“Please God, I can find it again,” I said.
In the last wild light of the fading day, with the cloud flitters flying low above the hills and the low shining of a sodden yellow sunset in my eyes, and Guenhumara hanging a dead weight on my bridle arm, I came over the last heather ridge, and checked for an instant, with an almost sick relief, looking down into the shallow upland valley that I had seen once before.
But the valley of Druim Dhu’s homestead was not the peaceful place that it had seemed that other time. Here also, the little burn that had come down shallow over its bed of trout-freckled stones had run mad and become a roaring torrent, bursting out of its old course to cut a new one for itself that deepened and broadened even as I urged Signus into the downhill track, rending away great chunks of the bank and spreading itself all abroad in a swirl and tumult of white water that swept perilously near to the little huddle of turf bothies within their hawthorn hedge. All across the shallow cup of the valley, men were struggling to get the lowing, terrified cattle up to higher ground, while others, women too, were struggling waist-deep in the water to shift the dam of torn-down bushes and debris that had built up across the true course of the burn. Above the roar of water their shouts and the barking of the cattle dogs came up to us, small and sharp and desperate, even reaching Guenhumara, so that she turned her head to look down into the valley ahead of us. “What — is this place?” she demanded, and then with a sudden thrill of fear in her voice, “Artos, what is this place? Those little green howes? Artos, you’ll not be taking me into the Fairy Hills?”
“The Fairy Hills, or Druim’s village. It is all the same.”
“It is a bad place!” she cried. “They are all bad places, the Fairy Hills!”
“Not to me and mine,” I said. “Listen, Guenhumara, I have been inside this place. It is only a living place, as your father’s hall. I have drunk heather beer in there, and no harm came to me. Druim Dhu and his kin are our friends.”
She made no more protest, but I do not think the fear left her; it was only swallowed up in the urgent needs of her body.
Thank God, the village was on the near side of the water; I rode down toward it, Pharic and Conn just behind me. A small dark man dragging a sheep hurdle staggered past us, with dazed eyes that seemed not to see us until he was almost past. Then he turned about, not knowing me even then, and demanded fiercely, “What do you here, big man on a big horse? This is our place; go home to yours!”
“Great God, man, I had better welcome last time I came here,” I said, and as though his eyes cleared, I saw the recognition come into them.
“Artos — my Lord Artos!”
“As. to what I do here — the way into the Place of Three Hills is cut off by the burns in spate, and my woman is far gone in labor, therefore I have brought her to Itha. Is she in the houseplace?”
He shook his head, then jerked it in the direction of the straining figures about the dam.
“The water’ll be in the houseplace soon, if we can’t turn it.”
“Meanwhile I take my woman there. Send Itha to me — I’ll come back and take her place as soon as may be.” I had dismounted by that time, Guenhumara scarcely conscious in my arms, and called to the other two, as the little man staggered on toward the desperate struggle that was being fought out around the dividing of the burn. “Tie up the horses and then go down and help with that dam. I’ll be with you in a while.”
I found the houseplace by the feather of smoke rising from the crest of its bush-grown roof, and the smell which came from it, and ducking low under the lintel, carried Guenhumara down the four turf steps into the smoky darkness. In the first moment I thought no one was there but the Old Woman on her stool, looking as though she had never risen from it, and a handful of children huddled about her, staring at me under their brows like little wild things. And then from behind her came a small fretful wailing, and I saw another woman crouched against the far wall and bending over a child in her lap.
At sight of me, Old Woman cackled with laughter that set her enormous belly heaving. “Artos the Bear! So you come back, Sun Lord. Maybe those that drink in the Fairy Hills must always come back.” And she nodded at Guenhumara in my arms. “No need to ask what ails that one.”
“No,” I said. “Her time is on her two moons early, and the burns in spate, even as yours, between us and the gate of the Place of Three Hills. Where may I lay her down?”
“Over there.” She jerked her head toward a pile of skins against the wall, and I carried Guenhumara over and laid her on it. I had scarcely done so when, with no sound of her coming, the girl Itha was at the foot of the steps, standing there like something drowned, to wring the water from her long black hair. Not that she was a girl now, but worn and weather-lined. They are beautiful young, but they age quickly, the women of the Ancient People. Some of the children ran to her, clinging to her drenched skirts, but she paid no heed to them. “Istoreth told me that you were here, and your woman needing my help.”
“As you see,” I said. “I am going now, Itha. Your menfolk need help too, with the burn.”
“You trust me?” she said, looking up from where she already knelt by Guenhumara. “I that am a woman of the Hollow Hills?”
“The water of the little well was good and sweet, and the faces in the fort were still the faces I knew, when I got back to them. I trust you.”
And I went out into the wild evening, down to join the men by the parting of the burn. The sun was set by now and some of the women had brought out torches, and in their flaring light the rush of water was fired with gold over swirling depths of immeasurable darkness, and the alder trees stood up gaunt and black against the last bright rags of the stormy afterglow. Pharic and Conn had joined those who were fighting to clear the dam of uptorn bushes, and I joined another band, who, waist-deep in the racing water, were striving with hurdles and sods and uprooted furze bushes to guide the threatening flood away from the village and turn it back into its true course. Again and again we saw our work torn away and the water pouring through the breach; again and again we restarted the desperate struggle to make good the damage. Most of that night, by the windy torch flare, I worked thigh-deep in the racing flood, one with the Little Dark Men about me, as I had not been even at Cit Coit Caledon. I lost all count of time, all my world was the white fury of water that must be fought like a killer horse, and the strength of my own body pitted against it; and Guenhumara in the turf house, fighting as I was fighting.
At last I became aware of a slackening in the rush of water, and shouted to the others that the spate was passing. And later still, I was standing only knee-deep in the flood, steadying myself by an alder branch and drawing in great gulps of air that I seemed to have no time for before, and looking about me. It was not yet dawn, but through the rents in the still tattered sky I could see the morning star that we call the Cock’s Lantern; and the world was spent and quiet all about me, and the level of the flood was going down, down; our dams and brushwood walls had held at last, and the water, its fury spent, was turned back into its old course.
There would be a heartbreaking deal of damage to make good, but the village was safe. I left the rest to finish the work, and crawled back, blind weary, to the turf house within the hawthorn hedge.
Itha met me in the entrance that looked, in the first light, to be no more than a dark burrow mouth in the side of the bush-grown mound. “It was in my mind that the voice of the burn was sulking, and soon you would come.”
“Itha, is the babe born? How is it with them?”