Caradoc of the North Wind - By Allan Frewin Jones Page 0,59

me! Help me!’

But the Old Gods did not come.

I am no longer of use to them – no longer under their protection, no longer destiny’s chosen child.

She had lost count of the days she had been here in this sunken box of cold, sweating, lichen-stained stone. Once a day the heavy wooden door opened a fraction and a hand would throw in some scraps of food and a wooden bowl of water. Sometimes the bowl tipped over on the uneven floor and the water was spilled. Then she had to soothe her parched lips with muddy rainwater dripping from the gash in the stones. When it did not rain, she went thirsty.

Branwen had given up shouting and beating on the door – it gained her nothing but a ragged throat and bruised hands. No one ever came in response to her howls, no one cared when she threw herself with all her strength at the solid oak of her prison door. She was like a caged animal, kept barely alive and in torment for the amusement of unseen eyes.

All her possessions had been taken from her – sword, shield, her leather hunting clothes, the golden comb that her mother had gifted her and which she had carried with her always. Her slingshot and the leather bag of stones, her tinder and flint. Everything. She had been thrown in here wearing nothing but a brown linen shift and with nothing but a pair of mangy hides to keep out the cold.

They didn’t. She was cold all the time. So cold that sleep seemed impossible – and yet she did sleep, fretfully, shallowly, waking often from hideous nightmares to a nightmare that was even worse, and from which there was no way of waking.

She had not seen Ironfist since she had been thrown sprawling in here and the door had slammed behind her with the crack of hard timbers and the clang of iron.

At first she had dreaded the moment when the cell door would be flung wide and soldiers would rush in to drag her to her death. As days followed days and nothing happened, dread turned to anger, and anger to bewilderment, and bewilderment to dull apathy. She dreaded now that the soldiers might never come – that she would be left here frozen and hungry for the rest of her life. Sometimes in the deep dark silence of the night, she wished she had something sharp that she could draw across her wrists to put an end to her dreary, aching, wretched existence.

Sometimes her own thoughts terrified her more than anything that happened outside her head.

Sometimes she thought of Iwan and Rhodri and Blodwedd and Dera and the others, but as the hellish days bled one into the other, she found she could no longer see them in her mind – no longer hear their voices.

It was as if the hunger and the cold and the misery and the loneliness were hollowing her out from the very roots of her soul and leaving her as nothing but wasted skin over a frame of brittle bones.

Branwen gnawed at the chicken carcass, holding it to her mouth with both hands, pulling the bones apart, tearing at the scraps of meat with her teeth. A whole carcass was a rare delicacy and despite the fact that most of the meat had already been cut off, there was still plenty to eat for someone famished enough to grind the gristle and sinew and cartilage between her teeth.

She was barely aware of the guttural, animal noises she was making as she ate; of how she squatted in the corner of her cell, her knees up to her chest, her feet splayed filthy on the straw-matted stones, the fur hides draped over her shoulders, her hair matted and tangled, her hands black with grime.

She lifted the bowl to her lips and swigged the icy water. It went down like knives into her stomach. She made a grunting noise and attacked the chicken bones again, her eyes darting this way and that as she ate.

It occurred to her that she was losing her mind. But what did that matter? Who would ever know or care?

Her head snapped round at a sharp noise from the door. Her mad eyes narrowed. What was this? She had been fed. Why was the door opening? What was happening now?

Two Saxon soldiers armed with spears entered, one of them carrying a thick round chunk of log. They saw Branwen squatting in