The Winged Man

Chapter 1
The Game of Fidchell
The night was drawing closer. The birds winging home in flocks alerted the prince to the danger. Soon the western sky would be fired with glowing gold as the sun left the Lands of the Living and, in a blaze of regal magnificence, visited the Lands of the Dead. Left behind would be a cold, dark world where only malevolent beings, murderers, robbers, wolves and owls - the scavengers of the night - dared move about. All others would gather close against the hearth, with wooden doors made fast against unknown terrors.
Prince Bladud urged his tired steed forward, anxious to reach the hill-fort before nightfall and before the gates were locked and barred. He could see the hill now, rising high above the plain and topped with steep, smooth, man-made ramparts. The forests had been cleared in the immediate vicinity so that the watchman on the ramparts had a long, clear view of any enemies approaching. Bladud had no doubt that at this very moment he himself was being observed, the summer dust from his horse's hooves drawing interested attention.
The shadows of the trees on the plain were stretched dark and long across fields unnaturally bright by contrast. He could hear the herd boys shouting to the cattle as they drove them in to shelter for the night. The first hearth fires were being lit, and thin plumes of smoke rose from one or two of the clustered homesteads on the plain. The lord of the fort, Keron son of Mel, was obviously not anticipating any attack or the alarm would have been sounded and these homesteads would have been deserted, their inhabitants already clustered in makeshift tents within the safe confines of the hilltop fort, their animals lowing uneasily in unfamiliar pens.
The strangely intense light of the evening seemed to isolate every blade of grass, every flower, every rock and bush. There was a splendour and a glory about more precious than the gold so coveted by kings and so laboriously won from the earth. At this moment of transformation from day to night, it was as though all things had paused - poised - breath-holding in awe at the delicate, fragile balance of mystery on which our lives depended. In this light small men were giants, birds were harbingers, and all were suddenly uncertain of their own role in the universe. Bladud wondered at himself. What was he doing so far from home? What was he seeking? Who, indeed, was he? A man awakened - or a man dreaming?
The watchman called to him from the tower beside the great wooden gate. Bladud felt it all unreal - and unreal his reply.
'Bladud, Prince of Trinovantum,ref1 son of Hudibras the High King,' he called back. But who was he really - and why did he feel that the name he gave was that of a stranger?
He was now on the steep incline rising up to the gate, and armed men were coming out to meet him. He was surrounded, challenged, greeted and accepted. Bladud of Trinovantum, son of Hudibras, rode in to the hilltop fort of Keron son of Mel. The huge gates of oak crashed closed behind him. The bolts were drawn against the night.
The prince noted the jumble of little hovels of twigs and straw that lined the streets winding up to the great house, the sullen people who drew aside and flattened themselves against walls to avoid his horse's hooves. The place had none of the grandeur of his father's rath. There seemed no order to it. Smoke rose through ragged and rotting thatch and hung in the air unwholesomely. The smell was foul. Goats and pigs and children ran in and out of the huts - occasionally pursued by an adult wielding a stick. What kind of master is this who allows such filth and disorder in his realm? Bladud could not help wondering, comparing it with his father's fortified town where every house was in good repair and there was separate fenced space for the animals.