“We won’t be stopping either. Come on. We need to put some distance between us. We’re going west.” She leaned down and hooked a hand under my arm, hauling me up.
“You’re being ridiculous.” I tried to shake her off me. “We’ve walked far enough for one day. Sit and rest.”
Belis grabbed me by the shoulders, looking straight into my face.
“They’ve been following us across the Chalk. Someone must have seen us passing and told them. It’s an insane bit of luck that we heard them coming. They must know we are close by. If they march north and find no trace of us, then they’ll come back this way. Believe me, you do not want that to happen. Me, they want alive. You?” She paused, her green eyes blazing at me. “If you want to live long enough to regain your immortality then we need to move right now.”
“Fine.” She let go of my shoulders and thrust my socks at me. I’d dropped them when I fell out of the tree. She did at least let me put them on before we set off.
The reminder of the enemy had soured Belis’s mood and quickened her pace. If I fell behind now she would pause, but fidget uncomfortably, looking up at the sky and tapping her foot until I caught up some more. We walked through the night and met the next morning’s sun on the edge of the Cotswold hills.
“You have got to slow down,” I gasped, looking up at the forested slopes ahead of us. “We must have put at least fifteen miles between us and that patrol, not to mention that they think you’re heading north. We have some time.”
Belis ignored me, eyeing the thick woods.
“Come on, this way,” she grunted, striding west along the forest’s edge.
“I think not,” I called after her. She spun on her heel and glared at me.
“And why not, O Mallt, the wise one? Since you know so much better than me about everything, yet have not ceased in complaining for the last week. ‘Oh my feet hurt, oh my ears are sore, this stew is tasteless and the fire is too smoky.’ My sister is a moment from death, there are Romans snapping at our heels and you whine about your feet hurting. Could you not, for one single moment, stop talking about your paltry problems and let me walk in peace? Believe me, I like this arrangement even lessthan you do, but I need you to get to Annwn, so you’re stuck with me. We are going this way if I have to drag you.”
“As you like,” I said, deeply offended. I didn’t complain that much. “I only meant to let you know that the fort of Corinium is a mile and a half over yonder hill. I didn’t realise I was so poor a travelling companion that you’d rather deliver yourself straight to the wolves’ den than listen to me.”
Belis froze, then snatched a look behind her as if there would already be cavalrymen riding towards us. She looked back at me slowly, and with an expression of utter frustration on her face.
“When were you planning on telling me this?” she spat out from between clenched teeth. I met her fury with my own.
“I was about to when you went off on your little rant,” I hissed at her. “And I do not appreciate your tone of disrespect. I am a goddess and should be spoken to with deference. If this is how your mother taught you to speak to others, then I am not surprised the Romans would not deal with her.”
She lunged at me then. I stepped back and tripped over something, landing flat on my back for the second time in one day. I glowered up at her from the ground, vaguely aware that I may have spoken a little harshly but absolutely certain that I would not be apologising. Belis grunted, visibly pushing down her anger, and turned away, her shoulders shaking with emotion. I clambered to my feet, keeping a wary eye on her back in case she lost her internal battle of wills and tried to attack me.
I dusted myself off and set off into the forest, aiming my feet north-west. After a moment I heard Belis follow me. The Cotswold woods were old even to me, gnarled oaks and broad-canopied beeches. What light filtered through to the forest floor was green-tinged gold and the air was thick with the sounds of songbirds. It was an incongruously peaceful scene, compared with the short but bitter argument we had just had.
I replayed my words inside my head over and over again. Perhaps I had been a little mean. I pushed it to the back of my mind. She had just made me walk for a whole day and a nightafter all; she could forgive me being snippy, especially with the disrespectful way she kept speaking to me.
We stumbled on in icy silence for a few more miles, pausing only to cross the newly paved road the Romans had built a decade or so previously. I let Belis decide when we should dart across, not wanting to provoke her any further.
I waited until we’d walked about a mile from the road before speaking. “Nowcan we stop and rest?”
Belis was about ready to drop – her footsteps were starting to slow, her eyelids shuttering open and closed. She looked as if she would argue just on principle but then shrugged and sat down right where she had been standing.
“If we’re going to stop during the daytime then one of us should keep watch,” she muttered eventually.
“I’ll go first,” I said, giving the vaguest suggestion of a peace offering. Belis nodded, already stretching out and wadding her pack under her head.
“Wake me at midday,” she said, eyes closing, “or if you see anything.” She fell asleep almost instantly, her chest rising and falling steadily under her cloak.
I curled up against the trunk of a beech tree, tucking my feet underneath me. I was tired, too, more tired than I ever remembered having been before. Every muscle in my body seemed wrung out, completely depleted of energy. Worse still was the constant racing of my mind. I could barely sort out my thoughts, my feelings, the strange emotions that were rocketing through this body.
The aching in my feet began to subside a little but I noticed a new sensation in my chest. It felt deeper than a muscle pain. Could it be some kind of indigestion? I thought back to the last thing I had eaten, the handfuls of berries the day before. I could feel hunger pangs in my stomach, but they were different. Human bodies were always aching in one way or another, I thought. No wonder they were so bad-tempered
The sun was almost directly overhead. I decided to let Belis sleep a little longer. She could have my hour and we would gowhen she woke up. I was pleased with my altruism. Let her try calling me selfish again after this. I began to sing, under my breath at first and then louder when it became clear Belis wasn’t going to be disturbed. It was a song I’d learned a few dozen years ago, while visiting Gwyn’s court, a merry tale of derring-do with an extremely whistle-able tune. The melody had stuck in my head, though I had forgotten more than half of the words.
“I haven’t heard that song since my childhood.”
I started, looking around for the source of the voice. A woman was standing right beside me. She looked to be in her late fifties, grey-haired and with lines radiating across her tanned skin. She smiled at me, her fingers twitching strangely in a gesture I didn’t recognise.
“I didn’t mean to startle you. I thought I was making a fair amount of noise as I came up the hill.”
