The Paradise War (37 page)

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 baby fat, 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, finding 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 I 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.

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.

While I was about this trifling chore, Tegid had inspected the weir. 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 to try.

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 in 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 fingers. 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 find 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 side and give 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 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 war band 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.”

25
T
HE
P
ARADISE
W
AR

T
he lord of the Underworld? That Lord Nudd?” I asked, thinking I must have heard wrong. I remembered Gwenllian mentioning a figure by that name in some of her stories—according to which Lord Nudd was a shadowy, furtive figure who ruled the nether realms as chief of the damned. Surely Tegid did not mean
that
Lord Nudd?

Grave and wary, the Brehon extended the fingers of his left hand in the sign against evil. “It may be that in the days to come you will wish you had never allowed that name to cross your lips. I will tell you what little is known—yet that little will chill the warm heart in your breast.”

“So be it. My heart is numb already from the outrage of all I have seen of this dread lord and his handiwork. Nothing you can say will abuse me more than that.”

“Well said, brother,” Tegid approved. “Sit you down and hear me, if you will.”

The day had worsened. Already the murky light we enjoyed was failing and it would soon be dark. So, while Tegid built up the fire against the cold night, I fetched skins from the hut and placed these at the fire ring. I took my place cross-legged on the goatskin, and Twrch came to me and climbed into my lap.

Tegid busied himself with the fire, but I could see that he was ordering his tale in his mind. I pulled my cloak around my shoulders and sat stroking Twrch, waiting for Tegid to begin.

“Few there are who have heard this song,” Tegid said at last, seating himself on the pelt across from me. “Fewer still those willing to sing it. There are some tales that cause the words to clot on the tongue and harpstrings to fall silent. This is such a song.”

“Yet I will hear it gladly,” I said, “if some good may come of it.”

“Hear then the tale of Nudd, Prince of Uffern.” So saying, Tegid began. “In elder days, when the dew of creation was still fresh on the earth, twin sons were born to Beli, Great of Renown. The first was Nudd, and his brother was Lludd. And this is the way of it:

“Beli ruled long and wisely, gaining much honor through his just and honorable ways. In all the time that Beli held the Island of the Mighty, there were no wars, no plagues, no troubles. The peace of Beli was such that Albion became the fairest realm that is in all the world. Men and women spent their days searching for knowledge of every kind and learning the truth of all things. They increased in knowledge and truth and in all the pleasing arts, and forgot the craft of war. Far easier in those fortunate times to hear a graceful song than the clash of swords, far easier to see poetic champions compose than chiefs of battle mount their chariots. So wonderfully did the sons and daughters of men wax wise and gather themselves the bounty of the land of every good thing under heaven, that they were called
Tylwyth Teg
, the Fair Family, and their abode was Paradise.