by Chris Page
‘What are your intentions if the birds discover Viking ships?’
‘Like you, it is also my sworn duty to defend Celtic Wessex with all my might. I would attempt to stop them using all the astoundments at my command.’
‘We must join together as Arthur Pendragon and Merlin did,’ said the king. ‘My men and your sorcery will be a victorious combination.’
It was Twilight’s turn to think for a moment.
‘I will gladly join you in repelling these heathens,’ replied the astounder eventually, ‘but there are no guarantees of our victory. As I learned at Lyme Regis, the Vikings have their own venefici. Also, my own philosophy, and one taught to me by the long magus, is that I will not side with anyone who seeks to dominate the people of Wessex for the sake of power or to spread a religious doctrine as you may do after the Viking have been defeated.’
Alfred looked puzzled.
‘But Arthur Pendragon, with the long magus by his side, fought all his battles—as I must—in the name of Christianity!’
‘That he did, but Merlin came to realize that it was wrong for him to do so. The latter half of his life was spent in repentance of those actions, and that is what he has passed on to me. I will join with you in repelling the rapine and slaughter perpetuated by these Viking invaders, but if we are successful I will not help you take other lives in other regions in Britain in the name of your religion. I hold no views on any particular religion; my views apply to all of them. Another one of the reasons behind this, and one everyone finds difficulty in believing, is most of the religions are formed around the eventual destination of the human soul. As the Wessex veneficus and guardian of the Equinoctial Mists, I know what happens to the soul in its many manifestations.’
‘That’s interesting. I wonder what Septimus Godleman will have to say about that.’ Alfred smiled.
‘Who is he?’
‘My household chaplain and advisor and scholar who advises me on religious matters. He is a former pupil of Saint Augustine and very much of the school that wants to convert all of these lands to Christianity, believing that the human spirit is formed to follow and needs to be led down paths that satisfy the soul. He also sees this latest heathen onslaught as a form of divine retribution for the non-Christian attitudes of the Wessex Celts.’
Twilight looked steadily into the king’s gray-green eyes. In deference to Alfred’s position he refrained from studying the man’s mind directly.
‘That is also how you see it?’
‘It is.’
‘Then you and your Septimus Godleman and anyone else of the same persuasion will not be able to call upon my enchantments to help you spread your word in Wessex,’ he said quietly. ‘Every plant, tree, blade of grass, animal, and human being in this abundant and elegiac Celtic land is an allegory for non-interference and independence of its chosen way. Why visit the drumbeat of war and the flames of conflict upon a peaceful, poetic, and elegant land in the interests of an alien doctrine that they will not accept and do not want?’
Twilight’s words fell between them like shards of cold flint.
Alfred considered this for a moment behind narrowed eyes.
‘Then there is nothing else for us to say to each other, veneficus, for besides defending these lands against the invaders, I must also spread God’s word.’ He stood up abruptly, gave a short bow to Rawnie, and walked back to his resting soldiers.
When the hoof beats had faded, Twilight turned to his wife and tenderly took both her hands in his and spoke directly to her mind.
It is time you and the children went to Avalon to stay with Guinevere and the lepers again. You will be safe there as before. I fear that it’s going to get very dangerous around Wessex. And though, as you have heard and know from your own experience, I will not assist this King Alfred in his religious domination of these lands, I must join with him and his army in repelling the Viking invader.
The magnificent wingspan of the sea eagle carried it high on the coastal thermals as it approached land. Its keen eyes picked out
every detail of the terrain far below, the crashing waves, currents, and gentle eddies, the random movements of shore-dwelling animals, the wheeling gannets and gulls, occasional humans throwing fishing nets, and smoke spilling from the holes in the reed roofs of hamlet hovels just off the shingle-strewn beaches. With its sharp, curved beak held slightly open it tasted and analyzed the fragrant scents of nature mixed with the unclean odours of human habitation drifting upward on the breezes. With all senses tuned to maximum and the spreading tail feathers acting as a rudder, the mighty bird wheeled and cruised up and down the long coastline for two days, until it found the pattern it was looking for.
Then it swooped.
Lit by a hundred blazing torches clamped to the walls, the huge feasting hall of Guthrum, jarl and king of the Viking, was awash with the noise and bustle of celebration. Sitting each side of Guthrum were the thirty regional chieftains, while further down the mighty table sat the ninety commanders, one for each of the long ships bobbing purposefully in the harbour. Propped against the walls were the brightly decorated round shields and assorted weaponry of the revellers. Serving women brought a constant supply of meat-laden metal dishes and flagons of keor, the strong lowland ale made from barley and honey, slapping groping hands away from their thighs and buttocks good-humouredly as they went. Outside lights blazed all along the harbour side as similar celebrations were taking place as each long ship crew held their own smaller version of the main celebration. All the important Norse gods were toasted, boasts were screamed to the heavens, weapons blessed, and oaths sworn to uphold and enhance the family standing. The large ox horns used as drinking vessels and carried with them on a leather shoulder strap into battle were continuously raised and great draughts thrown down hoarse throats in between verses of martial poetry. When the bloody sagas of this time came to be handed down, none of them would be found wanting. The mechanism employed by the Viking traditions in order to maintain honour for each family, and collectively for the Viking culture, would be carved in the Norse tablet legends forever and pushed beyond any mortal limits.
The mechanism of revenge.
Guthrum got to his feet and waited for the noise to abate. He was a tall, broad, blond-and-gray-haired man of fifty years with a full gray beard to his chest. The leather headband around his forehead had thirty small silver rings in it, one for each of the thirty regions who had voted him as king and whose chieftains now surrounded him. It was, as near as they would ever get, the Viking crown, and he had worn it for five years.
‘My brothers,’ he shouted as the hubbub began to die down. ‘Tonight we celebrate and tomorrow we drive our long ships toward the coast of the Britains.’
Horns were raised in the air to a chorus of cheering.
‘When Olaf Tryggvason,’ he pointed at the red-haired commander of the Lyme Regis raiding party, ‘came back and told us of the death of two hundred of our men at the hands of the Celtish sorcerer, it was a black day for our proud Viking race. I vowed then to Hel, our goddess of the dead, on the sacred blood axe of Wotan that not a single one of us would lie with our women or rest until we have had our revenge. Now the time has come to repay the debt with our Viking steel and superior battle knowledge.’ The cheering rose to a crescendo as one hundred and twenty drinking horns were again raised before being crashed against each other in the toast of revenge.
Guthrum held both his hands in the air.
‘But there is something else,’ he roared. ‘This time we, too, will have the assistance of sorcery. This time we, too, will be able to rain fireballs down on their heads and turn oars into lances.’
As the cheering rose again he turned to the brightly dyed ceiling-to-floor curtain behind him.
‘Bring out the gemini,’ he bellowed. ‘And their animals.’
‘Do you ever get scared?’ asked Desmond, throwing Combi a
n old, well-used linen ball, which the male bear caught easily on his nose, balanced it there as he rose up on his back legs, and flicked it to Nation.
‘Not for myself but I certainly do for others,’ replied Twilight, ‘especially since Eleanor and Harlo came along.’
‘I suppose I’ll get a bit twitchy when Nation has her twins.’
Twilight chuckled.
‘I wouldn’t worry about them. They’ll have those two big strong parents to look after them.’
Lord Scroop squawked at him from his perch between Sir Valiant’s ears. ‘C’mon Scroopy,’ Desmond called, pointing to his shoulder. ‘See if those old wings of yours can get you to here.’
After a great deal of flapping and squawking, the old parrot finally got airborne and landed clumsily on his shoulder.
‘Lord Scroop, King of Britain, at your service,’ the old bird cackled his stock phrase in a passable imitation of his master’s voice. ‘Lord Scroop, King of Britain, at your service.’
‘Alright Scroopy, don’t overdo it. We all know that’s the limit of your vocabulary. I sometimes wish I had taught you to say a few other things.’
‘What on earth do you mean, young Desmond? My vocabulary is far, far superior to yours. I just haven’t found the right occasion to use it.’
Desmond’s mouth fell open in complete disbelief at the words that had just issued from Scroopy’s beak. He turned to get a better look at the parrot sitting bright-eyed on his shoulder.
‘Wh . . . wh . . . what did you say?’
‘I said,’ the parrot cackled again right into Desmond’s face, ‘my vocabulary is far, far superior to yours.’
At a complete loss, the young man could only goggle open-mouthed. Then, in a sudden rush of understanding he whirled on Twilight.
‘It’s you! You’re speaking for him!’
‘And for me!’ Sir Valiant neighed across the compound. Desmond nodded his flaxen head in wonder.
‘You’ll never know just how much I wish I could do that,’ he said, lightly stroking Lord Scroop’s head. ‘With crinkum crankum like that I could strike the stars.’
Twilight chuckled. ‘Never mind, stay cheerful. It was a dictum of the long magus that whatever life throws at us, we must maintain a happy mien. In this business it’s so easy to delight in misery, surrounded as we are by war, famine, dropsy, plague, pestilence, demons, brigands, wraiths, invaders, and all the other shadows in people’s nature that prevent them from living a normal life.’
‘So much to understand,’ murmured the young troubadour.
‘There are civilizations out there,’ Twilight waved his arm around to encompass the whole world, ‘that are far in advance of ours. Merlin was an avid student and great believer in the Greeks and collected their writings, which he kept in a secret scriptorium. Before I came along the long magus spent fifty years studying these ancient texts and would quote them to me endlessly. It seems that the Greeks always had an appropriate maxim or pithy quotation for everything, especially battles.’
‘I’d like to see that scriptorium one day.’
‘And so you will, just as soon as we rid Wessex of these vicious invaders. Much of Merlin’s love of these ancients rubbed off on me. There is still so much to study and learn from these writings, and we will both spend many weeks delving into them.’
Twilight suddenly stiffened.
‘Stay here. I must go.’ Later, as the evening sun dipped over the compound, he was back. Motioning for Desmond to join him, they walked slowly toward the great circle of venefical destiny stones in silence. Finally Desmond broke the silence.
‘The Viking?’
Twilight sighed heavily and fingered the forty pica beaks around his neck.
‘I placed twenty pairs of pica at intervals along the Wessex coast to act as an early warning system if the Vikings came again. All but one of them was killed instantly, their throats slashed in flight. One of them stayed alive long enough to tell me what did it before passing away in my arms.’
They walked on toward the first stone.
‘That’s the second time I have lost forty pica to an enemy.’
They walked on. Desmond paused and rested his hand on the
‘This is Halcyon, the stone of The Prefect Elaine,’ he said. ‘Named after an Egyptian queen called Cleopatra. Halcyon was the name her parents gave her.’
‘Well remembered,’ said Twilight. ‘All the answers to all the conflicts are here. Each one of them faced many trials and came up with a way to overcome them.’
‘As we will,’ said Desmond.
Twilight stopped at the stone of Zero the Romany and turned to face his companion.
.fiftieth stone
‘It was a sea eagle. A big, fast, and very powerful bird with talons like metal thorns and a beak that will tear through flesh and sinew like a lance through soft fruit. Swooped on them from above, they never stood a chance.’
‘Did it have an aura?’
‘It did, and therefore is in ligamen to a Viking veneficus. A normal sea eagle does not kill indiscriminately, only what it needs to eat.’
They walked on.
‘You have replaced the birds that were killed?’
‘I have but with a different strategy. The killer sea eagle will be back, and this time we will be ready for it. Although they mate for life, sea eagles spend a great deal of time alone. This one will be alone as it was when it attacked my birds. There are many pairs of pica but few sea eagles.’
Twilight was right. Three days later the deadly sea eagle once again rode the thermals high above the Wessex coastline, its sharp eyes again covering every movement below. Its master had been very pleased with the pica killed and had proudly paraded the huge hawk in front of King Guthrum at the final celebrations. The cries for his prowess had rang out around the feasting hall and many toasts were drunk to his name from the ale-horns.
‘To Boma, the pica killer!’
‘Boma, a true feathered Viking!’ ‘Boma, the brave warrior of the skies!’
In truth it had slightly turned the eagle’s magnificent head. There was a strut about his walk that had not been there before, and more than a hint of invincible arrogance had crept into an already proud mien. Which, given that this was a creature that relied upon its instant reading of situations and its reaction to them, could be very dangerous.
Movement below!
A telltale black-and-white bird with one of its wings dragging along the ground flapped awkwardly in panic as it struggled out of a patch of small bushes to reach the relative safety of the tree line. An injured pica on the ground was as easy as it got. Wheeling into a steep dive and with the mighty wings swept back into a chevron, Boma arrowed in on the stricken bird. Sensing his presence, the pica flapped and crabbed frantically in its endeavours to reach the trees. Warm pica blood from yet another ripped throat from his sharp, curved beak began to assail Boma’s senses as he extended his talons to maximum and spread the huge wings to airbrake onto the back of the terrified bird, which had now given up and crouched in abject terror awaiting its death. In an explosion of sand, dust, and soil Boma hit the spot.
Nothing. There was nothing there.
Winded by the impact that should have been cushioned by the yielding body of the pica, Boma paused momentarily to try and work out why it had missed its quarry.
So quick was the fishing net sprung that Boma was caught with his great wings still open. As it struggled with slashing curved beak and talons to free itself, the fine jute mesh wrapped itself ever more tightly around the huge bird. Soon it was completely immobile, trussed up like a bluebottle in a spider’s web.
The conspicuous apparition had worked again, this time as a wounded and helpless pica.
‘The trouble with beautiful animals in ligamen to heathens,’ said Twilight in a matter-of-fact voice, appearing by the trapped bird�
��s side, ‘is that they take on all the worst characteristics of the human species they live with. They have removed all of the natural grace you were gifted at birth and replaced it with their own lust for blood.’
The Wessex veneficus looked deep into the eagle’s eyes for a moment, reading only hatred and still some surprise at its capture. The aura was strangely weak and the veneficus to whom it was in ligamen hazy.
‘They named you Boma. Well, Boma, you have killed forty of my birds, and that I cannot allow.’
He knelt down and tapped the top of its head to anaesthetize it against the pain that the forty deep pica head pecks would inflict.
Starting with those magnificent eyes.
Chapter 3
The striking reindeer skin drums of ninety Viking long ships thundered out the rhythm of the dipping oars as the vessels headed out to the open Northern Sea. Clearing the jagged headland, each vessel hoisted its brightly coloured headsail, which instantly filled with the following wind. With the striking drums fading to those watching on land, the twin propulsion of one hundred threshing oars per ship and a full headsail each soon had the entire fleet over the horizon.
Standing in full view of his fleet on the forward platform of his command and leading long ship, Guthrum kept his double-handled sword raised for all to see until the land had disappeared astern. At a given signal from his navigator in the early hours of the second morning, the fleet would split into three groups of thirty ships, each with three thousand fighting men. The first group, again led by Olaf Tryggvason, the red-haired commander of the ill-fated Lyme Regis raid, would, as before, pick up the Atlantic currents to take them south to repeat the landing in Lyme Bay. It was thought that the Celts would not be expecting another landing there. Having left guards on his ships, Tryggvason would then strike inland in a northerly direction for the town of Glastonbury as fast as he could, taking horses for his men and slaughtering anyone who got in his way. At Glastonbury he was to remove all opposition, dig in, and wait for instructions from Guthrum.
