“That smell can only mean one thing.”
Belis nodded and fished a knife from her belt. “Here, guard my back. I’ve heard they’re wicked quick when they want to be.”
I took the knife from her. It was heavy and cold in my hands, and I doubted I would be particularly successful in wielding it.
“Anything else you can tell me?” Belis muttered, moving closer to the fire.
“Don’t let it near you, they bite.”
“Great advice, Mallt,” snarled Belis as the wight emerged from the trees and lunged towards us. “Whatever would I do without you?”
The wight had been a man in life, tall and broad-shouldered, though the muscles had withered down to gristle and his skin hung loose. I could easily see his death: half of his skull had been stoved in, the bowl of his head was empty. His eyes had long since been plucked out by birds and the teeth marks of scavenging rodents patterned his face, but there was a terrible twisting rage in his decaying features.
Belis ran him through with her spear before he got within a yard of us. The wight barely paused at the blow, pulling himself along the shaft, snaggletooth jaws snapping at Belis. She kept gripping her end of the spear and levered him backwards, grabbing for her sword with her spare hand. The wight moved faster and Belis had to drop the spear before she could raise her sword. The spear slid to the ground and the wight leapt forwards, raising his arms to claw at Belis’s face. She took one hand off with a swing of the blade but the other kept coming and backhanded her across the cheekbone, knocking her to the ground.
The cold thrill of fear had rooted me to the spot, but now the wight was turning towards me. He was no larger than dozens of his kind I had faced before but now I stood alone in the woods, my hounds long vanished, my only ally still sprawling on the floor. I raised the knife, my hand shaking. Sweat coated my palm and I dropped the blade. The wight was almost on me now, the stench of rot so strong I could barely breathe.
Its remaining hand gripped my arm, dragging me forward. I stared up at its eyeless face, unable even to scream.
A bright sword appeared in the corner of my vision, sweeping the wight’s head from its shoulders. Belis stood behind it, the still snarling head of the wight in one hand. The body kept going, its hand moving to my throat. Belis dropped the head and pulled me loose, turning to slice the body into fragments.
Even as she stood over the dismembered limbs of the wight, it still twitched, trying to pull itself back together.
“Does it never die?” she asked, panting.
I was still shivering but managed to find my voice.
“Not by mortal hands. Shove it onto the fire and we can burn the body. The soul will linger, looking for another body to inhabit.”
Belis looked at me aghast. “One of ours? Can we protect ourselves?”
I shook my head. “It’s not strong enough to push out a living soul; it’ll find another body, human preferably, but I’ve seen them in dogs, lynx, horses.”
“So how is Britain not overrun with them?”
I frowned at her. “Because of me. That was one of my tasks, to keep the land free of such creatures and send the souls of the dead on. Now that I can’t do that…”
Belis paled and she looked down at the still jerking wight. “There is no one else who can do this?”
I sat down heavily and reached for a waterskin.
“There are other beings who could slay them, but they are not inclined to take on the duty of hunting all of them, nor of dealing with the menace in good time. It has been five hundred yearssince I last let a wight slip past me and harm a living human. I fear that my ability to protect has gone with my immortality.” I took a draught of water. “This is why we must get to Arawn, and fast. Wights are not the only fate that can befall a stranded soul. It is my responsibility, my purpose, to keep this land safe, to keep them safe.”
“What about Cati?” Belis said, something like panic entering her voice for the first time. “She’s an empty body. Could this wight find her?”
So typical of a mortal to think of themselves first, I thought.
“She should be safe enough with Dormath guarding her. He might be a mortal dog now but he’s still wily and fierce enough to chase anything smaller than a dragon away.”
Belis nodded and bent to push the fragments of the wight into the fire. Sleep seemed unlikely to return so I sat back on the log and watched as the remains of the wight melted into the flames, the smell of burning flesh filling the night.
Around noon on the seventh day of the Chalk I called to Belis, who had paused to grub for what she thought were onions.
“Come on up, here’s a sight you’ll not soon forget.”
She hurried up to join me where I stood, looking to where the green hills sloped down to the north. I heard the sharp gasp as she saw the great white horse carved into the chalk. It was drawn with long, smooth lines hundreds of feet high, as if some celestial being had traced the shape into the hillside with a finger. As I watched, the sun came out from the clouds and the horse seemed to move, running in place. It wasn’t anatomically correct, but the shape captured the essence of the creature, of the feeling of running free, thundering hooves and rushing winds. I had often wandered this way, spending an hour here and there weeding along the cuts. It made my heart sting a little to see it again now.
“The Vale of the White Horse,” said Belis, from beside me. “I had always hoped to see it. It’s enormous, so much bigger than Ithought it would be.” She looked at me. “Was it your kind that made it? The fae, I mean?”
