Caradoc of the North Wind - By Allan Frewin Jones Page 0,74

my lad!’ she murmured. ‘This meeting is a great joy.’ Terrwyn nodded his great head and snorted.

Branwen moved to the saddle and opened the pannier. She found warm clothing and a cloak within, as well as cheese and bread and a stoppered bottle of water. She would have wished for her mystical white shield to have been returned, but any weapons were welcome in the wilderness.

‘But why now, when the Old Gods could have come to our rescue a thousand times in the past?’ asked Iwan.

‘I don’t know,’ Branwen gasped, hardly able to speak for the solace and bliss that filled her. ‘Blodwedd always said we could not fathom the ways of the Shining Ones.’ She looked at Iwan. ‘But we are saved! We have food and clothes and beloved horses to bear us!’

He smiled a true, merry smile for the first time. ‘We are saved,’ he agreed. ‘I will ask no more questions. Come, give me back my cloak and put on the clothes Govannon has sent you. Bear the shield on your arm and strap the sword about your waist, they are surely meant for you. We can eat on the way! And it would not surprise me to find that these steeds have a clearer idea of our destination than we have!’ He laughed aloud as he looked at her. ‘Branwen of the Shining Ones! Branwen the shaman girl! You are a marvel to me, by all the saints, you are!’

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Iwan had been absolutely correct – the two horses had known where to take them. No sooner had they climbed into the saddles, than the beasts had turned and set off at a lively canter through the trees, down the long hillside and northward through the heather and spinneys and wild grasslands of eastern Powys. The speed of their travelling made conversation virtually impossible, and so Branwen had to wait a while longer for answers from her rescuer.

As dusk descended they were riding at a tireless trot through a long, narrow valley, and as the moon came up full in the starry sky, they found themselves under a high cliff of pale, bare rock. Without warning, the two horses stopped.

Branwen peered around. ‘And is this the place where we were to meet the others?’ she asked.

Iwan shook his head. ‘I don’t know where we are.’

‘Our steeds do, it seems,’ said Branwen. ‘What should we do, do you think? Dismount and make camp for the night?’

‘It’s a bleak place to seek for shelter,’ said Iwan.

‘All the same.’ Branwen was certain that they had been brought here for a reason. She swung down from the saddle; but as her feet hit the ground, she felt the world tremble under her.

With a deep creaking, growling groan, the face of the grey cliff yawned open in front of them like a sideways mouth. The horses stood calm and unperturbed, their heads down to tear at the long grass, seemingly indifferent to the uncanny gaping of the raw stone wall. Iwan jumped down to be at Branwen’s side, his eyes wide and thrilled.

The fissure in the cliff face became still and the ground was quiet again under Branwen’s feet. A broad, low-roofed cave was revealed, and in the middle of the even, earthen floor, under the sheltering arch of solid rock, a fire of hewn wood was burning brightly.

Branwen moved forward and rested her hands on the cold cliff face. ‘Thank you,’ she called. ‘Merion of the Stones – thank you!’

They unsaddled the horses, tethered them where there was good grass to eat, and carried the panniers inside.

They ate and drank, seated close to the jumping flames, and for the first time in an age of torment, Branwen felt genuine warmth and comfort seeping into her body so that her cheeks glowed and her fingers and toes tingled with new life.

‘Now will you tell me how you came to save me at the very last moment?’ Branwen asked Iwan, basking in the heat of the fire and watching his face through the licking flames.

‘It’s a long story, if you want to know it all,’ he replied.

‘I do. Leave nothing out.’

And so he told her the tale of how the king and Prince Llew and twenty-five warriors on horseback set off for their tryst with Ironfist, and how the Gwyn Braw stood on the walls of Pengwern, staring into the west, waiting for Branwen and Dera to return. And it was not only the two warrior girls who had vanished – Fain