Britons and heavy, hulking, mail-clad Ffreinc knights. He saw the blood haze hang like a mist in the air above the slaughter and heard the echoed clash of steel on steel, of blade on wood and bone, the fast-fading shouts and screams of men and horses as they died.
Looking toward the wood to the north, he saw the birds flocking to their feeding frenzy. Squawking, shrieking, they fought and fluttered, battering wings against one another in their greed. Grabbing up stones from the riverbank, he ran to the place, throwing rocks into the midst of the feathered scavengers as he ran.
Reluctant to leave the mound on which they fed, the scolding birds fluttered up and settled again as the angry stones sailed past. Stooping once more, he took up another handful of rocks and, screaming at the top of his lungs, let fly. One of the missiles struck a greedy red-beaked crow and snapped its neck. The wounded bird flopped, beating its wings in a last frantic effort to rise; Bran threw again and the bird lay still.
The hillock was covered with brush and branches cut from the thickets and trees along the riverbank. Pulling a stick from the pile, Bran began beating at the flesh eaters; they hopped and dodged, reluctant to give ground. Bran, screaming like a demon, lashed with the branch, driving the scavengers away. They fled with angry reluctance, crying their outrage to the sky as Bran pulled brushwood from the stack to lay bare a massed heap of corpses.
The stick in his hand fell away, and Bran staggered backward, overwhelmed by the calamity that had taken the lives of his kinsmen and friends. The birds had feasted well. There were gaping hollows where eyes had been; flesh had been stripped from faces; ragged holes had been wrested in rib cages to expose the soft viscera. Human no longer, they were merely so much rotting meat.
No! These were men he knew. They were friends, riding companions, fellow hunters, drinking mates—some of them from times before he could remember. They had taught him trail craft, had given him his first lessons with blunted wooden weapons made for him with their own hands. They had picked him up when he fell from his horse, corrected his aim when he practised with the bow, and along the way, taught him much of what he knew of life. To see them now with their empty eyes and livid, blackening faces, their ruined bodies beginning to bloat, was more than he could bear.
As he gazed in mute horror at the confused tangle of slashed and bloodied limbs and torsos, something deep inside himself gave way—as if a ligament or sinew suddenly snapped under the strain of a load too heavy to bear. His soul spun into a void of bloodred rage. His vision narrowed, and it seemed as if his surroundings had taken on a keener, harder edge but were now viewed from a long way off. It seemed to Bran that he gazed at the world through a red-tinged tunnel.
There was another hill nearby—also crudely covered with brush and lopped-off tree branches. Bran ran to it, uncovered it, and without realising what he was doing, climbed up onto the tangled jumble of bodies. He sank to his knees and grasped the arms of the corpses with his hands, tugging on them as if urging their sleeping owners to wake again and rise. “Get up!” he shouted. “Open your eyes!” He saw a face he recognised; seizing the corpse’s arm, he jerked on it, crying, “Evan, wake up!” He saw another: “Geronwy! The Ffreinc are here!” He began calling the names of those he remembered, “Bryn! Ifan! Oryg! Gerallt! Idris! Madog! Get up, all of you!”
“Bran!” Brother Ffreol, shocked and alarmed, ran to pull him away. “Bran! For the love of God, come down from there!”
Stumbling up over the dead, the monk reached out and snagged Bran by the sleeve and hauled him down, dragging the prince back to solid ground and back to himself once more.
Bran heard Ffreol’s voice and felt the monk’s hands on him, and awareness came flooding back. The blood-tinged veil through which he viewed the world dimmed and faded, and he was himself once more. He felt weak and hollow, like a man who has slaved all night in his sleep and awakened exhausted.
“What were you doing up there?” demanded Brother Ffreol.
Bran shook his head. “I thought . . . I—” Suddenly, his stomach heaved; he