The Giants’ Dance. Robert Goldthwaite Carter

man has done.’

      Will’s heart sickened to hear the words that he had known were coming since before sunrise. ‘I’m a husband and a father now. I can’t just leave without a word. It’s harvest time, Gwydion, and I promised Willow I wouldn’t be long.’

      His words were reasonable, sane by any standard. But they already sounded hollow in his ears.

      

      As the morning wore on, the August sun rose hot on their backs. Will saw its golden beams glittering on the headwaters of the Evenlode stream, and by midday they were across it and turning south, so that the sun began to fill the ups and downs of their path with shimmering patches and pools.

      They went a league or two out of their way to the south and passed many folk on the road. Gwydion made a sign to them and warned Will to silence. Some people seemed to see Will but not the wizard. Some seemed to see neither. Others turned about as if alarmed, or at least puzzled by some unaccountable presence. Occasionally there were those who embraced Gwydion as if they had been met by a long-dead kinsman, and to these Gwydion gave a word in friendship and sometimes a token of reward.

      They came down to a little river and saw a bridge-keeper’s shack. Here two men in red livery guarded the bridge. Arms had once been painted on a board but they had faded and peeled away.

      Neither the keeper of the Windrush crossing nor the two men-at-arms seemed to notice them, though a witless beggar put his hands out for a blessing and Gwydion clasped his hand briefly as he passed.

      ‘Welcome, Master Jack-in-a-box!’ the beggar said.

      ‘Keep up!’ Gwydion warned as Will looked pitifully at the beggar’s sores.

      ‘Has he no friends to take care of him?’ Will asked angrily. ‘Is he a man or a dog? And why is he clad in such filthy rags? Is there no Sister here? What sort of place is this?’

      ‘We are at the village of Lowe, and shall soon be through it,’ Gwydion said.

      ‘Can nothing be done for the people here?’

      ‘This village belongs to an ill-starred fellow whose company is best avoided. This lord has driven the local Wise Woman away, and for that his people will one day murder him, for it is a true rede that “by the least of men shall the best of men always be judged”.’

      There were cottages clustered here, with folk sitting at their doors. Half a dozen dirty children played in the way, and the people seemed odd. They made no acknowledgment of Will’s greetings as he passed. One old woman, however, received Gwydion as a subject would receive a king. She gave him a bundle which was put into the wizard’s crane bag which was instantly passed to Will to carry. As they left the village and rose up the hill high above the mossy thatches Will looked back down into the valley to where the brimming waters of the Windrush shone in brash daylight. There was a large manor some way to the right of the bridge.

      ‘Do not look at it,’ Gwydion said, and pulled him onward.

      ‘But how did the village get that way?’

      ‘It is a place of poor aspect. Land-blighted. Not every village in the Realm is as well set as Nether Norton. Many do not have a kindly lord. You should think yourself fortunate that the Vale is a place without any ruler, for some delight in making themselves overmighty while they may.’

      Their journey, Gwydion had said, would not take them far, but they had already walked many a long league and Will’s feet ached. They were going to the place where the violet light had burned, but it was ever the wizard’s way not to go anywhere very directly. He took account of the flows in the land, choosing ancient paths, or striding along great arcs that swirled from hill to saddle and then swept on along the spring-lines of an upland or plunged down into the cool heart of a wood. Always the wizard’s staff would swing out in a striding rhythm, seeking narrow deer paths, and more often than not Will found himself following in his guide’s footsteps instead of walking at his shoulder as he preferred. Seldom did they follow the ways used by men, though sometimes they found dusty tracks, or a line of gnarled trees, or a trackway that meandered among planted fields. By now Will had begun to worry about Willow and his regret at their not having said a proper farewell was eating at him. He went through what he would have liked to have said, then he pictured his daughter crawling across the grass while her mother gathered windfall apples, and that image brought him back to the events of the night and to the matter in hand.

      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,