‘Llaw. I think he is leaving us.’
‘Ridiculous!’ she snapped. ‘He is making his life here.’
Nuada looked at her and grinned. ‘Lead on, lady,’ he said. ‘I shall follow your beauty to the ends of the earth.’
‘Fool!’
‘Indeed I am. It is the fate of poets.’
He hoisted his pack to his back and waited. ‘What about weapons?’ she asked.
‘I have little use for them. But I have no fear; you will be there to guard me from the evils of the wild.’ His violet eyes sparkled with humour. Arian was unsure of Nuada; in the days she had known him he had made no secret of the fact that he found her attractive, yet not once had he made a move to court her. But then, she reasoned, this was a man who had moved among the ladies of the court, with their soft perfumed skin and their clothes of silk.
‘Let us go,’ she told him, moving off across the settlement. He strolled some paces behind her, enjoying the swaying of her hips in the tight buckskin leggings.
Once more the strange howling came from the distant north. It was answered by a second howl to the east… and another from the south. Nuada shivered.
‘Wolves?’ he asked.
Arian stopped. ‘It must be a trick of the wind,’ she said, ‘or a twisted echo. Anyway, it will not trouble us. Wolves keep well clear of people — except in the worst of winter, when food is scarce. But even then they can be scared away by a hunter with nerve.’
‘That howling went through me like a winter wind,’ he said.
She smiled at him. ‘That’s because you are a city man,’ she told him.
‘So you are not concerned by it?’
‘Not at all,’ she lied.
Manannan, the Once-Knight, sat alone with Ollathair the Armourer. The cabin was empty, for Gwydion and the family had wandered out into the settlement square. Ruad waited for Manannan to speak, but the Once-Knight sat silently staring at the table. Finally Ruad spoke.
‘We need them, Manannan. If they are alive, they must be brought back.’
‘I cannot do it; I cannot pass the Black Gate.’
The Armourer reached over and gripped Manan-nan’s arm. ‘The nation is in great danger. The Colours are in disarray; the Red is swelling. Nomads are being murdered. Lust, greed and evil are swamping the Harmonies. Do you understand? The King has gathered to him eight Knights — Red Knights. I sense their evil. They must be countered, Manannan. Only the Knights of the Gabala could hope to stand against them.’
‘Then you should not have sent them,’ said Manannan, fixing his gaze to Ollathair’s.
The older man looked away. ‘You are right. It was folly of the worst kind. But I cannot put it right.’
‘Go after them yourself.’
‘I cannot. There is no one to open the Gate this side, and the spell may not be reversible in the other world. You must go.’
Manannan laughed and shook his head. ‘You don’t understand; you never did. I came to you the night before the quest began. I told you then of my fears. It was not death that troubled me. I knew that if I passed the Gate my soul would be in peril. But no, you would not listen. Well, they are gone, Ollathair. You cannot bring them back. They died in whatever Hell they found beyond the Gate.’
‘You cannot be sure.’
‘No, I can’t. But if Samildanach and the others were alive, they would have found a way back. I am sure of that. Samildanach was almost the wizard you are.’ Manannan poured water into a clay cup and drained it; then he stood and looked down at Ollathair. ‘On that last night, I saw Samildanach saying farewell to Morrigan; she cried and he left her. I went to her and dried her tears and she told me she had dreamt strange dreams of blood and fire, of angels and demons. In her heart, she said, she knew she would never see Samildanach again. What could I say? But when we stood before the Gate and I felt the cold wind blow through it, my courage died. It is the same now. But you do not understand, Ollathair. You never did. You never felt the fear that gnaws away at the soul. You could never understand what it is to find yourself a coward. Oh yes, I can face men in battle. I am confident of my skills. But faced with the Gate, I was lost. Even now when I think of it my heart races, my breath seems short. I panicked, Ollathair. I did it then — I would do it now.’
He walked to the door and turned. ‘I am truly sorry.’
‘Manannan!’ called Ruad and the warrior swung to face him.
‘What is it?’
‘I have known that fear… when the King had me in chains and they burned my eye from me. But a man must overcome his fears, or they will overcome him. You are not a coward. It is not death you fear; it is the dark, the unknown, the journey into night. Will you not try to conquer it?’
‘You still do not understand,’ said Manannan wearily. ‘If I could do it, I would. Can you not see that?’
‘What I see is a man who was once a Knight of the Gabala — a man who swore an oath to protect and defend the Order. Go from here, Manannan. I free you from your oath. Now you can do as you will.’
‘Farewell, Armourer,’ said the Once-Knight.
Outside in the sunlight, he mounted Kuan and rode from the settlement. Death was now assured, he knew; but then, death came to all men. He would find a place high in the mountains and he would cheat his fate. When the pressure on his throat grew great, he would find a way to die that pleased him.
He rode throughout the afternoon, ever higher into the tree line, passing cabins and skirting other settlements. Towards dusk he heard a high-pitched howling from the forest. Kuan’s ears pricked and Manannan felt him shudder.
‘You have nothing to fear from wolves, Greatheart,’ he said, patting the stallion’s neck. ‘It is not yet winter.’
He rode on, following a narrow track peppered with the spoor of deer. The trees were thicker here and he ducked low over his saddle to avoid overhanging branches. At the bottom of the track the ground opened out and he saw a cabin and a tilled field. Before the cabin lay a man with blood seeping from a terrible wound in his side. The Once-Knight drew his sword and rode warily towards the body. The man was dead; his right arm and half his chest had been torn from him. Kuan whinnied as the smell of blood came to him. By a roughly-dug well lay a woman, her head smashed; there was no other wound in evidence.
Manannan dismounted and searched the ground. There was no spoor in the immediate vicinity, but he followed a trail of blood from the man’s body until he reached softer earth. Here he found paw-marks of great size — like the pad of a lion, but almost a foot across. He knelt by the track and stared off into the undergrowth. The beast had obviously moved off to feed. But why? The bodies could have been devoured where they lay. The beast must have been disturbed.
By his arrival? If so, that meant it was still close by. He stood and backed away from the undergrowth. A beast of this size was not something to anger.
At that moment a child came running from the trees, saw Manannan and screamed. She was around nine years old, with long blonde hair, and wearing a tunic of homespun wool.
A creature from nightmare moved out behind her. It was huge and double-headed, in part like a lion but wider at the shoulder. Its fangs were long and curved, and each head showed two great incisors long as sabres. In that instant Manannan realized the beast had not been disturbed by him but had moved off in pursuit of the child. He ran towards the girl, but knew he would never reach her before the beast bore her down. He cut to the left, shouting at the top of his voice.
The creature’s heads swung towards him.
‘Here, Ugliness!’ Manannan bellowed. ‘Come to me!’
The sound of its roaring filled the clearing — and it charged!