Warriors of Camlann

by N. M. Browne

  ‘We didn’t die then?’ Dan said, without noticeable emotion.

  Ursula shook her head. For an instant she had almost felt she could control the Veil, but here and now there was still no magic. She couldn’t disguise her disappointment. She shook her head again when Dan asked, ‘Do you think we’re home?’ It did not feel like home. ‘Can you …?’

  Dan looked bleak. ‘I know you’re disappointed that you couldn’t direct the Veil, and a little afraid, so, yes, I can still empathise. What if I’m stuck with that for ever?’

  Ursula did not need exceptional empathy to hear the fear in his voice.

  ‘Dan.’ She made him meet her eyes. ‘One problem at a time! Let’s find out where we are. I think we might see more from the top of the hill.’

  The forest floor sloped steeply in one direction towards what looked like a ridge. Ursula did not have a good feeling about this. Ursula’s riding boots were smooth-soled and gave her little purchase on the dry earth. Dan had to help her up the steep forested slope, which was surprisingly slippery. The air was warm and Ursula was conscious of her own battle filth and the weight of her mail. She did not think it wise to take it off and gripped her sword with her right hand as tightly as she held Dan’s hand in her left. Braveheart explored the forest floor excitedly. He shook himself once to be free of the lingering dampness of the mist and now seemed content, racing around in front of them like a puppy. Ursula was panting when they reached the top. She pushed a hand through her hair and was horrified to find it stained with gore.

  ‘Have I been cut?’

  Dan looked at her, appraisingly. ‘No, I think it’s someone else’s blood and there’s some gunky stuff in your hair as well.’

  ‘What do you mean, gunky stuff?’

  Dan shrugged. ‘You’ve just fought in a bloody massacre, Ursula – you’re splattered with all kinds of stuff, and so is Braveheart. It will wash away.’

  The same could not be said of the sensations of pain and loss and anguish that still seemed to pollute his own thoughts.

  ‘Don’t complain, Ursula, you didn’t hear the men you killed scream inside your head.’ Dan sounded uncharacteristically bitter.

  He had let her hand go and Ursula wished he hadn’t. Climbing up to the ridge had not helped much, all they could see below them was grassland in front of them and forest to both sides.

  ‘We’re not home are we?’ Dan said heavily. ‘There isn’t a road in sight.’

  ‘No noise either – just birds. I’m sorry, Dan.’

  ‘At least it got me away from the battle. I don’t think I could have endured any more of that. Where should we go?’

  ‘Straight on. Looks like it might be cultivated further over that way.’

  Dan’s face looked grey in the sunlight and beaded with sweat. He took off his long grey cloak and rolled it into a bundle. Ursula was surprised to see that underneath it he wore the scale armour that Arturus had given him. Bedewyr’s sword was at his hip.

  He shrugged. ‘Frontalis thought it was a good idea – when we were travelling – I didn’t get round to taking it off.’

  ‘I can tell,’ said Ursula with a delicate wrinkling of her nose, though she knew that she must smell at least as bad.

  Dan grinned, and she suddenly realised how unusual that had become.

  ‘At least we’re alive and we didn’t get separated.’ She tried to sound bright but she knew as well as he did that, as she had not recovered her magic, their chances of leaving this new world were virtually nil.

  ‘Let’s hope we’ve landed somewhere peaceful.’ Ursula continued in the same rather forced tone. ‘Do you think I should try to clean up a bit?’

  ‘Stay as you are. You look terrifying – that might be useful.’

  ‘Do you know something I don’t?’

  Dan glanced at her quickly, as if gauging her reaction.

  ‘I think I can sense something – soldiers, I think. Over there.’

  Ursula worked her sword out of its scabbard. She had sheathed it dirty and it stuck badly. She cleaned it up as best she could. Dan unsheathed his too.

  Ursula looked at him questioningly.

  ‘I won’t let anyone hurt you,’ he said tersely, and Ursula wisely said nothing. Dan called Braveheart to heel.

  They walked together more cautiously, keeping to the tree line for cover for as long as possible. There was a road, no more than a cart track running across the grassland, too narrow to be seen from the ridge. They started to walk along it. Tracks had to go somewhere and they could not stay in the middle of nowhere for very long. In the distance they could make out two mounted men.

  ‘What do you think?’

  Dan shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Ursula – we don’t know that they’re hostile. Let’s assume that they’re not.’

  He sheathed his sword. Reluctantly, Ursula followed suit.

  ‘Can you make out how they’re dressed?’ Dan asked.

  ‘I think they’re wearing helmets.’

  ‘Riding helmets?’

  Ursula shot him a look. ‘You wish! No, I think they’ve got ridge helmets on.’

  ‘Like Arturus’s men?’ Dan squinted up the road but could make out nothing clearly.

  ‘Yes, or Aenglisc – they wore the same sort of thing.’

  Ursula’s heart was beating too fast again, the familiar tattoo of fear. She was tired and hot and hungry. She felt quite tearful. She knew it for certain now. They were not home.

  They stopped then, the three of them, and waited for the riders to come into view. Ursula had the best eyesight – in daylight anyway. She identified them first.

  ‘I think they’re Combrogi, light cavalry. Cerdic’s men.’

  Dan looked shocked. ‘We’re still in Arturus’s world?’

  ‘Don’t know – looks like it. What can you sense?’

  ‘I’m trying not to sense anything.’

  Dan had never looked less relaxed. He was tensed as if against a blow.

  Ursula did not recognise the men who stopped a couple of metres in front of them.

  Dan held Braveheart by the loose fur round his neck to prevent him from threatening the mounted men more intimately. As it was he bared his bloodstained teeth menacingly.

  The riders were clearly uncertain of what to make of a tall, blood-spattered girl in chain mail and her grim-faced companion and war hound. Neither of the men dismounted.

  ‘State your name and business. You trespass on the High King’s land.’

  They spoke the heavily inflected Latin they had become used to among Arturus’s men.

  ‘You mean the High King Arturus?’ Ursula ventured.

  ‘Your name?’ repeated the bigger of the two men.

  ‘If you are Cerdic’s men you will know me. I am Ursa, and this is Gawain.’

  There was a sharp intake of breath from the riders.

  ‘You fought with Cerdic?’

  ‘We did not fight together but for the same side, yes,’ said Ursula, uncertain of the reason for their obvious agitation.

  ‘Then you, too, must be a traitor and will suffer a traitor’s fate. I suppose you know Medraut too?’

  ‘Do you mean Medraut, Count of the Saxon Shore?’

  ‘He means Medraut, ally of the Aenglisc and traitor to the Combrogi cause – what other Medraut is there?’

  Dan spoke for the first time, keeping his voice calm and level. The younger of the two riders was red in the face with outrage at the very name of Medraut. It occurred to Dan that they had emerged from the mist into a world almost like the one they had left, but subtly different in ways likely to get them killed.

  ‘Forgive us,’ he said as smoothly as Larcius might have done. ‘We have been away and clearly much has changed since our last visit. The High King is?’

  ‘Ursus, as every right-thinking Combrogi knows, defender of the faith and champion of Britannia.’

  ‘Ursus?’

  ‘High King Arturus Ursus, known to his soldiers as Ursus, since his triumphant
victory at Baddon Hill. Where can you have been that you don’t know of his slaughter of nine hundred Aenglisc at one charge, as he wielded the enchanted blade, Caliburn, torn from the stone of the earth by his own hand?’

  The younger rider was now almost puce with passion, as if their ignorance was an insult of the most outrageous kind.

  Ursula and Dan exchanged a puzzled look. Were they in Arturus’s world or in another very like it in which Arturus really had wielded Caliburn at Baddon Hill?

  Dan managed to sound confident nonetheless. ‘Of course the High King is known to us and we well remember Baddon Hill. Is Cynfach of the Sarmatians or Taliesin still serving Arturus?’

  The younger man blanched at Cynfach’s name but the other glared at him so that he closed his mouth and merely looked uncomfortable.

  ‘I’ll ask the questions here. You are our prisoners.’

  Dan’s voice regained something of its old confident timbre in his reply. ‘Really, I had not noticed that we were anybody’s prisoners.’

  The bigger rider glanced at his companion. ‘You want to show these ignorant fools a lesson, Nudd?’

  The two men dismounted, rather foolishly in Ursula’s view, as that threw away their only advantage. Dan warned Braveheart to wait, as it was not his intention to kill these men unless it was unavoidable.

  ‘You take the big one and I’ll deal with Nudd. Don’t kill him if you can avoid it.’

  Ursula nodded her understanding. Her arm still ached from the famous battle, scant hours earlier, but her opponent did not look like a man who had ever fought seriously in his life. His kit gleamed, but he moved clumsily with a swaggering gait that lacked balance. He had a long torso, which looked impressive on a horse, but on the ground he was a head and shoulders shorter than Ursula, a fact that seemed to take him by surprise. He drew his sword with a flourish. Ursula guessed that he was in his late twenties but he was a novice in single combat. With a weary internal sigh Ursula jolted her sword from its still sticky sheath and wiped a stray fleck of gore on her leggings.

  ‘We don’t have to do this you know,’ she said. She wanted to have a long soak in a bath and follow that with a long meal and an even longer sleep. Her opponent attacked her, slightly tentatively. The vibration as their swords met sent an uncomfortable jolt up her forearm, reminding her of just how tired she really was. She did not have the energy to humour him. She slashed back far more savagely than he had expected, and saw alarm widen his eyes. She aimed not for his body but for his sword, meeting his blade with a well-timed blow with the flat of her sword at his sword’s weakest point. His sword flew from his hand and shattered. She kicked him sharply and as he doubled up in pain she pointed her own blade at his neck. A quick glance round told her that Dan had stunned Nudd and was binding his hands with a length of rein.

  ‘You won’t get away with this. The Tribune will be back soon.’

  ‘Thanks for telling us. We’ll be expecting him,’ said Dan with another of his almost forgotten grins, as he secured the hands of Ursula’s opponent. The action seemed to have cheered Dan up. He looked less grey.

  ‘Where to now, Ursula? Which horse do you want?’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ said Ursula, ‘but we better choose quickly. I think the Tribune is riding this way.’

  Chapter Thirty

  ‘Should we wait?’ Dan was clearly uncomfortable about leaving their prisoners in the middle of nowhere.

  ‘He’ll find them.’

  ‘Yes, but if these men are on Arturus’s side where else do we go? If we wait for the captain and explain that they attacked us we may not be marked down as Arturus’s enemy. What else can we do?’

  He was right, of course, though Ursula found the thought of mounting a horse and just riding enormously tempting. As if just by riding she might find herself somewhere she wanted to be, instead of wherever she was.

  The captain was a tall man with a still, watchful face. He reminded Ursula of someone, though whether in Macsen’s world, Arturus’s world, or her own, she could not say. He took in the scene in a moment, his calm rather closed face revealing nothing. He noted his men’

  sitting back to back with their wrists tied together on the dusty dirt road, Ursula and Dan and Braveheart looking at him warily. His face darkened and he looked almost shocked.

  ‘We have been away and—’ Ursula began by way of explanation.

  ‘I know who you are,’ he interrupted, shortly.

  He held Ursula’s eye for a long second. She struggled to put a name to his face. He knew her so she must have met him in this world – was he one of the Sarmatians? He was fair skinned and dark haired and there were not many of that colouring in the troop – surely she would have remembered. Suddenly, Braveheart left Dan’s side and with a joyful bark rushed towards the stranger wagging his tail. The man’s dour face creased into a warm smile and he vaulted from the saddle. He knelt and hugged the war dog, permitting him to lick his face, burying his face in the thick bloodstained fur of his neck. Ursula was confused. Braveheart never behaved like that except with Dan and Bryn.

  Ursula peered hard at the man. He was tall and well built without being heavily muscled. He looked to be in his late twenties, maybe older, with the creased, weather-beaten face of a man much out of doors. He was clean-shaven with his hair cut in neat, Roman military style. He wore the characteristic ridge helmet of the majority of Arturus’s men, but his was decorated with silver. His clothing was plain and of earthy greens and browns. He wore no mail or scale armour though his horse was a fine black gelding. She looked at Dan, struck by a sudden unbelievable thought. Dan had blushed a deep scarlet as if evaluating the very same conclusion. It could not be Bryn – could it?

  ‘Do we know you?’ Ursula asked haltingly, embarrassed. The man looked at her, when he turned he had screwed up his face against Braveheart’s enthusiastic and undoubtedly smelly greeting. She knew – it was the same expression she had seen so many times.

  ‘Yes, long ago, I was Dan’s squire. It’s me, Bryn.’

  Should she too have run to embrace him? He had lived to a fine, well-nourished manhood. She should be glad things had turned out so well. Instead, Ursula swayed in the saddle. She was not inclined to faint, but she felt a sudden heat and dizziness. She would have fallen but Bryn caught her.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ she muttered, and then passed out.

  She was not out for long. She woke to the sound of Bryn’s quiet voice, filling in the lost years.

  ‘Larcius took me on as his squire. I studied a little with Taliesin but my heart was not in it. But all these years I wondered why? Why did you leave me alone?’

  Bryn’s voice was flat, without emotion. She tried to hear the boy in what he said, but even his accent had changed. He spoke Latin, Bryn who had scarcely spoken a word of any language but his own when they first arrived in Arturus’s world.

  ‘You found Braveheart’s collar?’ Dan sounded acutely uncomfortable.

  ‘Yes, Cynfach found it and told me what it said. He was always loyal to you and of course to Ursula. He tried to explain how it was for you, but you even took Braveheart away. I could not sleep for nights afterwards, though Gwynefa gave me a puppy when she found out what had happened. Poor Cynfach, a good man, he was killed soon after.’

  ‘Cynfach? No. Who by?’

  Ursula heard the sadness in Dan’s voice and felt tears threaten. She could not think of what they had done to Bryn. She could not believe what had happened to Cynfach. She had spoken to him, just before she went through the Veil. He had looked at her with such confidence, such pride. He could not be dead.

  Bryn was speaking again, in the slightly peculiar Latin favoured by Larcius. ‘He died in a hunting accident, but there were those who thought his death too convenient.’

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’

  Bryn cast a warning glance in the direction of his men still tied up in the road. They were trying to avoid his eye.

  ‘Cynfach knew who led the charge at Baddon and nev
er tired of praising you. It became ill luck to mention you, and Arturus always talked as if it were he who led the Sarmatian charge at Baddon. He presented himself as a war hero and those who mentioned remembering otherwise soon died. Taliesin has never sung about the Boar Skull and the Bear Sark in all the long years since the victory at Baddon Hill. These are peaceful times, or have been for most of us, but those looking for a fight can still find it. There are still Aenglisc and Pict and Scot around if you look hard enough. Cerdic found common cause with the enemy and now rules the small kingdom of Gewisse, with Aenglisc backing. Medraut sought another way to be king of his old lands and has made an alliance with Rhonwen and her old allies. She returned a couple of months ago. Arturus never managed to get the Saxon Shore back and Medraut did not believe he tried hard enough – or so it is assumed. Anyway, I have ridden out here regularly since Rhonwen’s return – I wondered if you would follow Rhonwen back here – as I followed you from Macsen’s land when I was a boy.’ His voice was briefly coloured by some emotion, sadness, regret?

  ‘Taliesin won’t speak of any of it – why you came and how you left – he won’t ever discuss you except, sometimes, he used to mutter in his sleep.’

  ‘Used to? Taliesin isn’t—?’ Dan found there was a lump in his throat.

  ‘No. He is unchanged. He cares for Frontalis who is old now and half blind. His order disapprove of his involvement with the “Devil’s Druid”. He’s banned from Court, though Arturus still consults with him in secret.’

  Dan met this further information with silence. It was very hard to take on so much change in what, for them, had seemed like no time at all. When Dan finally spoke, it was in a voice strained and roughened by acute embarrassment and shame. Ursula felt it too.

  ‘Bryn, I am very ashamed. I should not have run – I failed you.’

  Bryn shrugged. ‘It happened a long time ago. It will be twenty-one years when the winter comes.’ He indicated the silver cross he wore round his neck, over his tunic.

  ‘Brother Frontalis taught me that it’s better to forgive.’