by Chris Page
‘Excellent! Will you teach me some of this plant science?’
‘Of course, along with a great deal of other things when time permits.’
‘We haven’t seen much of the terrible twins,’ said Desmond.
‘They’re still in that large tent over there with Guthrum and his commanders, plotting, like us no doubt. There wasn’t much need for their brand of sorcery when everything was going the way of the invaders. It also seems they don’t like to leave Guthrum’s side. Probably worried about me spiriting him away.’
‘Or turning him into a pig or something.’
‘Don’t give me ideas. Now, in two minutes’ time another rather unusual event will take place that I intend to take full advantage of.’
‘What is it?’
‘An eclipse of the sun.’
‘I’ve seen one of them before. Everything goes dark for a short while.’
‘It does. An eclipse only occurs at the time of a new moon when it passes between our earth and the sun. It will last for several minutes, plenty of time for other surprising events to take place.’
‘Something with your pica?’
‘No, I’ve told them to keep as far away from here as possible until I call. I don’t yet fully understand what those gemini are up to, and that eagle Ran needs taking care of as well.’
‘You have a grand plan?’
‘I do. It’s very complicated and requires some elegant timing.’
‘Is Alfred in on it?’
‘Those parts that concern his men, yes.’
‘Can we watch from here?’
‘You can. I’ll be moving about. You are already invisible and there is no aura attached, so the twins shouldn’t be able to find you. I do believe my herbarium concoction is beginning to have an effect.’
He pointed to the north side, where the Viking were busily building the siege engines. Some of them began to stagger as if drunk. Soon they were all weaving about and falling over.
Twilight muttered his now familiar death refrain, pointing toward the dying Viking.
‘The moment of your savage destiny is upon you.’
Then it began to get dark. The eclipse was beginning.
And so was the next battle.
As the eclipse darkened the sky over Winchester, several things happened at once. With seven hundred Viking fighters collapsing around the siege engines, Go-ian and Go-uan’s first move was to them. As the mid-afternoon darkness grew, the other five thousand Viking reached for their weapons.
Then the deep voice of their god of gods rang out across the entire area and over the Plain of Salisbury in Nordic rune script. Interspersed by loud claps of thunder and jagged forks of lightning around the surrounding hills, the mesmerizing voice of Odin used his power to ‘bind’ them in what the Norse called a mystic sigil or herfjottur. This produced a desperate mental paralysis that struck the raiders rigid on the spot. As the deep timbre of the rune-knowing poetry of defeat rolled over their inert, stricken minds in the gathering darkness of the eclipse, the drawbridge of the castle clanged down and four hundred heavily armed Celtic soldiers ran out. Forming instantly into ten phalanxes, a battle formation based on the Roman centurion’s mass of well-armed groups that flexed and absorbed enemy encounters, the Celts moved quickly toward the transfixed berserkers and began to hack the nearest ones down.
At this point the venefical twins, who had been trying to figure out what was wrong with the siege-engine builders, switched their attention to the five thousand transfixed soldiers, who included Guthrum and Thorsten. Unbinding or loosening a rune was not difficult for them. The stricken siege-engine builders would have to wait . . . or die.
Then the thunderbolts zipping from Twilight’s fingertips began to blast to splinters the half-made siege engines, and the twins were forced to reply with a few of their own. As Twilight’s thunderbolts tore apart the transfixed Viking, the twins rained them down on the Celtic phalanxes, which began to split apart under the fiery onslaught.
Under the castle, four thousand men crouching in the long north-facing tunnel and a further three thousand, five hundred in the south-facing tunnel received the command to move. With their weapons bound in linen, their sandals hanging around their necks on jute twine, and all their armor and chain mail left behind, every precaution had been taken to ensure silence as they moved swiftly through the tunnels. Running for over a mile out into the surrounding countryside, way beyond the Viking ring thrown around the town, and originally dug by the Romans over three hundred years previously, both tunnels had become blocked through disuse and rockfalls, their exits buried under young forests. It hadn’t taken Twilight long to remove all the obstacles and open their exits up to the sky.
As the explosions above them shook the tunnels and the howling battle cries of the unbound Viking permeated the subterranean gloom, the first Celts began to emerge from the exits out in the forests. There had been some debate between Alfred, de Gaini, Easton, and Twilight as to the next move, with Easton making a good case for coming back at the marauders from behind. Eventually common sense prevailed and it was decided that roughly every five hundred men emerging from each tunnel should head off in different directions to regroup as an army later.
At Chippingham.
Alfred, with his wife and her companion and several other women, led the scramble from the northern tunnel exit and de Gaini the southern.
Hugh Easton, in his capacity as High Reeve of Winchester, bravely volunteered to stay behind with ten men to reopen the gates for the survivors of the phalanxes.
Once the twins had succeeded in getting the Viking out of the rune trance and back on the rampage, they soon closed down the scattered men from the ten phalanxes. Of the four hundred who had charged out of the castle in the gathering gloom of the eclipse, only sixty made it back in the bright glare of the afternoon sun before Easton slammed the mighty oaken gates shut on the howling pursuers. That left a total of just seventy to defend the castle against four thousand, five hundred demonically mad berserkers. With Twilight sealing off both tunnels when the last Celts had been through in order to maintain the bluff long enough for them to get clear away, the seventy brave defenders wouldn’t last for long unless he could come up with some very special magic.
Then he received a mind message from the gemini that stopped him in his tracks.
We have Desmond Kingdom Biwater and all his secrets, and he is about to die.
‘The big difference between you and us and Celts and Vikings,’ said Go-uan and Go-ian together, ‘is that human life is valuable to you, whereas it’s only a means to an end for us. Even the Viking venefici rarely last one hundred years. Unlike yours, who all seem to see out their full term before getting one of those fancy commemorative stones at Avebury, ours end up in a frozen cave with all the other piles of venefical bones.’
‘Your mother, Freyja, is still alive and going strong at the age of ninety.’
They both looked startled.
‘How do you know that?’
Twilight smiled at their discomfiture.
‘Although you answered that you ‘were’ trained by her when I asked who your mentor was at the first meeting we had here, implying that she was no longer with us, I decided to check. Sure enough, she is still very much alive and queening it over the entire venefical training system in Scandinavia.’
They were again sitting on the top of Glastonbury Tor.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ sniffed Go-ian. ‘It doesn’t change anything.’
‘But you’re right about the differences. I care about every life in Wessex and will do all I can to preserve it.’
‘Especially the life of your young, newly recruited companion, eh?’
‘Especially his,’ agreed Twilight.
‘Let us tell you what we want in return for his life, rune-slayer,’ said Go-uan. ‘We want Olaf Trygg
vason and all his men delivered back safely to our care from wherever you have spirited them. Then you can have the young troubadour back.’ Twilight considered this for a moment. ‘You want three thousand men back in exchange for one?’
‘Yes,’ the twins said together with a giggle. ‘No,’ said Twilight. ‘You keep him. As much as I value his life, the three thousand raiders with Tryggvason will slaughter many thousands more. They stay where they are.’
‘We will find them.’ ‘I doubt it.’ ‘We’ll throw in the seventy castle defenders as well. The castle is no good to Guthrum—it’s that weedy king and his men that he wants.’ ‘No deal,’ said Twilight. ‘Such a nice young man,’ said Go-ian with a sigh. ‘Musician, small conjurer, friend to four bears, a horse, and a parrot. Friend also to your wife, Rawnie, and daughter, Eleanor, and son, Harlo. Now, I wonder where they are . . . ‘
Twilight beamed at them. ‘Something else you will never find out.’ ‘So, he dies,’ they both snapped.
‘Just before you go, would you like to hear my terms?’
For the second time they looked startled. ‘Go on,’ they said, glancing at each other. ‘There is one person whose life I will trade for Desmond’s.’ ‘Whose?’ they said together. ‘Your mother’s.’ They froze and had an interchange of rapid mind speak, forgetting that Twilight could understand every word.
Does he have Freyja?
No, he’s bluffing. She’s at home in Norgstal. I communicated with her only this morning. Can he find her through the training school? No, it’s not a fixed location. Besides, she’s more than a match for him.
Maybe, but her power is on the wane. She’s not the force she used to be. What do you want to do? Stall. We need time to think about this.
Twilight had continued to look at them openly whilst they had this exchange.
‘Veneficus of Wessex,’ they both said with a small bow. ‘You are indeed a most resourceful and clever opponent. Your use of the Rune of Defeat with Odin’s voice was the stroke of a master strategist. However, it may yet come back to haunt you and the Wessex cause. We will retire to consider the situation.’
‘Thank you,’ said Twilight quietly. ‘Just so long as Desmond Kingdom Biwater is unharmed, I will keep away from Freyja . . . in Norgstal. It’s good to know that there are some lives you blighted gemini care about, even if it is the woman who gave birth to you and taught your evil misuse of the enchantments.’
There were no giggles left in the air this time when they left.
‘They let me go,’ said Desmond simply. ‘There was a fearsome row between Guthrum and the twins. Raging and cursing at each other for ages. As far as I could make out, Guthrum wanted to take off my head, and they didn’t. Then the regional chieftains got involved and had their say. In the end it came down to some sort of vote and here I am. The twins got their way but at what cost I do not know. That Guthrum is a monster. He has rages like the very storms of Hades itself. The veins on his face and arms stood out like cords, and his eyes popped like the knob end of a hermit’s stick. One day he will explode in a storm of malevolent bile.’
‘Perhaps he’s beginning to realize that this battle is not going according to plan. This green and fertile little land, which he thought would capitulate without much resistance and prostrate itself at his dirty feet, is fighting back. He came here with nine thousand fighting men and now has a little more than half of them left. All he’s got to show for it is a castle, a town of ashes, and a king who has slipped through his fingers with most of his men. One who will undoubtedly be better prepared the next time.’
‘He knows Alfred’s heading for Chippingham,’ whispered Desmond.
‘Oh?’
‘Not from me. I didn’t know it and couldn’t therefore reveal it, but the High Reeve of Winchester, Hugh Easton, did, and they tortured him until he told them. No one of flesh and blood could be expected to stand up to what they did to him. I was forced to watch. Afterward they cut off his lips, nose, and ears, then threw his broken body onto the fire. He was still alive.’
Tears were streaming down his cheeks. Twilight pulled his flaxen head into his shoulder and held him there for a while. Apart from the attempt to barter for Tryggvason and his men, the twins had used the meeting with him as a cover for an assault on the castle with long ladders and had slaughtered every one of the defenders except Easton. So much for the exchange offer of the castle defenders.
They were offering dead men.
After Desmond had composed himself he gripped Twilight’s shoulder.
‘Don’t worry. They won’t defeat me, only strengthen my resolve.’ He gave a watery smile.
‘Good,’ said the astounder. ‘Let’s go and get those animals of yours to a safe place before those hideous little gemini go after them as well.’
‘What else did they find out from me?’
‘Pretty much everything you knew that would be useful to them, but what you didn’t know couldn’t be revealed. The things they really want are the locations of Tryggvason and his men and my family.’
‘Make sure I never know these things in case they take me again.’
‘Worry not, my brave troubadour. There are many things I will not tell you, both for the good of yourself and others. In the meantime the characters in your spectaculum must be moved. Take my hand.’
‘Being your companion has its up and downs,’ said Desmond, smiling. ‘But I sure like this bit.’
The soldiers who escaped from Winchester began to arrive at Chippingham in their groups of five hundred. Mindful of the entrapment in Winchester Castle, King Alfred and Edward de Gaini placed them in staggered semicircular formations on the rolling hills in the front of the town. Each formation was led by a line of longbow men; attackers would be exposed to a hail of arrows from them first before being replaced by a second line of bowmen. Then the exercise was repeated. The strategy was to keep the Viking at range for as long as possible whilst reducing their numbers. Once hand-to-hand combat prevailed, the Celts would be cut down by the Viking death-or-glory berserker frenzy, superior skills, and weapons.
And their own ability to stand and fight in sufficient numbers in the face of it.
Mounted scouts were left patrolling the outer limits of the mighty Savernake Forest and hill and valley approaches around Chippingham, and warning bonfires prepared. Copying the foe, carnyx, long, animal-headed warning horns were also deployed all along the outer line to be blown at the approach of the dreaded lowlanders. All of Alfred’s soldiers would be fighting without armor, which was discarded in Winchester Castle in order to stay silent as they crept down the tunnels.
Those in the settlement of Chippingham too old or not inclined to fight were advised to leave and scatter across the landscape as fast as they could, and a steady stream of carts full of hastily gathered possessions with various animals tied to them, the elderly, women, and children clinging to the possessions on top, made their way along the rutted tracks leading south out of the town.
Alfred also dispatched ten riders in different directions: three to the coast, where they were to attempt to get passage to Transalpine Gaul and Iberia, two to Wales, three to Mercia, and two to Kent. Their task was to make contact with the many freelance bands of mercenaries that roamed these lands and bring them back to join with the existing army in the struggle against the invaders. Each carried a signed and wax-sealed proclamation from Alfred that any mercenaries engaged would be paid in gold.
At least food was plentiful. The grain stores in Chippingham were full after a fine harvest, and meat was also in good supply.
High on one of these hills, Samuel Southee flopped down on the grass alongside his cohort leader Nathaniel Stubbs.
‘I didn’t know I was capable of marching so far, so fast,’ he said, mopping his perspiring brow. ‘Just goes to show what we can do when there’s a few thousand murdering invaders up your arse, eh Nat?’
Clem Fossey joined them and stuck his spear in the ground, propped his shield against it, and unbuckled his short sword.
‘‘Twas a miracle getting out of that castle,’ said Fossey.
‘Still don’t know how the king pulled it off.’
Southee pointed. Walking through the serried lines of exhausted soldiery spread out around them, Alfred and de Gaini stopped here and there offering words of encouragement to the exhausted troops.
‘From what I hear, getting out didn’t have much to do with them, or that loud voice and thunder and lightning we heard that made the tunnel shake. I was talking to one of de Gaini’s aides last night on the march up here. Them Viking also lost seven hundred men, those that were building siege engines,’ said Stubbs.
‘How?’
‘He said it was magic. Alfred’s got the Wessex veneficus helping him. The bloke who took over from Merlin.’
‘Merlin? I remember him,’ said Clem Fossey. ‘Saw him over Malmesbury way once. Tall, skinny fella with long silver hair and beard and the greenest eyes you ever saw. Turned a cattle thief into a brood mare in heat and put him in a field with four stallions!’
They chuckled.
‘So, de Gaini’s aide reckoned this new veneficus killed seven hundred Vikings with magic, eh?’ mused Southee. ‘Wish he’d been standing alongside when them murdering killers came screaming toward us in Winchester.’
They stayed silent for a while with memories of dead comrades and the battle.
‘I dunno about these sorcerers,’ said Stubbs reflectively. ‘Best left alone if you ask me. Never know what they’ll do next, even when they’re on your side.’
High above the three comrades, Ran, the sea eagle of Go-ian, glided silently, the thermal up-draughts produced by the wind coming off the rolling hills around Chippingham providing the perfect medium for an effortless holding pattern. With her feathers barely ruffling in the light cross breezes, the great bird took in everything below for reporting back to her master.
