by N. M. Browne
‘Bryn, can you sing something really powerful? Taliesin, can you help me?’
Taliesin smiled. ‘You can do it yourself – what you must do is imagine you are shouting something as loudly as you can, something good, something that makes you feel safe and cared for. Don’t actually shout, of course, but mix that good feeling in with Bryn’s song. It isn’t as difficult as it sounds.’
Brother Frontalis stepped forward and held Dan’s hand. He met Dan’s worried look with his frank and confident gaze. ‘I told you all that is good comes from God. I know it, and Taliesin knows it too. All will be well, Gawain, take my faith and send it out to all the men, for no evil, real or feigned, can fail to fall at the Lord’s name.’ Frontalis was unafraid and totally sincere.
‘I don’t know if I can make this work,’ Dan faltered.
‘Dan just do it! I know you can!’ Ursula clapped her hand on his shoulder rather hard, which gave him the jolt he needed.
Dan looked at Bryn, who was terrified of the horrible drama taking place overhead. Bryn’s eyes were huge and frightened looking, but he did not say anything nor did he cower away as many of the grown men were doing.
‘Sing the AlleluiaI taught you, Bryn,’ said Brother Frontalis. ‘Let the sound soar, like I showed you.’ Brother Frontalis’s confidence seemed to relax Bryn slightly.
‘Do we need to stand at the battlements so Rhonwen and the Aenglisc can see us?’
‘That’s a good idea. But take Bryn away, Ursula, if it looks like he’s in danger.’
Bryn was about to protest but Dan added sternly, ‘You are our secret weapon, Bryn, and a good soldier does not expose such a thing unnecessarily.’
They followed the men still forming a defensive wall along the battlements and found their place next to Arturus, who waved his shield defiantly at the enemy.
Rhonwen’s magic was even more disconcerting from the height of the battlements. It seemed as though they stared into a sea of blood in which Combrogi soldiers lay in great torment being torn limb from limb by beasts of nightmare. The air was so alive with magic that Ursula wanted to cry with frustration. If only she could still reach the magic she could have destroyed Rhonwen’s illusions so simply. She would swap all her Boar Skull strength for one moment of power, when the lightning energies of the magic coursed their wild rhythm through her veins. But, it was not a choice she had. Ursula could see the Aenglisc advancing stealthily beneath the illusion of a sea of blood.
‘Do it, Dan! They’re coming this way – the real Aenglisc. I don’t think anyone else can see them.’
The Aenglisc looked uncomfortable as though they themselves expected to be set upon by the beasts of Rhonwen’s conjuring, but they were brave men and they followed their leaders with swords and seaxs drawn.
Dan nodded at Bryn, who shut his eyes against all the horrors and sang. The first tentative notes were swallowed up in the demonic cries that were themselves magically amplified, but as Bryn gained his confidence, his voice grew stronger, until it truly soared as Frontalis had instructed. Dan opened himself to Frontalis’s emotions, letting down the guard he’d been so carefully constructing. It was like relaxing a tensed muscle. It was like forcing himself to swim out of his depth for the first time. He had to allow himself to fully experience Frontalis’s faith and send it out like a great, invisible psychic blast to hearten the Combrogi and confound the Aenglisc. It was an unnerving experience but quite unlike the bewildering loss of self he had experienced with Ursula. He found it easiest to imagine he was a kind of amplifier taking input from Bryn and Frontalis and projecting it as loudly as possible through the bizarre powers of his mind. It was instinctive. He could not describe what he did, he only knew that it seemed to work, for the effect was immediate and tangible. The Combrogi stopped cowering beneath their shields and straightened their backs. They were still as threatened by the lowering evil above and around them, but their fear was dissipated by the purifying clarity of Bryn’s unearthly soprano and Frontalis’s unshakeable faith.
Arturus raised his shield, this time in triumph, and his gesture was answered by several hundred Combrogi soldiers who responded by raising their own.
Ursula felt Rhonwen’s illusion waver as her confidence was temporarily dented by the impact of Bryn’s clarion song. Ursula was not the only one to notice. For one brief moment, the illusion of the sea of blood shimmered like a heat haze and dissolved. It was long enough to reveal the presence of the advancing Aenglisc. The Combrogi let loose a shower of stones. When Arturus gave the word the four men given charge of the precious ballista leapt into action, raining down huge round missiles on the unsuspecting heads of the enemy. Bryn’s glorious Alleluia became a still more triumphant anthem. The dark cloud overhead paled to grey, and then drifted apart so that fragments of demon floated overhead, becoming gradually less cohesive until they ceased to exist at all. The somewhat cold, wintry sun shocked them all with its sudden, hard brilliance. In the unforgiving morning light the blood river appeared far less convincing and Rhonwen let it go.
Ursula felt the sudden sagging relaxation of her muscles as the magic ceased. She had clenched her whole body against her desire to wield the magic and now that it was gone she felt shaky and tearful. The monstrous shrieks had ended abruptly as if someone had turned off a broadcast from hell. Bryn’s song, now solitary and sublime, rang in Ursula’s inner ear. She was ambushed by an unexpected sense of peace. The Aenglisc had run away and the first attack was over. It was clear that the Aenglisc had abandoned their attempt at capturing the fort by stealth. Even firing blind, the Combrogi archers had struck a large number of the enemy, who had themselves been blinded by Rhonwen’s illusion and therefore failed to raise their shields in time. The surrounding fields were stained with fast-congealing blood and the corpses of men, who only minutes before had been as alive as Ursula, littered the ground.
The High King Arturus ordered a ceasefire to allow the dead and wounded to be collected. He had strapped his shield over his back and it caught the sun as he moved – a gold cross on a white ground as clear and unsullied as Bryn’s voice. As the sun reached the zenith of midday Dan still amplified Bryn’s jubilant Alleluia and Bryn sang on.
Chapter Twenty-six
The Aenglisc retired some distance from the fort to bury their dead. The wind bore the distant sound of their singing into the heart of the Combrogi fortress. They were the Combrogi’s enemies but they grieved like any other men. Dan felt the regret, the sorrow and the pride of those who sang war songs for their dead comrades. He was glad when the burials finished sometime between dusk and full darkness. He missed Frontalis’s faith. He missed Bryn’s voice. In the silence of the night it seemed a colder more brutal world, and Dan wished he and Ursula had a way to leave it. Death was everywhere around him, snapping at his heels, in the last thoughts of his enemies and the first thoughts of his friends. Would this be his last sunset? He breathed in the multi-layered stench of the fortress and longed to be home. Ursula had retired to her tent, exhausted by the tantalising presence of magic beyond her reach. Her nerves were worn raw with the desperation of her need for the magic. It was an addiction she had not known she had acquired. Dan felt for her but there was nothing he could give her but his sympathy and Ursula had little use for that. Arturus had doubled the guard overnight but there seemed to be no need. All was quiet, but for the small sounds of sleeping men and animals, the blast of the horn to signal watch change, the small scufflings and fidgetings and quiet exchange of pleasantries that accompanied each handover. Dan was restless. He and Taliesin had tried to take on the merlin form to spy on the Aenglisc but had been unable to make it work. Dan thought they were both too tired but refrained from saying so. Taliesin’s pride would admit no physical weakness, though Dan could not remember him caring much about such things when he’d first met him in Macsen’s world.
The morning showed Dan the Aenglisc at their fires, eating their now meagre supplies, and cleaning and sharpening their weapons. Just before noon
Rhonwen produced an eerie green mist that rolled like some vile toxic cloud all around the fort. It reeked of sulphur and was clearly created to disguise the activities of the enemy. The fort became an island surrounded by an apparently poisonous sea. Arturus instructed all food to be covered up in the great hall to prevent it spoiling, should the green cloud be harmful. Once more, Arturus stood on the battlements with his white shield aloft and gave the orders to fire occasional volleys of stones into the evil-looking mist. He was well aware that he had limited supplies of missiles but he loosed them anyway. Dan wondered at his wisdom. He knew the ballista used specially made pottery spheres, which shattered on impact. These had the double advantage of producing lethally sharp shards once fired which wounded as well as stunned and rendered them unusable to the enemy. It had taken months for the relatively poor craftsmen of Camulodunum to reproduce this Roman trick and Arturus still had fewer examples of the clay shot than he would have wished.
Perhaps Arturus was wiser than Dan realised and the blind shooting worked, because no Aenglisc breached the walls. By late afternoon the mist died away to reveal yet more bodies on the scarp slope. By late evening, the unmistakable stench of sickness reached the hill fort. The men from Cado had done their work; the river was contaminated and most of the Aenglisc were affected, doubled up with cramps or vomiting their guts up and worse. That night was unseasonably warm with thick cloud cover burying the moon. The smell from the Aenglisc camp turned Dan’s stomach. Everywhere smelled too badly and the inactivity and strain of being under siege was beginning to affect the men. Everyone was irritable and Dan struggled to retain his own good humour. He sat by the fire with Ursula and helped her sharpen her sword and spear. She was tense and grim looking.
‘Dan, what if I die here?’
‘What? What can I say? You might die, Ursula, this is war. You’ll be a target if the Aenglisc have any sense.’ He couldn’t think of anything very reassuring to say but continued anyway.
‘But the Aenglisc are all ill – they’ll be less effective. I think they’ve got food poisoning or something.’
‘It doesn’t seem very fair does it – poisoning them first?’
‘Like Arturus says, he’s High King because he wins, not because he’s a hero.’
‘I’m scared, Dan.’
‘I know.’ Dan wanted to touch her, comfort her, but did not know how.
They gazed moodily into the fire together. Waiting was the hardest part. After the evening meal, which no one ate very enthusiastically – it was like eating in a sewer – Arturus gathered everyone together to talk about his battle plan. It was simple – at dawn he intended to charge the Aenglisc and destroy them. Though simple it would involve some reconstruction of the fort itself, as its only entrance and exit was both narrow and inaccessible. Under the cover of darkness the men were to cut new gateways in the fort’s fabric, large enough for several men to ride through at once. It was an insane idea and yet Arturus had it all planned out so meticulously that he persuaded them that it could work. They would have to work in shifts through the night. Dan was given the task of disguising the noise of such wholesale building work – with music. Most of the men and Ursula were to be involved in removing the fortifications, so the few who were left were chiefly those who were incapacitated in some way. Dan was left with Bryn, Taliesin, two horsemen injured when they’d lost control of their horses, the lituus and tuba players, and a man with a drum. Dan split the men into two shifts and did what he could to amplify whatever sounds they managed to produce. It seemed to work and those busy labouring joined in when they could, so that it must have sounded to Aenglisc ears like some all night carousel. How those not working slept at all was something of a mystery. By dawn, however, Dan was reduced to teaching the men football chants, Bryn had lost his voice and even Taliesin’s calloused fingers were bleeding from playing too much. It was a relief when Arturus called them all together again.
‘This is it. This is our chance to finish what I started with the High King Ambrosius ten years ago. Beyond these walls lies the biggest army the Aenglisc have ever produced. We have down there the Bretwalda of Britannia, Hengest’s heir and all the most land-hungry, power-crazed leaders of the Aenglisc. If we kill them all now their ambitions for Britannia will be destroyed. We will be in a position to drive the Aenglisc out of Britannia and restore the Saxon shore. Gather your weapons, mount up, ready the fire drums, and we will be victors before noon!’
It was not the most inspiring speech that Dan had ever heard but it seemed to work. There was no cheering, but then they did not wish to alert the Aenglisc to the imminent attack. Ursula found Dan in amongst the milling men and beasts.
‘You will take Braveheart?’ Dan said.
She nodded dumbly.
‘You will be fine. I know you can do this. You are Boar Skull after all.’
Dan knew she wished he would be by her side, fighting with all his old berserker skill. He shrunk from the thought of all the killing and the pain to come. He pulled his hood over his head as if that would make a difference. He was very afraid that Ursula would die. His fear for her overcame his natural reticence and he hugged her briefly.
‘Be lucky, Ursula.’
He could feel her fighting to keep her composure. Her face was the dead pan, sullen one of old. She did not trust herself to speak but nodded again briefly and strode off to mount her horse. Braveheart followed her through the furious activity of the men rushing for their posts. In the makeshift stable she found her horse. The Sarmatians had given her a groom to care for the horse and the fine scale armour with which it had been supplied. The groom bowed when he saw her and she nodded somewhat imperiously. She had to lead these men, these proud, brave men. She was almost as afraid of failing them, as she was afraid of death. Someone darted suddenly from the shadows.
‘Bryn!’
‘Let me fight with you!’
‘Bryn, you know you can’t,’ Ursula said firmly.
‘I can ride as well as Cerdic’s men – the light cavalry.’
‘I know you can, Bryn, but you must stay with Dan. I fear he may need you.’
‘What, to sing again?’ Bryn managed to fill those simple words with contempt. ‘Brother Frontalis would have me be a monk. I am a sworn warrior. My place is with Braveheart, fighting.’
Ursula choked back her sympathy and put all the steel she could muster into her response.
‘Your place, Bryn, is with your liege lord as you swore on the road to Alavna. Would your father have had you abandon your lord because he chooses a difficult road?’
Bryn coloured and Ursula was a little ashamed of her blatant manipulation.
‘Go to him, Bryn. Arturus may have need of him and he of you. That is your duty.’
Bryn bowed stiffly and with a stony face replied, ‘As you say, Lady Ursa.’
Fury evident in every tense line of his body, Bryn did as he was told.
Ursula exhaled slowly, trying to calm herself. She needed to concentrate. She accepted help from the groom and rode to the crowded muddy field that was the hill fort. Tents and cooking pots had been removed and stowed away. They would have no immediate need of them. After the battle they would be dead or victorious and either way they would not sleep at Baddon Hill again. It was still early and everyone was tired after the night’s hard labour, but Ursula did not need Dan’s special perception to feel the anticipation and the fear.
Arturus found Ursula in the melee. ‘Lady Ursa, I am going to remain here with Dan and Taliesin in case Rhonwen tries something unexpected. All my hopes ride with you. Take my shield and hold it high as the signal to ride. I will tell Dan to give you my message. Please take this also.’ He handed her a full-face mask of gold, modelled on some idealised Roman god. There were eye-shaped holes through which she could see and two finely modelled nostrils through which she could breathe. He helped her to fasten it around her head with leather bands so that it stood slightly proud from her face, overlapping the front of her helmet. She f
ought a terrifying sense of claustrophobia.
‘It belonged to Ambrosius. It will terrify the Aenglisc and may well preserve your beauty. Go with God, Lady Ursa, and all the hopes of Britannia.’ He smiled almost wistfully and was gone. She rode slowly to what would become the front of the Sarmatian force, next to Cynfach. Brother Frontalis was busy blessing the men. His sonorous voice giving comfort was the only sound that could be heard above the noise of last minute weapon and kit adjustments. Fantastic. She was not only leading the best horsemen in Britannia down a slope of suicidal steepness but she was also hampered by a vast shield slung across her back while her vision was restricted by some mask. When Frontalis came to her and said, ‘Bless you, my child,’ her ‘Amen’ had never been more heartfelt. It was time.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Ursula waited with her contingent of Cataphracts behind her at the newly created south gate. More than two hundred and fifty Sarmatians would ride behind her in the main charge, followed by similar numbers of light cavalry and infantry. Larcius would lead the smallest contingent of one hundred men from the east gate, Cynfach would lead one hundred and fifty Sarmatians from the west gate. All waited on Ursula’s signal. It felt suddenly too hot in the layers of padding necessary to prevent the chafing of her mail. Sweat trickled uncomfortably down her nose within her mask, making her whole face itch. Of course it was impossible to scratch. She clutched her horse more firmly with her knees and adjusted her weight. The waiting was unbearable. She checked that her sword could still move freely in its sheath and wiped the sweat off her hands, the better to hold her kontos. She heard the standard bearer with his scarlet and gold draco make similar preparations beside her. He was also wearing a full face mask of burnished bronze, which had the advantage of disguising the wearer’s terror from the enemy. She could hear Braveheart’s rapid breathing at her side. He too was readying himself. The lituus sounded and infantrymen started to drag away the makeshift crossbeams supporting the hastily constructed gates. It was a complicated business to get them open. Everything had been done so quickly that nothing worked as smoothly or as silently as it might – everything creaked and grated and banged. Ursula feared that the advantage of surprise would be lost. The Aenglisc must now know that something was going on. She prayed they would not have time to organise themselves and seize the initiative. There was another blast of the trumpet and the large barrel-shaped casks that had contained supplies were arranged in a row in front of the heavy cavalry. They had been coated in foul-smelling pitch. God, how she wished this was over. Her bowels felt weak and her heart hammered wildly to no rhythm but that of fear.
