Robert Carter - The Giants’ Dance

There were dangers. There was no denying that, for Maskull was implicated. And no denying the bubbling excitement in Will’s belly that others might have feared to call fear.

When he paused to take stock he saw people in the distance, working in the fields or making their way to market. As soon as Gwydion saw them he turned away and passed into the dark shade of a wood. He whispered to himself, nor was he whispering blessings. From time to time he would put his hands flat on the smooth grey trunk of a tall beech tree to mutter an incantation or to ask the air for directions. He stooped to crumble soil between his fingers, then to drink a handful of cool water which he found bubbling fresh from the earth. Will thought of old Wortmaster Gort, whose own skills upon the land were a delight. But he had once said that a true wizard such as Gwydion knew all parts of the Realm, from having walked every step of it a dozen and one times. He said that Gwydion could tell from the taste of a handful of water, or the feel of a pinch of dust, where he stood to the nearest league, just as carriers upon the Great North Road might know how far they had gone just by listening to the way people said certain words.

‘How far is it now?’ Will asked.

‘Not far.’

When Will began to feel hungry, Gwydion plunged into a wood and brought out a great armful of morels. They had a delicious taste. And again, down beside a stream where willows grew he found several white fleshy growths on the tree trunks that looked like giant ears and tasted like they looked but which filled the belly well.

Here there were many dry-stone walls and sheep meadows, and ahead a country of windy heath on which the bracken was slowly turning russet. Gwydion halted as they approached one of the ancient roads that he detested so much. Will looked up and down it, finding that his eye could follow it a long way to north and south. It was dead straight and did not yield to the earth in any way. Though old and broken in places now, still it scarred the land like a knife wound.

‘Slave road!’ Gwydion said with disgust as he hurried to the far side. ‘The straightest of them, built here fifty generations ago, when the Slaver empire took the Isle by force. Its name now is the Fosse. Do you see how it still works its dividing influence upon the land?’

After so long following Gwydion, Will’s feet had learned how to tread a true path through the land. When he planted his feet and felt for the earth streams, he could sense the way the power was turned and pent up as if into brackish pools by the ancient highway. He could see what Gwydion meant about the village of Lowe being a place that was land-blighted. He wondered at how his talent had sharpened and matured during the past few years. What could that mean?

After crossing the Fosse their own path trended more southerly. The land began to open out and there was more rising than falling. They began to cross a wide sweep of planted country that rose up into the higher Wolds. At length, Gwydion stopped and danced magic, calling out in the true tongue that there might now be an opening. In moments a path between the briars appeared where no path had been before. They went along it, and Will felt a tingle in his bones, the same he had felt when entering the Vale. At that time there had been joy in his heart, but not now, for the smell of burning had been rising on the wind and he began to taste something unpleasant at the back of his throat. Fine grit stuck to his lips and gathered in the corners of his eyes. The track before them and the leaves on the trees and bushes were dusty. Now they gave way to leaves that were rain spotted and again to leaves washed clean by a recent downpour.

Will thought of the great towering cloud that had risen high into the sky last night. It was as if a column of rain had been sent deliberately to damp the fires down. The stream that came from the higher land was running milkygrey with dust, carrying black flecks on its surface. Gwydion stooped to look at it, but this time he did not dip his hand in or try to drink.

‘This is the valley of the Eyne Brook,’ he said at last. ‘Yonder lies Fossewyke. We are nearing our goal.’

Will looked at the scum of ash that floated on the brook’s surface. He soon found the reason for it – the water had bubbled across a great heath that had been turned black by fire. When they ventured into the valley the soil was warm underfoot and smoking in places even though there had been rain heavy enough to douse it.

‘Steam,’ Gwydion said, nodding at the wisps. ‘Nothing could have survived here last night.’

As they journeyed to the heart of the devastation, Will found himself gagging at the acrid smell. All the trees nearby had been smashed down, their trunks charred black on one side. Everything was layered in thin ash. In places it had drifted into banks that looked like so many grey snowdrifts. The woods seemed to have been brushed flat by a tremendous wind. Nothing green remained. Nothing stood properly upright. All around was a steamy haze, heaps of roasted dust and twisted rock rubble.

Will gouged at his eyes to clear them as they came to what had been a fish pond. Its bed was still too warm to walk on. It had been dried so suddenly that the fish had been boiled alive and lay simmered on the cracked clay. Will stretched out his hands and felt the remains of ovenlike heat. Now he could see why Gwydion had not striven to get here sooner.

Everything around them was strange and terrifying. He walked into a stinking ruin, staggered on after Gwydion over the hot ground until they came to a rise. A great bank of loose, smouldering earth reared up before them, and beyond stretched a curtain of smoke. Ash and cinders were raw and sharp underfoot. They scraped and crunched under Will’s feet as he climbed, sending up dust and a vile smell. He tried not to breathe but then as he reached the top of the bank he gasped, for beyond was a sight that he had not expected – a huge, smoking crater.

‘What could have done this?’ he whispered, looking across the shimmering waste.

‘Welcome,’ Gwydion said emptily, ‘to the village of Little Slaughter.’

The whole village had been obliterated. But how? Ten thousand lightning strokes would not have been enough to cause such destruction. Nothing was left of cottage, granary, alehouse, mill. Everything had been smashed to powder and the powder scattered for half a league.

‘There was a battlestone here,’ Will said slowly. ‘A battlestone that someone tried to break. Is that it?’

Gwydion looked at him for a moment but said nothing.

Will went as close to the hole as he dared. It was still red hot, and fuming. He could not see how deep it was, but it was so big around that all of Nether Norton could have fitted inside. He felt numbed, drained of all feeling. His mind raced as he tried to understand what could have happened. When he knelt to touch the dust at the crater’s edge he saw there the brightness of what had been molten iron; now it shone like a solidified pool of the Wortmaster’s most precious quicksilver. He could not speak or tear his gaze away for a long time.

Gwydion laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘I am sorry you had to see this.’

All around were ashes, but here and there away from the crater they saw small signs that this place had been home to many dozens of folk – a horseshoe, a burned chair, a child’s rag doll.

A fist of fear clutched at Will’s stomach, and he suddenly looked up into the wizard’s face. ‘I remember Preston Mantles and the lad, Waylan, who Maskull mistook for me. This ruin was meant for Nether Norton, wasn’t it?’

‘It might have been.’ Gwydion closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. ‘And it may still happen.’

Will stood up and walked away. He wanted to run, to run from the wizard, to run far away. And when his thoughts touched Willow and Bethe the blood in his heart froze solid. He was scared to open his mind in case too many terrors rushed in on him at once. Instead he wandered wherever his feet might lead him and cried for the people of the lost village, and his tears fell upon the wounded earth.