Gemini Thunder (21 page)

There wasn’t a Celtic body in sight. No weapons, clothing, supplies.

Nothing.

As the eighty warriors stood around the still smoking crater where the hovel had been, the small island trembled for a moment, then erupted in a huge explosion, blowing every one of them to pieces. When the dust and debris finally settled down there was nothing left, just a huge muddy pool where the island had been.

And besides eighty warriors, Guthrum had lost his lifelong friend and second in command, Ove Thorsten. And Freyja had just learned why her children had failed to kill this Wessex veneficus.

He was very good at this sort of thing.

‘When False Island went up, I reckon you could’ve heard it in Combe Castle,’ said Desmond to Gode. Buried around False Island had been seventy-five big thunderbolts just waiting for Twilight to set them off. When he’d done so, he was almost directly above Freyja high in the air and had taken great joy in her stupefaction at the backfiring of her own plan.

Then, to rub salt into the wound, he’d whispered in her ear. ‘Soon it will be your turn, odious hag-mother. Very, very soon.’

Leaving a scream in the air, she’d immediately transformed back to the castle and Guthrum. He wouldn’t be very pleased either. They could both exercise their tempers in any way they liked. The Combe estate would become a graveyard under the piercing ire of their lamentations.

Twilight now had the problem with Ike and his family. Freyja’s wrath would be directed at them, especially Ike and Ifor, for leading her to False Island. He transformed immediately to Ike’s hovel and landed in the middle of a huge family argument. When they got over the shock of Twilight suddenly appearing in their midst, the argument continued.

The two sides were predictably Ike and Ifor on one side and Gretchen, her five daughters, two other sons, and two sons-in-law on the other.

Ike was doing his best to persuade them to leave immediately, but he was completely outnumbered. He turned to Twilight.

‘They all heard the explosion of False Island. Unfortunately none of them believes it was your doing. They think that it was the devil himself blowing up Alfred, who they are all against because he is a Christian. An incarnation of a so-called devil visited them here.’

‘He visited you here?’ asked Twilight. ‘He did. He came in response to my call as his bondswomen and bondsmen,’ Gretchen replied haughtily.

‘Don’t tell me.’ The astounder chuckled. ‘He had a black face with heavy horns and slanted, triangular, yellow iridescent eyes with the body cloaked entirely in a black silken cloth and a sharp, three-pointed spear held in his right hand. Like this . . .’ They all gasped. Standing in front of them was the same devil who had visited them before. Twilight chuckled again, a deep-throated rumble that seemed to shake the entire area. Then he was Twilight again.

‘Gretchen, that was Freyja, the Viking venefica, not the devil. Like me, she can change her appearance to anything she wants. She used it so that you would tell her how to find King Alfred and me. I knew she’d been here. We can trace where she goes. We then made a plan. Ike and Ifor made trips on the other side of the Levels to a place we named False Island to lure her and the Viking there. The plan was that they would think King Alfred and I were there. The explosion you heard was me killing eighty warriors and a senior commander sent by Freyja to destroy us. Freyja will know that Ike and Ifor set her up and will be coming for them very soon. After that she will come for you . . . all of you. I promised Ike that I would do my best to save you all. I can do that by transforming you out of here to a place Freyja will never find. If you choose not to accept that option, I cannot guarantee your safety.’

‘He’s right, Gretch, every word,’ said Ike quietly.

‘Every word, Mum,’ echoed Ifor.

Gretchen looked around at the rest of her family. ‘I don’t know what to think,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘He was so real, so . . . right.’

Then they all started talking at once.

Twilight motioned to Ike and Ifor for the three of them to go outside. Let them decide without any interruption. It took a long time for them to reach a decision. Their voices rose and fell, became agitated, exasperated, and reasoned. Finally Gretchen came outside.

‘We have decided. Everyone goes . . . except me. I am staying. Staying with my beliefs and what I hold to be true. I will not move from this place.’

Her lips were compressed into a thin line, and she folded her arms in a resolute gesture of immovability.

Ike’s shoulders slumped and Ifor burst into tears.

Twilight went inside.

‘Would everyone come outside and hold hands,’ he said sharply. ‘Now!’

When they’d gone, Gretchen stood in the middle of the hovel and closed her eyes. So much for their diabolical beliefs. It’s only when the going gets tough that the true bondswoman comes to the fore. The fires of conflict and death didn’t frighten her; that’s what the practice of devilhood was all about. Full of self-righteous fervour, she closed her eyes and began to call on Chaldean once again. Before she got the first line out, the deep voice interrupted her.

‘I’m here,’ said the voice of the devil. They should have listened to her, not that shaman shape-shifter.

Her years of diabolism had really stood for something. With a great feeling of passion and loyalty swelling in her breast, Gretchen opened her eyes.

To the sight of an old, withered woman standing in front of her. ‘I am Freyja,’ cackled the toothless vision. ‘Or, as you would know me, Satan.’

Freyja’s laughter rang around the small Penbarrow hamlet on the Cary River.

The loss of her twins and venefical pride at the False Island debacle came spitting to the fore. This large, stupid, devil-worshipping woman was all she had to salve her pain.

So be it.

The watching pica later told Twilight that Gretchen’s screams from within the hovel lasted a long time. Finally they died to a croak and then stopped altogether. Then Freyja left. Shortly afterward, thunderbolts rained down on the hamlet and, like False Island, the Penbarrow hamlet disappeared in a muddy pool of swirling water.

Two days later, Twilight was sitting with King Alfred, Edward de Gaini, Gode, and Desmond. He had just transformed back from Tintagel Castle in Kernow where he had sat with Ike Penbarrow for a long time talking about Gretchen’s death. He’d spared Ike the gory details. Although the Levels boatman was expecting it, the news still hit him hard. As Twilight left him, he was tearfully preparing to tell Ifor and the rest of the family. The good news was that Tintagel and the surrounding area of Camelford were rapidly filling up with soldiers. Lured by the tales of the defeats at Winchester and Chippingham told by the returning soldiers and refugees to the West Country, men of Wessex were responding to Alfred’s call to arms. ‘There are almost two thousand men there already,’ said Twilight. ‘It’s putting a strain on the local food supply, and winter hasn’t really started yet. By next spring when you hope to face Guthrum, the land will be stripped of all possible means of support.’

‘With two thousand there already, I should be able to raise a force capable of inflicting a substantial defeat on the berserker and his clones,’ replied the king. ‘But how do I feed them all?’

‘First of all they need leadership. Two thousand leaderless men wandering around Kernow for the winter will get bored and get up to mischief. They also need proper military training to stop them deserting in the face of those howling savages.’

‘Sounds like a job for you, Edward,’ the king said with a smile.

‘I think you should all go,’ said Twilight. ‘Our plan to spend the winter here has been compromised. Without Ike to supply you here on Swifty’s Island you will all starve soon or get discovered by Freyja and the raiders as you search for food. At least Tintagel will be safe from the Viking. All the signs are they will winter in Combe.’

‘And you?’ Gode asked, still exasperated at the thought of the Viking tearing her beloved estate apart. ‘Where will you be?’

‘Here, there, and everywhere, but not tomorrow. Tomorrow is a very special day in my annual calendar and one I cannot miss. I have to attend to my venefical duties at the crucible of the cowering dead. It would suit me to have all of you secure at Tintagel before

I go because I will be out of action for the entire day from dawn until dusk and unable to watch over you. With Freyja in the mood for rapid slaughter of anyone and thing connected to us, I would hate for her to find you whilst I’m away.’ ‘The crucible of the cowering dead?’ said Alfred. ‘Sounds very dramatic.’

‘I’ll tell you all about it if you wish,’ said the astounder quietly. ‘Although I give you advance warning, it might make you reconsider some of the paths you have chosen in life.’

‘You’ve already done that,’ said de Gaini to a series of nods from the others.

‘So be it. When I have finished, I will transform you all to Tintagel. Gather around. I will explain the runes, maxims, and lore of our venefical equinoctial duties when the heavy mists gather in the autumn.’

With unconcealed eagerness they all gathered around the warm cooking hole in the hovel on Swifty’s Island, and Twilight began.

‘This is how it was taught to me by my mentor, Merlin, and to him by his teacher and so on all the way back for ten thousand years of venefical existence. When the ancients began to understand how the complicated existence of erring humankind affected the world, and how the errant behaviour and deeds of the past influenced and affected the present and the future, they decided that a system of retribution should be put in place to punish, when dead, those who had led an unworthy life. In those far-off days, and still to some extent today, people were judged on their courage. Mettle spoke for all. As a result the ancients set up a system whereby all cowerers, whatever the reasoning, had their souls confined to a minute droplet of moisture within a great raging charnel mist when they died. The confinement did not result, as envisaged, in a manifestation of future goodness but turned the countless millions of cowerers into a screaming, raging mass, whose rage is directed at the ancients for the entrapment of their tortured souls. In the sarcophagal mists there is no place called Oblivion, no eternal rest. The screaming souls of the cowerers are trapped. There is a powerful legend that says one day these raging mists will break through the sarcophagal barriers that bind them to the mist and sweep across the earth in a screaming mass of undiluted hatred. Many thousands of years ago, venefici were placed by the ancients to police the cowerers. We are the only people who can commune with them, their annual outlet and link with the live world. And that communing can only take place throughout the first day of the Autumn Equinox when the mists are at their most active. We soothsay them, listen to the tortured pleas of their elected representatives, soothe, placate, and maintain . . . then we listen again, and again, always soft-voiced to contain their rage. Our role on behalf of mankind is to maintain them within the charnel mists. It is a wasteland from which they must never be released. It is called the Equinoctial Festival of the Dead.’

‘What happens to the non-cowerers, the good people?’

‘The martyrs, those whose lives—however brief and insignificant— looked challenges in the eye and stood fast against them, are accorded an altogether better reception in the afterlife. The Fates recorded their heroics, and their souls were accorded everlasting and blissful peace as a result. It tells us much about the human condition that they are so few compared to the cowering masses that received no such honour and were banished forever to the impotence of the charnel mists. Remember this—courage, heart, mettle, call it what you will, is a junior companion to capitulation in terms of numbers, but as a king to a serf in terms of eminence. For every hundred humans there is only one with true courage, and each one is buried in respected family and common-land barrows. It is the containment of the other multiplier of ninety-nine unhappy souls that we are charged with.’

‘Where does this take place?’ Desmond asked, knowing the answer.

‘The great stone circle at Stonehenge.’

‘What happens if they are ever released?’ Alfred held his breath, guessing what the answer would be.

‘It would be the end of mankind as we know it,’ said Twilight in little more than a whisper. ‘The combined power of the cowerers is capable of wiping all traces of our existence from this region and probably the entire country, in a matter of days. They would also release similar mists from all over the world to work their havoc.’

‘And previous venefici have always managed to maintain this situation?’ This time it was Gode asking.

‘Much to their credit, they have,’ replied the miracle-monger. ‘But it gets harder every year due to the increasing numbers. Cowerers don’t die, they already have, nor do they fade away. They just multiply as more cowering candidates arrive in the mists.’

‘These latest battles have no doubt swollen the ranks of the cowerers,’ muttered de Gaini.

‘Who decides which path a life has chosen, and therefore whether it lives forever in the raging mists or rests peacefully here among the barrows?’ asked Desmond.

‘They decide themselves. It is predicated upon the life they have led. Selection at the time of death is automatic.’ ‘What a tremendous responsibility,’ whispered Alfred. ‘Our thoughts will be with you tomorrow. There is also much to ponder upon in your words and actions over the preceding weeks, especially for a Christian such as me. Can my faith coexist with a belief in your venefical gift and everything you have to do at Stonehenge tomorrow?’