Patrick by Stephen R. Lawhead Page B

the roasting meat, rising silvery blue in the evening air.
    I looked up to see him watching me across the flames. “To the sea.”
    He shook his head gently. “They will always catch you there.”
    I accepted this in silence, and we sat for a while longer.The first stars came out, and the moon peeped through the high, thin clouds. “Did you ever try to escape?” I asked.
    â€œNo,” he said. “But if I did, I would not go to the sea. They will always catch you there.”
    â€œWhere would you go?”
    He looked down and busied himself with the spit.
    â€œPlease, Madog,” I said, “tell me. If you wanted to escape, where would you go?”
    He thought for a moment. “I would go that way,” he said, indicating with a jerk of his head the unseen mountains rising behind us.
    â€œInto the forest?”
    He nodded.
    â€œBut that would be very…ah…,” I faltered, searching for the word.
    â€œ Baolach, ” Madog suggested.
    â€œDangerous? For fear of wolves and such?”
    â€œAye.”
    â€œThen is not escape through the forest a very dangerous thing?”
    â€œIt is that,” he agreed. “But you can hide. There are many good places, and they will not hunt more than a day or two.”
    We spent the whole of the night talking and eating, and in this way made peace with one another again. As dawn edged into a low, gray eastern sky, Madog yawned and rose. “I am glad they did not kill you,” he said.
    The simple, heartfelt sentiment moved me deeply. I thanked him and meant it. He merely nodded and picked up his crook and went down to the sheepfold, lowered the top two timber poles, and led the sheep up the track toward the high meadow. I slept then and did not awake until late in the day. I rose and went to the basin, hobbled and shuffling like an old man, and bent stiffly to remove the cover. I drank and washed and then went into the nearer trees to relieve myself. I was pleased to see that my piss ran clear once more. I knew then that my bruises would heal and I would live to escape another day.
    But that day would have to wait until next summer, I concluded. Already the nights were drawing in; soon the gales of autumn would arrive, and none but a fool would trust a boat to the unchancey seas of Mare Hiberniae when the wild wind blows. I would have to spend the winter on the mountain with Madog and his sheep.
    The thought produced a melancholy that laid my spirit low. I remembered all that had been taken from me: my home, my family, my friends, the easy life I had known. Down and down I sank, into an unfathomable sadness—a sorrow as full and deep as the sea separating me from my homeland. Away in Britain, I imagined, life had resumed much as before the raid, and I was all but forgotten. Julian, Scipio, and Rufus were riding the coastal road and plaguing the girls at the Old Black Wolf, laughing and drinking, their old friend Succat nothing but a distant, swiftly fading memory.
    For two days I lay beside the fire and wallowed in this sick bereavement for my former life, wishing I could by some miraculous power simply rise from my bed and fly across the sea and that all I had lost would be returned to me. I vowed I would escape again as soon as I was well enough to walk. Ah, but no, there was nothing for it. By the time I was hale once more, the ships would be securely anchored in snug harbors awaiting the gentler tides of spring.
    I resigned myself to enduring this hardship as best I could, and decided that my time was best spent learning as much as possible about the mountains and forest surrounding our bothy. Thus, when I was well enough to resume my wood-gathering chores, I took to walking farther and farther into the forest, searching out unexplored paths and following them as far as the short days allowed. In this way I gathered a fair knowledge of the place Madog called the Wood of Focluit—a great forest that covered,