Read Online The Grey King by Susan Cooper - Free Book Online Page B

Tywyn and the police, and then come back with anyone who is there. All the hands you can get. And bring more fire brooms, Bran, you know where they are. Come on, Owen.”
    Both men ran up the path across the valley, and the boys dived for the gate that led over the fields to Clwyd Farm. Bran swung his head round in a whirl of white hair: “Take it gently, now,” he said earnestly, “or you’ll be worse ill—” and he was off like a sprinter, leaving Will to close the gate and trot resignedly in his wake.
    The telephoning was done by the time he caught Bran up at the farm.David Evans took them with him in the Land-Rover, with Rhys and a tall thin farmer called Tom Ellis who had been there when they arrived. The back of the little car had been hastily filled with fire brooms and sacking, and several buckets that Will’s uncle seemed to have small hope of using. The dogs, for once, were left behind.
    â€œThey will be no good with fire,” Rhys said, seeing Will cock his head to the plaintive barking. “And the sheep can get out of the way on their own—indeed they will all be well away, by now.”
    â€œI wonder where Cafall is,” Will said, and then caught sight of Bran’s face and wished he had not.
    Close to, the fire on the mountain was very much more alarming than it had seemed from a distance. They could smell it now, and hear it; smell the smoke more bitter than a farm bonfire; hear the soft, dreadful sound of flames consuming the bracken, like paper crumpled in the hand, and the sudden crackling roar as a bush or a patch of gorse went up. And they could see the flames, leaping high, bright red and yellow at the edges of the fire but ferocious and near-invisible at its heart.
    As they tumbled out of the car David Evans was yelling for the fire brooms. Will and Bran pulled them out: besoms made like those for old-fashioned sweeping, but with the twigs longer and wider-spread. John Rowlands and Bran’s father, already equipped, were thrashing at the leading edge of the fire, trying to contain it; but the wind was gusting higher, and the flames, now leaping, now creeping, were soon past them and travelling along the lower edge of the mountain. As they swept upwards, roaring up the hillside through the tinder-dry bracken, Owen Davies jumped out of the way only just in time.
    The crackling rose; the air was full of fumes and smoke and whirling black specks of charcoal and ash. Great heat shone out at them. They were all in a line beating at the flames, flailing away with all their might, yet only occasionally extinguishing a spark. John Rowlands shouted somethingdesperately in Welsh; then seeing Will’s uncomprehending face near him, gasped out: “We must drive it higher, before it can reach Prichard’s! Keep it from the rock!”
    Peering ahead at the great outsweeping rocky slope of Craig yr Aderyn, Will glimpsed for the first time the corner of a grey stone building jutting out beyond its far side. The light glinted on a spray of water flung up beside the house; someone was soaking the land all round it, in an effort to deaden the fire if it should reach that far. But Will, beating hopelessly with his long flat-tipped broom, felt that nothing could halt or check the inferno before them, snarling high over their heads now as it reached a tangle of blackberry bushes. It was like a huge beast raging over the mountain, gobbling up everything in its path with irresistible greed. It was so powerful, and they so small, that even the effort to control its path seemed ludicrous. He thought: It is like the Dark —and for the first time found himself wondering how the fire could have begun.
    Below them, from the road past the foot of the great Craig, came the clanging of a fire engine’s bell, and Will glimpsed patches of bright red through the trees, and a hose snaking through the air. Men’s voices were calling faintly and there was a sound of