a simple supper of stewed beans with a little sliced leek and burdock. The next morning, Brother Aethelfrith bade his friends farewell and started back to his oratory. The merchants he had followed to Elfael had also concluded their business, and as he passed Castle Truan—what the Normans were now calling Caer Cadarn—he saw five mule-drawn carts turn out onto the road and thought, now that the wagons were empty of goods, he might beg bold and ask for a ride.
So he quickened his pace and by midmorning had caught up with the wagon van when it paused to water the animals at the valley stream before starting up the long slope of the forested ridge. He came within hailing distance and gave a shout, which was not returned. “I see they still have some manners to learn,” he muttered. “But no matter. They will have to be hard-hearted indeed to refuse my request.”
As he neared the fording place, he saw that the traders were standing together in a clump, motionless, with their backs to him; they seemed to be staring at something on the far side of the stream.
He hurried to join them, calling, “Pax vobiscum!”
One of the traders turned on him. “Keep your voice down!” he whispered savagely.
Mystified, the friar shut his mouth with a click of his teeth. Taking his place beside the men, he stared across the fording place and into the wood. The mules, impassive creatures ordinarily, seemed restless and uneasy; they jigged in their traces and tossed their heads. And yet the wood beyond the stream seemed quiet enough. Brother Aethelfrith could see no one on the road; all seemed calm and tranquil.
“Forgive my curiosity, friend,” he whispered to the man next to him, “but what is everyone looking at?”
“Gerald thought he saw the thing—the creature,” the merchant whispered back, his voice tense in the unnatural silence.
The only sound to be heard was the lazy, liquid gurgle of the water as it slipped around and over the stones.
“What creature?” wondered the priest. Nothing moved amongst the lush green foliage of the trees and lower brushwood. “The phantom,” the man explained. He turned his face to the bowlegged friar. “Do you not know?”
“I know nothing of any phantom,” replied Aethelfrith.
“What sort of phantom is it presumed to be?”
“Why,” replied the merchant, “it takes the form of a great giant of a bird. Men hereabouts call it King Raven.”
“Do they indeed?” wondered the friar, much intrigued.
“What does it look like—this giant bird?”
The merchant stared at him in disbelief. “By the rood, man! Are you dim? It looks like a thumping great raven.”
“Shut up!” hissed one of the others just then. “You will have the demon down on us!”
Before anyone could reply to this, one of the other traders threw out his hand and shouted, “There it is!”
Friar Aethelfrith glimpsed a flash of blue-black feathers glinting in the sun and the suggestion of a massive black wing as the creature emerged from the brushwood on the opposite bank a few score paces downstream. Two of the merchants gave out shouts of terrified surprise, and two others fell to their knees, clasping their hands and crying aloud to God and Saint Michael to save them. The rest fled back down the road to the safety of Castle Truan, leaving their carts behind.
“Christ have mercy!” gasped one of the remaining merchants as the creature’s head came into view. Its face was an oval of smooth black bone, devoid of feathers, with two round pits where its eyes should have been. Save for the wickedly long pointed beak, its head most resembled a charred human skull.
Lifting its swordlike beak, the thing uttered a piercing shriek that resounded in the deathly silence of the wood.
Even as the cry hung in the air, the phantom turned and simply melted back into the shadow of the wood.
The terror-stricken merchants leapt to their feet and ran for their wagons, lashed their mules to motion, and fled back into the valley. Of all those at the stream, only Aethelfrith was left to give chase—which he promptly did.
CHAPTER 35
Gathering up his robe, Aethelfrith strode boldly across the stream and started after the phantom. Upon reaching the far side of the stream, he paused and, finding nothing, proceeded into the brushwood, where the thing had vanished. There was no sign of the creature, and after a few paces he stopped to reconsider. He could hear the traders clattering away into the distance as their wagons bumped over