The Silver Hand (38 page)

Twrch barked. I heard a scrabble of claws on the paving stones, and Ffand shouted, “Twrch! Come back!”

“Tell me what is happening!” I cried. “I cannot see it!”

“The dog,” Llew said. “Twrch is running toward the stone. I do not see—”

“Look!” cried Ffand. I could feel her slender body trembling with excitement. “There is something . . .”

“Tell me! Tell me!”

Llew answered. “It is an animal. A fox, I think. No, its legs are too short and its head is too big. Maybe a badger . . .” He paused. “No, it is too far away—I cannot quite see what it is. But it has come out from the base of the stone.”

Twrch barked again. The sound was further away.

“Now the animal has seen Twrch. It is running away.”

“Which way?”

“It is running at an angle to us away from the stone. Twrch is chasing it. He is going to catch it—”

“Twrch!” Ffand screamed from her place behind me. “No!”

She hooked an arm around my waist, bent sideways, and slipped off the horse. I heard her buskins slap the paving stones as she raced after the dog, shouting, “Twrch! Stop! Come back!”

In the middle distance, I heard Twrch bay as he closed on the animal. I heard a snarling growl as the other beast turned to defend itself. The snarl became a frightened yelp—abruptly cut off. Even at a distance I heard the snap of its neck as the great hound seized the hapless creature and shook the life from it.

“Well,” Llew said, “that is that. Whatever it was, Twrch killed it. Come, we will see what it was.”

We left the sarn and rode a short way out onto the turfy plain to the place where Ffand stood holding the straining hound by his chain-link collar. Twrch barked eagerly as we dismounted, pleased with his kill.

“No,” Llew groaned. “Oh, please, no . . .”

“What is it?” asked Ffand, her voice rising on a puzzled note. I could tell she was staring at the dead thing lying in the grass before her and was mystified by what she saw.

“Do you know this creature, Llew?” I asked.

“It is a dog—a kind of dog,” he answered, in a tone of misgiving and regret.

28
D
YN
D
YTHRI

A
dog? Are you sure?” asked Ffand.

A corgi, I think.”

At his utterance of the odd word, my inner vision flickered to life with the image of a strange, short-legged creature with a dense coat of mottled red, yellow, and brown. It had a big head with foxlike ears, and a short muzzle; its body was thick, stout, and tailless. A curious beast, it appeared half fox and half badger, but with the grace and virtue of neither.

The image faded, but not before I had glimpsed Llew's anxious glance towards the Giant's Stone.

“I think we should go,” he said uneasily.

Even as we were climbing into our saddles once more, we heard the hollow grinding of the trembling stone and felt the deep earth-pulse in our entrails. The ground shivered beneath my feet. The horses whinnied. I held tightly to the reins to control the animal as the uncanny sound grew louder and the deep, rhythmic throbbing grew stronger.

Twrch growled and ran toward the Giant's Stone. Ffand shouted, and dashed after him. And Llew, in the saddle now, lashed his mount forward to catch her, shouting, “Ffand! Wait!”

My mount reared beneath me. I pulled his head down hard to keep him from bucking and bolting.

The deep trembling stopped.

“Hold him, Ffand!” shouted Llew.

My inner eye remained dark, and I cursed my lack of sight. “What is happening?” I cried, following him. “Tell me!”

“A hole—a passage has opened beneath the stone,” he told me. “I saw something moving. It is gone now, but I think it was a person.”

He dismounted and thrust the reins into my hands. “Hold these!” he said. “Twrch will tear him to pieces.”

Before I could reply, Twrch began barking wildly again. Ffand shouted, scolding him. But the dog did not heed her. In almost the same instant, I heard a shout from the direction of the stone—a human voice, that of a man. The voice called again, speaking a word I did not know.

Llew shouted at Twrch to quiet him. “Hold him, Ffand,” he commanded. “Whatever happens, do not let him go.”

I heard another shout in the odd tongue, and an answering call. Llew shouted something I did not understand. And then—“Tegid, get down!” he shouted.

In the same instant, the air convulsed with quick thunder. I felt the pressure of the sound on my skin. Something flew past my ear, whizzing as it went.

“Twrch!” Llew shouted. “No!”

The sharp thunder cracked again. Ffand shrieked. Twrch's growl became brutal and fierce, a lethal warning. Llew shouted to stop him.

“Twrch!” Llew cried, his voice tight, frantic. “Twrch, no! Stop him, Ffand!”

A third thunderclap shattered the air. I heard a man scream.

And then I heard Twrch growling and Llew shouting. I ran toward the sound. “Llew!”

“Twrch!” Llew bellowed.

“Llew! What is happening?”

My ears buzzed and my head ached from the sound. I smelled sour smoke in the air. Llew was yelling at Twrch to stop. Then all went very still and quiet. Twrch growled softly, as if gnawing a bone. Llew murmured something that sounded like, “He has done it.”

I moved quickly to where Llew stood. “What has happened?”

“It is a man, a stranger—Dyn Dythri,” he said, indicating that the stranger was from his own world. “He had a gun—a weapon.”

“A weapon made that sound?”

“It did.” His voice still shook with excitement and alarm. “He was frightened. He started shooting at us—”

“Shooting?”

“Sorry—using the weapon, I mean—he started to attack us with the weapon. Twrch killed him.”

“That is too bad. The stranger showed an uncommon lack of prudence.”

“You can say that again,” agreed Llew sourly. “He was stupid to—”

Before he could finish, I heard a scratching sound coming from the direction of the Carreg Cawr; Llew tensed.
“Clanna na cù!
There are more!” he darted forward to seize the dog. “Twrch! Stay, Twrch!”

To me he called, “Do not move, Tegid. I will speak to them.”

“How many have come?”

“There are two,” he said. “No—wait . . . three. There is another one coming out now . . . ” He paused, and then I heard him shout a strange word: “Nettles!”

“Nettles!”

This peculiar utterance awakened my inward eye. The darkness thinned and brightened, and I saw that a cavern hole had opened at the base of the Giant's Stone. Standing before this tower were three frightened men, slight of stature and dressed in the curious drab clothing of strangers; their hair was cut close to the scalp, revealing skin of an unhealthy yellow-gray pallor. Clearly, the light of life did not burn brightly in them.

The Dyn Dythri stood hunched together, their hands to their faces, tears streaming from their weak eyes. When at last they dared peer out from behind their fingers once more, they gaped at us, hands hovering at their pallid faces, as if their eyes hurt. Their mouths were slack with surprise; their wasted limbs trembled. These cowering strangers were dull, spiritless creatures indeed.

“Nettles!” Llew cried again. One of the men started, and I realized the peculiar word was his name. He was smaller than the others, round-faced, with a sparse mist of silvery hair on his head like clouds wafting round a barren mountaintop. On his face glinted a singular ornament: two round crystals bound by metal rings joined together with thin silver bands.

The man, eyes wide behind the crystals, regarded Llew for a moment and then smiled with recognition. One of those with him, still quaking at the sight of us, muttered something, and I realized I had heard the rough speech before: it was the tongue Llew spoke when he came to us. And it marked these visitors as members of his clan.

“Tegid! It is Nettles—Professor Nettleton. I told you about him, remember?” Llew turned and approached the small man. The two looking on shrank even further into themselves—as if they would disappear completely.

Llew said, “
Mo anam,
Nettles! What are you doing here? You should not have come.” He spoke to the small man, who then merely gazed blankly at him, his smile uncertain. Then Llew, remembering his former tongue, said something to the man, who replied. They talked together for a moment. Llew looked at the two other men, who cringed from his glance, then pulled the small man over to where I stood.

“This is Nettles. He is the nearest thing to a bard that we have in our world. He is the one who helped me.”

“I remember,” I replied. My inner sight held his image before me, and I saw that despite his frailty and ugliness, his eyes gleamed with the bright intelligence of a keen and sagacious mind.

With much halting and stammering, the two spoke together, and I turned my attention to the other two who still stood shuddering beneath the stone. They had seen the man Twrch killed—the body lay facedown a few paces from them—and were shaken by it.

One of the men—a handsbreadth taller than the other—wore the air of a leader. He stepped toward the body. Twrch growled, his hackles rising. The man immediately stepped back. Twrch subsided.

The small man glanced at the body, and then said something to Llew, who answered him in his own tongue. They talked a moment, and then Llew said to me, “I told him what happened. I asked if they carried any more—um, weapons. He does not know.”

Llew's eyes narrowed as he glanced at the two men standing before the stone. “This is a disaster, brother,” he declared bluntly. “You know how much trouble Simon has caused here—these men are worse. I have seen them before, but they do not recognize me. The tall one—Weston—is the leader. Twrch killed one of his men.”

In his clumsy tongue, Llew addressed the small man Nettles, then said to me: “They must be watched and returned to their own world as soon as possible. Nettles agrees; he tried to stop them,” Llew explained. “He has prevented them from coming for a long time. But they got lucky today—or rather, unlucky.”

I did not fully understand what Llew was saying—though I knew he was referring to the arrival of the strangers. He was angry and wanted them to go back—that I understood.

After a moment, Llew and the small man walked to the place where the others waited. The two strangers cringed at Llew's approach—as well they might. For, though he had but one good hand, he could have slain either of them with a single blow.

Seeing him before them reminded me how much Llew had changed. His shoulders were wide and his back broad, his arms corded with muscle, his legs long and strong. As the Giant's Stone soared above him, so he towered above the frail creatures cringing beneath it.

He stepped before them, and I saw in my mind's eye their craven faces pinched with fear; I heard them speaking in their uncouth tongue with the one called Nettles.

Llew returned to me. “Nettles is telling them what is to—” He halted, running around quickly. “Wait! Where is Ffand?”

Suddenly, Llew was racing away. “She is shot!” he shouted. “That idiot has shot Ffand!”

“What?”

“Over here, Tegid! Hurry!”

She lay crumpled on the ground—little more than a cloak flung on the grass, it seemed. A deep red stain spread slowly over her side.

“She is bleeding. It is bad, Tegid.” He gently probed the wound with the fingers of his good hand. “The bullet—” he said, “I think it went through. The wound is clean, but she is bleeding badly.”

I tore a strip of cloth from the edge of her cloak, folded it, and pressed it to the injury. “We will bind the wound,” I said. “That is all we can do until we reach Dun Cruach.”

Llew held the folded cloth to the wound while I bound it with another strip torn from her cloak, tying the knot tightly over the injury to hold the cloth in place.

“I hope that serves until we get to Dun Cruach. You must take her to the wagons, Tegid. I will deal with these—these intruders.” He spoke the last of these words through clenched teeth. “Can you see?”

“Well enough.” I stooped to gather Ffand in my arms and heard behind me the sound of horses approaching: Bran and Alun had arrived. The sudden appearance of these two Ravens, with their blue markings, armbands, spears, and shields, alarmed the strangers anew. They cowered close to the Giant's Stone, watching the warriors with wide, fearful eyes.

“We heard a strange noise,” Bran explained, eyeing the strangers, “and thought to discover what had happened to you.”

Alun regarded the strangers with a frown. “Dyn Dythri,” he muttered.

“Fret not, Alun,” Llew said coldly. “They are not staying long. They are going back where they came from as soon as possible.”

“Will you do it now?” asked Alun, regarding the Giant's Stone. “Here?”

“No,” Llew told him. “The portal—the gate is closed now. We must find another place to send them back.” He indicated the strangers cringing in the shadow of the stone. “Take them to the wagons, Alun.” To Bran, he said, “You take Ffand. Make a comfortable place for her. Tegid and I will follow—we have something to do first.”

I raised Ffand in my arms and gave her to Bran, who took the unconscious girl on the saddle before him, turned his horse, and started back. Alun, spear in hand, rode to where the strangers stood gawking. A quick gesture with the point of a spear was all it took to get them moving. They started off along Sarn Cathmail; we waited until they were out of sight behind the hill and then proceeded to bury the dead stranger in the shadow of Carreg Cawr.

Llew cut the turf with his sword and rolled back the grass. He chopped at the earth with his knife; then we scooped out the loose soil with our hands. Twrch helped dig. When we had made a shallow grave, Llew went to where the body lay. He searched in the grass for a moment before finding what he was looking for. He stopped and picked up an odd object: small, square, with a short, protruding shaft; it was blue-black in color, but with a metallic sheen on its surface.