by N. M. Browne
Ursula/Dan tried to be a dove and a pigeon at the same time. They became something and it flew. With that becoming came sight and hearing and the dizzying perspective of flight. There were Aenglisc everywhere, an army of foot soldiers, in mail shirts and ridgehelmets, or spangenhelm. Rhonwen stood in front of a huge crowd, her face ravaged by fire, her dark hair wild and matted. Her garments were hung with skulls and bleached bones so numerous that her own form was lost beneath them; so many that they clinked and scraped together as she moved in some variant of the danse macabre. She now seemed a half-mad figure, frothing at the mouth, her eyes glazed and her pupils eerily dilated as though she were drugged. She was chanting. Her beautiful voice was as ravaged by hard use as her beauty. The words were hoarse and harsh and were screamed rather than sung. The meaningless syllables sent shudders down the bird form that was the eyes and ears of Dan and Ursula. The air thrummed with magic and fury. Rhonwen was pouring her venomous hate into a roughly made, clay figure that may have been intended to represent Ursula. There was no time for thought, or rather thought and action were one with this bird that was made of thoughts. It flew down towards the upturned face of Rhonwen and dived for her face, pecking and beating its wings, which became entangled in the mass of her heavy, dark hair. To the Ursula/Dan bird it felt as if talons clawed the scarred flesh of Rhonwen’s burnt cheek. Whatever happened, the chanting stopped abruptly and with it the malevolent power died away, and the fear dissipated and the strange fusion of being ceased.
Dan felt Ursula’s hand crushing his and opened his eyes at the same instant that he gasped for air. He saw, with his own eyes, Arturus cross himself and Ursula let go of his hand. He was himself again. He breathed deeply and shook his head like Braveheart did when wet, as if to rid himself of the strangeness that still clung to him.
‘Are you all right, Ursula?’
There was a pause. Dan could see intelligence return to Ursula’s frightened eyes. She swallowed hard and wiped the sweat from her hand on her tunic, almost as if she were checking that she still was what she had been before. Ursula took a deep breath and answered, woodenly, reflexively as if in shock.
‘Yes, thank you. That was the weirdest thing that has ever happened to me.’
Given the number of weird things that had happened to Ursula in recent months, that was no inconsiderable claim, but Dan agreed with her. Taliesin was still looking at him expectantly.
‘We found Rhonwen. She was acting like a mad woman, shrieking and wearing all these bones. She’d made a model of Ursula – I think she was trying to harm her through the figure.’
Arturus did not pause to question how Dan had gained the information. He accepted that Dan had found the means to spy on the army and was only interested in what he had discovered.
‘How many men were with her? Please think, Gawain.’
‘I would say near a thousand – wouldn’t you agree, Ursula?’
Ursula nodded thoughtfully. ‘I think they were all infantry. I sensed no large numbers of horses. There were a group of maybe fifty archers and I saw a good number with throwing axes, but most had only swords and shields. I don’t think there were more than a thousand, no, not more than a thousand.’
‘And where were they?’
Ursula and Dan looked at each other. It was hard to accept that their recent experience had taken place in any real time or place. They had arrived wherever Rhonwen was, instantly.
‘I don’t think it was far from here,’ Dan volunteered hesitantly.
‘It was near the sea – I could taste the sea.’
‘Yes, yes, you’re right.’
‘If they camp there tonight the vanguard could be here by midday tomorrow.’ Arturus looked thoughtfully from Dan to Ursula, and back. ‘It is clear that Gawain and the Lady Ursa can speak without words, yes?’
Dan and Ursula nodded.
‘We could use such a talent. I will think about it. Do you know what the witch plans to do?’
Dan and Ursula both shook their head, and with a half smile of regret, the High King left. Ursula thought there must be some residual link between herself and Dan because for one instant she felt Dan recoil from the thought of having to repeat their recent experience. It had not been as bad as she had feared but it must have been worse for Dan. She could almost taste the flavour of his thoughts in her mind. It had been a terrible, intense, self-destroying closeness but a small fraction of Ursula was newly aware of loneliness without him. She felt a little hurt that he did not feel the same way.
Chapter Twenty-four
Arturus was right. By noon of the next day the vanguard of the Aenglisc army began to pour onto the land beneath the fortress. Only their leaders rode. The majority of the men walked together in no particular order, each carrying his own personal kit. There was little in the manner of their dress to distinguish them from the less Romanised of their enemies. They all carried shields, mainly large, oval, wooden shields with heavy, metal, central bosses that were themselves pointed enough to be used as weapons. Some carried slightly smaller round shields, but all walked with pride and a certain ease with their weaponry which Ursula recognised as the mark of a warrior. They were more threatening than the Aenglisc she had already fought. They were warriors not soldiers, closer in their demeanour to Macsen’s Combrogi warriors than to Arturus’s trained Romanised forces. It hit her then, the realisation that these men were dressed like those she had seen in a re-enactment of the Battle of Hastings before she first entered the Veil. Like her classmates she had been shouting encouragement to the men in the Aenglisc shield wall as they were charged by the Norman knights. Dan was right. These men might very well be her own ancestors. Few were as tall as herself, but that was probably the result of their diet. Many were blonde as she was, blonde with faces that would not have been out of place in any street in modern England. She had agreed to fight these men and some of them she would kill. She was after all still Boar Skull where it mattered – in the strength of her right arm. She would kill some of these men, unless her own luck ran out quite spectacularly. She moved away from the walkway on the battlements with a growing sense of unease. Could she back out now? Bedewyr, Larcius and Cynfach had also been watching the arrivals. As Ursula turned to walk away she noticed that all of them were watching her closely. There was no way she could back out without harming Arturus’s cause. She was committed. It had seemed so much clearer when she had rescued the Combrogi villagers from the brutal invaders. Here and now the Aenglisc were just another band of men, wanting what was not theirs. Did they deserve to die?
Arturus’s servant saw her walk away, and hailed her.
‘Lady Ursa, the High King and Taliesin would like to see you in Taliesin’s quarters.’
She smiled and the young man flushed, embarrassed to be acknowledged by a hero. It made Ursula uncomfortable, but it was a common reaction. Damn Taliesin and his clever ideas. It was all his fault – he’d turned her into a legend.
Dan was waiting in Taliesin’s tent, his dark cloak giving him a distant, monkish air.
The High King was speaking in furtive whispers to Taliesin but stopped when Ursula entered.
‘Lady Ursa, thank you for coming so swiftly. You have seen them – the war bands?’
Ursula nodded.
I have been talking over our tactics for the battle with Taliesin. We agree that it would inspire the men if you were to lead the charge of the Sarmatians.’
Even in the dimness of the tent Ursula must have looked stunned because Arturus added quickly, ‘It is important that the men have heart. Were not so many of the men Christians, I fear that they would regard you as a goddess.’
Ursula hesitated, and then said cautiously, ‘But, Arturus, you are their leader, their High King, their War Duke – would it not be best for them to follow you?’
Arturus’s teeth flashed brightly in the gloom, a swift, rare smile.
‘Lady Ursa, I am not a fool, and though I wish my men gave me half the adoration they reserve for yo
u, they do not. I win battles. I won battles for my dear friend, the High King Ambrosius; I will do it now for myself. The men and the kings of this island respect my competence, but I have never had their love …’
‘But—’
‘Leave it, Ursula – he’s right. You don’t know how these people feel about you. I do. They would follow you to the gates of hell and back, which is just as well because there are enough Aenglisc to send you there. Taliesin agrees. It’s why he called to us through the Veil.’
Dan’s mental voice was firm and strong. She trusted it. She let her ‘but’ trail away. All she could do was accept the inevitable with the best grace she could manage. She sighed, the smallest, least dramatic sigh she could produce – no more than an exhalation of breath.
‘You’d better tell me what you want me to do.’
By late evening, the land around the ancient hill fort was bright with campfires. The songs of their enemies, raucous and warlike, rang loudly and discordantly through the still night. They stoked the flames of their courage and hate with their fires, their war songs, their sea songs and their sagas.
Dan stood with Braveheart on the battlements. He was protected by the high, wooden parapet and the darkness of his hooded cloak. His body quivered, with an involuntary nervous spasm as the waves of aggression and hate from the Aenglisc threatened to overwhelm him. There were more than a thousand men. Either his earlier estimate had been wrong or more troops had joined the battle force.
The Aenglisc were convinced to a man that they had caught Arturus this time. They could not fail. They saw war as the duty of a man and they gloried in it. They were afraid, of course, but they believed they could win, that they would win and the victory would inspire a hundred tales to fuel the fireside sagas for a thousand years. Somewhere out there in the darkness Dan could feel Rhonwen, readying herself for her own battle. Was she the source of their confidence? Dan was not skilled enough to pick up her particular brand of hate among so many, but he knew it was there. He swung round as he sensed Taliesin approach.
‘I have brought you comfort, Dan.’
Dan tried to smile. He managed a grimace, a twitch of the lips, no more.
Brother Frontalis and Bryn came into view. Bryn carried Taliesin’s harp in a leather case, lined with fur. He removed it reverently. Taliesin settled himself in Combrogi style on the muddy wooden boards of the walkway. He took something from the cord he wore round his neck and began to tune his harp. It was a dark night but for the slight, transient, glimmering moonlight, but Taliesin needed nothing but his harp and his talent, hard won through endless years of practice in Macsen’s world; it had not been lost in the movement between worlds. Taliesin’s quick fingers spun a magical web of musical threads, wove sound to insulate them from the menace in the night. A hush fell over the soldiers in the hill fort. They paused in their clattering and cleaning of kit, stilled and silenced by the haunting harmonies, as Brother Frontalis added his rich baritone to Taliesin’s harp. The night should have swallowed one man’s harp and another man’s voice, but it did not. When Bryn raised his own pure treble, it was as if the stars themselves sang, piercing the darkness with silver clarity. Where Bryn’s voice and Taliesin’s harp sounded there was only beauty and belonging. While they played Dan was free of any feelings but his own.
It was a kind of spell and even when the last lingering chord died Dan sensed a change around him. Arturus’s men were calmer and he was no longer overwhelmed.
‘Thank you.’ Dan’s response was heartfelt. ‘I did not think anything could help but that did.’
‘Can you sense Rhonwen out there?’ Taliesin nodded in the direction of the Aenglisc camp, which now surrounded the hill fort like a sea.
‘She’s there. I know that much – but I don’t know what she plans to do.’
‘We’ll find out tomorrow. I’ve no doubt they will try to provoke a battle, they’re not well placed for a siege. The harvest is in and most of it is in Caer-Baddon or here. Arturus will try to delay the fight until they’re hungry and sick – a few dead sheep in the river will sort them out nicely. The men from Cado have their orders.’
Dan absorbed this information for a moment. ‘But what about our water?’
‘Our barrels of water are guarded night and day.’
‘Rhonwen couldn’t poison us through magic could she?’
‘I don’t think so. If she had the power to strike us all down with a real sickness she would have done it by now.’
‘What are you expecting then?’
‘Only trouble, Dan, no more than that. Let’s get some sleep.’
‘What if they attack tonight?’
‘Then we’ll fight them tonight. But they won’t. They’re too drunk.’
It was true. There was a different quality to the emotions still raging over the fortress wall. Without a further glance at the sprawling enemy camp, Dan followed Taliesin to the neat rows of tents, the familiar stink of the latrines and the powerful odour of horses. When his mum had been alive she had grown roses and had bought manure from the stables. He was not sure she would have been impressed by the association he made between her and the reek from the stables, but nonetheless it gave him comfort and he went to sleep dreaming of home, of his mother and Lizzie, and a carefree, sober father he had not known for years. He longed for those lost days when he had always felt safe. He longed for them so badly that his chest ached and he woke to the sound of the lituus, the morning battle horn, with his face wet with tears.
Chapter Twenty-five
Taliesin was right. The Aenglisc did not attack in the night. Soon after dawn, the smells from the Aenglisc cook fires drifted across the hill fort. Ursula had slept badly. She had been cold and the thought of leading a charge of Sarmatian horsemen down the steep scarp slope of Baddon Hill filled her with panic.
She was terrified of failing them. She kept on imagining herself falling off as she led the proud horsemen in the charge; or worse, failing to jump the broad ditch at the foot of the hill and breaking her horse’s legs. Moreover she had relatively little experience with the long spear, or kontos, which the Sarmatians used to such good effect in training. She was out of her depth and drowning in the hostile waters of ‘what if?’.
More prosaically, Ursula hated not being able to shower or bathe. Like everyone else she had slept in her clothes and she felt dirty and unkempt. Larcius had lent her a comb and she had braided her hair, though it was too fine to stay in place for long and she would have to tuck it into her helmet when it came to the battle. She felt sick at the thought of battle. She was not ready.
Dan was eating his breakfast standing up, chatting to Frontalis. She felt a pang of envy and annoyance. He had abdicated his role as a hero, why had she not had the wit to do the same? Suddenly, the air around her crackled with static, lifting the fine golden hairs on her arms. Magic! Rhonwen!
Ursula ran for the battlements, followed a moment later by Dan.
‘What is it?’
Before she could think her reply it became all too obvious. The sky darkened and the air became black with demonic forms. Rhonwen had modified and improved the trick she’d tried against Ursula earlier. Above their heads, hideous dog-faced men feasted on Roman soldiers, while great vultures with monstrous beaks and human eyes flapped their black wings and seemed to drop severed heads onto the terrified Romans. It was like a scene from some vision of hell painted by Hieronymus Bosch.
‘Sorcery!’ screamed Brother Frontalis and he began to sing in his strong baritone, ‘Yea, though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, yet will I fear no evil …’
‘It’s an illusion!’ cried Ursula, wishing she had a more powerful voice.
Men were kneeling on the ground and crossing themselves, while the pagans spat curses at the demonic host.
Arturus took control. He raised his own shield, which was painted with a golden cross, outlined in crimson against a ground as white as chalk and egg white mixed could make it. The cross was vivid i
n the eerie light. Arturus shouted, ‘What you see is not real. It is sorcery and illusion. We are not men to flinch from the semblance of evil. We must be strong and be ready to repel the real enemies – the Aenglisc. They are counting on our disarray to conquer us. To the battlements!’
Arturus’s ringing cry was echoed by the clarion call of the lituus signalling action. Overhead, the demonic throng darkened and deepened like a thundercloud and the air was filled with a cacophony of screams, shrieks of pain, and bestial cries that made Ursula shrink with fear. She knew it was an illusion but it was a powerful one that blotted out the sun and made everything, even Arturus’s shield, grey and colourless. It made even her allies look ghastly and cadaverous. The men followed orders but many covered their heads with their shield. They rallied a little at Arturus’s courage, but the horses reared wildly in their stables and not even the skilled Sarmatians could keep them calm. Braveheart raised his massive head and bayed an unearthly cry. A chill settled round Ursula’s heart. Dan was battered by the overwhelming tide of fear. He grabbed Ursula’s hand and dragged her towards Taliesin, who was inspecting the illusion with a critical eye.
‘Rhonwen’s improved, I’ll give you that. Not bad.’
‘Taliesin!’ Dan forced the one-time bard to face him. Taliesin seemed to react to a crisis with unhelpful levity. ‘Taliesin! What did you do to make the sound of Bryn’s singing so loud yesterday?’
Taliesin looked shamefaced. ‘I wondered if you’d realise. Because you helped me when I was stuck in merlin form, I was able to use a little of your mental power to amplify the sound, so it rang in the minds of those around me.’
‘You did what?’ Dan sounded both angry and bemused.
‘Dan, it doesn’t matter,’ Ursula broke in urgently. ‘If you have an idea, tell us! This is horrible even for me and I can feel the magic Rhonwen’s using and I know that what is up there is not real.’
Dan spoke rapidly and urgently. ‘I need Bryn to sing something strong and powerful, loud enough to deafen the enemy and show Rhonwen we’re not afraid. It would hearten the men and it might make her stop this monstrosity.’ He waved at the hellish apparition that was still raining severed heads down into the fortress, though no solid object thudded to the ground.
