The Paradise War (46 page)

It was the prince. The defensive line broke as the prince and the warriors of his Wolf Pack gave chase to the wolves of the forest. “They are mad!” cried Tegid. “They will get us all killed!”

The bard made to halt them. “Stay!” he shouted. “Hold the line!”

If they heard him, they paid no heed. The prince and his men were too intent upon catching the wolves. Someone threw a spear, and I saw one of the last wolves struck in the hindquarters. The animal yelped in pain and fell. Whining, the wounded beast began dragging his hindquarters in an effort to dislodge the spear.

The man ran to the wolf. A long knife flashed, and a moment later the wolf lay dead in the snow. The warrior—it was Simon—retrieved his spear and raised a cry of triumph. He turned and lofted his spear, urging others to follow. Inspired by this feat, more warriors broke ranks and hastened after the wolves.

The warriors disappeared into the forest. Their torches flickered through the trees; their shouts and the howls of the wolves rang in the darkness. And then, so suddenly it could not be anticipated, the wolves appeared once more.

Whether they had been hiding nearby or had turned to the attack after drawing the men away, I cannot say. However it was, the wolves simply appeared and without the slightest hesitation streaked through the gaping hole in the rank where Prince Meldron and his men had been standing only moments before.

In the space of two heartbeats all became chaos and confusion: men running, horses rearing, spears flashing, and torches being flung this way and that. The shouts of men and the screams of the horses drowned out all else.

“What are we to do?” I cried, turning to Tegid for an answer.

“Stand firm!” he replied, as he began running down the line to recall the men. “Stay with the king!” he called back to me.

We stood our ground, and the wolves did not attempt to attack us. They centered their attack on our weakest place and ignored the rest of the line. Tegid flew to the place, but before he could close the hole in the ranks, some of the horses broke free of the picket and bolted. Men leaped for the trailing bridle ropes, and threw themselves into the horses’ path, trying to turn them back. But to no avail.

The horses, terrified of the wolves, the noise, and the fire, could not be turned. They fled into the forest. The wolves seized the opportunity and gave chase, and as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. The wolves were gone, and a good many horses with them.

We stood waiting for some time, listening to the cries of the wolves and the screams of the horses as they crashed blindly through the forest undergrowth; but the wolves did not return. The sounds of the chase receded, becoming fainter as the pursuit hastened away from us. And then we heard nothing.

When it became clear that the attack was ended, the king threw down his torch and began walking down the line to the place where the prince and his warriors had abandoned their posts. I hesitated for a moment, and then followed. Tegid had told me to stay with the king, after all. Together we hurried to the place of attack.

From the amount of blood I saw splattered in the snow, I was prepared for the worst. Five men had been wounded—savaged and mauled by the wolves, but not killed. Four horses were down, and two of these were dead, their throats ripped; eight more had fled into the forest. The wolves would run them until they dropped. We would not see them again.

The king surveyed the damage without expression. Tegid hastened to meet us. “We have lost twelve horses,” he reported. Even as he spoke, the two wounded horses were relieved of their misery; a quick spearthrust behind the ear and they ceased their thrashing.

When Prince Meldron and his warriors returned, the five wounded warriors were having their wounds washed with snow and bound with strips of cloth by some of the women. The prince glanced quickly at the wounded men and strode to where we were standing.

“We have driven them off,” he declared proudly, wiping sweat from his brow. His warriors came to stand behind him. In the fluttering torchlight the fog from their breath shimmered like silver as it hung above their heads. “They will trouble us no more!” The prince was expansive in his judgment. “We have put fear in their craven hearts.”

“How many did you kill?” asked Tegid sharply. I heard the anger in his voice, cold and quick.

Those gathered close behind the prince heard it, too, and murmured ominously. Meldron smiled and held up his hand to them, however. “Siawn killed one, as you well know,” he replied amiably.

“Yes,” replied Tegid. “And how many more? How many more wolves did you kill?”

“None,” the prince said, his tone going flat. “We killed no others. Neither did we suffer defeat.”

“No defeat?” snapped Tegid. “Twelve horses lost and five men wounded—you deem that a victory?”

The prince looked to his father, who stood glaring at his son. “But we drove them away,” Meldron insisted. “They will not dare attack us again.”

“They have already done so! The moment you broke ranks they doubled back and attacked the place where you should have been.”

“No one was killed. We have shown them we will fight.” He raised his spear, and the warriors muttered agreement.

“You have shown them, Prince Meldron, that it is well worth coming back: twelve horses, and only one of theirs killed. They will not even notice the loss,” Tegid said, his voice thick with fury. “I can assure you they will return. They will harry us from this night forth until we reach Findargad, for you have shown them most wonderfully that the gain is great and the risk is light. They are already laughing at the ease with which they have outsmarted us. The wolves
will
return, Prince Meldron. Stake your life on it.”

The prince glowered at Tegid, his eyes narrowed to hate-filled slits. “You have no authority over me,” Meldron growled. “You are nothing to me.”

“I am the bard of the people,” Tegid said. “You have defied the king’s command. Owing to your disobedience, five men are wounded and we have lost twelve horses.”

Meldron returned a haughty stare. “I have not heard the king say that he is angry. If my father is displeased, let him tell me so himself.”

The prince looked to his father. King Meldryn glared at his son but did not open his mouth to speak. “You see?” the prince sneered. “It is as I thought. The king is well satisfied. Go your way, Tegid Tathal, and do not trouble me with trifles. If not for me, we would still be fighting the wolves. I have driven them away. You will thank me yet.”

Tegid’s face was livid in the torchglare. “Thanks to you, O Headstrong Prince, we will fight the wolves again. Thanks to you, twelve who might have ridden must walk in the snow. Thanks to you, five whose bodies were whole must now endure suffering, and perhaps death.”

I thought Prince Meldron would burst. His neck swelled and his eyes narrowed still further. “No one speaks to me like this,” he hissed. “I am a prince, and the leader of men. If you value your life, say no more.”

“And I am the bard of the people,” Tegid replied, once more reminding the prince of his authority. “I will speak as I deem best. No man—prince or king, least of all—makes bold to stop my tongue. You would do well to remember this.”

The prince fairly writhed with rage and frustration. He appealed silently to his father, turning angry, imploring eyes upon him. But the king merely stared back in stone-cold silence. The prince, humiliated by his father’s lack of support, turned abruptly and stomped away. Those men who deemed themselves the prince’s own followed him. And Paladyr, the king’s champion, was among them.

30
T
HE
B
ATTLE
OF
D
UN NA
P
ORTH

T
egid spoke the cruel truth when he said that we had not seen the last of the wolves. Emboldened by their victory, they followed us— slipping silently through the snow-laden forest by day and skulking just outside the firelight by night. They did not attack us as they had that first night. But neither did they abandon the trail.

“They have eaten well,” Tegid said. “They are content for now, but we must remain wary.” He pointed to the sharp peaks rising steeply before us, and close. “Soon we will leave the forest behind. When they see that we are making for the high trails, they will strike again.”

“But they will not follow us into the mountains,” I said optimistically. It did not seem likely that wolves would pursue us once we left the cover of the trees.

“Would you care to make a wager?” the bard inquired slyly. He grew suddenly grave. “I am not lying when I say I have never known wolves like this.”

“This determined?”

“This cunning.”

I knew what he meant. In the days since the attack, I had felt the eyes of unseen watchers upon us. Time and again, I found myself looking back over my shoulder, or darting a glance to this side or that as we traversed the forest trail. Only occasionally did I see the gliding, ghostly shape of a wolf flickering in the deep-shadowed dimness.

For safety’s sake we kept close to the river. And, though the waterway narrowed as the path grew steeper, the high rock bank offered some protection and the swift-moving water did not freeze. At night we banked the fires high and warriors maintained vigil from dusk until dawn. I took my turn at watch on those endless nights: huddled in my cloak, stamping my feet to keep warm, slapping myself to stay awake and alert, peering into the void of darkness for the phantom glint of a feral eye, and then shuffling back to camp and collapsing into a dull, exhausted sleep until the sun rose once more.

Not that we ever saw the sun. So cloud-wrapped and snow-bound had the world become that we lived in a world bereft of light and warmth. It was as if Sollen now ruled in Albion and had banished the other seasons to eternal exile. Each dark day that I awakened, I heard again Tegid’s words,
The Season of Snows will not end until Lord Nudd is defeated.

The trail narrowed to little more than a rock-strewn path. The forest grew gradually more sparse, the trees smaller, stunted and deformed by the constantly battering wind, and the distance between them greater, as if in their misery they shunned one another. The ice-hard sky drew nearer as we climbed toward it. Torn shreds of cloud and tattered squalls of snow obscured the uncertain path ahead. And, when we looked behind, it was into a snow-hazed bleakness of white, relieved by gray slabs of rock and boulders the size of houses. We climbed above the tree line, slowly nearing the mountain pass leading into the rockbound heart of Cethness.

Each day the way grew steeper; each day the wind blew ever colder; each day the snow flew ever faster. Each day we traveled less far than the day before. And each night my shins and ankles ached from the upward strain of the trail, my face and hands burned from the wind blast, and it took longer to massage warmth back into stiff, half-frozen limbs.

We brought as much firewood from the forest as we could carry; the horses were laden with it. But the nights were bitterly cold up among the bare peaks where the wind wails and moans without surcease, and we burned great quantities of precious fuel each night in a futile effort to keep warm.

If I had thought leaving the forest meant leaving behind the wolves, I was sharply disappointed. The second night above the tree line, as we set about making camp, we heard them once more—high up in the rocks around us, raising their eerie howls. The next day we could see them on the trail behind us. They no longer troubled to conceal themselves. All the same, the wolves did not attack. Neither did they abandon the pursuit, although they were careful to keep their distance.

I began to think that they would not attack again. Why should they? All they had to do was simply wait until, one by one, we began falling by the way. They would take the stragglers, kill and devour any who lagged behind, slaughter those too cold and too weak to go on. So that this would not happen, the king commanded the warriors to walk last in order to aid anyone falling too far behind, as well as to prevent the wolves from drawing too close.

We struggled through the snow, higher and higher, climbing steadily into the fierce, frigid air. Cold, hunger, and exhaustion united against us. Despite the king’s precautions, people began to fall away. We found the stiff, gray, frozen bodies each morning as we broke camp. Sometimes we would see someone laboring on the trail ahead; they would suddenly fall, never to rise again. Or sometimes they would simply sink into the snow at the side of the trail and no one would see them again. The bodies we saw, we buried under mounds of rocks beside the trail. Those we did not find were left for the wolves.

We lost fifty before reaching the pass called the Gap of Rhon, a narrow slash between two mountains where the trail clings precariously to the sheer mountainside far above the crashing white-water cataract of a river known as Afon Abwy. The swollen river thrashed its way to the mountain glens, sending up a fine white mist which coated the rocks and froze on them. The whole gorge was encased in ice.

On the day we came through the Gap of Rhon, we lost five to the yawning gorge. The wind gusted and the hapless climbers lost their footing on the ice and were swept to their deaths upon the rocks of the Afon Abwy. I saw this happen but once, and it is a sight I hope never to see again: the broken body falling, raglike, striking the sides of the gorge, tumbling, spinning, glancing off the ice-covered rocks, disappearing into the mists and churning water.