The High King: Chapters 7–9

In the larder which had become a prison, Gurgi was first to hear the shouts of alarm. Though muffled by the heavy walls, the cries brought him to his feet before the other companions were aware of the tumult beyond their cell.

Exhausted from their efforts, they dozed fitfully by turns; hoping only to sell their lives dearly when the guards at last came for them.

Before smoke filled his eyes again, Taran caught a fleeting glimpse of the furious Smoit, armed with a huge scythe and laying about him like a bear turned harvester.

Flinging aside the hoe which, until then, had served him as a weapon, Coll threw his bulk against the press of swordsmen besetting Fflewddur Fflam.

Taran leaped into the fray, striking left and right with telling blows.

Fflewddur had come up with Llyan loping at his heels.

“Gwystyl has promised to do all in his power to gain help from the Fair Folk,” Gwydion went on. “King Eiddileg has no great fondness for the race of men. Yet even he must see that Arawn’s victory would blight all Prydain...."

King Smoit, girded for battle, set out from the castle, and with him went Lord Gast and Lord Goryon, who had learned belatedly of the attack on their king and now hastened to join him.

That same morning a gnarled, gray-headed farmer strode up to Taran in the castle courtyard.

Though it was the bird’s pleasure, aloft, to revel in the limitless reaches of the sky, to swoop and soar above the white sheep flocks of clouds, he now put aside all temptation to sport with the wind and held steadily to his course.

Far below, Avren glinted like a long trickle of molten silver; fallow fields spread in patches; the treetops rose black and leafless, broken by dark green stretches of pine forest following the curves of the hills.

At closer range, he saw them to be Huntsmen of Annuvin. For a time he followed them and, when they halted amid the scrub and stunted trees, flapped to a low branch and settled there.

The gwythaints’ screams of triumph ripped the empty sky. The crow suddenly checked his flight, feigning confusion.

Stiffly he launched himself from the tree and flapped his way aloft. Southward, Caer Cadarn lay beyond the reach of his ebbing strength. He must decide quickly, while life still remained to him.

A secret sense, like some hidden memory he shared with all the forest creatures of Prydain, had guided him unerringly; and the crow understood he had come at last into the abode of Medwyn.

“I hope you do not follow his example,” Medwyn added. “I have already heard much of your bravery and—a certain bent, shall we say, for boisterousness?..."

"...As for you, I judge you and the gwythaints have been at close quarters. Have a care. Many of Arawn’s messengers rove aloft these days. But you are safe now, and will soon be up and winging.”

Medwyn turned to the eagle. “You, Edyrnion, fly swiftly to the mountain eyries of your kindred. Bid them rise up in all their strength and all their numbers...."

They forded while frozen splinters cut at the legs of their horses, and wended through the bleak Hill Cantrevs, pressing eastward toward the Free Commots.

“I have seen pitchforks and hay-rakes among the Commot Folk. Could not the tines be cut off and set in wooden shafts? Thus would you gain three, four, and even more weapons where you had only one to begin with.”

While each day Taran rallied followers in greater numbers, Coll, Gurgi, and Eilonwy helped load carts with gear and provisions, a task by no means to the liking of the Princess, who was more eager to gallop from one Commot to the next than she was to plod beside the heavy-laden wagons.

Her warrior’s garb was ill-fitting, but she took pride in it and was therefore all the more vexed when Taran refused to let her go afield.

The Princess reluctantly agreed; but next day, when Taran cantered past the horse lines at the rear of the camp, she furiously cried to him, “You’ve tricked me! These tasks will never be done! No sooner do I finish with one string of horses and carts than along come some more. Very well, I shall do as I promised. But war-leader or no, Taran of Caer Dallben, I’m not speaking to you!”

Bearing northward through the Valley of Great Avren, the companions entered Commot Gwenith and had scarcely dismounted when Taran heard a crackling voice call out, “Wanderer! I know you seek warriors, not crones. But tarry a moment and give a greeting to one who has not forgotten you.”

Bearing northward through the Valley of Great Avren, the companions entered Commot Gwenith and had scarcely dismounted when Taran heard a crackling voice call out, “Wanderer! I know you seek warriors, not crones. But tarry a moment and give a greeting to one who has not forgotten you.”

Dwyvach, the Weaver-Woman of Gwenith, stood in her cottage doorway. Despite her white hair and wizened features she looked as lively and untired as ever.

“My mother knows what a child must do and what a man must do. I am a man,” he added stoutly, “and have been one since you and I stood against Dorath and his ruffians that night in the sheepfold.”

His broad face, reddened and roughened by cold and wind, was nearly hidden by the collar of a great fleece-lined jacket. A sword belt of heavy iron links bound his girth, and at his back hung a round shield of ox hide.

It was Coll who gave him the thought, as the marshaling camps grew crowded, to send smaller, swifter bands directly to Caer Dathyl rather than march from one Commot to the next with a force becoming ever more cumbersome.

Llassar, Hevydd, and Llonio would not leave Taran’s vanguard and stayed ever close at hand; but when Taran wrapped himself in a cloak and stretched on the frozen ground for rare moments of sleep, it was Coll who stood watch over him.

“You are the oaken staff I lean on,” Taran said. “More than that.” He laughed. “You are the whole sturdy tree, and a true warrior.”
Coll, instead of beaming, looked wryly at him.

Even now, amid the tumult of warriors arming, of neighing horses and shouting riders, the white, thatched cottages of the little village seemed to stand peaceful and apart.

His heart laden with memories, he reined up at a familiar hut, whose smoking chimney betokened a warm fire within.

The door opened and out stepped a stocky, hale old man garbed in a coarse, brown robe.

The hearth light glowed on shelves and rows of pottery, of graceful wine jars, of ewers handsomely and lovingly crafted.

“Well done,” said Annlaw in a quiet voice, then added, “I have heard how smiths and weavers throughout the Commots labor to give you arms and raiment. But my wheel cannot forge a blade nor weave a warrior’s cloak, and my clay is shaped only for peaceful tasks. Alas, I can offer nothing that will serve you now.”

Though weary and drained of his strength, Taran’s heart pounded with the joy of victory as he led the exulting warriors from the forest and back toward Merin.

The former giant, busily gnawing a bone, gave Taran only a scant sign of recognition.

Soon the high fortress of Caer Dathyl rose golden in the winter sunlight. Its mighty bastions sprang up like eagles impatient for the sky.