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seen them, the Red Crests, and I know. Flann, Gourchien, you also, you have seen them often; look at him. How shall he run with our sons and carry his spear among us hereafter?’
    There was a low, growling murmur from the men round the fire; Cunori, his hand leaping to his dagger, had begun a furious retort, and for a moment it looked as if there might be trouble—the kind of snapping, snarling trouble that breaks out suddenly between hounds—for all men knew how little love was lost between Cunori and Istoreth.
    Then the Chieftain cut in: Better send him across the frontier to his own kind.’
    ‘And what shall he do across the frontier with his own kind?’ Cunori demanded furiously. ‘We are all the kind he knows, and he is but nine summers old.’
    ‘There are tradesmen enough at Isca Dumnoniorum who will take him in to learn a trade,’ said the Chieftain, kindly enough.
    But before anyone could reply, Beric himself took up the fight.
    All this while he had stood very still, staring at each speaker in turn, while the roast boar meat turned cold and heavy in his stomach. Now he drew himself up and faced the Chieftain like a small wild thing at bay. ‘What have I to do with the Red Crests, that I should go to them now? You are my people, my own people, by hearth fire and bread and salt, and I will not go to Isca Dumnoniorum and learn a trade; I will learn to be a hunter and a warrior with the rest of my kind.’ His voice cracked a little, but he managed to steady it, as he swung round on the circle of the warriors. ‘Oh, elders of my Clan, I have not done anything wrong, that you should cast me out!’
    There was a long silence, and then out of the circle two spoke up for Beric.
    The first of them was Rhiada, the blind harper, who sat on a deerskin at the Chieftain’s feet; and he drew a hand across
his harp-strings, so that the firelight played on them as on running water and the harp-notes sprang up towards the stars like a bird released; and he flung back his head and laughed up at Beric. ‘So, that was boldly spoken for a nine-year-old. I do not see his people in his face, but I know a bold heart when I meet one. What matter where the blood comes from, so that it runs hot and true, my brothers?’
    And the second was Ffion, who, before he grew old and white-haired, had been the greatest hunter in the Clan; and he leaned forward into the firelight and said in his old gentle voice: ‘Let him run with the pack. If he can hold his own with them after this night’s work, he will make a warrior worth having. He comes of a warrior people, though not ours … . I have reared a wolf-cub before now; he was not a dog, but he hunted with me as a dog, none better.’
    For a while the argument raged, for Istoreth was not one to give in easily, and he had a certain following among the younger hunters. But Ffion had been a great man in the Clan almost as long as the oldest of them could remember, and the word of a harper was not a thing to be lightly set aside. Also, all of them being warriors, the game-cock way in which the boy had spoken up for himself appealed to them. And so at last, looking round the firelit circle, the Chieftain said: ‘So be it, then; let him start his training with the rest, and may he make a warrior indeed.’
    ‘And may he not bring sorrow and to spare upon the Clan, even as Merddyn foretold!’ said Istoreth savagely, and turned his attention back to his mead horn.
    ‘As to that, there was the matter of a black ram lamb,’ said Ffion quellingly.
    And Beric, his future settled on the word of Rhiada and Ffion, found himself with his fellows, who had been openmouthed onlookers all this while, thrust out of the firelit circle.
    The whole scene was breaking up and shifting, as people began to press back against the huts, leaving the open space clear in the moonlight for dancing. Beric did not stay with
the other boys, but slipped away among the crowd. And when he glimpsed his mother carrying a