For a long time Gwyndoc lay amongst the rough bracken, the light of the great fire shining full in his face, its warmth striking hard through his clothes and seeming almost to scorch his body. At first sleep seemed impossible to him with the heat on his face, the charnel-house smell still in his nostrils and the tearing of dry flesh still in his ears. And always the great river lapped and gurgled about him and the little black figure snarled and gibbered from a barge that drew rapidly from his eyes into the swirling mist and then, as he breathed again in relief, came forward towards him, faster and faster, until the dark prow seemed about to cleave its way into his breast.
Around him lay the huddled figures of the other riders, some of them still and silent, others snoring and beating the
