The Wolf of Allendale Read online

  A black miasma swirled out toward him. He could feel it seeping around him, creeping into his soul and his mind. He felt his soul cringe under its touch, cornered like a field mouse before a hawk. He’d never encountered a cysgod-cerddwr before, and for the first time, he realized exactly what it would mean.

  The world shrank to nothing but that terrible residue of malevolence. He was aware of a tight throbbing in his temple, faster and faster. His breath was like shards of ice in his chest. Before he’d even faced the beast, it had beaten him.

  Screeching ravens, far away. Dancing flames. Three forged iron birds stepped around on their posts to glare down on him. Terror surged through him. He began to fall.

  The spell the cysgod-cerddwr had wrapped around him was shattered by the movement. The riverbank, the sticky mud, the worn rocks, reappeared. He could again hear the rattle of the current. He caught his balance just before he landed on his knees.

  He focused on a reed swaying up and down, up and down, as the water relentlessly buffeted it. One breath. Two. The icy grip of panic faded. His heart settled. The shadow was burned out of his soul by the fire of his spirit. He swallowed hard, his throat as parched as midsummer heather.

  He pushed himself to his feet, forced himself to focus as another wave of dizziness washed over him. He dug his nails into his palms. The sharp pain drove away the last remnant of shock. He composed his face, and only then turned to face the group.

  All were looking at him, puzzled. A couple of them glanced at the prints. Why did they not sense what he had? He knew the answer at once.

  It was a message intended for him alone. A warning, a taunt, a display of power. A statement that it was here, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  It had crossed the river. Otherworldly beings did not—could not—do that. Water was an inviolable boundary. Just what was this thing?

  He became aware that he was staring at nothing. Fearn stepped forward, concern etched on his face.

  “Where is Coll?” Bran asked before the other man could speak. “Has he finished the burial ritual?”

  There was silence. The hunters glanced at each other and Fearn looked awkward.

  “Well? Speak to me, Fearn.”

  Fearn looked at him levelly and Bran regretted his sharp tone. The two younger boys, with barely two or three hunting forays completed, tried to discreetly slip away, no doubt imagining a shower of lightning bolts or such like. Everyone watched them go.

  Fearn waited until the sound of their scrabbling had died away. “He is making talismans to try and drive the beast away. He says you have not done enough. He says iron is the only way to banish it.”

  Bran’s hands tightened on his staff. He had the sense he was sliding, like a child down an icy hillside, helpless and out of control. Everyone looked at his white knuckles and another man retrieved his dogs and backed away.

  “All possible measures are already in place,” Bran informed his remaining audience, his words clipped and clear although seeming to come from outside himself.

  He took a sharp breath and concentrated on the men. “Our ancestors are walking among us. I have called on them to guard us and watch over our steps.”

  As he’d expected, this provoked a superstitious shiver. Two men glanced behind them and made the protective gesture against the evil eye. The spirits were around them at all times, unseen and unheard, and they were at Bran’s behest. What whispering, what clandestine thoughts would they be reporting back to him?

  “The knot of life has been woven around the village in an unbreakable barrier that nothing can cross.” He paused deliberately.

  “Coll is a master ironworker, that’s true. But he has no experience in controlling the spirit world.”

  More worried gestures. Coll’s soul and personality seemed to mirror the blazing furnace with which he spent his days. Likely the reason for his incredible talent. But this was also the reason behind his much-resented failure to become cloaked, despite his years of Druid training. He’d never learned to temper his fiery nature with the other elements.

  Fearn was still looking uneasy. There was obviously something else as well. Bran held his gaze, forcing him to speak.

  The hunter licked his lips and took a step back. “He thinks a better Pennaeth is needed.”

  Bran froze. His anger rose, both at the challenge and at his own weakness. As he exhaled, it pulsed out in a swirling cloud. One of the dogs yelped.

  A smith plied one of the most respected crafts, and if he were Pennaeth besides . . . It would elevate the status of the Pridani immeasurably.

  Coll could not become Pennaeth, not unless he were cloaked. There were two ways to do this. The first was to be awarded a cloak by another cloaked Druid, as he himself and almost all Druids had been. The second way only happened rarely now. That was to capture the cloak of a Druid in a battle.

  In old times when the Pennaeth was challenged, a battle to the death followed, and the vanquished’s blood nourished the soil to bring in the new era. Just like the King Stag. Just like the perpetual death of the God of the Green every autumn. But now, the change was down to popular opinion. The supplanted Pennaeth was simply driven out.

  A shout broke the tension. A girl was tearing down the track from the village.

  “A messenger! A messenger is coming!”

  7

  “Who is coming? From which direction?”

  “A rider. From the south, a thousand paces distant. I think it’s the man who came before.” The girl panted out her news as fast as she could, looking between Bran and Fearn.

  Her eyes widened as she remembered who she was talking to, and she stepped back almost fearfully as she searched Bran’s face.

  “Thank you, Mintana. You’ve done well.” Bran deliberately turned toward the village and put a hand on her shoulder. He wondered what news Don was bringing. How close the warriors were getting. “How’s your archery coming along?”

  The girl kept pace at his side. “Um . . . they say I’m doing well. That I’ve got natural talent. And I’ve been making my own bow as well. And when Seb cut himself on an arrow blade, I poulticed it with yarrow and bandaged it, all by myself.”

  The girl seemed to grow in both height and confidence as she spoke, looking up at him for approval.

  Bran smiled indulgently. “Perhaps in a couple of years you could come to me as my apprentice, learn the healing craft. What would you think to that?”

  Mintana’s mouth fell open. “Do you really mean that?!”

  “Certainly. You’ve obviously got a natural affinity for healing—not all people do—and as you know my last apprentice left at midsummer to start his years as a Wanderer. And perhaps afterward you could do Druid training proper.”

  Her face broke into a grin. Everyone aspired to the Druid craft.

  “That’d be brilliant! Ma and Pa will be so pleased!”

  She glanced toward the village walls, no doubt wondering who was watching.

  Bran gestured forward. “Off you go, then, lass. Keep working hard, and we’ll talk more about it in the spring.”

  Mintana nodded seriously then blushed pimpernel red. She raced on up the path with the infinite ease of youth, arms pumping wildly.

  Fearn stepped up to his side. “She, at least, will be ever loyal to you now,” he murmured.

  Bran shook his head impatiently. “The children need encouragement. That is why I encourage them. Don’t think I’m playing a petty game of strategy and ally building.”

  Fearn spread his hands out in apology. “Don is here already; look.”

  The stocky pony was trotting down the last incline toward the swelling crowd outside the gate. Bran and Fearn reached the village walls just as Don was swinging down from its back. People stepped back to let them through.

  “What news, Don?” Bran clasped hands with him. A boy took hold of the sweating pony’s forelock and led it toward the river to drink.

  “A lot to discuss. But first I need mead. Even in winter,
riding is thirsty work.” He wiped his face with his cloak.

  “Mintana, bring mead!” Fearn shouted to his pupil. “And bread and meat, to the Meeting Hut.”

  The girl raced off.

  “You’ve finished fortifying the walls,” Don observed as they passed over the causeway, observed by the hind and the hare. “You’ve worked hard this last moon.”

  “I hope it is enough.”

  Don shook his head and made a futile gesture. “Walls, ditches, gates, they’re nothing to them. They just smash through them. Everyone I’ve spoken to in the south, they say they’ve never come across anything like them, neither in living memory nor in the Histories. It’s like the war with the Fomorii, only much worse. We’ve got a big problem, that’s for sure.”

  Bran looked up at his new walls, which suddenly seemed weak and insubstantial. He’d feared as much in his darkest moments. The Pridani were strong. They would fight, and the Gods would fight beside them. He would make sure of that.

  But what of their foe, and their own Gods?

  He glanced up and saw a skein of pink-footed geese overhead, flying south. What did that mean? They came from the north, from the land of ice and the realm of the dead, going in the direction in which they were. A good omen? Or not?

  The three men wove between the low-eaved buildings. A woman pushing her quern stone back and forth sat back and glanced up at them, reaching for the dish she was filling with flour. Coll and Beth caught up with them a moment later.

  They reached the Meeting Hut at the far end of the settlement, a little away from the dwelling huts. Mintana was already outside, a clay jug of mead, some bread, and a chunk of cold mutton proffered on a wooden platter.

  “Thank you. Off you go.”

  She looked disappointed as she went away, looking back hopefully as Bran ducked through the door drapes.

  Don followed him inside, Coll, Beth, and Fearn behind. The three of them made up the Trydydd, the most senior leaders of the community after himself. Fearn was an adept hunter on whom the village owed many a full belly. Coll was a master smith and Druid trained besides, an automatic choice despite his fiery nature. Beth, the daughter of the previous Pennaeth, was respected for her careful wisdom.

  Women often possessed greater insight than men, Bran mused as he dropped dry branches onto the peat embers in the hearth. How often had a problem he’d wrestled with for an age been solved by a woman? It came from their intimacy with the threads of life, with the Goddess. There were some things no man could know. His eyes lingered on Beth’s swollen stomach as she dropped to a stool. Fearn began to untie the door drapes.

  Beth was looking pale and seemed to be losing weight, something which exaggerated the size of her belly. That was the hard part of a pregnancy at this time of year, when supplies of nourishing food were running short. Was there something else besides? She was grieving for Raith, obviously, but in any circumstances this would be a particularly hard babe to carry.

  Fearn dropped the hide drapes over the entrance. The air grew thick and close from the smoldering peat. Shadows danced from the tallow lamps.

  The gathered faces waited expectantly as Bran lifted a cup and slowly poured the mead, watching the amber liquid dance in the firelight. It seemed to split and branch like the tines of an antler, and he thought again of the King Stag struggling through the heather.

  Like the battle with the Fomorii, Don had said. The Fomorii had been the original inhabitants of the land, the ones who had laid out the stone circles and monoliths that were still revered by the Pridani. It was the Pridani’s own forebears who had come to this land, generations before, and claimed it for themselves, but not before a long, devastating war had been fought.

  Was it now their own time to fall beneath the wheel of time and change? Were they now to succumb to the next wave of invaders as a new cycle began? Bran handed Don the filled cup with a sense of foreboding. The messenger drained it in a gulp and held it out for more.

  Coll unsheathed his knife and severed a large piece of the mutton with one deft slice. He speared it with the blunted end and began to chew, the firelight pulsing over his stubbled chin. It was a knife of his own design. Very cleverly made, Bran had to admit; ideal for both carving and eating.

  He noticed Don take a step closer to the smith, discreetly observing the unusual tool. No doubt he’d be memorizing the design for the smith in his own village.

  “I see you’ve finished the sentinels for the gate,” he said to Bran. “You’ve captured a remarkable likeness to life. I’ve not seen comparable work anywhere else at all. May their souls guard you well.”

  A subtle gesture of diplomacy; Bran expected nothing less. He smiled an acknowledgment, both of the compliment and the reason behind it. Don bowed his head.

  “Three moons’ work. Five blades, three chisels, endless blistered fingers.” Bran chuckled. Everyone smiled except Coll, who was deliberately concentrating on his meat.

  “Tell me. With the deer, why did you choose the hind and not the stag?”

  Don was looking at him with genuine interest. It was a good question. It was the stag who battled throughout the autumn, after all. His life was defined by defense of his right. But until now, nobody had asked him why he’d chosen the gentle hind.

  “The stag fights,” he said quietly. “He fights for his pride. For his bloodline. He fights for the defeat of his rival.”

  Bran studied the faces of his audience. Outside, a child shouted. Coll went to the table, cutting himself a new chunk of meat. His careful concentration showed he was also listening.

  “But the hind; she will also fight. She fights for her children and will defend them to the death. The hind fights for love, for life, for the future. It is the female who is the vessel of life. The male is only the vessel of death.”

  His eyes lingered on Beth and her swollen stomach a moment longer.

  Don stretched his arms back, cracking his shoulder joints. “A most interesting choice. It speaks the full wisdom of the Druids.” He smiled his respect.

  A piece of wood collapsed in the hearth, sending up a fizz of sparks. The atmosphere changed, grew expectant. It was time to begin the real purpose of the meeting.

  8

  Shep was staring at the door, his ears pricked and alert. Then his tail began to wag. Bert took a sip of his tea. So far he hadn’t heard anything, but he had a good idea who was coming.

  A couple of minutes later, just as he put his mug down and bent to pull on his boots, the door flew open, admitting an icy blast of wind. The smoke swirled from the hearth and a puff of ashes eddied into the room.

  “Howay, lad, shut the door!” He grinned conspiratorially at his grandson. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

  Thomas grinned back as he dropped onto the stool near the door. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

  “I’m getting the other ewes in-by this morning, back from Gaterley Hill, and sorting out the ones for market. Then the rams can go in with the rest, ready to lamb next spring.”

  He knelt awkwardly to lace his boots. The split in the left one was getting worse, he noted. Unmendable. He’d have to see about getting a new pair. He wondered if he could afford it, but wet feet was a sure recipe for pneumonia.

  “They should have been sorted out two weeks ago,” he continued. “But it doesn’t matter. I’ve a feeling it’ll be a cold spring.” He glanced sideways at the boy. “Lucky you happened to call in today.”

  Thomas shuffled on his stool. “Well, you said you were going to do it this week, and what with there being no fog this morning . . . I thought you’d like the help.”

  Bert chuckled and clapped him on the shoulder. What use was school, anyway? He’d never been himself, and he could teach the boy far more than he’d learn in there.

  He looked critically at him while he was tickling Shep. He was filling out across his shoulders; he’d be a man soon. Tough and strong, but wiry with it. Perfect for this job.

  Thomas suddenly looked up, then grin
ned as he met Bert’s indulgent expression.

  “Shall we head off, then, lad?”

  Thomas jumped to his feet and they headed out the door. They went up the slope, past the outcrop shaped like a hand with the fingers folded in—the Fist, it was called—and onto the steep drove lane to the open fells.

  Thomas leaped up atop the wall. He shaded his eyes and pointed. “I can see them, Grandpa! Over on yonder fell! Shall I take Shep and fetch them?”

  Bert leaned on his crook as he looked. “Go on then, lad.” He coughed as he caught his breath. How nice it was to have some young legs to help.

  “Come on Shep!” Thomas whistled.

  The dog looked up at Bert, his ears pricked in a question.

  “Go on, boy.” He gestured toward the white dots grazing on the far hillside, and the dog turned and headed along the track twisting through the heather.

  Thomas set off at a run and Shep kept pace at his side. Within a few minutes they’d covered the half mile, and the sheep were already bunching together. Bert watched wistfully as he flexed his right knee a few times. It stiffened so easily these days. He used to be able to run like that.

  The sheep were racing back toward him, boy and dog behind. Thomas was sure-footed and quick. Bert could see him leaping between the tussocks with ease, arms out for balance. He nodded, pleased with the boy’s fearless attitude. If you hesitated, that’s when you turned or even broke an ankle.

  He’d been a champion runner himself, back in his day. The annual race for all the Dales shepherds—over twenty miles across fell and dale—he’d won six years running. Thomas should enter next year. He could probably win it.

  He could hear the rumble of several hundred hooves echoing through the ground. A skylark flew up, disturbed by the commotion, and hovered over his head singing wildly. His grandfather had told him the bird always sang in the face of danger. It showed how strong and confident it was; it didn’t even need to stop singing to guarantee its escape.