“No,” Hern admitted.
“So, by fair means and foul,” Uncle Kestrel said, “the Heathen have beaten us. They’ve brought their women and their children, and they mean to stay. The land is full of them. Our King is in hiding, bless him.”
“What will we all do?” Duck asked in an awed whisper.
“Run away to the mountains, I suppose,” said Uncle Kestrel. He looked worn out at the idea. “I’ve run from them for months now. But you five might stay if you wished, I think. This is a funny thing—” He glanced at Gull and began to whisper. I do not think Gull was listening, but it was so hard to tell. “The Heathen look almost like you do—the fair hair. He’s had a deal to bear—Gull—from our side saying he was a Heathen changeling and bringing bad luck, and from the time the Heathen took him, thinking he was one of them.” We all stared at Gull. “Be easy on him,” said Uncle Kestrel. “As you see, they gave him back—this was in the Black Mountains—but he was not himself after that. Our men said he carried the Heathen’s spells, and they might have killed him but for your father.”
“How awful!” Robin said in a very high voice, like a sneeze or an explosion.
“True,” said Uncle Kestrel. “But we had our good times.” Then for quite a while he sat and told us jokes about people we did not know and things we did not understand, to do with the fighting. I am sure he meant to cheer us up. “That’s what kept me sane, seeing the jokes,” he said. “Now I suppose I’d better be off to see Zara.” He got up and limped away. He did not behave much as if he was looking forward to seeing my aunt. Nor would I, in his shoes.
Robin cleared the cups away. She kept looking at Gull, and Gull just sat. “I don’t know what to do with him,”
she whispered to me.
I went away outside, in spite of the smell from the River. I was hoping to be able to cry. But Hern was sitting in the boat, on the mud below the Riverbank, and he was crying.
“Just think of Gull like that!” he said to me. “He’d be better dead. I wish I’d gone after the army.”
“What good would it have done?” I said.
“Don’t you see!” Hern jumped up, so that the boat squelched about. “Gull had nobody to talk to. That’s why he got like that. Why was I such a coward?”
“You swore to the Undying,” I reminded him.
“Oh that!” said Hern. He was very fierce and contemptuous. The boat kept squelching. “And I swore to fight the Heathen. I could swear to a million things, and it wouldn’t do any good. I just wish—”
“Stand still,” I said. It suddenly seemed to me that it was not only Hern’s angry movements that were making the squelching round the boat. Hern knew, too. He stood bolt upright with his face all tear-stained, staring at me. We felt the small shiver run along the banks of the River. The mud clucked, quietly, and a little soft lapping ran through the low green water. There were yards of bare mud on both sides of the River, but in a way that I do not know how to describe, it looked different to us. The trees on the other bank were stirring and lifting and expecting something.
“The floods are coming down,” said Hern.
If you are born by the River, you know its ways. “Yes,” I said, “and they’re going to be huge this time.”
Before we could say more, the back door crashed open, and Gull came out. He came out stumbling, feeling both sides of the door and not seeming to know quite where he was.
“The River,” he said. “I felt the River.” He stumbled over to the bank. I put out both hands to catch him because it looked as if he were going to walk right over the edge. But he stopped on the bank and swayed about a little. “I can hear it,” he said. “I’ve dreamed about it. The floods are coming.” He began to cry, like Robin sometimes does, without making a sound. Tears rolled down his face.
I looked at Hern, and Hern looked at me, and we did not know what to do. Robin settled it by racing out of the back door and grabbing Gull in both arms. She hauled him away inside, saying, “I’m going to put him to bed. It’s frightening.”
“The floods are coming down,” I said.
“I know,” Robin called over her shoulder. “I can feel them. I’ll send Duck out.” She pushed Gull through the door and slammed it.
Hern and I pulled the boat up. It was horribly hard work because it was stuck a long way down in the mud. Luckily Hern is far stronger than he looks. We got it up over the edge of the bank in the end. By that time the sick green water was racing in swelling snatches, some of them so high that they slopped into the grooves the boat had left.
“I think this is going to be the highest ever,” Hern said. “I don’t think we should leave it here, do you?”
“No,” I said. “We’d better get it into the woodshed.” The woodshed is a room that joins the house, and the house is on the rising ground beyond the bank. Hern groaned, but he agreed with me. We got three of our last remaining logs to make rollers, and we rolled that heavy boat uphill, just the two of us. We had it at the woodshed when the woodshed door opened and Duck came out.
“You did arrive quickly!” I said.
“Sorry,” said Duck. “We’ve been putting Gull to bed. He went straight to sleep. It’s awful having him like this. I think there’s nothing inside him!” Then Duck began to cry. Hern’s arm tangled with mine as we both tried to get them round Duck.
“He’ll get better,” I said.
“Sleep will do him good,” Hern said. I think we were talking to ourselves as much as to Duck.
“Gull’s head of the family now,” Duck said, and he howled. I envy both boys for being able to howl.