‘So, we push inland and find his cousin’s farm?’ asked Kai. He ran shivering fingers through his soaked curls and his thin beard.
‘No,’ said Arthur. ‘As soon as he reaches shore, that fisherman will look for his Saxon lords and tell them where we are and where he has sent us. He’s more Saxon than Briton now, and he’d sell our lives for a handful of silver. Get him up.’
They pulled Huell to his feet, and his hulking frame was heavy, too heavy for Arthur and Kai to drag across the beach and escape the Saxons, whom Arthur expected to come galloping over the dunes at any moment.
‘Where do we go then?’ asked Kai.
‘Inland here, and head west. We keep away from farms and settlements. There are six Saxons left in the group we fought on the beach. Our quest is over. We cannot continue, and we must return to Ector.’
‘We can’t just abandon the druid’s quest. What if Kadvuz curses us, or strikes us down with thunder?’
Arthur frowned at him. ‘He can’t conjure thunder. The Romans broke the druids’ strength long ago, and what power can gods have if hardly anybody worships them any more? You and I can’t storm a Saxon fortress alone and rescue a princess, especially not with Huell in this state. We return to Ector. Perhaps he will give us more men and we can return. If not, then we join his war band.’
Kai stared at Huell, as though he expected their leader to give an order, to disagree with Arthur or come up with a new plan, but Huell just sagged in their arms like a sack of meat and bone. Arthur wasn’t their leader, and if anything, Kai had more right to decide things if Huell could not. Kai was Ector’s son, and Arthur was an orphan with no say at all. But Arthur also wanted to live, and despite the hardship, the death of his comrades and their hopeless situation, he found he could think clearly. He could cut through the fear and the despair and see what must be done. They were deep in Lloegyr, and their men were dead, and he could see no other way for him and Kai to get out of there alive. Kai nodded, and they set off up the beach. Arthur’s wet boots crunched on the shale, and despite it being late spring, the day had an overcast sky and a chilling wind from the sea, causing Arthur to shiver in his soaking clothes. He had lost his Saxon shield and spear, but still had his long knife and seax at his belt.
‘We can’t drag him all the way across Lloegyr,’ said Kai after twenty paces. Huell was like a dead weight in their arms, dragging his feet on the tiny stones, and the two young warriors were out of breath before they had even reached the dunes.
Arthur dropped Huell, and the big man rolled onto his back, cradling his handless arm.
‘Get up and walk,’ said Arthur.
‘He can’t,’ pleaded Kai, but Arthur ignored him.
‘Get up and walk. How many times have I heard you say that we don’t flee, or we don’t surrender, or warn me to fight bravely? What kind of warrior are you to fall to the ground like a whimpering child?’
‘They took my fighting hand,’ Huell snarled, his face deathly pale from so much blood lost. ‘I am worthless now, less than worthless. Just let me die.’
‘So, you have given up? You are surrendering? All the years you have cursed me as a bastard orphan, believing yourself a superior, braver, better man, and here you are snivelling on the beach like a coward.’
‘Arthur,’ Kai raised a hand to warn Arthur that he had gone too far, but Arthur waved it away.
‘They took my hand,’ Huell shouted, his mouth turned down at the corners. His voice came as a half-shout and half-sob.
‘Luckily for you, you have another. Now, get up and walk. You will heal and learn to fight with your left hand. We need you, Rheged needs you. Get up.’
Arthur held out his hand and Huell grabbed it with his left hand, his dark eyes blazing with anger. Anger was better than death, and Arthur needed Huell angry if that would force the warrior to live. So Huell rose, and he walked. When he stumbled, Kai caught him, but Arthur would not. Though wounded, Huell was still the man who had made Arthur’s life a misery and so Arthur marched ahead, cresting the high dunes which rose like waves from the shale-topped sand. Coarse wild grass topped the dunes, and the three warriors left the coast behind as they marched across fields thick with purple heather and brush. Arthur headed west, constantly watching to the south for any sign of Saxon riders, but he saw none as they found a well-worn goat path which cut through a boggy heath of nettles, gorse and foul puddles.
A knoll rose from the flatlands, with a sickly elder tree at its summit. Arthur headed for the high ground to get a better look at their surroundings. They would need to make camp soon. Huell needed to rest, and the more they trudged around the coastline, the more tracks they left for the Saxons to follow. The three warriors climbed the knoll and Huell slumped down against the tree, grimacing in pain. Kai took off his cloak and ripped the wool into strips with his knife. He used one strip to make a sling for Huell, looping the sling around Huell’s neck and forearm to take the pressure off the wounded limb, and to keep it elevated. Arthur scanned about them. The sea was to the east, beyond the dunes. To the south-west rose the clifftop where they had lost the Saxon riders. To the north, the land cut away long and flat, to where the coastline swept north-east. That way lay Dun Guaroy and the Saxons’ stronghold, but Arthur must head west and hope to make it out of Saxon lands alive. Mountains rose in the west, black, shadowed and distant, and the border between Rheged and Lloegyr lay in their peaks and valleys, but to get there Arthur had to cross a swathe of open farmland. Green meadows, fields of crops separated by hedges and brown pathways, and clutches of woodland rolled over gentle hillocks to where the mountains seemed to touch a sky heavy with clouds the colour of curds.
‘If we cross the fields, the Saxons will find us,’ Arthur muttered.
‘Perhaps they have given up on the chase?’ Kai replied, tying off Huell’s sling.
‘After we killed six of their men? They won’t give up.’ Arthur ruffled his hair and beard with his hands to shake the itching sea salt out. His clothes began to dry and stiffen, and his mouth was dry. They had no food or ale, and Arthur had to find a place for them to rest. Daffodils and bluebells spattered colour across the brown pathways which ran between the fields, rutted by cart and wagon wheels. An oak tree grew tall and sprawling in a distant wheat field, and Arthur hoped perhaps they could find some shelter beneath its boughs. He could see no buildings, no thatch or any sign of the stream beside the fisherman’s cousin’s farm to the north or west. So the three set off towards the mountains and the oak tree in search of a safe place to rest.
Arthur’s boots sunk into the bog, so that each step was a sucking, squelching drain upon his energy. Kai had to pull Huell along, and more than once the grizzled warrior fell shrieking as his bloody stump landed in the watery mud. Kai cursed as his boot came off in the mud, and he had to dig down to fish it out. As he rose, Kai’s mouth dropped open, and he pointed to a raised bank to their south. Spear points wavered in the air like moving trees, and Arthur dropped to his belly, dragging Kai and Huell down with him.
They lay in the bog, its mud cloying, foul smelling and cold. Six Saxon warriors on horseback cantered along the hedge line bearing north. Cutting across the bogland where the three Britons crouched. Huell tried to rise, shaking his stump at the riders, and Arthur forced him down into the stinking bog water, fearful that Huell wanted the Saxons to find them and end his suffering. They waited in the muddy water until the Saxons passed from sight, and Huell sobbed silently, lying prone, his face covered in stinking mud.
The three warriors trudged through the flatlands, keeping to hedges and brush, crouching and moving with caution, eyes ever northwards in case the Saxon riders returned. The sun began to set as Arthur reached the oak tree, and as his hand touched the rough bark, it felt like a small victory over the Saxons. They had evaded the hunters twice, once on the beach at heavy cost, and again in the bog. They were no safer at the tree should the riders return, but to Arthur, the march to its wide trunk and sprawling boughs showed a change in his luck. And as he fell to his knees with exhaustion, he rubbed his forefinger and thumb on the bronze disc around his neck, hoping its dragon would bring him good fortune.
The oak was ancient and twisted, its roots gouged into the earth, thicker around than Arthur’s arm. It cut into the land opposite the bog, its roots leaving deep culverts in the earth, and they huddled into its shelter, watching the sky, waiting for the sun to go down. Night meant the hunt would be over for that day, and they could rest. As darkness fell, Arthur and Kai gathered twigs and dry wood debris from around the great tree and stacked it around a pile of kindling. Kai fished into the pouch at his belt and found his flint and steel. He scratched at the flint with shaking, icy hands until finally the sparks caught in the crushed, dried leaves and crunched-up twigs and took light. Kai looked up and grinned, and Arthur smiled back. Though risky, the fire was another minor victory.
The flames crackled into life, and Arthur and Kai crouched around it, warming their hands and rubbing them together. Huell stayed back, curled into a ball, intertwined with the tree roots, silent and shivering with the stump of his severed hand clutched close to his chest. They kept the fire low, little more than a few fingers of dancing flame, fearful that its glow would be visible for miles and give their position away to the Saxon hunters.
Arthur and Kai lay down beside the fire’s fragile warmth, warming their hands and aching muscles. Arthur silently rejoiced in his brother’s survival, knowing that such sentiments were unspoken among warriors. He remembered how as children they would play together all day, climbing trees like the very oak they slept beneath, running wild in the fields around Caer Ligualid with Lunete and the other children of Ector’s stronghold. He and Kai would play, practice weapons with their father, fight with each other, and had grown up as friends and brothers. They had faced death that day, and come through it alive, where other, more experienced warriors had perished and the mighty Huell himself had suffered a life-altering wound which might yet kill him. Arthur’s eyes closed quickly, his body exhausted from running, rowing and fighting his way through Lloegyr.
Arthur woke the next morning with the fire still warm on his face, and a brisk wind ruffling his long hair. He had slept all night, a dreamless sleep where his muscles and his mind repaired and rested. Arthur stretched his stiff back and arms, sore not just from exertion but also from sleeping rough on the dirt and grass beneath the oak tree. Arthur rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and through the fog of sleep he wondered how the small fire had stayed burning all night long. He sat up and jumped backwards, shocked to see Kai sitting by the fire, which burned large and strong, with an old man. The old man was laughing, turning a rabbit on a makeshift wooden spit, and the smell of roasting meat made Arthur’s mouth water.
‘Ah, your friend is awake,’ said the old man. He was a Briton and spoke the language with a bright, clear voice. He flashed a wide smile at Arthur. Despite his age, he had a perfect set of white teeth, and his grey eyes were bright in a face creased with age, wrinkled and worn. He was bald, but for a ring of white hair around his ears, which he had grown long and wore in tight braids. Strange tattoos covered the old man’s scalp, faded symbols, writhing beasts and an arrow pointing down over his forehead. His beard was close-cropped to his chin, and he wore a long, dirty grey tunic belted at the waist with a hooded cloak the colour of burned bread. ‘Eat. You must restore your strength.’ The old man tore a chunk of meat from the rabbit and handed it to Kai, who glanced nervously at Arthur, but took the steaming meat and devoured it.
‘Who are you?’ asked Arthur, taking the offered meat from Kai. The old man had appeared from nowhere in the night and acted as though he was an old friend who should be welcomed. He showed no fear of the armed, travel-stained warriors and spoke to them like a scolding elder.
‘Just a weary traveller who noticed three fools had started a fire in the land of their enemies and thought I would offer my help.’
‘You are going to help us? And if we are fools, why have you kept the fire going?’
‘Yes,’ the old man said brightly and grinned. ‘Well, the fire doesn’t matter now that I have found you.’
‘Found us?’ Arthur asked slowly. Kai caught Arthur’s eye and shrugged to say that he didn’t understand the old man’s presence, either.
‘Yes, yes.’ The man was becoming impatient and waved a long-fingered hand at Arthur to dismiss his question. ‘Now, I must see to your man there, before his wound rots and he dies a long and painful death.’
The old man drew a short knife from his leather belt and thrust it into the fire.
‘Keep away from me, old one,’ said Huell. His voice croaked from within the tree roots, and he glowered like a red-eyed, white-faced demon.
‘Now, now, Huell of Rheged, if I don’t tend to your wound, you will lose your arm. So, no more complaining, if you please.’
