Gwenhwyfar Read Online Free PDF

she wasted her time standing there yearning after them, they never would be.
    All her father’s men and a few of the women were out hunting in this fine weather, for in a few days there would be a great feast, both for Samhain and for the High King’s wedding, and a great deal of meat would be needed. Should there be any excess, it would be smoked and salted against the winter. This was also the time when the herd beasts were culled for the winter, but in that case, with the exception of a single ox, it would only be the things that couldn’t be preserved that would add to the feast.
    You didn’t risk the warhorses in that sort of hunting. At least one party had gone out after boar, one had gone fowling, the rest, in pursuit of deer. She hoped there would be a lot of success with the fowling party; just once she would like to be able to eat so much goose that she didn’t want any more.
    In theory, she wasn’t supposed to go out into the forest alone. Well . . . she wouldn’t be alone, even though none of her mother’s women would care to go scrabbling for nuts. But she wasn’t going to take any of the other, older children either.
    Instead she marched off to the kennel, and loosed Holdhard, one of the boarhounds. All the dogs loved her, and Holdhard seemed to regard her as his special charge whenever he was let off his rope. With the formidable dog trotting alongside her, she made her way over the hill and down into the valley, where the little copse of hazelnut trees was what she had in mind. Holdhard knew to be quiet when she wanted to slip away; the two of them moved stealthily enough until she was well into the woods.
    She avoided the oaks, and not just because they were sacred and dangerous. A thick layer of leaves and acorns carpeted the ground beneath them, and that meant the wild pigs could be feeding in there. Even a young pig could be dangerous to a child, and a grown sow or boar could easily kill a man. Holdhard sniffed at the air and growled as they went past; Gwen called him sharply to her. Whatever he scented had to be dangerous, but it would likely leave the two of them alone if they left it alone. At this time of year, like men, the beasts’ priority was to lay up food against the cold. In the case of the beasts, that meant eating everything they could to get fat against the days of starvation.
    As a precaution against the nettles she had taken more rags with her; when they reached the nut trees, she wrapped them around her hands and pulled the stinging nettles aside so that Holdhard could worm his way in with her.
    Once inside the ring of nettles, thistles, and briars, it was as if she were in a different world. There wasn’t a breath of wind; the branches above her were bare and let the sunlight through to warm this place as thoroughly as her little nook against the castle wall. The ground was thickly carpeted with crisp brown leaves that crackled as she sifted through them for the nuts. The air was full of the scent of them, a scent of dying, a little stuffy, with a suggestion of immense age.
    It was soporific, and as Gwen felt through the leaves for the hard, round nuts, with the sun on her back, Holdhard flopped down into a sun-dappled spot and began to doze.
    Slowly the sack filled. Holdhard snorted and snored and twitched. There was no other sound; there didn’t seem to be any birds at all in this part of the woods. The sun didn’t seem to move at all, and Gwen worked in a drowsy dream.
    And then a snort that did not belong to Holdhard made her look up, and she froze.
    Through the screen of nettles, she watched in numb fear as a bear shambled out of the underbrush. He swung his head from side to side, as if he was trying to find something, and finally he reared up on his hind legs to sniff the breeze.
    Holdhard continued to sleep. She knew that she did not dare to move, for if she did, she knew that the bear would see or scent her.
    The bear dropped down onto all fours and snorted fretfully.