Robert Carter - The Giants’ Dance

It had been more than four years ago, but the dread he had felt on that night and the redeeming day that had followed remained alive in him. It always would.

‘Will?’ Willow asked, searching his face. ‘What are you thinking?’

He broached a smile. ‘Maybe I’ve taken a little too much to drink,’ he said and touched his wife’s hair. It was gold in the firelight and about as long as his own. He looked at her, then down at the child whose small hand had first clasped his finger just over a year ago. How she had begun to look like her mother.

‘Ah, but she’s a beautiful child!’ said old Baldgood the Brewster, his red face glowing from the day’s sunshine. He had begun to clear up and was carrying one end of a table back into the parlour of the Green Man. The other end of the table was carried by Baldram, one of Baldgood’s grown sons.

‘Seems like Bethe was born only yesterday,’ Will told the older man.

‘She’ll be a year and a quarter old tomorrow, won’t you, my lovely?’ Willow said dreamily.

‘Aye, and she’ll be grown up before you can say “Jack o’ Lantern”. Look at this big lumpkin of mine! Get a move on, Baldram my son, or we’ll be out here all night!’

‘My, but he’s a bossy old dad, ain’t he?’ Baldram said, grinning.

Will smiled back at the alehouse-keeper’s son as they disappeared into the Green Man. It was hard to imagine Baldram as a babe-in-arms – nowadays he could carry a barrel of ale under each arm all the way down to Pannage and still not break into a sweat.

‘Hey-ho, Will,’ one of the lads from Overmast said as he went by.

‘Hathra. How goes it?’

‘Very well. The hay’s in from Suckener’s Field and all’s ready for the morrow. Did you settle with Gunwold for them weaners?’

‘He offered me a dozen chickens each, but I beat him down to ten in the end. Seemed fairer.’

Hathra laughed. ‘Quite right, too!’

‘Show us a magic trick, Willand!’ one of the youngsters cried. It was Leomar, Leoftan the Smith’s boy, with three of his friends. He had eyes of piercing blue like his father and just as direct a manner.

Will asked for the ring from Leomar’s finger, but when the boy looked for it, it was not there. Then Will took a plum from the pouch at his own belt and offered it.

‘Go on. Bite into it. But be careful of the stone.’

The boy did as he was told and found his ring tight around the plumstone. He gasped. His friends wrinkled their noses and then laughed uncertainly.

‘How’dya do that?’ they asked.

‘It’s magic.’

‘No t’aint. It’s just conjuring!’

‘Away with you, now, and enjoy the Blazing!’ he said, ruffling the lad’s hair. ‘And you’re right – that was only conjuring. Real magic is not to be trifled with!’

Two more passers-by nodded their heads at Will, and he nodded back. The Vale was a place where everybody knew everybody else, and all were glad of that. Nobody from the outside ever came in, and nobody from the inside ever went out. Months and years passed by without anything out of the ordinary happening, and that was how everybody liked it. Everybody except Will.

Though the Valesmen did not know it, it was Gwydion who had made their lives run so quietly. Long ago he had cast a spell of concealment so that those passing by the Vale could not find it – and those living inside would never want to leave. The wizard had made it so that any man who wandered the path down from Nether Norton towards Great Norton would only get as far as Middle Norton before he found himself walking back into Nether Norton again. Only Tilwin the Tinker, knife-grinder and seller of necessaries, had ever come into the Vale from outside, but now even his visits had stopped. Apart from Tilwin, only the Sightless Ones, the ‘red hands’, with their withered eyes and love of gold, had ever had the knack of seeing through the cloak. But the Fellows were only interested in payment, and so long as the tithe carts were sent down to Middle Norton for collection they had always let the Valesmen be. Four years ago, Will’s service to King Hal in ending the battle at Verlamion had won him a secret royal warrant that paid Nether Norton’s tithe out of the king’s own coffers, so now the Vale was truly cut off.

And I’m the reason Gwydion’s kept us all hidden, Will thought uncomfortably as he stared again into the depths of the fire. He must believe the danger’s not yet fully passed. But with Maskull sent into exile and the Doomstone broken, is there still a need to hide us away?

Maskull’s defeat had given Gwydion the upper hand, but he had shown scant joy at his victory. He and Maskull had once been part of the Ogdoad, the council of nine earth guardians whose job it had been to steer the fate of the world along the true path. But then Maskull had given himself over to selfishness, and though a great betrayal had been prophesied all along, that had not made it any easier for Gwydion to accept.

Will sighed, roused himself from his thoughts and looked around at the familiar surroundings. It was strange – in all his months of wandering he had thought there was nothing better than home. And now he had a family of his own there was even more reason to love the way life was in the Vale. And yet…when a man had extraordinary adventures they changed him…

It’s easy for a man to go to war, he thought. But having seen it, can he so easily settle down behind a plough once more?

It hardly seemed so. Occasionally, a yearning would steal over Will’s heart. At such times he would go alone into the woods and practise with his quarterstaff until his body shone with sweat and his muscles ached. There was wanderlust in him, and at the root of it was a mess of unanswered questions.

He stirred himself and kissed Willow on the cheek. ‘Happy Lammas,’ he said.

‘And a happy Lammas to you too,’ she said and kissed him back. ‘I guess we’re just about finished with the Blazing. Looks like everyone’s had a good time.’

‘As usual.’

‘What about you?’

‘Me?’ he asked, his eyebrows lifting. ‘I enjoyed it.’

‘It looks like you did,’ she said, a strange little half-smile on her lips.

‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

She fingered the manly braid that hung beside his ear. ‘I saw you looking into the bonfire just then. What were you thinking?’

‘I was thinking that only a fool would want to be anywhere else today.’

She smiled. ‘Truly?’

‘Truly.’

It was good to see everyone so happy. They had watched the lads and lasses circling the fire. They had listened to the vows that had brought the night’s celebration to a fitting close. Some had plighted their troths, and others had made final handfasting vows. Now couples were slipping off into the shadows, heading for home.

There was no doubt about it, since the ending of the tithe the Vale had prospered as never before. They had put up three new cottages in the summer. They had filled the new granary too, and all this from the working of less land. Now the surpluses were not being taken away to make others rich, the plenty was such that Valesmen’s families had already forgotten what it was to feel the pinch of hunger.

‘About time this little one was abed,’ Willow said.

‘Yes, it’s been a long day.’

They walked up the dark path to their cottage, his arm about her in the warm, calm night. In the paddock, Avon, the white warhorse that Duke Richard of Ebor had given him, moved like a ghost in the darkness. Away from the fire the stars glittered brightly – Brigita’s star, sinking now in the west; Arondiel rising in the east; and to the south Iolirn Fireunha, the Golden Eagle.

An owl called. Will remembered the Lammastide he had spent six years ago sitting with a wizard atop Dumhacan Nadir, the Dragon’s Mound, close by the turf-cut figure of an ancient white horse. Together they had watched a thousand stars and a hundred bonfires dying red across the Plains of Barklea.