Chapter 2: The Road of Bones

The rain was a constant, miserable presence, a grey veil that blurred the edges of the world and turned the old Roman road into a ribbon of sucking mud. Cynfael walked with his hood pulled low, the ring on his finger a dull, warm throb against his cold skin. Cadfan rode ahead, a silent silhouette on a shaggy pony, his spear held loosely, his eyes scanning the treeline. Behind them, the six men of Cynfael’s warband followed, their shields slung on their backs, their breath misting in the chill air. They were young, mostly, with the hard-eyed look of men who had already buried friends.

They had left the hillfort of their fathers at dawn, a place of tumbled stone and defiant oaks, to answer a summons that had come not by horn or rider, but by a dream that had left Cynfael gasping for air in the dead of night. The dream had been of fire, and of a spear of light thrusting into a dark tide, and a voice that was the rumble of the earth itself, saying, *Badon. You are needed.*

He did not understand it. He was a warband leader, the heir to a crumbling fortalice that had not seen a Roman soldier in sixty years. His father, Bryn, had held the hill against the Irish raiders and the occasional Saxon slave-taker, but he had been a man of iron and cattle, not of visions. The gift, if it could be called that, had come to Cynfael on the night his father died, when the old man’s spirit had slipped away and the land had seemed to shudder, and Cynfael had seen, for a single, terrible moment, the faces of a thousand dead kings staring back at him from the fire-pit.

He touched the ring again. It was a plain band of dark iron, set with a chip of blood-red garnet, and he had found it in the ashes of his father’s pyre, unmelting, unsullied. It had felt like a command.

Cadfan reined in his pony, letting it blow. The man was old, his face a map of scars, his hair a shock of iron-grey, and he had served Cynfael’s father before him. He was a man of few words, and when he spoke, it was with the weight of stone.

“We cross the river at the old ford,” he said, pointing east. “Then we cut north, through the forest of the Silures. We’ll make for the hillfort of Caer Gwent by nightfall. They are loyal to the High King’s cause.”

“The High King?” Cynfael asked, the words tasting strange in his mouth. “Arthur wears no crown, Cadfan. He is a war-leader, a *dux bellorum*, chosen by the kings of the west.”

Cadfan’s eyes, the colour of slate, held his. “He wears no crown of gold,” the old man said slowly. “But the land has crowned him. I have seen it in the mist over the Tor, and in the flight of the crows. And you, boy, have felt it in your blood. That is why we ride.”

They pushed on, the rain easing to a thin drizzle as the land began to rise. The forest closed in around them, a tangle of ancient oaks and thorn, the path barely a goat-track. The air was thick with the smell of wet leaf-mould and something older, something that made the hairs on Cynfael’s arms stand on end. He began to hear whispers, soft and sibilant, just at the edge of hearing. They were not words, not quite, but the sound of roots growing and stones settling, and beneath it, a faint, rhythmic beating, like a heart buried in the hillside.

He stopped, his hand going to the hilt of his sword. The warband halted behind him, their eyes widening.

“Did you hear that?” he asked.

His second, a broad-shouldered man named Einion, shook his head. “I heard nothing, lord. Only the wind.”

But Cadfan had dismounted, his face pale. He knelt, placing a gnarled hand on the earth. He was whispering, too low for Cynfael to catch, and the rhythm of the heart-beat seemed to quicken in response.

“The old ones are waking,” Cadfan said, his voice barely a breath. He looked up at Cynfael, and for the first time, there was fear in his eyes. “He is here. In this wood. The Saxon’s shadow.”

Cynfael felt a cold dread slide down his spine. “The Saxon? Aelle?”

“Aelle is a man, and men can be fought with steel,” Cadfan said, rising stiffly. “This is something else. A raven with a woman’s face. A tree that walks. The druids have called forth a thing from beneath the mound of the Old People. It hunts the land, and it is hunting you.”

As if in answer, the whispers swelled. Cynfael saw them then, between the trees. Shapes that were not quite trees, their bark-dark limbs bending at impossible angles, their eyes like knots of fire in the gloom. They were moving, slowly, inexorably, cutting off the path ahead.

“Form a shield wall!” Cynfael shouted, drawing his sword. The blade was his father’s, a long, straight spatha of good Roman steel, and it sang as it left the scabbard. His men obeyed, their shields locking into a solid line, their spears levelled at the advancing shapes.

But Cynfael did not raise his shield. He felt the ring on his finger grow hot, almost searing, and the whispers resolved into a single, desperate cry. It was a voice of the land, ancient and agonized, and it was calling to him. *Push them back. Push them back into the dark. Use what I have given you.*

He did not understand. He was no sorcerer. But as the first of the tree-creatures lunged, its branch-like arm sweeping toward him, he raised his father’s blade, and the iron sang a note that was not of this world. A shimmer of pale light ran along the edge of the sword, and when it struck the creature’s limb, the wood did not resist the steel. It burst into a shower of black, writhing splinters, and the thing shrieked with a sound like tearing bark and fell, writhing, to the ground.

The other shapes paused, their fiery eyes fixed on Cynfael. He felt the power in his arm, in his blood, surging like a river in flood. He took a step forward.

“You will not have this land,” he said, his voice not his own, deeper, older. “You will not have these souls. The sons of Prydein stand, and the dead are with us.”

The creature’s mouth, a split in the bark, opened. It spoke, in a rasping, bone-dry voice. “The son of the hill, the speaker to the dead. You are too late, little king. The spear has been stained, and the shadow is already moving. Aelle marches, and the sea itself will not wash away what is coming. Badon will drown in blood, and your Arthur will be nothing but a memory.”

Then, as quickly as they had come, the shapes dissolved back into the trees, leaving only the dripping forest and a silence that was louder than any scream.

Cynfael stood, his sword trembling in his hand, the light fading from the blade. He could smell smoke now, faint but unmistakable, and hear the distant, panicked lowing of cattle. The creature’s words echoed in his skull.

Cadfan was staring at him, his face unreadable. “The land has chosen,” the old man whispered. “But the choosing is only the beginning. The price is yet to come.”

Cynfael looked down at his hands. The ring was cool now, but he could feel the pulse of it, deeper than his own heartbeat, and he knew, with a sudden, chilling certainty, that Cadfan was right. He had woken something, and it would not be easily put back to sleep. He sheathed his sword, turned his face to the east, and walked on toward the waiting dark, with the smoke of a burning village on the wind and the name of Badon, heavy as a curse, on his tongue.