The Way of Wyrd by Brian Bates Read Free Book Online Page A

imagination—but when the moon re-emerged, he was still sitting motionless against the rock.
    I considered skirting the area by creeping down the hill, along the perimeter of the woods and rejoining the path well beyond the sleeping figure. But weariness gave me courage and I now felt certain that I had to contend with one man only. I unstrapped my knife and drew it from the belt-sheath; it felt heavy and cumbersome. Transferring it to my right hand, I crept cautiously to within ten paces of the motionless figure, hoping to slip by without waking him.
    Then my heart stopped for the man looked up slowly, as if he had been aware of my presence all along, his face hidden in moon-shadow cast by a floppy, wide-brimmed hat.
    He rose smoothly to his feet and glided towards me, walking with a cat-like lightness and balance. I tightened my grip on the knife, but he stopped a few paces away from me, tipped back his hat and looked at me quizzically.
    ‘May I ask who you are, walking by moonlight over the graves of giants?’
    His voice, heavy with Saxon dialect, hung in the night air.
    ‘I am Wat Brand, freeman of Mercia,’ I answered, as boldly as I could manage. ‘I am journeying in these lands under the protection of your King.’
    With a dramatic flourish the stranger swept off his hat and bowed deeply; for a moment I thought he was mocking me, but then he straightened up and smiled broadly.
    ‘I am called Wulf. I am your guide. May I be of service?’
    I stared at him in astonishment.
    ‘Are you the guide appointed by the King?’ I asked, incredulous.
    ‘The King requested my services,’ he replied and proffered his hand in greeting; hurriedly I sheathed my knife and gripped his hand in response. He looked directly into my eyes with a gaze remarkably penetrating, yet open and friendly. Indeed, his whole appearance was very striking. In the moonlight his beard and shoulder-length hair glowed gold above the clothes of a traveller: long, faded blue cloak, light-coloured tunic and leggings and strong boots laced to the calves. His face, dominated by large, wide-set eyes and strong nose, was given a strangely melancholy expression by long, sloping eyebrows.
    ‘Why are you travelling by night?’ he asked pointedly. ‘Why not rest until daybreak?’
    ‘Why were you not on the beach to meet me?’ I retorted defensively. I did not wish to describe my forest nightmare, for I felt such a story would sound absurd.
    ‘My apologies,’ he said immediately, apparently contrite. ‘I had business elsewhere and was delayed.’
    He was watching me very closely and I had the uneasy feeling that he was looking for tell-tale signs of my ordeal.
    ‘There is no point in journeying further tonight, now that we have met. Let us rest together under the trees,’ he said, smiling disarmingly.
    Reluctantly I nodded my acquiescence, anxious to conceal my fear of the forest.
    Wulf collected his bag and strode fleet-footed down the hill, his cloak flapping around him like a raven’s wings. I scrambled after him, wincing with pain from the ankle and feeling the grip of fear tighten around my throat as we padded into the dark confines of the forest. Barely a hundred paces into the shadows, Wulf stopped in a small clearing crushed from the undergrowth by a fallen oak, lying huge and moss-covered like a toppled, long-dead giant.
    ‘Rest yourself,’ he said, sweeping off his hat again and gesturing towards the tree as if he were greeting me as a guest in his house.
    Watching him warily, I stepped over the branches and sat with my back against a clear area of trunk while my guide bustled around, collecting kindling and piling it in the middle of the clearing I noticed that the ground was black from previous fires; obviously Wulf was already familiar with this area of the forest.
    He hunched over the kindling, sparked flame from flint and iron and expertly coaxed the fire to a full blaze. Then he sat next to me, so close that we were almost touching,