Dawn Wind Read Free Page B

corn plot he might be able to see the steading. He gathered up his wounded arm again, and leaving the track, began to stumble up the hillside, Dog, puzzled but willing, at his side. It seemed a long way, but he reached the plot at last, and stood clinging to the piled grey stones, while the world swam and jiggled before his eyes. But in a few moments the wind from the hills seemed to clear his head a little, and then with a sob of relief he saw the steading, which had been hidden from the track by the rising ground.
    It stood at the end of a shallow combe, a cluster of two or three turf-thatched bothies and a cattle fold, all within its grey encircling wall, like any other of the small hill farms; but its house-place walls were limewashed in the Roman manner, and shone harshly white in the sunlight. Owain remained where he was for a few moments, clinging to the wall and shivering, but he knew that if he was to reach shelter he must reach it soon. He thrust off from the wall like a swimmer thrusting off from shore, and began to stumble through the fern towards the blurred gleam of the distant limewashed walls.
    For a long time the steading seemed to get no nearer, and then suddenly it was there. The gap in the low stone wall was clear, and Owain lurched through. He saw the dark opening in the house-place wall, and the dim red glimmer of firelight inside, and stumbled towards it.
    Something moved in the gloom, and a woman appeared in the doorway. A tall iron-grey woman in a skimpy dust-coloured tunic, with a copper cooking spoon in one hand, and her hair knotted up on top of her head as though she would stand no nonsense from it or from anything else. ‘Well?’ she began before she had time to see who or what it was on her threshold. ‘What is it? What do you want? Be quick, I can’t stand here all day.’
    Owain leaned his sound shoulder against the rowan wood doorpost. ‘Viroconium,’ he mumbled thickly. ‘I—missed the road—can you tell me—tell me—‘He saw her face very clearly, a long bony face with iron grey hairs sprouting singly here and there on the chin. But something very strange was happening to it, it was swimming towards him, growing larger and larger as though to overwhelm him. His shoulder seemed to lose the doorpost, and with no more fuss and turmoil than a small tired sigh, he crumpled across the threshold.
    He could not have been unconscious for more than a heartbeat of time, for dimly through the roaring darkness he heard the woman cry out sharply for somebody called Priscus, and Dog’s warning sing-song snarl, and even managed to mumble something that quieted and reassured the hound before he flew at anybody. He heard also the quick pad of footsteps, and a man’s voice asking a startled question.
    Then from a very great distance, the woman’s voice again. ‘How in Our Lord’s name should I know who he is? Ceawlin of the Saxons or the Bishop of Gwynedd maybe; I can’t have him cluttering up my threshold. Take his heels, man, or do I have to carry him alone?’
    ‘Do but give me a moment, my dove,’ said the man’s voice. ‘It is not every hour of every day one finds a stranger lying across one’s door-sill. Where do you want him?’
    ‘By the fire. Where else should I want him?’
    Owain felt himself lifted and carried a few scuffling steps, and laid down again on the softness of strewn bracken. He tried to open his eyes, then shut them again hurriedly because everything was spinning. He tried to tell the woman that he would do well enough if she would just let him lie still for a while, but no sound would come. Yet when the woman spoke again, her voice seemed to come from a little nearer. But maybe that was only because she was leaning over him. ‘Look now, he is only a child, after all.’
    ‘Old enough to be at a man’s work of kill and be killed, seemingly.’
    The woman snorted. ‘He’s scarce dry from the egg for all that … Go now and draw some water and put it on to