Chapter 4 #2
This wight didn’t look like he would be thanking me this evening.
Branches snapped behind me and I jumped to my feet, keeping the fire to my back.
Belis was still asleep, her spear propped against a tree beside her.
I measured the distance between us, no more than a few yards.
I didn’t want to call out to her lest I provoke the wight.
The smell got worse and I felt my mortal heart begin to drum in my chest, pumping the blood faster and faster.
I dashed towards Belis, shaking her awake.
“Wake up, wake up, there’s a wight in the trees.”
She was dizzy with sleep for a moment, but her eyes focused on my face and in a moment she was on her feet, spear in hand.
“Where is it,” she whispered, tracing the spear point through the night. I pointed to where the smell was strongest.
“Over there, it came up from the south.” I moved closer to her. “Have you fought one before?”
“I’ve never even seen a wight,” Belis said. “You’re sure that’s what it is?”
For once she didn’t sound patronising, speaking as one equal to another. Still not appropriately respectful but better.
“That smell can only mean one thing.”
Belis nodded and fished a knife from her belt. “Here, guard my back. I’ve heard they’re wicked quick when they want to be.”
I took the knife from her. It was heavy and cold in my hands, and I doubted I would be particularly successful in wielding it.
“Anything else you can tell me?” Belis muttered, moving closer to the fire.
“Don’t let it near you, they bite.”
“Great advice, Mallt,” snarled Belis as the wight emerged from the trees and lunged towards us. “Whatever would I do without you?”
The wight had been a man in life, tall and broad-shouldered, though the muscles had withered down to gristle and his skin hung loose.
I could easily see his death: half of his skull had been stoved in, the bowl of his head was empty.
His eyes had long since been plucked out by birds and the teeth marks of scavenging rodents patterned his face, but there was a terrible twisting rage in his decaying features.
Belis ran him through with her spear before he got within a yard of us.
The wight barely paused at the blow, pulling himself along the shaft, snaggletooth jaws snapping at Belis.
She kept gripping her end of the spear and levered him backwards, grabbing for her sword with her spare hand.
The wight moved faster and Belis had to drop the spear before she could raise her sword.
The spear slid to the ground and the wight leapt forwards, raising his arms to claw at Belis’s face.
She took one hand off with a swing of the blade but the other kept coming and backhanded her across the cheekbone, knocking her to the ground.
The cold thrill of fear had rooted me to the spot, but now the wight was turning towards me.
He was no larger than dozens of his kind I had faced before but now I stood alone in the woods, my hounds long vanished, my only ally still sprawling on the floor.
I raised the knife, my hand shaking. Sweat coated my palm and I dropped the blade.
The wight was almost on me now, the stench of rot so strong I could barely breathe.
Its remaining hand gripped my arm, dragging me forward. I stared up at its eyeless face, unable even to scream.
A bright sword appeared in the corner of my vision, sweeping the wight’s head from its shoulders.
Belis stood behind it, the still snarling head of the wight in one hand.
The body kept going, its hand moving to my throat.
Belis dropped the head and pulled me loose, turning to slice the body into fragments.
Even as she stood over the dismembered limbs of the wight, it still twitched, trying to pull itself back together.
“Does it never die?” she asked, panting.
I was still shivering but managed to find my voice.
“Not by mortal hands. Shove it onto the fire and we can burn the body. The soul will linger, looking for another body to inhabit.”
Belis looked at me aghast. “One of ours? Can we protect ourselves?”
I shook my head. “It’s not strong enough to push out a living soul; it’ll find another body, human preferably, but I’ve seen them in dogs, lynx, horses.”
“So how is Britain not overrun with them?”
I frowned at her. “Because of me. That was one of my tasks, to keep the land free of such creatures and send the souls of the dead on. Now that I can’t do that…”
Belis paled and she looked down at the still jerking wight. “There is no one else who can do this?”
I sat down heavily and reached for a waterskin.
“There are other beings who could slay them, but they are not inclined to take on the duty of hunting all of them, nor of dealing with the menace in good time. It has been five hundred years since I last let a wight slip past me and harm a living human. I fear that my ability to protect has gone with my immortality.” I took a draught of water.
“This is why we must get to Arawn, and fast. Wights are not the only fate that can befall a stranded soul. It is my responsibility, my purpose, to keep this land safe, to keep them safe.”
“What about Cati?” Belis said, something like panic entering her voice for the first time. “She’s an empty body. Could this wight find her?”
So typical of a mortal to think of themselves first, I thought.
“She should be safe enough with Dormath guarding her. He might be a mortal dog now but he’s still wily and fierce enough to chase anything smaller than a dragon away.”
Belis nodded and bent to push the fragments of the wight into the fire. Sleep seemed unlikely to return so I sat back on the log and watched as the remains of the wight melted into the flames, the smell of burning flesh filling the night.
Around noon on the seventh day of the Chalk I called to Belis, who had paused to grub for what she thought were onions.
“Come on up, here’s a sight you’ll not soon forget.”
She hurried up to join me where I stood, looking to where the green hills sloped down to the north.
I heard the sharp gasp as she saw the great white horse carved into the chalk.
It was drawn with long, smooth lines hundreds of feet high, as if some celestial being had traced the shape into the hillside with a finger.
As I watched, the sun came out from the clouds and the horse seemed to move, running in place.
It wasn’t anatomically correct, but the shape captured the essence of the creature, of the feeling of running free, thundering hooves and rushing winds.
I had often wandered this way, spending an hour here and there weeding along the cuts.
It made my heart sting a little to see it again now.
“The Vale of the White Horse,” said Belis, from beside me. “I had always hoped to see it. It’s enormous, so much bigger than I thought it would be.” She looked at me. “Was it your kind that made it? The fae, I mean?”
“I’m not fae,” I said. “I’m a goddess. And, no, it was made by humans, magic ones, but humans nonetheless.”
“Druids?”
“No, witches, I think.” I looked down at the horse, remembering the story.
“It was, what, a thousand years ago? The lowlands were being terrorised by a herd of horses that ate human flesh. The warriors gathered together and managed to kill all but one, the stallion. The beast was enormous, pure white, and no fighter in the land could bring him down. Eventually a witch, I forget her name now, sold the warriors a spell to defeat him. The second bravest of them scattered meat beneath a tree and waited in the branches until the stallion came to feed. When the horse was eating, the warrior leapt onto his back and, saying the words of the spell, rode him into the hillside where the Chalk captured him and turned him into the carving you see now.”
“The second bravest?” said Belis. “Why the second bravest? Why not send the bravest?”
“The bravest warrior was the meat,” I said.
She blinked at that. I let her stare at the horse a little longer before clearing my throat.
“The White Horse marks the next stage of our journey,” I said. “From here we turn north, head for Glevum and the River Severn.”
“How far is it?”
“To the Severn or to Caer Sidi?”
“Both.”
I thought about it, picturing in my mind the lands we had to travel.
“If we maintain my current pace we should reach the banks of the Severn in three days’ time. Then another two weeks travelling through Silurian territory.”
Belis flexed her fingers, then balled them into fists. I could see the tension running through her like a vein of tin ore through granite. She set her jaw, making a decision.
“So far to go. We need to make better time. Come on,” she said, striding off down the hill.
So brusque still, I thought, as I gingerly followed her, taking small, tentative steps. Walking down slopes, especially those as steep as these, was tricky and Belis was forced to wait for me at the bottom. She was looking up at the horse as it gleamed in the sun.
“Someday I’d like to bring Cati here,” she said, half to herself. “She would like it, I think. I might keep that story to myself, though.”
I gave a noncommittal mumble of agreement. It was the first time she had mentioned her sister in five days. She sniffed and set off again.