Warriors of Alavna

by N. M. Browne

  The screaming had stopped now. Ursula felt a tingle as somewhere Rhonwen used her power. Then the screaming was replaced by a desperate sobbing. It seemed even that was perceptible only to Ursula and the bard. Bryn gave no sign of having heard anything. Still, the sobbing was marginally easier to ignore than the screaming. Ursula concentrated on doing as the bard had suggested. She was not entirely sure why. The bard’s idea was seriously implausible.

  It was easier than she had expected. She had never thought of herself as a particularly imaginative person but it was not difficult to imagine that the bard and Bryn were not there. Indeed it took little effort to convince herself that she had only envisioned that they were there in the first place.

  To Ursula’s heightened senses there was only a small ripple in the air like a heat haze where a few moments ago she had seemed to see Bryn and the bard. A heat haze in November in the dark was certainly unusual but less threatening to the Ravens than two visitors to the camp. Ursula had no confidence that the bard’s plan would work.

  There were few scouts guarding the camp. Almost all of the Ravens must have been involved in the raid on Macsen’s camp. There was one bored sentry tending the fire and another two dragging something along the ground. It looked like a body, or an animal carcass. She could smell the charred flesh. A bundle of disordered rags and hair lay a little way from the fire. It had been bound by the hands to some kind of branch of wood. It was Rhonwen.

  Ursula turned to where the bard would have been had he been visible which of course he was not.

  ‘That’s Rhonwen on the ground. I don’t think she’s going to be able to walk. You kill the guard and I’ll fight the other two. Then you might be able to get her onto a horse.’

  ‘Bards don’t kill, Ursula. We are forbidden. It’s why we always had safe passage, at least until the Ravens came.’

  ‘Where I come from no one is allowed to kill, especially not fifteen-year-old girls,’ she snapped at him angrily. She had crossed a boundary. She had become a warrior. She had felt death at her throat and defended herself. The bard’s scruples seemed almost an indulgence. Then the old Ursula reasserted herself. What had she become that she regarded killing as necessary? What was she thinking of? The bard was right. She sighed.

  ‘Never mind, I will do it. You and Bryn concentrate on getting Rhonwen out of here.’

  Ursula concentrated on the wild power that sung through her. She was Boar Skull, a warrior giant, of inhuman strength. She imagined her hair limed as Macsen’s had been. She envisioned it standing up like a punk halo or a petrified lion’s mane. She removed almost all her clothes. The man she was going to make herself into was too broad for the leather breastplate she still wore. She pictured the elaborate blue tattoos winding along her own muscled arms and chest. Kai was not around to deny her the long warrior’s moustache either. She took Bryn’s spear and raised her sword skyward.

  ‘I’m going to count to sixty and then charge. Get Rhonwen out of here and on a horse. I’ll meet you back where I left Macsen. Go!’ She didn’t see the bard and Bryn run towards the limp-looking figure, because they were not there to be seen. She breathed deeply, inflating her huge naked torso. It was not a great plan but at least this way she might get away without more killing.

  At the count of sixty she began the wild ululation of the Celts and charged. The man dozing at the fire leaped to his feet and ran, yelling out to his compatriots. They were burying something and had left their shields elsewhere. They were caught unexpectedly. They ran too. Maybe they thought Ursula was in the vanguard of a major Celtic onslaught or maybe the sight of a wild-eyed Celtic giant charging towards them was in itself terrifying enough. Either way they ran. Ursula felt almost disappointed. The magic was a dangerous force. Using it she found she craved action, if only to expend some of its abundant energy. Power surged through her limbs. Boar Skull’s bulk could scarcely contain it.

  Rhonwen was gone as well as two of the tethered horses. Ursula’s headache had eased. She could have mounted a third horse but chose instead to run after Bryn and the bard. It was the only way that she could think of to discharge her unstoppered aggression.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Somehow the Combrogi found one another again at the site of the fireside battle. A neat pile of severed heads and a cairn of stones marked their victory. Gwyn, Macsen, Prys and Dan were blood-stained but little of the blood seemed to be their own. Dan sat apart from the others, who wisely kept their distance until the berserker frenzy was over.

  Rhonwen had lost the silver mask along with all her self-possession. She had covered her ravaged face with her cloak. She did not want to speak. Everyone including Macsen gave her the courtesy of privacy. Ursula’s arrival was met with surprise. She still retained her wild Combrogi appearance, which necessitated some explaining as far as Prys and Gwyn were concerned. They had not believed Rhonwen’s claim that she was other than a man at the oath-taking ceremony. They nodded sagely when Macsen explained she was a woman who had learned the capacity to shape shift. They clearly believed none of it.

  Rhonwen’s presence brought back both the headache and the awareness of Rhonwen’s inner anguish that Ursula found impossible to deal with. The bard nodded at her encouragingly.

  ‘No one saw us,’ he said enthusiastically. He was sure she had succeeded in making them appear invisible.

  ‘No one looked,’ Ursula answered shortly. The run had tired her but done nothing to reduce the thrill of eager power that pulsed through her veins. It made her wild. ‘Can anyone lend me a tunic?’

  Dan, roused from the foothills of madness by Ursula’s voice, found a spare tunic in Kai’s saddlebag. Bryn, like a good squire, had retrieved the horses before joining him. The tunic looked woefully inadequate to cover Boar Skull’s excessively broad chest.

  ‘It’s OK, Dan,’ Ursula said in English. ‘I need to speak to Rhonwen. I think I had better do that as me, as a woman, I mean.’

  To Dan the massive Boar Skull was the Ursula he knew best, but he knew what she meant. He stood in front of her, to shield her from view, while she reduced herself to normal Ursula proportions and put on the tunic.

  She touched him gently on the arm. ‘Were you hurt?’ He shook his head.

  ‘Between us we killed all of them – ten or fifteen, I don’t know. I had the sense to walk away while the others … you know took off the heads. I was nearly sane by the time they finished. It was gruesome. Do you know what the really terrible thing is? The more you kill the less you think about it. I think my soul must be stained with the evil of it.’

  Ursula nodded. It was a more poetic way of expressing the feeling than she could have managed herself, but she knew exactly how he felt. Magic lent her an exuberance, a pleasure in her own strength that distorted her normal reactions. Somewhere, underneath the overlay of magic, her own soul seemed pretty stained. She had killed a man who had threatened her. She had done it without ceremony, almost by the way. She was a murderer. Did it make it any better that he would have killed her? She remembered the Ravens who had captured Rhonwen. She had wanted to tear them limb from limb with Boar Skull’s mighty hands.

  She didn’t like such thoughts. She shook her head as if to rid herself of them. She had things to do. ‘I do need to talk to Rhonwen. There is some kind of connection between us. Perhaps she’ll talk to me.’ Ursula could not help but feel sympathy for the tortured woman but, less altruistically, she needed to somehow stop Rhonwen’s mental anguish from reverberating through her own bones. Rhonwen’s pain made it hard to focus on anything else. ‘I suppose I’d better ask Macsen for his permission to talk to her. I wonder what they did with her mask?’

  ‘I could go back with Bryn to find it. The camp isn’t far away.’

  Ursula looked doubtful. ‘There may be more men there now. Did any escape from you?’

  Dan shook his head. ‘I think they all tried to make us a path to a hero’s glory. They all tried their luck against us.’

  That made sense
to Ursula, in this world where all soldiers were mad. Maybe they all shared her fevered need for action, for some kind of consummation in conflict, once their blood was up. Any one of the Ravens could have run away from rather than towards the Combrogi. They might not have proved their courage but they would have lived. Instead they had chosen to die.

  She had no sympathy to spare for dead Ravens. Rhonwen’s pain made her own heart beat more erratically. She had to talk to her.

  ‘Maybe you should find the mask,’ she said hesitantly. ‘Maybe the mask might help.’

  Dan nodded and looked intently at his friend. ‘You forgot to get rid of your moustache.’

  Ursula put up her hand to her face in horror.

  ‘Just kidding!’

  Ursula laughed. She had not known she still could. As far as could be told in near total darkness she was Ursula, just as she should be, without illusion.

  Ursula, just as she should be, was enough to draw looks of stark disbelief and admiration from Prys and Gwyn. Had she changed that much then? When they had met her first she had worn no disguise but her excess weight and her long lost red anorak. They had not seen her as female then. She dismissed the thought. She could not worry about such trivia any more. There were too many things to do.

  Dan introduced her, grinning broadly. All trace of the bear sark killer was gone.

  ‘Here is Boar Skull as you have never seen her. You may call her Ursula.’ Ursula couldn’t help smiling at their confusion. It illuminated her face. Macsen was the first with a courtly compliment.

  ‘Ursula, you are as beautiful as a woman as you are heroic as a warrior.’ It was the first time anyone had called her beautiful. She smiled again and then wondered if he was making fun of her and scowled.

  ‘With your permission, Prince, I mean, King Macsen, may I speak to your sister?’

  Macsen nodded. His smile disappeared. A pall of gloom descended on the small party. They’d hoped to find her in a better state. Gwyn and Prys could see the hope of marriage to Cadal fading. Dan whispered in Macsen’s ear, and at Macsen’s nod Dan gathered Bryn, Braveheart and Taliesin and set off for the Ravens’ camp to try to retrieve Rhonwen’s lost mask.

  Rhonwen was sitting a little way away, wrapped in her cloak. She made no sound, but the wailing in Ursula’s head grew worse, bludgeoning her thoughts, making it hard to form a sentence. Her head ached as if it would split. Rhonwen’s internal wailing was building to a crescendo. Ursula touched her gently on the shoulder.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Rhonwen answered with a kind of gasp then croaked.

  ‘They ambushed me on the road to King Lud’s. They tied me and took me to the camp. They ripped off my mask and mocked me. Most left except for the few who guarded the horses. The men tried to …’ Rhonwen’s voice broke. Ursula would have patted her shoulder but she had been burned there too.

  ‘One of them tried to … touch me, but I found my power then. I made fire come. It was real, wild, like before,’ Rhonwen spoke as if to herself. ‘This time I did not care if I got burned. I didn’t want to live with the shame, with this ugliness and…’ she started to sob. It was a blessed physical release of mental anguish. The wailing in Ursula’s head died down. It made sympathy easier.

  ‘It’s all right, Rhonwen. If you tell me how, I may be able to heal you.’

  It was not an idea that had even occurred to her before, but Ursula suddenly remembered Kai’s disappearing wound long ago, after his first encounter with Dan as Bear Sark. There was no obvious abatement to the sobbing. She did not know if Rhonwen had heard her. Ursula felt awkward, at a loss. She may have changed her appearance but she still lacked the right words, the right tone to comfort.

  ‘Dan, The Bear Sark, has gone back to find your silver mask.’ She began tentatively, ‘I could try to heal you, you know. I’m strong I …’

  Rhonwen’s words were unequivocal.

  ‘I am a princess, do you think I could be healed by one such as you? You … you … ! I have no word for someone who is both man and woman. Leave me. I will effect my own healing.’

  Ursula was taken aback, but at least there was no ambiguity. Rhonwen really did, as she had always suspected, hate her. Ursula had done her duty. There was nothing else she could do.

  She gathered her shredded dignity and walked slowly back towards Rhonwen’s brother. She felt as if she would have rather stood in the Great Hall naked than meet the questioning eyes of Macsen and his men.

  ‘They attacked her. She burned one of them. I think she wants to be alone.’

  Ursula accepted the proffered horn of ale, grateful that it wasn’t mead. She rejoined the circle conscious of the sudden distance that had sprung up between them. Boar Skull was a comrade in arms but who, by Lugh, was Ursula? She was tempted to be Boar Skull again but did not have the strength. The electric pulse of magic had slowed. She was suddenly very tired. She could terrify a foe but she could offer no comfort to a suffering woman. She did not like the feeling of impotence. Someone covered her in a fine wool cloak and she slept.

  She awoke to the confusion of rapid action, Prys shaking her and the sounds of jangling bridles.

  Dan’s voice was clear, if breathless, above the clamour.

  ‘There must have been fifty, sixty, a whole century of them back there. I don’t know where they came from. I think I saw Huw with them. I snatched the mask but I’m afraid they saw me and followed. We’ve got to go!’

  Macsen pulled Ursula to her feet and threw her in the direction of her mount. Gwyn was dragging an uncooperative Rhonwen towards a horse. Ursula quickly checked. Bryn and Braveheart were OK. The bard had a cut above his eye. He was staunching it with his cloak. It did not look serious. In less than a minute they were mounted and riding like the gods.

  It did not take long for them to hear their pursuers. Ursula thought back to the Raven camp as she had left it. Surely there had not been enough mounts for fifty men? The steady drum of hooves not far behind could have been fifty thousand. It was a very frightening sound. It was an earthquake-like vibration, rumbling as if the Goddess herself were coming after them.

  Macsen was urging them south towards the Brigantes’ land. Rhonwen spoke up for the first time, her beautiful voice still harsh with pain.

  ‘Macsen, Lud fights with the Ravens, the carrion birds. I heard it in their camp. Huw’s working with him. It’s certain. Ride the other way!’

  Macsen reined his horse around with a muttered curse. Ursula knew that the last thing Macsen would want to do would be to bring an enemy back to his fortress, but they had little choice; to the east lay the marsh, to the west their enemy and to the south their enemy’s allies, the Brigantes. They were all tired and the odds were against them. They turned north. They turned towards Craigwen. Under the thunder of hooves Ursula could hear the bubble of water as they approached a shallow stream. As they rode towards it she had the germ of an idea. She spurred her horse on to catch up with Macsen.

  ‘Macsen,’ she yelled above the noise, all reverence for his royal station forgotten. ‘I’m going to try and create an illusion of us being swept away by the river. It might stop them.’

  ‘Do what you can!’ He was looking for a good place to stop and make a stand, his eyes sweeping the landscape in the grey dawn, searching for high ground, something to give them an advantage that could be gained in the minutes between them and their pursuers. The lie of the land was uncooperative. Maybe the earth herself was against them. Ursula could not ride and think at the same time. Galloping terrified her. She needed to concentrate if she were to help them.

  ‘Dan!’ Her voice sounded lost in the tumult of sound, but Dan was there in a moment.

  ‘Can I ride with you? I need to do something!’

  Dan did not hesitate. He rode alongside her and leaped from his own horse to hers. He did it effortlessly, without pause or thought. Perhaps it was the type of thing that you couldn’t do if you thought about it. Somehow in the confusion she had ended up on Kai�
�s horse. He was faster than she was used to and a trained Combrogi war-horse. Luck was on her side there for he scarcely faltered at the sudden additional weight. The Combrogi favoured such tricks and he was used to it. It took Ursula a moment longer than Dan or the horse to adjust to the new situation. She forced herself to be calm. She made herself feel the pulse of magic that thrilled up her spine. They galloped through the stony riverbed. The river here scarcely justified the name, but she could change that. The cold spray from the splashing hooves inspired her. She thought of the wetness of water, the icy chill of melted ice. She concentrated on creating an illusion of water, great torrents of water, a river full to overflowing. In her mind she saw it bubbling up all round them. When she saw the vanguard of the Raven century she focused on the picture of a river bursting its banks she had once seen on TV. She imagined the water flooding its banks. She willed the deluge to be.

  ‘Ride!’ she heard Prys behind her. ‘The banks burst!’

  They rode as if their lives depended on it, which they did. As she looked over her shoulder she saw the Ravens’ lead horse rear at the sudden rush of white water in front of him. They would not ford that in a hurry. Instinctively everyone rode away from the illusion. Even Ursula could not argue with her instinct to ride like she had never ridden before to escape the treacherous water.

  When they reached safe dry ground, they dismounted breathless and exhausted.

  ‘You nearly killed us.’ It was Gwyn. He sounded angry.

  ‘What do you mean? It was an illusion that just saved your life,’ Ursula answered hotly.

  ‘By Lugh, that was no illusion. I’m soaked and freezing!’

  It was true. Real water dripped from Gwyn’s boots and horse. He shivered. The Combrogi eyed her with weary respect. She had made the river actually burst its banks.

  ‘Not so much next time, eh?’ said Dan and grinned.