The Grey King (12 page)

Bran said guiltily, “If I hadn't stopped playing, perhaps the Brenin Llwyd couldn't even have sent the wind. The magic of the harp would have stopped him.”

“Perhaps,” Will said. “And perhaps not.” He gave Cafall's head one last
rub and straightened up. The white sheepdog looked up at Bran, tongue lolling as if in a grin, and Bran said to him lovingly,
“Rwyt ti'n gi da.
Good boy.” But still his fingers did not stop moving over the harp.

Slowly they scrambled down the rock. Though it was full morning now, the sky was no lighter, but grey and heavy with cloud; the rain was still light, but it was clear that it would grow and settle in for the day, and that the valley was safe now from any more threat of fire. All the near slope of the mountain, Bird Rock and the valley edge were blackened and charred, and here and there wisps of smoke still rose. But all sparks were drowned now, and the ashes cold and wet, and the green farmlands would not again this year be in any state for burning.

Bran said, “Did the harp bring the rain?”

“I think so,” Will said. “I am just hoping it will bring nothing else. That's the trouble with the High Magic, like talking in the Old Speech—it's a protection, and yet it marks you, makes you easy to find.”

“We'll be in the valley soon.” But as he spoke, Bran's foot slipped on a wet rock face and he stumbled sideways, grabbing at a bush to save himself from falling—and dropped the harp. In the instant that the music broke off, Cafall's head jerked up and he began barking furiously, in a mixture of rage and challenge. He jumped up on to a projecting rock and stood poised there, staring about him. Then suddenly the barking broke into a furious deep howl, like the baying of a hunting dog, and he leapt.

The great grey fox, king of the
milgwn,
swerved in midair and screamed like a vixen. In a headlong rush down Bird Rock he had sprung out at them from above, aiming straight for Bran's head and neck. But the shock of Cafall's fierce leap turned his balance just enough to send him spinning sideways, cartwheeling down the rock. He screamed again, an unnatural sound that made the boys flinch in horror, and did not stop himself to turn at bay, but rushed on in a frenzy down the mountain. In an instant Cafall, barking in joyous triumph, was tearing down after him.

And Will, up on the empty rock under the grey drizzling sky, was instantly filled with a presentiment of disaster so overpowering that without thought he reached out and seized the golden harp, and cried to Bran, “Stop Cafall! Stop him! Stop him!”

Bran gave him one frightened look. Then he flung himself after Cafall, running, stumbling, desperately calling the dog back. Scrambling down from the rock with the harp under one arm, Will saw his white head moving fast over the nearest field and, beyond it, a blur of speed that he knew was Cafall pursuing the grey fox. His head dizzy with foreboding, he too ran. Still on high land, he could see two fields away the roofs of Caradog Prichard's farm, and nearby a grey-white knot of sheep and the figures of men. He skidded to a halt suddenly. The harp! There was no means of explaining the harp, if anyone should see it. He was certain to be among men in a few moments. The harp must be hidden. But where?

He looked wildly about him. The fire had not touched this field. On the far side of the field he saw a small lean-to, no more than three stone walls and a slate roof, that was an open shelter for sheep in winter, or a storeplace for winter feed. It was filled with bales of hay already, newly stacked. Running to it, Will thrust the gleaming little harp between two bales of hay, so that it was completely invisible from the outside. Then standing back, he stretched out one hand, and in the Old Speech put upon the harp the Spell of Caer Garadawg, by the power of which only the song of an Old One would be able to take the harp out of that place, or even make it visible at all.

Then he rushed away over the field towards Prichard's Farm, where distant shouts marked the ending of the chase. He could see, in a meadow beyond the farm buildings, the huge grey fox swerving and leaping in an effort to shake Cafall from its heels, and Cafall running doggedly close. A madness seemed to be on the fox; white foam dripped from its jaws. Will stumbled breathless into the farmyard to find Bran struggling to make his way through a group of men and sheep at the gate. John Rowlands was there,
and Owen Davies, with Will's uncle; their clothes and weary faces were still blackened with ash from the fire-fighting, and Caradog Prichard stood scowling with his gun cocked under his arm.

“That damn dog has gone mad!” Prichard growled.

“Cafall! Cafall!” Bran pushed his way wildly through into the field, scattering the sheep, paying no heed to anyone. Prichard snarled at him, and Owen Davies said sharply, “Bran! Where have you been? What are you up to?”

The grey fox leapt high in the air, as they had seen it do once before on Bird Rock. Cafall leapt after it, snapping at it in midair.

“The dog
is
mad,” David Evans said unhappily. “He will be on the sheep—”

“He's just so determined to get that fox!” Bran's voice was high with anguish. “Cafall!
Tyrd yma!
Leave it!”

Will's uncle looked at Bran as if he could not believe what he had heard. Then he looked down at Will. He said, puzzled,
“What fox?”

Horror exploded in Will's brain, as suddenly he understood, and he cried out. But it was too late. The grey fox in the field swung about and came leaping straight at them, with Cafall at his heels. At the last moment it curved sideways and leapt at one of the sheep that now milled terrified round the gate, and sank its teeth into the woolly throat. The sheep screamed. Cafall sprang at the fox. Twenty yards away, Caradog Prichard let out a great furious shout, lifted his gun, and shot Cafall full in the chest.

“Cafall!” Bran's cry of loving horror struck at Will so that for a second he closed his eyes in pain; he knew that the grief in it would ring in his ears forever.

The grey fox stood waiting for Will to look at it, grinning, red tongue lolling from a mouth dripping brighter with red blood. It stared straight at him with an unmistakable sneering snarl. Then it loped off across the field, straight as an arrow, and disappeared over the far hedge.

Bran was on his knees by the dog, sobbing, cradling the white head on his lap. He called desperately to Cafall, fondling his ears, dropping his cheek just once, in longing, to rest against the smooth neck. But there was nothing to be done. The chest was a shattered ruin. The silver eyes were glazed, unblinking. Cafall was dead.

“Murdering bloody dog!” Prichard was babbling with fury still, in a kind of savage contentment. “He'll kill no more of my sheep! A damn good riddance!”

“He was just after the fox. He was trying to save your old sheep!” Bran choked on his words, and wept.

“What are you talking about? A fox?
Dammo,
boy, you are as mad as the dog.” Prichard broke the shell out of his gun, his pudgy face contemptuous.

Owen Davies was down on his knees beside Bran. “Come,
bachgen,”
he said, his voice gentle. “There was no fox anywhere. Cafall was going for the sheep, there is no question. We all saw. He was a lovely dog, a beauty”—his voice shook, and he cleared his throat—“but he must have gone bad in the head. I cannot say that I would not have shot him myself, in Caradog's place. That is the right of it. Once a dog turns killer, it is the only thing to do.”

His arm was tight round Bran's shoulders. Bran looked up at the rest of them, blindly tugging off his glasses and rubbing a hand over his eyes. He said, high, incredulous, “But did none of you see the fox? The big grey fox that Cafall jumped as it went to kill the sheep?”

John Rowlands said, his voice deep and compassionate, “No, Bran.”

“There was no fox, Bran,” David Evans said. “I'm sorry, boy
bach.
Come on, now. Let your father take you to Clwyd. We will bring Cafall after you.”

“Ah,” said Prichard with a sniff. “You can get that carrion out of my yard as soon as you like, yes. And pay the vet's bill when I have had that sheep seen to, as well.”

“Cae dy geg,
Caradog Prichard,” said Will's uncle sharply. “There will be talk of all this sheep attacking business later. You can have a little feeling for the boy, surely.”

Caradog Prichard looked at him, his small eyes bright and expressionless. He motioned to one of his men to take the wounded sheep away. Then he spat, casually, on the ground, and walked off to his farmhouse. A woman was standing there in the doorway. She had not moved through everything that had happened.

Bran's father helped him to his feet, and led him away. Bran seemed dazed. He looked at Will blankly, as if he had not been there.

David Evans said glumly, “Wait a minute. There is some sacking in the car. I will come and find it.”

John Rowlands stood beside Will in the fine rain, sucking at an empty pipe, looking reflectively down at the still white body with the dreadful red gash in its chest. He said, “And did you see this fox, Will Stanton?”

“Yes,” Will said. “Of course. It was in front of us as clear as you are now. It had tried to attack us on Bird Rock, and Cafall chased it down here. But none of you could see it. So nobody will ever believe us, will they?”

John Rowlands was silent for a moment, his creased brown face unreadable. Then he said, “Sometimes in these mountains there are things it is very hard to believe, even when you have seen them with your own eyes. For instance, there is Cafall, and with our eyes we saw him alone jump at that sheep. And indeed something did sink its teeth into the sheep's throat and must have got a bloody mouth doing it, for there was blood all over the sheep's fleece and it is lucky to be alive. And yet it is a strange thing, which will not go out of my mind—that although poor Cafall lies there with his own blood all over his broken chest,
there is no blood on his mouth at all.”

W
ill said, “Excuse me, Mr. Davies, is Bran home from school yet?”

Owen Davies jerked upright. He had been bent over the engine of a tractor in one of the farm outhouses; his thin hair was ruffled and his face smeared with oil.

“I'm sorry,” Will said. “I made you jump.”

“No, no, boy, that is all right. I was just a bit further away than this engine, I think. . . .” He made the quick apologetic grimace that seemed to be as near as he ever came to a smile. All the lines on his thin face seemed to lead nowhere, Will thought: no expression, ever. “Bran is home, yes. I think you will find him in the house. Or up by . . .” His light, worried voice trailed away.

Will said softly, “By Cafall.” They had buried the dog the evening before, up on the lower slope of the mountain, with a heavy stone over the grave to keep predators away.

“Yes, I think so. Up there,” Owen Davies said.

Will wanted suddenly to say something, but the words were slippery. “Mr. Davies, I'm sorry about that. All of it. Yesterday. It was awful.”

“Well, yes now, thank you.” Owen Davies was embarrassed, flinching
from the contact of emotion. He said, looking down into the tractor's engine, “It couldn't be helped. You can never tell when a dog may take it into his head to go for the sheep. It is one in a million, but it can happen. Even the best dog in the world . . .” He looked up suddenly, and for once his eyes met Will's, though they seemed to be looking not at him but beyond, into the future or the past. His voice came firmer, like that of a younger man. “I do think, mind you, that Caradog Prichard was very ready to shoot the dog. That is something very drastic, and not done normally to another man's creature, at any rate not before his face. We were all there, it would have been nothing to catch Cafall. And a sheep-chaser can sometimes be given a home, somewhere away from sheep, without having to be killed. . . . But I cannot say this to Bran, and nor must you either. It would not help him.”

His eyes flicked away again, and Will watched, fascinated and disturbed, as the bright echo of another time dropped away like a coat and left the familiar drab Owen Davies with his humourless, slightly guilty air.

“Well,” Will said. “I think you are right, but no, I wouldn't mention that to Bran. I'll go and look for him now.”

“Yes,” Owen Davies said eagerly, turning his anxious, helpless face to the hills. “Yes, you could help him, I believe.”

But Will knew, as he trudged along the muddy lane, that there was small chance he, or anyone of the Light, could comfort Bran.

When he reached the edge of the valley, where the land began to climb, he saw very small and distant above him, halfway up the mountain, the figure of John Rowlands like a toy man. His two dogs, black-and-white specks, moved to and fro. Will looked, irresolute, at the place further down the valley where Bran would be gone to earth: alone with his misery. Then on an instinct he began to climb straight up, through the bracken and gorse. John Rowlands might be a good person to talk to, first.

Nevertheless it was Bran he first saw.

He came upon him suddenly, without expecting it. He was partway up
the slope, panting hard as he still did on rising ground, and as he paused for breath, raising his head, he saw there before him sitting on a rock the familiar figure: dark jeans and sweater, white hair like a beacon, smoky glasses over the pale eyes. But the glasses were not visible now, nor the eyes, for Bran sat with his head bent down, immobile, even though Will knew he must have heard the noisy puffing of his approach.

He said, “Hallo, Bran.”

Bran raised his head slowly, but said nothing.

Will said, “There was no dog like him, ever, anywhere.”

“No, there was not,” Bran said. His voice was small and husky; he sounded tired.