The Paradise War

Chapter 24 Twrch

Deserted by the living, peopled only by the dead who lay unmourned and unburied amidst the destruction, once-proud Sycharth stood as a pillaged tomb-cold and desolate, broken. The mighty stronghold appeared itself a corpse, forsaken and forbidding.

The eye met atrocity at every glance: women bludgeoned to death still clutching their frozen babes to their breasts; children with hands and feet cut off and left to bleed; dogs and warriors decapitated and their heads switched; cattle roasted alive in their pens; sheep slaughtered and their entrails pulled out to bind and then strangle their herdsmen… Everywhere the marks of fire, filth, blood, and outrage.

The stink of death permeated the misty air, just as the thickened blood stained the rain-sodden ground. Tegid and I lurched from one abomination to the next in dazed disbelief. Bile bitter in our mouths, sick and numb, we muttered ever and again the same two questions: How could this have happened? Who could have done such a thing?

Still more mysterious to us was the absence of any sign of battle. For we did not find the king or his warband, although we made a thorough search of all that remained of the hall and the royal quarters. Aside from those few warriors struck down outside the hall, we discovered none of the battle host. By this we presumed that the king had fled the fight with his warband virtually intact, or else that he was away when destruction overtook his stronghold, and perhaps even now did not know of it.

Any suggestion that the king had fled the fight, Tegid considered repugna~:t. «He would sooner cut out his own heart,» Tegid murmured darkly. «He would sooner be food for ravens, than see his people slaughtered like pigs and his fortress laid waste. Nor would he allow himself to be captured while he drew breath.»

We stared dismally at the devastation. There was no telling when it had happened. The cold and snow preserved the bodies as they had fallen. If the king and his warband had been there, we would have seen them.

«He must have departed before the destruction took place,» I said. This seemed equally unlikely. Yet there seemed no other explanation. «Meldryn Mawr is not here.»

Surely the Great King must have been absent when disaster fell upon Sycharth. But in the season of ice, when all the world retreats inward, what would induce him to leave? «Where would he go?» I wondered aloud.

«I do not know, brother,» Tegid answered ruefully. «We will not fmd the answer here, I think.»

«Where else, then?»

«We will go to the settlements and holdings round about. We will ride the circuit of the land and see what may be found.»

We left the caer. Stupid with grief and sick with dread, eyes staring, hands shaking, we mounted our horses and rode directly to the king's harborage on the nearby Muir Glain estuary. We rode fast to outrace the fading light, and reached the shipyard in the dim twilight, as dark clouds closed overhead.

We did not even bother to dismount, but sat our saddles and scanned the wreckage: ships burned to the waterline, every sail and mast destroyed, every hull stove in.

The sheds and houses had been torched, and with them the stacked timber. Even the earthen banks of the sea mouth were burnt and blackened. Nothing escaped. The destruction was utter and complete. All was charcoal and ashes. «It must have burned for days,» Tegid muttered. «The blaze would have been visible halfway to Ynys Sci.»

Our horses jittered nervously, blowing and stamping, as we searched here and there with our eyes for any sign of survival. I touched my weapons-carefully wrapped against the weather, but close to hand-grimly grateful for their cold consolation.

«There is nothing here,» Tegid said at last. «We will go on.»

Night overwhelmed us as we struck off across the wooded hills-a longer way to go, but we could not traverse the marshlands in the dark. So we took the hilltrack, riding the ridgeways and hunting runs which joined Sycharth with neighboring settlements. As we approached the first ;tronghold, the cloud cover thinned somewhat and the moon ;hone briefly; not long, but enough to see the settlement: black against the blacker hills beyond the river.

Caer Dyifryn was built on a flattened river knoll, home to perhaps two hundred Liwyddi clansmen. All two hundred had fled, or were murdered. We did not stop to count them. There was no need-no living thing remained within the circle of charred stumps that had been the timber ringfort. This we could see before we even dismounted. Yet, out of respect for kinsmen, we did dismount and walked among the blasted ruins of their homes.

«We cannot stay here,» I said, when we had concluded our futile survey. I spoke softly, but my voice sounded loud in the unnatural silence. Tegid made no move or sound. I touched him on the arm-his flesh was rigid and cold beneath my fingers. «Come, brother, let us go from this place. We can camp by the river and return here in the morning if you wish.»

Tegid made no reply, but turned and mounted his horse once more. We left Caer Dyffryn but did not stop. We did not rest that night at all and paused only once, long enough to water the horses before moving on. Gray dawn found us standing, red-eyed and weary, in the ruins of Cnoc Hydd. Once a pleasant settlement nestled in a fair fold of the vale, it was now, like Sycharth and Dyifryn, a scorched husk. Here, most of the inhabitants had been burned, but whether before or after death could not be told.

While Tegid sifted among the soggy ashes of the hail, I inspected the blackened, fallen beams of the Warriors' House. Using the butt of a broken spear, I poked here and there amidst the debris, searching for I know not what. The acrid stench of smoke and charred corpses brought the tears to my eyes, but I persisted. And in a corner of the collapsed hearth, my efforts bore fruit.

I had been stirring the rubble to no purpose, and made to move on. A furtive movement caught me eye as I turned away. I thought I heard a dry rustle. I spun on my heel and stared into the shadows of the fire-pit. At first I saw nothing… but then, hidden in a crevice beneath the tumbled stone, I saw a small huddled shape.

I took the butt of my spear and nudged the cringing form gently. It made no sound, but cowered deeper into its hole. I shifted some of the fallen timber and stone, and carefully opened the crevice to the light. Peering into the hole I saw the scorched carcass of a bitch hound and, quivering beside it, her pup.

The slate-gray coat was matted, and singed in a dozen places; a wicked gash, red and raw, laid open one small shoulder. The creature lay shivering with fright and cold, curled next to the stiff body of its dead mother. There were three other pups, all dead; the bitch had died protecting her litter, her teeth still bared in a frozen snarl. The pup appeared old enough to be weaned-though still round as a ball of butter with its babyfat, it showed several fine white teeth when I reached down to pick it up.

The kindest act would have been to kill it outright and end its suffering. But after all the waste and destruction that Tegid and I had witnessed, fmding this lone survivor– though it was only a half-starved hound pup-I could not bring myself to add even this small, wavering life to the death around me. I determined to let it live, to make it live.

It did not whimper or cry out when I took it by the scruff of the neck and lifted it from its den. But the little beast nipped at me when I tried to pet it. And, as I made to cradle it in the crook of my elbow, it snagged the side of my hand with its sharp new teeth, and held on. «Be.still, Twrch!» I scolded it with a tap on the nose, blurting the first word that came to me.

Tegid heard me speak; he turned at once, expectantly. He saw the pup in my hands and smiled sadly. I carried the dog to him, and he took it and held it up before him. «So! One yet remains in the land of the living.» He glanced at me. «What did you call it?»

«Twrch,» I said.

«Boar?» wondered Tegid. «Why that?»

«He tried to bite me when! held him,» I explained. «It put me in mind of the way an old boar will keep fighting on when it is beaten and will not give in to death.» I shrugged, adding, «It was nothing. You name it, Tegid. This one should have a good name.»

But Tegid would not hear of it. «You have already given a good name. So let him be called.» He held the dog aloft. «Little defiant one, Twrch, may you be to us a Boar of Battle indeed.»

He gave the pup to me and said, «This ruin is like the others. We will find nothing here. We will move on.»

«We need rest, Tegid. Rest and food. Our horses are near dead with exhaustion. We should stop a day at least. There is a place near the river-we passed it on the way here. Let us stop there for today and decide what to do when we have slept.»

Tegid was not for it, but his horse stumbled to its knees in the muddy track as we rode down from the caer and he was forced to admit that I was right. If we did not stop, we would likely go the rest of the way on foot. And since we did not know how far we might have to go to find our missing king and kinsmen, it did not make good sense to squander our horses.

So we returned to the refuge beside the river-nothing more than a stand of young alder trees and willows, with a place cleared among them for a fishing hut overlooking a weir. The trees offered shelter from the wind, and the hut kept the rain off our heads. Grass grew long on the bank of the river, and enough green remained for the horses to graze. We let them drink their fill from the river and then tethered them among the bare trees.

Inside the low, wicker hut we found a small supply of firewood, a little charcoal, goatskins, and several sealed jars.

The skins were filthy, but the firewood was dry, and, best of all, the jars contained good sweet mead. The keeper of the weir knew well how to ease his cold vigil.

I made a nest for Twrch in a corner of the hut with one of the skins. He sniffed it cautiously, then settled down. Likely the weir keeper's dog used the goatskin for a bed, and the pup took some small comfort from a familiar scent, for, after licking his wounded shoulder, he tucked his nose between his paws and went to sleep.

While I was about this trifling chore, Tegid had inspected the weir. He returned to the hut with four sleek brown trout. In no time he had the fish gutted and I had a fire burning in the pit outside the hut. We skewered the trout with sharpened willow wands and set them over the fire.

The sweet, oily scent of the roasting fish mingling with the dry, oaky smell of the silvery smoke brought the water to my mouth and pangs of hunger to my stomach. We had not eaten well for many days. Tegid opened one of the jars, and we passed the mead back and forth between us while we waited for the fish to cook.

We sat on either side of the fire, turning the willow skewers from time to time in silence. There were no words for what we were thinking and feeling. We were too tired and hungry to make sense of any of it-wiser to eat and sleep before trying to understand what we had seen and deciding what to do about it.

Though the day remained gray and cold, the trout warmed us inside. I savored each succulent bite, licking my fingers before pulling off the next morsel. Although I could have eaten my weight in trout, I saved a portion for Twrch. I did not know if he would eat it, but thought it would do no harm totry.

The hut was cramped, but the shelter welcome. We slept.

I awakened some time later, feeling a cold, wet spot on my throat. Twrch had crept near while I slept and curled himself m the hollow of my throat with his nose pressed beneath my chin. I rose, taking care not to wake Tegid, picked up the pup and carried it outside. The day had not improved. If anything, the fitful wind out of the northeast was colder than before, and the clouds lower and darker.

«I have something for you, Twrch,» I whispered. «Taste this, and tell me if you like it.»

I offered the pup the bit of cooked fish I had saved for him. He sniffed at it, but would not eat it-though I held it against his closed mouth. He would, however, lick my fmgers. So I rubbed the fish on my fingertips and let the pup lick them clean. After he had done this a few times, I tried the fish again. He gobbled it down as only a starving pup can, and then cleaned my fingers to get every last morsel.

«There will be more later,» I told him. «We will find something more to your liking-a deer, perhaps, or a fat partridge.» In saying this, it occurred to me that we had seen no signs of game. Excepting the fish we had eaten, we had not seen any wild creature since entering the Vale of Modornn.

«Is it possible,» I wondered aloud to Tegid when he joined me a short time later, «to drive all wild game from the valley? Could such a deed be done?»

He merely shook his head and said, «It is not possible-but neither is it possible to destroy three fortresses without any of them alerting the others. Clearly, there is a greater mystery here than I can fathom.»

That ended the matter for the moment, as neither of us cared to dwell on it further. Tegid undertook to water the horses and move their tethers, while I looked to the nets in the weir. There were no fish in the nets, and, as I set about replacing the nets on the poles, Twrch began yipping fiercely from the bank. I waded from the water to fmd him digging into a hole in the bottom of an earthen mound the shape of a large beehive.

The mound was half hidden among the trees, but a few paces from the riverbank. I would not have noticed the mound at all if Twrch had not called it to my attention. Seeing the pup so excited by his discovery, I decided to have a look myself. I thought he might have found an otter's den, or that of a badger. But I soon saw that the mound was made of turf, newly cut, and stacked carefully. I lifted off the top few turves and knew at once why the dog had become so eager, for the pungent smell of oak smoke met my nostrils the moment I looked into the round hole I had made in the top of the hive.

The Many-Gifted One had smiled upon us! Inside the mound were wooden stakes with crosspieces-each crosspiece bending under a splendid weight of smoked salmon.

«Good dog, Twrch!» I said, reaching in at once and seizing the first fish I saw. I stripped a chunk of smoke-browned flesh from the silvery si~de and gave it to Twrch as a reward for his good service. I stroked him and praised him lavishly while he ate it.

Then I restacked the turves and carried the remaining portion of the fish back to Tegid. «Whatever else befalls us, we will not starve,» I said, handing him the smoked salmon. «We will grow weary of eating them long before we've seen the last of them. Twrch located the smoke-hive and led me to it.»

«Once again we are indebted to the keeper of the weir.»

«And to Twrch's nose,» I added.

Tegid tasted the fish. «He knew his craft, this weir master.» He offered me the last morsel. «This was bound for the king's board.»

At mention of the king, I felt a twinge-as if an icy hand had clutched my shoulder. «What are we to do, Tegid?»

«I do not know,» he answered softly. «But I think it is time to consider what has happened.»

«What has happened?» I could think of no good explanation for any of it. «Whole settlements laid waste, the people murdered without raising a hand to their own defense, even the cattle slaughtered where they stand-and all else burnt to ash. Yet nothing is carried off or plundered. Such meaningless destruction is insane.»

Once I had started, it all tumbled out in a rush. «And how could it happen?» I demanded. «One caer might be attacked-two at most-but then the others would know. They would see the smoke from the fires, if nothing else, and they would sound the alarm. The king would raise the warband against the invaders. There would have been a battle, and we would have known about it; we would have seen the signs at least.»

Tegid looked thoughtful. «Not if the attack had come by night,» he replied. «No one would have seen the smoke.»

«The glow from the fire, then. Someone would have seen something!» I was all but shouting now. «Still, who is it that can attack in the night? What enemy can strike three fortresses at once-and who knows how many others– without warning any of them, and without losing a single warrior? Who is it that can destroy all without leaving a trace?» Anger and outrage made my voice tremble. «I am asking you, Tegid. What enemy can do these things?»

A strange expression had come into the Brehon's eyes as I spoke. I stared at him. «What is it? What have I said?»

«Your questions are better than you know,» he answered in a thin, tight voice. «There is one who can do the things you describe.»

«This person, this monster-who or what is it?»

Tegid halted me with a sharp gesture, as if he feared I might blurt the answer before he could tell it. Or as if the telling of it would bring the fiend down upon us. «You are right to call it a monster,» he said softly, «for such it is. Yet it goes on two legs and takes the form of a man.»

«Will you name this creature to me?» I dreaded the answer, but I had to know.

«I will. It is Nudd, Lord of Uffern.»