by N. M. Browne
The others of their convoy were gathered round.
‘This is Daniel Alavna ab George, known as The Bear Sark. He has killed more Ravens than I have counted and could kill an army if someone taught him how to hold that sword right. He buried the children of Alavna with his own hands and planted his sword deep into the soil of their grave. I, Kai Alavna ab Owain vouch for him.’
Finn looked extremely taken aback. Then, to his even more evident astonishment, each of their companions vouched for Ursula and Dan. It was a big thing it seemed, like adoption. Bryn explained it to Dan while Kai and the others talked about Alavna. It meant that if they did anything wrong and injured the tribe in any way, their companions had taken the responsibility. If anyone killed or injured them, their comrades would avenge them. Ursula did not know the full import of Kai’s words, but she still shivered as they were spoken. She did not need to know exactly what was meant. She could feel all the promises thickening the air.
They walked on into full view of the fortress, which stood on a cliff above a sparkling sea. They walked across the grassy plain of the valley, shadowed by steep-sided hills on either side. News had travelled quickly and what seemed like hundreds of people then arrived to gawp at them or to welcome Kai. Someone took the ponies and they moved in a small bubble of empty space, maintained by the frown on Kai’s face. No one jostled them, but the frank stares of the people made Ursula feel like an exhibit in the zoo. Dan could hear her teeth grinding as they began the steep climb to the fortress gates.
The fortress itself was built largely of stone. It was not exactly a castle of the Romantic kind with high turrets and round towers. It was simpler than that. It had solid, high, curved walls within which other buildings huddled. It was surrounded by a ring of deep ditches, hewn from the rock and filled with sharp pointed stakes. Most significantly of all, the cliff it crowned was so steep, Dan almost had to use his hands as well as his feet to climb it.
It should have made Dan feel safe, but the occupants seemed scarcely less hostile than Ravens. Dan felt his spirits sink.
Chapter Twelve
Finn was enormously proud of Macsen’s fortress. It had been built by a Raven engineer who had switched sides rather than be branded a thief. Unfortunately for him, his thieving was inveterate and he had ended his days skewered by a Combrogi spear, before the completion of the fortress. He had been an innovative engineer, a genuine genius, but because he had never been entirely trusted, Macsen had ensured that his own men make slight alterations to his plans. The result was, apparently, a brilliant fusion of Combrogi workmanship and Roman ingenuity. Not that Dan cared. He wanted to be rid of the reek of death that clung to his hair and clothes and he wanted a little bit of peace.
They were led through the main gates, through a paved courtyard towards the great hall, a rather squat Romanesque basilica within the circle of the all-enclosing wall. There were other stone and timber buildings within the wall whose functions Dan could only guess at. At a nod from Finn, servants led the travellers towards one of these, the Roman engineer’s innovation, a Roman style bathhouse. Being dirty did not usually bother Dan. His mother had cared a lot when she was alive and he’d never quite understood why. Now he was more desperate for a hot bath than at any other time in his life. It was then that Ursula shot him a look of pure panic. She would not go through the door, but hovered awkwardly in the courtyard. He realised then that a bathhouse would probably involve communal nakedness. How could they get out of this one? A servant was already helping Kai to strip. His naked torso was all but completely covered in blue tattoos of an intricate intertwining leaf design. He was very heavily muscled. Dan wondered how he had ever managed to fight a man like that and, as he remembered, injure him. Aware suddenly that staring at another man’s chest might not be acceptable behaviour, he quickly averted his eyes.
‘Kai,’ he began, ‘my lord Boar Skull is not accustomed to …’ to what? He was without inspiration. He began again. ‘In my world, we do not usually …’
Kai was looking at him with amusement.
‘Rhonwen’s other outlanders were afraid to unclothe their puny bodies in the company of men!’ Kai laughed broadly and the others joined in. Kai leavened his remark with a gentle clap around the shoulders which would have knocked Dan over, had he not braced himself. These were men who had vouched for him; they had a right to mock him he supposed. Gwyn alone looked contemptuous. Dan forced a grin.
‘There is a private room you may use for your own purposes.’ Kai winked. ‘A servant will attend you!’
Prys began a raucous and extremely vulgar song. There was the general spirit of a post rugby match changing room. He would really have liked to stay. For Ursula’s sake he followed the servant. The relief on her face and her smile when he explained that there was a private bathroom transfigured her. She could definitely be beautiful, if she was clean and smiled more often.
They took turns to bathe and Ursula refused the attentions of a servant, though she did have the presence of mind to ask for bandages to bind a chest wound, that she claimed to have received on the road. Dan had been worried. He could not remember her being injured until he realised that she would need to bind her chest if she was to look like a convincing man. They were brought fine new clothes to wear. Dan felt a little bit of an idiot in diamond-patterned blue and yellow trews, bright blue tunic and green and blue plaid cloak. He was also given a fine leather scabbard for Bright Killer. The sword was a little too long for him even with a proper scabbard. Clean and shiny, he looked very young indeed. The servant had brought a rawhide leather breastplate to wear over his tunic, but it was too big and hindered his movements. He gave it to Ursula. She was dressed in oranges and reds. She looked nervous and was grateful for the breastplate. She would have covered herself completely in armour if she could. Ursula had also been lent a fine sword to replace the one she had given to Kai for Madoc’s burial and a gold torque, befitting her status as The Bear Sark’s Lord – though no one was too sure of either of the outlanders’ status. Dan thought she looked scary, which pleased her. She was worried that she moved too much like a girl, though Dan could not see it as a problem. She carefully watched the way he walked, but found his rolling swagger unnatural and too difficult to copy.
‘Well, try walking like Kai then. He’s nearer your height anyway.’ Ursula concentrated very hard on picturing Kai in her mind and pulled back her shoulders, threw out her chest and tried to copy the swing of his massive forearms and equally solid legs.
‘That’s brilliant!’ Dan had never realised that Ursula could be such a magnificent actor. She seemed in a moment both bigger and more masculine.
‘I don’t know if I can do this.’
‘You did it on the road. What’s the difference?’ Dan really didn’t see it as such a big deal. After the first slip-up he’d even started thinking of Ursula as a boy himself. ‘It’s not as if you were a girlie girl in the first place.’
‘And just what do you mean by that?’ she snapped back with another of her glowering scowls and an icy flash of suddenly cold blue eyes.
Dan knew enough about Ursula to consider an emergency subject change.
‘Hang on a minute. I don’t think your sword belt is quite right.’ Ursula permitted him to adjust it. The servant who had arrived to usher them into Finn’s presence coughed politely. Dan hoped that he had not seen Ursula practising her walk. They both followed the servant across the courtyard to the Great Hall. Ursula’s scowl had deepened to thundercloud proportions and Dan could hear her grinding her teeth. He wished she did not withdraw into herself when she was afraid. Dressed in his outlandish garments, without the perverse comfort of his mad, bear sark persona, he felt nervous too. He reached for his place of calm madness, just to check it was still there. If it was, he could not find it. Before panic unmanned him completely, Braveheart bounded towards him. Bryn, clean and clothed in suitably handsome clothes, followed with all the dignity of his new rank of squire. He looked at Dan’s fine cloth
es with obvious pride and satisfaction. Dan did not want to let him down. With one hand on Braveheart’s head and the other on the hilt of Bright Killer he followed the servant inside.
The Great Hall was a large oblong room with a low raftered ceiling and a series of small high windows. The late afternoon sun scarcely illuminated the room and the deficit was dealt with by a series of torches fixed to the wall by finely worked bronze holders. The room was a riot of colour, noise and scents, not all of them unpleasant. Richly decorated fabrics covered the hall and floors in a kaleidoscope of shifting patterns. It looked like a film set of some alien court. The room was filled with men and women, lavishly dressed and adorned with heavy gold jewellery. Everyone was talking and gesticulating at once, like a huge party. But it was a party that expected trouble. There was an electric tension in the room, an excitement that almost shaded into fear. The splendour and the strangeness of it overwhelmed Dan. Ursula looked very uncomfortable, though she brightened when she saw a number of the women were as tall as she was. Her pale blonde hair was not so extraordinary here either. Dan could almost see her doubting the wisdom of adopting a male role. Perhaps it might not be so bad to live as a woman. Certainly the servants moving among the throng with goblets of Roman wine and mead treated the women with as much respect as the men. The proud bearing and confident conversation of the women there gave no indication that their place was inferior in any way.
There was little furniture in the room, indeed almost none. At a signal, which Dan missed, the assembled people sank gracefully to the ground, sitting on furs and rugs. They carried on their animated chatter without pausing for breath. There was one low leather sofa, low backed and short-legged. It was the only furniture in the room. Finn indicated that Kai should take it. As Macsen’s second-in-command he took precedence over the steward while Macsen himself was away harrying the legion. Cleaned and scented and dressed in fine clothes Kai looked every inch a barbarian warlord. He wore a breastplate that shone like silver, if indeed it was not silver. His red hair, combed and oiled, hung in two complex plaits down his back and his long moustache drooped almost to the level of his chin. The rest of his face was freshly shaven. He spoke clearly and well of what had befallen them on the road, of Rhonwen’s success in raising the Veil and adding two warriors to their number but most of all he spoke of Macsen’s plans to defeat the Ravens at Craigwen and of the need for the women and children to leave for Ireland. King Cadal had confirmed with Finn that they would be cared for under the usual terms.
There was a pause and a general low hum of whispered concern. Many of the gathered men and women exchanged glances. Dan saw a young warrior touch hands briefly with a red-haired girl as tall as Ursula. Even here inside the stone walls of Craigwen, lives were at risk. Everyone looked grave. Kai continued, ‘Let us not pretend that the Raven is other than a savage bird, that has scavenged on our tribal feuds too long. It has grown fat on our past mistakes and it is not so fat that it has grown foolish. Prince Macsen has studied its ways. We will fight and we can win but we must be prepared for what will come, for the death of many among us before the fight is won. We will be besieged by the legion, of that there can be no doubt. We will fight the better for knowing that our women and children are safe. Women of the Combrogi, you are our hope. If we shall fail, from where else can a future come but from your strong wombs and from your proud hearts? It will be your duty to keep our ways and honour safe there on the Sacred Isle, against the day when the Combrogi can walk freely again on the Island of the Mighty.’
Kai paused again and met the eyes of the assembled throng. For the first time Dan was aware that the survival of an entire people was at stake. The presence of the two strangers paled into insignificance besides the life of their tribe. Dan felt his earlier nerves to have been a vanity.
Finn spoke in the silence that greeted Kai’s words.
‘King Cadal will send his warships tomorrow soon after dawn. Princess Rhonwen will join the other women when she returns. Prince Macsen wishes all our warriors to train together under the leadership of Hane. If our old style of fighting cannot destroy the Ravens we will learn new ways. What the Ravens can do can not the Combrogi do better? For tonight we feast.’
He clapped his hands and servants bearing low wooden tables, more wine and food rushed forward to ready a feast. Prys guided Ursula, Bryn and Dan to sit with their companions of Alavna. Everyone began to chatter and laugh again, but Dan felt there was a brittle edge to the laughter, a desperation to the humour. Even so, the Combrogi knew how to feast. Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow, or maybe the next day, we die.
Chapter Thirteen
Dan’s quiet place of blood and madness remained lost to him. In spite of having drunk several glasses of mead, Dan could not sleep. They had all lain down to sleep where they had feasted, though men and women had been leaving together all night to go elsewhere to say their goodbyes.
He kept probing the place in his mind where he thought he’d kept his madness. He worried at it as he had worried at the gap in his teeth when he had a tooth knocked out at rugby. The gap still remained; his madness did not. He did not want to be mad exactly, but to be in such an inherently mad situation without its protection worried him more. Is this how Ursula felt? To his surprise he found he did not like to sleep indoors either. The smell of so many bodies, however frequently immersed in the Roman baths, bothered him. There was a smell of grease and stale alcohol. Indoors even the distinctive smell of Braveheart’s damp hair bothered him, as it never had outside. Carefully he disentangled his cloak from that of his companions. Ursula touched his hand in the darkness.
‘Are you going outside?’ The men around them were more or less insensible with drink. They stirred only to belch or worse and did not appear to notice Dan and Ursula’s clumsy attempts to creep away. They were the ones without wives who had drunk ale and mead until they had passed out.
Once outside in the clear star-filled night Ursula spoke.
‘I dreamed I saw Rhonwen last night. She and Macsen were in a town. It looked like a Roman town. She started a fire as a diversion, to help Macsen. It must have been part of his plan, you know, to keep the Ravens there under pressure so they wouldn’t set off at once for Craigwen. Well, the fire began as an illusion, like the dragon, but she lost control. I could kind of feel how it happened. The power twisted somehow out of her grasp, and the fire became real. I could see her face and her eyes and her mouth open wide, screaming for help. In my dream I knew what to do to make it stop, but I couldn’t quite do it. It was terrible – her face. She was horribly burned. I think Macsen put out the fire but I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll ever forget her face. Dan, do you think you can dream true things, like you know I might be clairvoyant or something? I am sure it was real.’
Dan wanted to put his arm round her, but he was sure there must be sentries watching.
‘I’m sure it was a dream. You probably drank too much mead.’
‘No, it’s awful stuff. I had the servant bring me water. It’s so sweet I’m sure it must rot your teeth.’ Surprisingly, everyone she had seen had quite good teeth, but then hardly anyone she had seen had been much above forty.
‘Well,’ Dan continued, ‘you’ve never been clairvoyant before.’
‘And I suppose you were always a berserker before?’
‘Fair point, but I may not be a berserker again either. The madness – I could kind of feel it before, it’s gone.’
Ursula looked at him very hard. There was enough moonlight for them to see each other clearly. She looked at him as if his head were transparent and she could look inside.
‘Trust me – you’re still a berserker, still mad.’
She didn’t say it like a joke. He was sure she believed it and, bizarrely, he felt comforted. He didn’t believe she had become clairvoyant, of course, but he trusted her instincts. He felt relieved and exhausted.
‘Ursula, it was just a bad dream. Let’s go back inside. Everyone will be up at dawn. Wh
o knows what we’ll be asked to do then?’
*
They were asked to help. To carry endless boxes and leather bags of things to the waiting ships. The bay was shallow and the Irish sailors came ashore in small coracles of stretched hides. It was not an easy landing place because the rocks that surrounded the bay were particularly dangerous and broke the waves to form strange tides and eddies. The spring tides were vicious and the coracles came ashore surfing on white waves. They seemed fragile craft for such precious cargo. Loading the coracles took care and it was midday before everything and everyone was on board. Women comforted crying children by telling them of the heroic journey they were to undertake, but there was not one who didn’t look tight-faced and anxious as they stepped aboard. Dan wanted Bryn to go but he was so outraged at the mere suggestion that Dan backed down. Dan did not want to start an argument about manhood, but he did not want the responsibility of Bryn’s life in his hands, when it came to a fight. It seemed, as in so much else, that he had no choice.
When all the women, the children, the bags, a strong box of gold as surety, and even some small domestic animals were all safely stowed aboard the small fleet, the warriors lined themselves up on the shore and beat their shields with their spears. It was a defiant gesture but a sad one. The Celts were not ashamed to cry and many of the men were damp-eyed as they waved the children away. Dan wondered if Ursula regretted her choice. She was committed now to playing the role of warrior and, when the fighting came, wielding a sword with the rest of them.
The fortress felt rather forlorn when the women and children had left. The warmth and welcome of the place such as it was had left with the women. Craigwen was now a barracks. It became clear that Dan and Ursula were not the only strangers to enter Craigwen. Since Kai’s return fifty or so additional tribesmen had answered Macsen’s call and arrived with their retinues to train under Hane. Dan and Ursula felt rather lost. Bryn, with an instinctive grasp of the fortress protocols, managed to bring them food and news of new arrivals. It meant little to either of them, though the food was welcome. It was late afternoon when Kai sought them out.
