. There was quite a lot of blood on his shoulder and upper arm, and he had Bridei’s small knife held loosely in his right hand.
“I’m sorry,” Bridei said solemnly, and gave a monumental sniff. “It was the other man I meant to hit, the one who was trying to shoot me.”
Donal’s eyes flew open. His mouth stretched in a grin and he half rose to his feet, then subsided again with a groan. “Blessed All-Flowers be praised! Where were you, you wee—in there? How can that be? Yon crack’s not wide enough to admit a half-grown pup, let alone a great lad like you! I can’t credit it!”
It was true. The opening looked hardly big enough for him to fit one shoulder through, let alone the rest of him. No wonder that man had failed to reach him with the sword . . . The thought of that slashing, rending blade made Bridei feel suddenly odd, and he sat down abruptly by Donal’s side.
“Tell me.” Donal’s voice had changed again; now he really was angry, but Bridei sensed it was not for him. “Tell me what happened here, lad. All of it, every detail, everything you saw.”
“You’re bleeding,” Bridei said. “I know how to tie a bandage, Broichan showed me. I’ll do that now, and then I’ll tell you while we go home. You should have a poultice of wormwood and rue, and drink mead, and go to bed early. That’s what my foster father would say”
Donal regarded him in silence.
“I’m sorry I hurt you,” Bridei said once more, and felt his lower lip tremble ominously.
“Oh, aye,” said Donal, his voice oddly constrained again. “I think the usual thing is to rip up a shirt or two. It’ll have to be yours; I can’t get mine off over this shoulder. But make sure you put your jacket back on straight away, it’s cold up here. And get on with it, will you? That mead’s beginning to sound very good.”
IT HAD BEEN A mistake, Donal said. It was Broichan whom the fellow and his companions were trying to harm, not Bridei. Bridei knew this was wrong. He had seen the expression in that man’s narrowed eyes, had watched as his finger tightened on the bowstring. Broichan did have enemies. A man who is everybody’s friend has no need of guards on the perimeters of his property, or doors with bolts. Perhaps those attackers were the druid’s foes, but the one they wanted to kill was Bridei. Why, he could not tell. His father was a king, certainly, but Gwynedd was a distant place with its own councils, its own wars, far removed from the realms of the Priteni. Besides, his father had sent him away. If he’d been of any special importance, surely his family would have kept him. The attack just didn’t make sense.
The man Donal had killed was buried in a corner of the sheep yard. Others, sighted from Broichan’s guardposts, had escaped into the forest despite energetic pursuit by the druid’s men at arms. They remained unaccounted for, their mission and origins a mystery. Donal cursed that the fellow had obliged him to kill or be killed; he’d rather have bruised the other a little, trussed him up and got the truth out of him one way or another. Too late now; the gray-clad man could only tell his story to the worms.
Bridei was no longer permitted to wander on his own, but must go accompanied by at least two of the guards, and only when there was a real need for it. The daily rides were curtailed, for Donal was much occupied. Tense exchanges in lowered voices were frequent, and all the men had a guarded, edgy look about them. Mara muttered over the washtub. Ferat cursed as he plucked geese, and Bridei learned new words, which he did not repeat. He spent a lot of time in the stables grooming Pearl and talking to her, for her warm body and sweet, accepting eyes made her a good companion, as horses went. In the afternoons he studied. He tried not to notice how empty the house seemed, how quiet. He tried not to think of how small he was, how little he really knew of how to be strong, how to fight back. He tried not to worry about Broichan and what a long time it was taking him to come back home.
Without the druid, the household had not observed the ritual of Gateway, marking entry to the dark time. Mara said that farther along Serpent Lake there would be a big heap of logs, pine, ash, oak, set by the shore ready for burning. Bridei would have liked to go down and watch folk leap through the flames, as Mara had told him they did. But there had been no point in bothering Donal; why ask when you know already the answer will be no? So all Bridei had done was set out a little bowl of mead and a platter of oatcakes on the step outside the kitchen. This was a sign of respect; thus, he invited the dead to share the household’s gifts, to be welcome there on this night when barriers opened and the worlds merged. In the morning, mead and cakes were gone; there was nothing left but a scattering of pale crumbs.
Gateway night was well past now, and it would soon be Midwinter. The king’s council must be long over, but there had been no word from Broichan. The nights stretched out. Lamps burned in kitchen and hall throughout the day, illuminating an interior that was always smoky, for the fire was constantly burning save when all slept. Mara muttered about the soot and hoarded supplies of oil. In his small chamber Bridei huddled in a blanket, candlelight flickering on the stone walls, and tried to concentrate on the lore. It felt as if his foster father had been gone forever. When was Broichan coming home?
Three days short of Midwinter it snowed. The air had been hinting at it since early morning: there was no mistaking that stillness, that odd, deceptive sensation of warmth, as if the soft cloud blanket were easing winter’s grip even as it blotted out the sun. Bridei was outside helping the men move sheep from one field to another. The guards kept their long watch on the upper margins of Broichan’s land; their stalwart forms, their blue-patterned features were clearly visible up under the bare oaks on the forest’s edge. They worked shorter shifts in winter; at any time, there would be men coming in for roast meat and ale with spices, and other men putting on layers of clothing, skin cloaks, leather helms, heavy boots, ready for another battle with the chill. Ferat was so busy he’d no time to grumble. There were two fellows to help him, both too terrified of the cook’s temper to do anything but work at top speed and pray that they made no errors.
The snow began to fall as the last of the ewes were going through, herded by the overexcited dogs. Bridei’s job was to sit on the drystone dike by th
e gap and make sure they separated out the right ones. The farming side of Broichan’s affairs was handled by a man called Fidich. It was clear Fidich had once been a warrior of some note, for the patterns he wore on his face were almost as elaborate as Donal’s, and he had markings on his hands, too, twists and spirals from wrist to fingertips. Fidich had strong shoulders and a grim expression, and a right leg that ended just below the knee. He walked with a crutch of ash wood, and could cover the difficult terrain of the farm with astonishing speed. He lived in a but on the far side of the walled fields all by himself. Never a sheep dropped an early lamb, nor a pig ventured out into a forbidden plot of land, but Fidich knew of it. The leg did make some things difficult. That was why a boy for gate-work was useful.
“Right, lad, that’s the last!” Fidich called over the voices of three large hounds clamoring in chorus, and Bridei hauled the gate shut and fastened the bolt. The sheep on the other side, the ones relegated to a winter of sheltering under scrubby bushes and gleaning a living from what little feed could be spared, showed momentary confusion, then wandered off as if nothing untoward had happened.
The snow made its presence felt first in isolated flakes, descending in a slow, graceful dance. As men, boy, and dogs headed downhill to the house, the flakes became soft flurries and swirling eddies, settling patchily on the frost-hardened mud of the track. Over the lake, the tree-clad hillside was disappearing behind a blanket of low cloud. The wind stirred, and the pines moaned in response. By the time Bridei and his companions reached the house, the dogs bore a wintry coating on their shaggy gray hair and the wind was howling in earnest. Looking back up the hill, Bridei could not see the field where they had been working, nor the sheep, nor the guards pacing beyond. There was only the white.