'Welcome, travellers. You have no need of your weapons here.'
It was as if a great load had slipped from Michael's back. He sheathed the Ulfberht. Cat hesitated, then replaced her arrow in its quiver, though her face remained tight with suspicion.
'I am Brother Nennian, 'the man said. 'I have little enough here to offer you, but what I have is yours.'
Water sprang into Michael's mouth at the thought of the goats and the chickens. He felt like a rude savage, a barbarian at the dinner table.
'Thank you,' he said with what gruff grace he could muster. 'We've come a long way.'
SEVENTEEN
BROTHER NENNIAN HAD a more substantial building farther back in the trees, a long low hut which Michael would have to stoop to enter. A fine rain had begun, misting up the wood and starting a distant thunder as it hit the trees. They saw to the horses first, unsaddling. and rubbing them down whilst the Brother silently ladled out what seemed to be a good half-peck of barley grain for them.
Brother Nennian's living hut was not much different to many Michael had seen the tribes construct, but it was cleaner and airier, due partly to the innovation of windows cut in the turf and mud of the walls and glazed with animal stomachs stretched thin. Firewood occupied one corner, a pile of goatskins another and a well-built wooden table a third, with the inevitable cross standing there. In the middle of the place was a sunken hearth in which coals gleamed red and around it were various utensils, including a surprising number made of bronze, Michael noted, and earthenware vessels of one sort or another. It was dark, stuffy, smoky, smelling of old food and old fires, but the hard earth floor had been swept bare except for the ubiquitous tree roots poking up through it, and none of the vermin usual among the tribe's huts seemed to be in evidence. Michael hoped that he and Cat had not brought too many of their own with them. The warmth was making them more active already.
Cat sat with that green glow in her eyes, her quiver on her back and her face as still as stone. She kept her gaze averted from the cross on the low table, and eyed the clay pots around the fire with a mixture of longing and apprehension.
The Brother deftly resurrected the fire and set a heavy bronze pot on to warm, stirring the contents. The flames lit his face from below, making it at once cherubic and daemonic. Michael could hear the sound of rain on the roof, heavy now, pattering against the cloudy windows.
'Goat stew,' Brother Nennian said suddenly. 'You arrive at a good time. Usually it is porridge, or cheese and bannock, but one of my charges died yesterday and thus she makes her contribution.'
'Was it goblins?' Michael reached into a pocket and brought out the bell, black with dried blood.
Brother Nennian paused. 'That would have been Meif. She was always a one for straying. Yes, the grymyrch like to prowl the borders of the sanctuary in the hope of a stray. They have been busy these past few weeks. Something in the wood has agitated them. But do not be afraid. We are safe here.'
'We were not afraid,' Cat said coolly.
Brother Nennian smiled. 'I believe you, child. Anyone who has come as far as you must needs have rope in place of nerves.'
'Anyone who lives alone in the depths of the Wolfweald is not short on them either,' Michael said, making it into a question of sorts.
The Brother inclined his head slightly and stirred the steaming pot.
'We each have our own way of getting by. Me, I have my faith. You, I think,' he said, speaking to Cat, 'Have something else. Another blood in your veins, perhaps. It does not make us so very different, believe me.'
'It makes us enemies,' Cat said. Her ears poked through the black hair and her eyes were felinebright. She looked hardly human. With a sense of shock, Michael realized that he had become accustomed to her appearance. Only now, seeing the quiet, ordinary-looking man stirring his stew, did he grasp how truly strange she appeared.
'I have made you welcome in my home, though I could smell the Wyrim blood in you. Do I not rate some trust in return?' Nennian asked.
'Folk such as you have been persecuting the tribes and the Wyrim for centuries. You think we can easily throw that aside?'
'Cat—' Michael began, but she ignored him.
'We are the Folk of the Forest. What does that make us in your eyes? Even the water of the forest you taint. I can smell what you call the holiness of this place, the thing that keeps the beasts at bay. It does not keep me at bay, holy man, for I am half human, a changeling, and my soul is already forfeit.'
Brother Nennian stared at Cat out of his round face, the humour gone; in its place was something like sadness.
'Child, we three are a mere spark in the darkness of this wood. It would crush us if it could. I see something in you both that should not be there. Maybe it has preserved you thus far, but be careful that in the end it does not destroy you.'