Ordeal of the Dragon

By W. B. Baker

In this time of Harry Potter mania and its associated popular magic of surface spells and incantations, it is refreshing to encounter an author with so vivid a command of the language. Indeed, the language is infused with vibrant images and metaphors that portray the people and the land in fine, lyrical writing. In a style that draws from the full, rich well of old language, the author conveys the reader into a world that appears to be, at first glance, more impressionistic than real. Wales, in all of its glory, rises in the readers imagination while capturing the heart and soul of the country. And yet, the themes and struggles are contemporary with this 21st Millennium, harking to the consciousness of all humankind. The reader stops to ponder, and then begins to remember that these enduring images come from the human soul, not constrained by any epoch or era.

These works come from an author who is providing an outstanding recognition of the United Kingdom and its life, history, and people. Literature is the vehicle, far beyond the transitory cinema of contemporary life, which provides depth for his audience. Dr. Baker challenges the reader to understand these tales for their immediate pleasures as well as for their deeper meanings. In this, he accomplishes the best that his art can and should do to mirror the human condition.

- Daniel Paul Larson, D.M.A.

Vice-President for Instruction

MVCC/State University of New York

BRILLIANT!
A Bloody Good Read!!

Douglas Neal, MRCVS

W. B. Bakers novels may well be among the finest examples of representative literature of the region. From a nation renown for dramatic warrior poets comes this authors third novel of Carmarthen, a stunning combination of narrative melded with the extraordinarily vivid imagery we have come to expect from this award-winning writer.

Ordeal Of The Dragon resumes the tale of Myrddin Emrys (Merlin) as a child in Wales, integrating exceptionally strong characters with a remarkable knowledge of superstition, myth, and religion to create a fantastic realm of murder, vengeance, and personal redemption.

A beautifully crafted and equally majestic effort.

Teresa McAlister,
Knight Ridder




Eloquent, Powerful, and Articulate

- New York

The haunting tale of a young boy and his love for a dog within which are couched the secrets of the universe. Once again, W. B. Baker reveals the wonders of Carmarthen and the whole of Britain to the World.

Priory Road, Carmarthen - Carmarthenshire, Wales

Ordeal Of The Dragon, like The Orphans Of Carmarthen and Vault Of The Griffin before it, transcends the delicate boundaries of religious and historical perceptions, compelling readers to consider and take stock of their personal interpretations of reality.

A stunning philosophical success and ideological examination, where inspirational axioms are subtly imbedded within the vibrant images and metaphors of classic gothic themes. The superbly devised religion of the Banfith Priestesses is a triumph unto itself; revealing the authors meticulous attention to detail as much as Bakers facility for conceptual ideology.

Correlations between astronomical observances, religious ceremonies, and classical Welsh mythology demonstrated in the extensive research necessary to conceive the Banfith religion does each of us Brits quite proud.

Bloomsbury - London, England

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 23, 2005
• ISBN: 9781465317810

W. B. Baker

Member of The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, the author has been recognized by the Congress of the United States of America and awarded the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal for his contributions to Literature. W. B. Baker has been honoured with inclusion in Gale (Cengage) Contemporary Authors, Who’s Who in The World, The Magistracy Medal of Honour (Order of St George), Top 100 Writers Author Laureate (Cambridge, England), and recognised with a Resolution from the Missouri Senate (United States). Enthusiastic readers in forty-one countries around the world attest to this author’s breath-taking imagery and his ability to convey the uncommon faith and courage of the British nation. “Kudos to the author for clouting our sensibilities – in an unapologetic attempt to awaken England’s devotion to a grand and goodly heritage … and his tireless service to the United Kingdom, its culture and its people.” — Royal Tunbridge Wells

Book preview

Prologue

Men are merely fleeting shadows of life, drifting across the swirling face of time.

Giselle made the statement with such a deliberate poignancy that the boy immediately committed the lyrical phrase to memory. More anecdote than poetry, and quite possibly closer to truth than fact, Emrys reasoned to himself as the witch continued on with the lesson.

To embrace authority or power within the physical world is relatively simple, if one repositions his or her principles often enough. As a result, wealth, power, and social position are very poor criterion by which one might measure the character of man. Those without all three are often the finest models of humanity; in that they have nothing to distract them from becoming the people whom they dream of being.

"Never forget that, my boy. Nor that you are looking at the world from a singular perspective: given that, no matter how one views the natural or divine, the individual remains the centre of the world he or she perceives. Your perception of the universe is yours alone, with you constantly remaining at the very heart of the world you understand."

Giselle stared directly in his eyes, "Remember that above everything else you may learn in life."

You are the very centre of what you know and understand.

The sorceress pointed to the first set of figures and traced their outline on the shutter with her first three fingers: ∫∫∫ , three squiggly lines that rose or fell in unison a finger’s width apart.

Fire: The first element. It can be created, controlled, and contained: yet may never be commanded on its path for it, alone among all the elements, ever remains alive.

The sorceress counted each attribute with her fingers; assigned to make their memorisation easier, he supposed. Then she walked to the next window and traced the outline of the following rune with the identical three fingers: ||| , three straight vertical lines drawn down exactly the same way.

Air: Though felt, breathed, and smelled; it never can be seized or weighed.

While the boy repeated the simple phrase, the sorceress stepped to the side door, shut it and traced her three still-extended fingers along the marks upon its boards, ≡ , three straight horizontal lines.

Earth: whether scorched from fire, baked by the sun, or frozen by the bitter cold: it always brings forth life.

Giselle drew three wavy horizontal lines next, F :

Water: It is forever without form, and though tasteless and colourless: it is without cost and yet forever priceless.

Lastly, the witch traced three concentric circles with her fingers, Image4615.TIF .

Spirit: like fire, one may never command its path; like air, it cannot be weighed; like earth, it contains the will of life; and like water, it remains free, yet forever precious.

Everything in life may be accorded thus, in that all things must either bond or blend with the elements from which they spring.

As for you, the priestess smiled and pointed a bony finger directly at the boy. "You make fire, but cannot instruct it; breathe but cannot catch the breeze, live within the earth but do not order it to grow, wade in water but cannot halt its waves, and know not the unknown abyss into which you fall in death."

The world and all its parts behave according to their nature. Thus, anyone who comprehends the properties of any object can harness its qualities to one’s benefit.

The ancient Banfáith witch took one long last gulp from her mug of disgusting lukewarm brew and dumped the clumps of brownish residue on the ground outside the open window.

Let me show you something.

Giselle crossed to the large bench in the centre of the room. It had been positioned parallel to the tanning vat and, like every other horizontal board in the dwelling, was stacked with an assortment of dusty objects. She reached over and retrieved an empty bowl, dipped it into an open barrel of water, and then set it down upon the bench.

Which way is north?

Emrys hesitated: curious, but uncertain as to what the witch was trying to prove.

There. He pointed in the general direction.

What makes you so certain? Giselle continued, as she pulled the cork out of a piece of Roman crockery.

The stars always point to the north at night, and each day the sun travels from east to west crosswise from north to south.

Familiar and expected, the woman replied. Nevertheless, when clouds obscure the sky or fog of night consumes the atmosphere, north remains exactly where it lies; whether you are able to point it out or not.

Emrys stood silent, waiting for her point.

Giselle retrieved a nail from off the table and plunged it sideways through the cork, placing it in the centre of the bowl. As Emrys watched, the cork slowly swivelled on the surface of the liquid until the spiked end of the nail pointed precisely to where he knew north to be. The boy’s eyes grew wide in astonishment as he leaned over the bowl of water.

Magic? he asked.

No. A trick, she whispered. A nail like any other.

Except, she paused and raised her index finger, Except this particular nail was whet across a lodestone almost a thousand times, revealing the properties that lay hidden within the iron; properties that lie within each and every piece of iron if similarly applied.

The boy looked intently at the nail, reached in and turned it on its axis and then watched it slowly right itself to point true north once more.

People are the same, my boy.

All humanity possesses hidden attributes and abilities that may only be revealed by time and patience. Some are recognised by chance, some are products of a lifetime of being whet against folly or adversity, and most are simply pondered and forgotten: noticed in only that they hold something grander together or support something the majority of people cannot ever hope to see.

Emrys looked at the old woman intently, not missing the lesson in philosophy, then gazed back at the swimming piece of steel. Giselle reached down, pulled the nail from the cork and handed it to the boy.

Keep it.

He rolled it over and over in his palm with his finger. Perhaps the village of Carmarthen had been wrong about Giselle. Maybe the wrinkled old woman was not a witch at all, in that the tottering dowager might have been simply misunderstood: shunned for her intolerance of the mediocre or ordinary.

Giselle seemed so very unlike what others reported witches to be: vindictive, cruel, and malicious. This old woman appeared to be the grandmother every young boy wished he might have, not at all like Aoife, the legendary witch of Lir. Reported to have been the evil step-mother of her sister’s children, Aoife placed a spell on them which transformed them into swans, then cursed them to roam the earth for nine hundred years. A true wizard, she met her comeuppance when Bodh Dearg, the ruler of the gods, transformed her into a witch of the air, and doomed the old hag to sweep the winds until the end of time.

Emrys happened to glance across the room and noticed a blackened, well-worn broom leaning against the drooping shoulder of the stone fireplace. Perhaps, he thought to himself, he might do well to hold off before rushing to make any final decisions.

You will do well to always bear in mind that things are seldom, and even quite rarely, as simple or as evident as they appear. The secrets of the universe can as clearly be found in the corner of your garden as well as they might be sought out within the farthermost of unexplored kingdoms or realms: a fact of life that very nearly everyone fails to appreciate. The difficulty most people have is that they accept the familiar as trivial, and tend to regard the unknown as mystical or fantastic.

Almost as an afterthought, the old witch added, It is a glaring flaw of humankind.

The lad’s memory being what it was, he found no difficulty in following her lectures and the intermittent sermons that the sorceress often interjected between seemingly unrelated ideas. Her tutelage was, nonetheless, much different than he had supposed. Emrys imagined that the pair would have spent the long hours of the night hunkered over thick, secret volumes of sorcery. Instead, Giselle revealed the magic of the commonplace and, usually, during the gleaming light of day.

Irrespective of their posturing and arrogance, humanity remains, in most respects, the lowest component of creation.

Humans are the neediest of creatures, in that they seem to always require rescuing from life or from their fellow man. Mankind is, likewise, a most condescending beast; in that, for the moment, his breed is master of the world, with their present existence inking the courses of their distant future. Yet, for all humanity’s greatness, the creator or creators cannot turn their collective backs on mankind for an instant: afraid that he might either destroy himself, his fellows, or the universe; which, by any amount of reasoning, took a great deal of time, attention, and imagination to create.

Emrys never failed to be impressed with Giselle’s detached viewpoint, in that the prophetess appeared to glimpse the world and each of its parts from a singularly objective perspective. It was though the old woman could somehow step outside the bands of time and survey the landscape of creation from high above the daily grind or fray.

Remember the obvious, not only the obscure. the witch continued.

Your eyes are both on one side of your head for a reason. They only allow a person to view what is directly in front and not behind. Even turning around, one may only view half the world at best. So it is within your thoughts. A person can never pretend to see more than what one’s perspective offers.

The old woman stepped up close and held a fist up to the small boy’s face. What do you see?

A set of knuckles? He smiled weakly. The witch found his impertinence not the least bit funny.

A warning or a threat? Emrys answered warily.

Strange, Giselle responded with a smile. I see a thumb. A gift. The promise of the scent of summer. The witch slowly rotated her closed fist around to reveal the petals of a small purple flower protruding from underneath her fingers.

The boy carefully pinched the stem between his fingers and took the tiny flower from her palm.

So it is with life. Never presume that your single perspective affords the finest or only interpretation of the world. Each person sees the world through a different set of eyes, all of which have been jaded from an individual point of view. Clarity is the only path to inner peace, not outbursts of emotion, conquests, or even knowledge of the world. Remember that every person and thing is on its way to somewhere, and that you may only view it briefly on its path to what it must ultimately become.

Giselle carefully lowered her weight on feeble knees and sat down beside the lad upon the single shaky bench that sat before the hearth. She picked up a stick and started poking its tip between the glowing embers. After a moment of silence, she slowly extended her arm in front of him and held her left fist in front of the small boy’s face once more, deliberately sticking out her thumb.

There are no direct routes to wisdom. While humanity is always searching for shorter or less thorny paths to knowledge, they miss the point that none can exist on the way to understanding. Therein lies the difference. Any individual can memorise remedies or solutions to specific problems. Wisdom comes from understanding what questions initiated the need for answers in the first place. Outcomes are only important when one ultimately uncovers their inspiration. With wisdom comes the realisation that every obstacle overcome only presents each of us with a more difficult question. And, if that were not difficult enough, the earth itself defines the limitations of mankind’s allotted span of time to search, as well as confining his perception of how to phrase his questions.

Waiting for a moment to make sure Emrys understood, the witch stuck out her index finger as well. She licked it, held it up to find a trace of breeze, and then held her thumb and finger open so the boy might see.

As sounds may only reach your ears upon the air, seek the song of the world that you alone can hear and understand: a melody that rises up from behind your heart and bursts from your lungs alone toward the sky. A melody which none but you can hear or dare to comprehend, a song that rings with the sound of eternity. The natural and supernatural worlds tune against each other in a constantly changing harmony and only the individual who can perceive the beauty and intricacies of both may live within and contribute to the melody of the universe.

Giselle unfolded her middle finger as well and continued on.

Ambition is symbolised by the one element that is entirely wicked or benevolent depending on the perspective of the observer. Fire, of all the elements, is incessantly alive: devouring friend and foe in an all-consuming flame; reducing to blackened cinders all those who block its path. So, too, ambition will destroy one’s world in its struggle to stay alive, consuming everything of significance to perpetuate its flame. In its battles with greed, power, and lust, humanity often fails to recognise that when ambition incinerates all available fuel, it eventually turns and burns alive the soul that set it free.

Emrys stared into the dying fire.

Conversely, as fierce as fire may be, it is, perhaps, the finest servant of mankind. It warms and welds, and wields the goodness of his soul. Properly employed, fire burns away the dross of all humanity, searing from the earth the useless refuse of civilisation: scalding and scorching back the rotten decay to make room for finer things.

Likewise, the character of man possesses equal power to create or destroy. Wise men understand this potentiality: that humans alone in all creation possess an equal inherent aptitude for good or ill. Within each and every upright soul lies an equal capacity for malevolence. Only one’s understanding of himself and the universe determines whether his existence either cauterises or chars the world.

Giselle unfolded all but her smallest finger and wiped the beads of sweat from off her brow. Without smearing the water from her hand, she showed her dampened fingers to the boy.

Just as digging the soil deeply enough brings water from the ground, recognise that humanity is, regardless of what you have been taught, the only source of evil in the world. The choices men and women make each passing day either free or ensnare their souls.

Unsheathe a sword and slash with all your might against the water in a well. Flail against its surface until the end of time. It remains exactly the same after your assault, for it cannot be severed or slain. With time, one realises that evil is ultimately the same, and not an entity that can be destroyed; nor can it ever be separated from humanity. Wickedness is an innate flaw that will always lurk within the essence of mankind: a necessary obstacle to goodness, they both spring from the very same fountain of the human soul.

Giselle started poking in the coals again, but left her other arm in front of the child’s face with four fingers extended.

Emrys knew that she must unfold the last finger sometime and make her final point. He waited for it, but the sorceress kept stabbing the dying logs, ignoring the boy. She was deliberately not telling him, a realisation that only made him all the more impatient.

His resistance finally gave out. What about the last one? the boy pointed to the still closed fourth finger on her hand.

Patience, my boy, Giselle grinned.

The priestess realised that the boy misunderstood and missed her little joke. "No, the answer is patience."

The eternal struggle of humanity is to define itself against and within the universe. The patient appreciate with time that mankind’s reach will always exceed their grasp; able to touch much more than the breadth of their reach may ever hold: to witness far more of the universe than one may ever understand.

Remember this well, my boy, Giselle halved the distance between their faces and stared directly into his eyes.

The race of life is never won by the strongest, most clever, or even the quickest. At the end of the day, the prize is bestowed upon the individual who realises that the race, ultimately, does not exist: that humanity is merely dropped by birth somewhere within the ever-turning wheel of time, to be ultimately forgotten and disappear. With this recognition comes the understanding that the more one comprehends the world, the less, by necessity and all logic, man must eventually understand.

Emrys sat in front of the fire in complete silence, considering everything the ancient woman had told him. The glare of the dying fire reflected from the bronze medallion hanging from her neck and brought back the riddle of the artefact to his mind. The lad could see the relationship of the five elements to the ancient talisman, but still did not understand the symbolism of the elaborate markings.

Seeing the child’s problem, Giselle tied the final strands of ideology together.

The three concentric circles do more than merely separate the marks, they represent the human soul: symbolising the physical, mental, and spiritual realities of mankind. The more one dedicates his life to any one, the less he is capable of mastering the remaining two. Ultimate victory in the race of life, therefore, comes to the one who realises the circles never end and never intersect: that there is, and was in fact, never a race at all.

What of the hole in the very centre? Emrys asked. Why a hole at all?

Giselle smiled weakly.

When you find the missing fragment that fills the emptiness, . . . then you will know.

* * *

Chapter One

Droplets of dew had frozen to the tips of autumn leaves, forcing the multicoloured sails of every tree to dip toward the ground. They rattled against each other like thousands of tiny, flattened shells as the breeze rustled up and across the fields from the sea. After several seasons of complete silence, it seemed each leaf had much to say, for the clatters of their pattering raced through the glen faster than lightning across a bleak, midnight sky.

This was it: perhaps the most glorious day of the entire season. Foliage upon the mountains lit the fields on fire with every colour; while far below, the valley floor rippled like a tranquil pool of green. The air was brisk, but not too cold; the kind of morning that proclaimed the promise of an even more glorious afternoon. Boy and dog stealthily made their way through the carpet of turf and sodden leaves that lay strewn about underneath the multi-coloured canopy, the air apparently not quite cold enough to crisp the fallen soldiers of the trees.

Squirrels were everywhere. Kits, barely old enough to venture from their leafy castles in the limbs, scooted across the path and played tag around broad, gnarled trunks of thick ancient oaks. Their parents scampered back and forth with acorns in their jaws, happily burying the bounty in some unseen pattern so that only they might retrieve them when the larder called. All the while, scarcely above Emrys’ head, the magpies swooped down to scissor through swirling fingers of fog—their feathers of white and black flashing prominently between the slowly disrobing boughs.

In an instant, the celebrations of the morning ceased.

The squirrels were gone before the lad had even time to notice them scurrying away, while all the birds were almost magically pulled up into the limbs with silenced melodies. A whistle rang high and clear upon the chill, its pitch catching Emrys off guard and instinctively driving his chin down toward his chest. Woof’s paws skidded to a complete stop while still in mid-stride, the dog’s small triangled ears twitching back and forth to pinpoint the origin.

Emrys’ heart skipped a beat.

For a moment, he heard the sounds of running through the underbrush, followed by another distinct piercing whistle. The fact that Woof heard it as well did not surprise the lad as much as her immediate reaction of sitting down rather than running off in the general direction of the sound to investigate.

Think it might be the Gwyllgi?

The lad froze there, motionless against the steep side of the hill, with Woof matching his pose. Neither had any interest in encountering one of the legendary creatures. Everyone along the Vale of Towy knew and talked about them, though none had ever chanced to spy one passing by. One half legend, one half superstition; the supernatural creature somehow seemed completely believable and real.

The Gwyllgi or Dog of Darkness was referred to by different names by the merchants who hit Carmarthen on their regular circuits throughout the countryside. Some called it Barghest; while others knew it as the Mauthe Doog. The kings of the underworld, Arawn and Manannan, were said to breed special hounds that were red and white or speckled in colour and served their lords as massive hunting dogs; fierce guardian gods in disguise. Regardless of their names or masters, the monstrous canines with huge, dagger-like teeth and claws were supposed to only appear at night, with anyone unlucky enough to come across the red-eyed beasts supposed to die soon after meeting them upon the track.

Black Hounds of Hell were embellished even more when the Romans reinvented their Moon Goddess, Hecate, as the protectress of witches and queen of Hades, and gave her the capability of causing sickness and riding broomsticks through the air. The shift toward the Druids’ Rhiannon was complete when the Legions insisted that the brutally wronged Hecuba of Troy was reincarnated as Hecate’s band of black bitches, which accompanied the goddess upon her lonely, moonlight patrols.

Other rumours held that the frequency of black-dog ghosts throughout the land might actually be a result of the ancient custom by which dogs were sacrificed and buried under the doorposts or walls of buildings; that their tortured souls might act as guardians of the structures. Such traditions had been long since abandoned since the departure of the Roman garrisons, but that did nothing to quench the fires of superstition they set ablaze, burning forevermore within the rampant imaginations of Carmarthen. Whatever the source, it was widely believed that the baying of unseen hounds meant disaster was coming for the unfortunate listener: with those who actually saw the unearthly creatures, flashing their massive drooling jaws and crimson stares, bound for sudden death.

As the hills had almost entirely shaken off the clinging shadows of the previous evening, Emrys tended to dismiss the Gwyllgi or otherworldly hound as the cause of the eerie sound, leaning to the legends of the Dark Hunter. Though Giselle had made it clear that she did not believe in such things, on those occasional evenings when the wind would moan through the trees, the old woman would humour the boy with ghost stories; the tales of the Dark Hunter being among his favourites.

The Dark Hunter was supposed to appear within the valley whenever wickedness raised its head and threatened the countryside. That might explain the recurring tales of how the Hunter roamed along the trails beside the Towy throughout all the decades of the Roman occupation: the soldiers stationed at the nearby garrison all far too wary to venture into the fields at night alone. The black spectre was the supernatural protector of Carmarthen, sometimes called Herne the Hunter, Cernawain, or Kernunos. So ingrained were the legends that, even almost one hundred years after the Italian occupation ended, the Druids continued to tell how they placed standing stones throughout the lanes across the valley; that the Hunter might use them as signposts to guide him on his nightly, ghostly patrols.

The apparition always appeared as a very tall man with darkened skin, carrying a huge spear and wearing a metal and leather hood adorned with a great set of stag antlers. His hounds were huge, slobbering beasts that often appeared as normal dogs that, without provocation, changed into vicious, enchanted animals; with shafts of green lightning and flames erupting from their eyes and wide, salivating mouths. Whenever the Dark Hunter walked the hills, the skies were supposed to churn against the evil men he stalked, with lightning oftentimes flashing through the clouds to direct him on his way. On any given night there could be only a single Wild Hunt, the pack of hounds and Dark Hunter believed to fight to the death against the enemies of Carmarthen. Truly supernatural heroes, in the event that any of the pack might be killed in the course of battle, superstition proclaimed that they would reappear alive the very next evening, returning to the battle each stormy night until the entire glen and its inhabitants were saved.

The boy’s imagination clawed its way back to reality.

The morning sun was already running its fingers through the hairline of saplings that stood between the meadow and the whiskered shock of sprouts that marked the mountain’s face. Its defiant glares lashed the shadows back into their cracks and holes, and relieved the lad of any fear that the apparitions of the night might dare attempt to invade the day. Even if the hounds of hell dared to stamp through the shadows of the glen by night, no creature of the underworld dared to challenge the power of the sun. Besides, Emrys had a hunch that any monstrous black dogs that might prowl the countryside by night were, more than likely, the descendants of the Roman war dogs or mastiffs, left to fend for themselves when their masters retreated back all those years ago to sunnier southern climes.

That being the logical assumption, Emrys had a pretty good idea from whence the piercing whistle came.

* * *

The rut had begun.

As if by some prearranged signal, antlers along the length of the valley began to whack against the brittle underbrush. First in front and to the left, then directly behind the pair: the preparations for battle began in earnest hidden back within the trees. All bucks, which had spent the year silently gliding through the shadows, now crashed noisily through the woods and slashed their antlers against the bracken.

Emrys recognised the clanging commotion and watched as Woof’s ears pivoted front to back to catch the sounds of felt being beaten and stripped off bone. Over the ridge, rattles of antlers clacked against branches of yews, ripping off the itching velvet to reveal formidable weapons of ivory. All along the ridge, countless racks of bloody daggers would dry quickly in the morning breeze, with every owner perfectly prepared to plunge their points into any buck amidst the herd of does. It was the grandest battle of the glen, an annual contest of strength and skill rewarded by the ever-growing harem of deer.

Young males only displayed single nubs, while masters of the forest sported impressive spans of fingered points that signalled their dominion within the herd. Emrys had found a discarded antler last spring, for the males dropped their incredible weight immediately after the mating season. Boys of Carmarthen sometimes ventured into the edges of the shadowed undergrowth to search for the whitened prizes; men paying them in coin to use their tips on walking sticks and canes. Upon finding the truly impressive rack, Emrys fashioned a walking stick topped with a thick and knobbly beam and burr: a sturdy staff to lean upon when crossing through the muddy fields, the bony bat doubled as a formidable weapon to fend off the occasional ill-tempered badger.

The seemingly universal attraction of men to incorporate the animals’ antlers, skins, or hooves into every aspect of life was far from simply functional. Deer had always been considered magical creatures, and their antlers were symbolic of powerful life force. Horned deer were animal archetypes of the Horned God, Hu Gadarn, or the Roman deity, Cernunnos. Witches and wizards preferred parchment made of deerskin for their letter amulets, while the Druids embraced the ancient superstition that deer often conveyed men’s souls to the Otherworld. Stags were widely considered some of the most common animals used by their gods, used frequently as messengers and as disguises to lead hunters to magical places deep within the glens or lonely ravines.

The bellowed whistle was followed by a profound crash that ricocheted off a nearby stand of trees. A titanic battle was being set in array further on up the mountain, and the lad was keen to watch the fray unfold.

Let’s go watch.

Emrys whispered the proposal as softly as he could and, though he tried to make the suggestion sound like a command, the proposition came out sounding less convincing than he had hoped.

Woof was not as keen, having had an experience with an angry buck the previous year. Only her nimble footwork had kept the pup from being unceremoniously run through and she had absolutely no intention of tempting fate again. More than content to stay safely where she sat, the boy ignored her murmured cautions and, after petting and making a fuss of scratching the pup’s head profusely, made his way alone up the grade toward the sounds of battle.

* * *

The contest was being staged in a clearing just below an open ridge, where the combatants could easily manoeuvre, free of bracken and briars. A glance conveyed that the fight was going to be far from fair; a mismatch of sizes that only a fit of anger or total desperation might ignore. Standing with its back toward the boy stood the most impressive specimen of its kind Emrys had ever seen. A heavily muscled chest held high a massive snorting head, whose plumed blasts of foggy breath grumbled up into the tumbling breeze.

With a rack of antlers twice its breadth, the champion pawed and scraped the sod with sharp, chiselled hooves. Powerful flanks rippled under the gleaming red hide, driving the majestic animal forward into the air. It stamped its challenge upon the rocky field, whistled, and waited for a reply.

Across the clearing answered a bellow that caused the boy to drop his jaw. Low limbs cracked sideways and the thorny hedge of bushes collapsed in splintered bits onto the ground. Out of the undergrowth stepped the largest, most magnificent stag Emrys had ever seen. The first challenger was apparently caught off-guard as well; taking two small steps back in what could have been nothing less than amazement. Its senses had not prepared the buck for so worthy an adversary.

The hart stepped through the branches rather than under them, looking every bit as tall as a full-grown horse. Resplendent, the animal exuded total confidence in his air of invincibility. His chest was two times the size of the pale contender to his throne. Indeed, his entire frame was full double in length and girth. Every muscle could be seen twitching under a magnificent pelt of mottled auburn, with hooves that seemed to strike sparks from the broken stones under their blows. From an open mouth, its tongue rolled out to the side, clearing a path for the immense lungs to suck the air. Though fully forty strides away, and still partially concealed by straining bushes, Emrys could clearly hear the creature’s heavy breaths.

Discounting the dragon and griffin under the mountain, the child had never seen so majestic