The Grey King (6 page)

They were on a lonely part of the road, with barren moorland on one side of the road and dark tree-clad mountainside rising at the other. No fields were cultivated here. Bracken and rocks fringed the roadside as if it were a track over the open mountain. Suddenly Will became aware of a change in the sound of the sheep behind him: a higher note of alarm in their bleating, a flurry of scuffling hooves. He thought at first that it must be John Rowlands and Tip, heading off a runaway; but then he heard a sharp, piercing whistle that in a moment had Pen swinging round at the sheep, growling, barking,
threatening them to a standstill. And he heard John Rowlands calling: “Will! Quick! Will!”

He ran back, skirting the frightened bleating sheep; then jerked to a halt. Halfway past the flock, at the edge of the road, there was a great splash of red at the throat of a single tottering animal, smaller than the rest. Will saw a flicker of movement in the bracken as some unseen creature fled. Away it went towards the mountain, and the fronds waved and then were still. Will watched horrified as the wounded sheep staggered sideways and fell. Its fellows pushed away from it, terrified; the dogs growled and threatened, frantically containing the herd, and Will heard John Rowlands yelling, and the thwacking of his stick against the hard road. He too yelled and waved his arms at the heaving flock of sheep, keeping them together as they tried in panic to break away over the moor, and gradually the nervous animals calmed and were still.

John Rowlands was bending over the injured ewe.

Will shouted, across the heaving backs, “Is it all right?”

“Not much hurt. Missed the vein. We're lucky.” Rowlands bent down, heaved the inert sheep over his shoulders and grasped its fore and hind feet separately, so that it hung across the back of his neck like a huge muffler. Grunting with effort, he slowly stood up; his neck and cheek were smeared red by the sheep's bloodstained fleece.

Will came towards him. “Was it a dog?”

Rowlands could not move his head, because of the sheep, but his bright eyes swivelled quickly round. “Did you see a dog?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“I saw something running away through the bracken, but I couldn't tell what it was. I just thought it must be a dog—I mean, what else could it have been?”

Rowlands did not answer, but waved him ahead and whistled to the
dogs. The flock began pouring on down the road. He walked at the side of it now, leaving the rear entirely to Tip; neatly and efficiently the dog kept the sheep moving along.

Soon they came to a deserted cottage set back from the road: stone-walled, slate-roofed, sturdy-looking, but with the glass broken in its two small windows. John Rowlands kicked open the heavy wooden door, staggered inside, and came out without the sheep, breathing heavily and wiping his face on his sleeve. He closed the door. “Be safe there until we can get back to her,” he called to Will. “Not far now.”

Before long they were at Clwyd. Will opened the gate of the broad pasture where he knew the sheep were to be kept, and the dogs nudged and nagged them inside. For a few moments the sheep eddied about, bleating and muttering; then they settled down to a greedy rasping nibble of the lush grass.

John Rowlands fetched the Land-Rover and took Will with him to collect the injured sheep; at the last moment the black dog Pen leaped up into the car and settled down between Will's feet. Will rubbed his silky ears.

“It must have been a dog attacked that sheep, surely?” he said as they drove.

Rowlands sighed. “I hope not. But indeed, I cannot think of any wild creature that would attack a flock, with men and dogs alongside. Nothing but a wolf would do that, and there have been no wolves in Wales for two hundred years or more.”

They drew up outside the cottage. Rowlands turned the car so that its back door would be in easy reach, and went into the little stone building.

He was out again almost at once, empty-handed, looking uneasily about him. “She's gone!”

“Gone!”

“There must be some sign—Pen!
Tyrd yma!”
John Rowlands went casting around outside the cottage, peering intently at grass and bracken and gorse,
and the black dog wove its way round and about him, nose down. Will too peered hopefully, looking for flattened plants or signs of wool, or blood. He saw nothing. A jagged rock of white quartz glittered before them in the sunshine. A woodlark sang. Then all at once, Pen gave one short sharp bark and was off on a scent, trotting confidently, head down, through the grass.

They followed. But Will was puzzled, and he could see the same bafflement on John Rowlands's seamed face—for the dog was tracking through untouched grass, not a stem bent by the passing even of a small creature, let alone a sheep. There was the sound of water running somewhere ahead of them, and soon they came to a small stream flowing down towards the river, the jutting rocks in its course showing how much lower than usual it was running in the dry spell.

Pen paused, cast up and down the stream unsuccessfully, and came to John Rowlands whining.

“He's lost it,” the shepherd said. “Whatever it was. Could have been no more than a rabbit, of course—though not too many rabbits I have ever heard tell of would have the sense to hide their trail in running water.”

Will said, “But what happened to the sheep? It was hurt, it couldn't have walked away.”

“Particularly through a closed door,” Rowlands said drily.

“That's right, of course! D'you think whatever animal attacked it would have been clever enough to come back and drag it away?”

“Clever enough, perhaps,” Rowlands said, staring back at the cottage. “But not strong enough. A yearling will weigh about a hundred pounds, I near broke my back carrying her a little way. You'd need a mighty big dog to drag that weight.”

Will heard himself say, “Two dogs?”

John Rowlands looked at him with narrowed eyes. “You have some unexpected ideas, Will, for one not brought up on a farm . . . yes, two dogs together could drag a sheep. But how would they do it without leaving a
great flat trail? And anyway, how could two or twenty dogs open that door?”

“Goodness knows,” Will said. “Well—perhaps it wasn't any animal. Perhaps somebody drove by and heard the sheep bleating and got it out of the cottage and took it away. I mean they couldn't know we were coming back.”

“Aye,” John Rowlands said. He did not sound convinced. “Well, if any did that, we shall find the sheep at home when we get there, for it has the Pentref mark on its ear and any local man would know that we winter Williams Pentref's ewes. Come on, now.” He whistled to Pen.

They were silent on the drive home, each lost deep in concern and baffled conjecture. John Rowlands, Will knew, was worrying over the need to find the sheep quickly, to doctor its wound. He, Will, had his own worries. Although he had not mentioned it to Rowlands, and hardly dared even to think what it might mean, he knew that in the moment when the wounded sheep had staggered and fallen beside the flock, he had seen something more than that formless twitch of motion in the bracken where the attacker fled. He had seen the flash of a silvery body, and the muzzle of what had looked very much like a white dog.

M
usic was flowing out of the farmhouse in a golden stream, as if the sun were inside the window, shining out. Will paused, astonished, and stood listening. Somebody was playing a harp, long rippling arpeggios soaring out like birdsong; then without a break the music changed to something like a Bach sonata, notes and patterns as precise as snowflakes. John Rowlands looked down at him with a smile for a moment, then pushed open the door and went in. A side door was open into a little parlour that Will had never noticed before; it looked like a creaky-neat Best Room, tucked away from the big kitchen-living room where all the real life of the house went on. The music was coming from this parlour; Rowlands stuck his head round the door, and so did Will. Sitting there, running his hands over the strings of a harp twice his own height, was Bran.

He stopped, stilling the strings with his palms. “Hullo, then.”

“Much better,” said John Rowlands. “Very much better, that, today.”

“Good,” Bran said.

Will said, “I didn't know you could play the harp.”

“Ah,” Bran said solemnly. “Lot of things the English don't know. Mr. Rowlands teaches me. He taught your auntie too, this is hers I'm at.” He ran one finger across the lilting strings. “Freezing in the winter in this room, always, but it keeps better in tune than in the warm. . . . Ah, Will Stanton, you don't know what a distinguished place you are in. This is the only farm in Wales where there are two harps. Mr. Rowlands has one in his house too, you see.” He nodded through the window, at the trio of farm cottages across the yard. “I practise there mostly. But Mrs. Rowlands is busy cleaning today.”

“Where is David Evans?” said John Rowlands.

“In the yard with Rhys. Cowshed, I think.”

“Diolch.”
He went out, preoccupied.

“I thought you'd be at school,” Will said.

“Half-holiday. I forget why.” Bran wore the protective smoky glasses even indoors; they made him look eccentric and unreal, the inscrutable dark circles taking all expression out of his pale face. He was wearing dark trousers too, and a dark sweater, making his white hair still more striking and unnatural. Will thought suddenly: He must do it on purpose; he likes being different.

“An awful thing happened,” he said, and told Bran about the sheep. But again he left out the quick glimpse of the attacker that had made him think it was a white dog.

“Are you sure the sheep was alive when John left it?” Bran said.

“Oh, yes, I think so. There's always the chance someone just stopped and took it away. I expect John's checking.”

“What a weird business,” Bran said. He stood up, stretching. “I've had enough practising. Want to come out?”

“I'll go and tell Aunt Jen.”

On the way out, Bran picked up his flat leather schoolbag from a chair beside the door. “I must drop this off at home. And put the kettle on for Da. He comes in for a cuppa, round about now, if he's working nearby.”

Will said curiously, “Does your mother work too?”

“Oh, she's dead. Died when I was a baby, I don't remember her at all.” Bran gave him a strange sideways look. “Nobody told you about me, then? My dad and I, we're a bachelor household. Mrs. Evans is very nice, always. We eat supper at the farm, weekends. Of course, you haven't been here at a weekend yet.”

“I feel as if I'd been here for weeks,” Will said, putting his face up to the sun. Something in the way Bran spoke was making him oddly uneasy, and he did not want to think about it too closely. He pushed it to the back of his mind, to join that image of the flicker of a white muzzle through the bracken.

“Where's Cafall?” he said.

“Oh, he will be out with Da. Thinking I am still at school.” Bran laughed. “The time we had when Cafall was young, trying to persuade him that school is for boys, not puppies. When I went to primary school in the village, he used to sit at the gate all day, just waiting.”

“Where do you go now?”

“Tywyn Grammar. In a bus.”

They scuffed their feet through the dust of the path down to the cottages, a path made by wheels, two ruts with hummocky grass growing between. There were three cottages, but only two were occupied; now that he was closer, Will could see that the third had been converted into a garage. He looked beyond, up the valley, where the mountains rose blue-hazed and beautiful into the clear sky, and he shivered. Though the mystery of the wounded sheep had taken up the front of his mind for a while, the deeper uneasiness was swelling back again now. All around, throughout the countryside, he could feel the malevolence of the Dark growing, pushing at him. It could not focus upon him, follow him like the gaze of a great fierce eye; an Old
One had the power to conceal himself so that his presence could not at once be sensed so precisely. But clearly the Grey King knew that he was bound to come, soon, from somewhere. They had their prophecies, as did the Light. The barriers had gone up, and were growing stronger every day. Will felt suddenly how strange it was for him to be the invader; for the Light to be advancing against the Dark. Always before, through all the centuries, it had been the other way round, with the powers of the Dark sweeping in fearsome recurrent attack over the land of men protected in gentleness by the Light. Always the Light had been the defenders of men, champions of all that the Dark came to overturn. Now, an Old One must deliberately reverse the long habit of mind; now he must find the thrust of attack, instead of the resolute sturdy defence which for so long had kept the Dark at bay.

But of course, he thought, this attack itself is a small part of a defence, to build resistance for that other last and most dreadful time when the Dark will come rising again. It is a quest, to awaken the last allies of the Light. And there is very little time.

Bran said suddenly, uncannily echoing the last thread of his thought, “Hallowe'en, tonight.”

“Yes,” Will said.

Before he could say more, they were at the door of the cottage; it was half-open, a low heavy door set in the stone wall. At Bran's footstep the dog Cafall came bounding out, a small white whirlwind, leaping and whining with pleasure, licking his hand. It was noticeable that he did not bark. From inside, a man's voice called, “Bran?” and began speaking in Welsh. Then as Will followed Bran through the door, the man speaking, standing shirtsleeved at a table, turned in mid-sentence and caught sight of him. He broke off at once and said formally, “I beg your pardon.”

“This is Will,” Bran said, tossing his bag of books on the table. “Mr. Evans's nephew.”

“Yes. I thought perhaps it was. How do you do, young man?” Bran's
father came forward, holding out his hand; his gaze was direct and his handshake firm, though Will had an immediate curious feeling that the real man was not there behind the eyes. “I am Owen Davies. I have been hearing about you.”