Caradoc of the North Wind - By Allan Frewin Jones Page 0,72
she could strike them down. She felt again that slightly dream-like state created by Merion’s crystals – the eerie sensation of being present but unseen, of being among her enemies, and of hearing their voices speaking a language she hardly knew, and yet at the same time being able to understand their speech.
The Saxons were evidently in some confusion.
‘What has happened?’
‘Have the waelisc mountain rats attacked?’
‘I think not! More likely something has gone amiss at the execution of the witch girl. Did you see the owls? They were not here by chance! Remember how they flocked to save that demon creature last summer? They’re bringing some similar mischief now, I’d swear that by Wotan’s beard!’
‘Cut out your jabbering and run, you fools! The general needs us!’
Keeping tight to the walls, Branwen and Iwan managed to slip away through the open gate. Ironfist’s mighty encampment confronted them now. When Branwen had been brought this way the previous night to attend the feast in the Great Hall, she had only been able to guess at the size and scale of the army – but now she saw it under a clear sky, and her heart turned cold.
Stretching away as far as the eye could see was an ocean of tents and huts and paddocks, of smithies, and storehouses and barns. There were horses by the hundred, wagons loaded with weapons, barrels filled with arrows and spearheads. The camp had become a whole city of dwellings and work places to house and support the vast Saxon army.
And despite the scores that had run at the summoning of the horns, thousands upon thousands of warriors still swarmed in the camp.
Iwan tugged gently at her sleeve and Branwen turned away from the awesome and fearsome sight, following him as he slipped alongside the outer southern walls of Chester towards the River Dee.
‘We can’t risk crossing the river here,’ he murmured close in her ear. ‘Someone might notice the disturbance in the river. We’ll head south a way and find some secluded spot to swim over.’
She nodded silently, her mind still glutted with the image of Ironfist’s gigantic army. She could almost see them in her mind – flooding through Powys like an unstoppable disease.
Even if she survived – even if she returned alive and battle-ready to Powys – how could she ever hope that the warriors of Brython could hold back such a tide of hate and death?
They followed the meandering loops of the river southwards, till Chester and the army camp were lost behind hills and ridges and bare winter woodlands. Then they travelled silently a little further into the wilds, seeking for some place where the river seemed less wide.
They found a likely crossing place at last, where the river narrowed between high, grassy strands, backed by thick woodlands. They slithered down the muddy, pebbled banks and stepped hand in hand into the icy flow.
But the moment that Branwen’s foot touched the water, it began to bubble and churn, foaming and spitting and drawing away from her. She gave a cry of surprise as the running water pulled back, revealing a broad arrowhead of muddy, pebble-strewn riverbed.
‘What’s this now?’ hissed Iwan, staring at the boiling and eddying lips of retreating water. ‘What new tricks have you learned while you were in prison, Branwen?’
‘None, I’ve learned none,’ she breathed. ‘This is not my doing.’
They grasped each other’s hands again, fingers twining tightly as they watched the waters curl back into two long, seething bulwarks of frothing and swirling foam. The dank riverbed lay exposed now in a deep water-walled ditch all the way to the far bank.
‘Run!’ said Iwan. ‘Quickly. While we can.’
Branwen went leaping down with him between the rising dykes of ever-moving water. The bubbling crests of the two poised walls rose high above their heads, roaring like cataracts, spitting a fine hail of drops down on to them as they pounded along the slithery and slippery channel.
Branwen glanced anxiously from side to side as they flung themselves towards the western riverbank, their heels kicking up mud and ooze, their lungs gasping for air in the fine haze of water droplets.
The towering, howling, thundering banks of racing water would give way – they had to give way! This was beyond all reason! They would be crushed under the weight of falling water.
Yet they were not. There was a final frantic scramble up the far bank, their feet sinking deep in the slime, mud squelching between their fingers. And then, breathlessly, they were