Warriors of Ethandun (16 page)

Dan had to watch carefully as Aethelnoth gathered up saddles, harnesses and stirrups and tried to copy him as he strapped on the riding gear. It looked unnecessarily complicated to Dan, who had never before used stirrups and had rarely used a saddle. In any case, he'd always had a stable boy or Bryn to deal with the detail. He got on with it, reluctant to ask Aethelnoth for help. He did not know if ignorance of equestrian matters was likely to confirm Aethelnoth's suspicions that he was a Dane.

They led the horses outside to the yard. It had begun to rain and the day had turned as grey as the smoke that billowed from the charred bodies on the pyre. The horses were restless and unsettled. The rain plastered Dan's hair to his head and trickled down his neck; it soaked his borrowed clothes, reviving the smell of other men's sweat and the drying blood. He wished his cloak had been waterproofed against bad weather, but perhaps they did not do
that in these days, as Aethelnoth was scarcely better dressed for the rain. It promised to be a miserable ride.

It was worse when he mounted up. He did not feel at all comfortable in the unfamiliar saddle and he couldn't see the point of the stirrups. He shifted his weight to find a better position at exactly the same moment as his mount became aware of the looming presence of Braveheart and freaked.

It had been a while since Dan had fallen quite so hard. Braveheart licked his face reassuringly, which did not help much when Dan remembered what else Braveheart had licked recently. The dog's breath stank.

‘Not much of a warhorse,' he said, getting to his feet with as much dignity as he could manage.

‘You hadn't tightened the girth strap properly. Maybe you'd be better on a boat.'

That decided it. Dan removed the saddle and left it on the damp ground. Free of the encumbrance of the saddle, he felt much more in control. He was relieved to find that he had not forgotten how to ride.

Aethelnoth looked disapproving. ‘You'll do the horse no favours riding like that.'

‘Let's just go,' Dan said, anxious to get away from the farmhouse and all that had happened there. Ursula needed him. He had to go to her; he had no time to waste on anything else.

Ursula was beginning to get angry. The girl with blind green eyes kept summoning her from her explorations and she hated it. The magic that surged through her had a life of its own and the girl could call to that magic, could draw it like iron to a magnet, and where her power went, Ursula followed.

It took a while for her to discover that she was angry. She had lost so much of her sense of her own self that at first she had thought that the emotion came from the hares leaping across the hillside or from the wolf pack howling at the moon.

Every time the girl brought her back, it was to the sound of the thin, wailing voice chanting incantations. The noise made the skin on Ursula's real flesh-and-blood body shiver, as if it she'd heard chalk squeaking on a blackboard or a metal knife scraped across a china plate. There was always blood too when she awoke. The girl had killed some small animal and daubed herself and Ursula with gore. In the torchlight the faces of the Danes were fearful as the girl demanded that the Goddess speak.

The girl, who named herself Finna, was all focused will and strange magnetism. When Ursula tried to inhabit her mind, she found it hidden from her, as if the girl had lost herself in thick fog or the total darkness of a deep pit. There was no sense that the girl herself resisted Ursula's intrusion; she was simply not there. Ursula could have gathered her magic together and blown the girl apart; it was a possibility. Ursula knew that the magic would allow her to kill with ease. She resisted the temptation, not because she thought it wrong – she no longer thought at all in any normal way – but because somehow she knew it would not work, that the girl was hidden from her. When Finna called Ursula back from her travelling with her nasty high-pitched whining, the bonfire that burned outdoors to light the yard in front of the Great Hall blazed so fiercely that Guthrum feared it was out of control and set men with buckets of earth to dampen it. Ursula turned the gentle breeze that fanned the flames of the night torches into a wind fierce enough to snuff them out and set cloaks flapping like sails in a storm.

‘The Goddess is growing angry,' the girl Finna said, and all present took a step back from Ursula's recumbent form and Ursula knew that the girl spoke the truth in that at least. Ursula was angry and growing angrier.

‘What must we do to please her?' Guthrum asked anxiously. Ursula knew that he gained much status from his men by having a goddess at his side. Already the word had spread throughout the country that Freya herself had declared that Guthrum would be victorious, and that had brought many Aenglisc allies who might otherwise
have proved troublesome. Ursula knew that he thought that he had won already.

‘Goddess!' At Finna's voice Ursula felt herself compelled to open her eyes, so that she saw the green-eyed girl's small smile of triumph. The fire blazed wildly again but Finna ignored it. She was a plain, undernourished thing and yet her confidence and authority lent her a kind of glamour; Guthrum was utterly in thrall to her.

‘Are you hungry?' the girl asked. It took a while for Ursula to understand the question; she had shared many meals that night but none had given nourishment to her body. It was hard to think about her body, but when she tried she found that her mouth was dry and tasted bad and that her stomach ached a little. She thought that perhaps that was hunger. Ursula nodded slowly, remembering the taste of hot venison, the way it felt in her mouth, the way it made her body feel well.

‘Then you shall be satisfied,' the girl said, and turning to the assembled warriors and the battered Aenglisc women who served them she declared: ‘The Goddess hungers and she will be fed. We will prepare a sacrifice fit for her.'

Guthrum looked at Finna. ‘How many will do it?'

‘Twenty,' she replied firmly as if she spoke for Ursula, but Ursula did not know what she was talking about. She disliked being in the girl's presence. She disliked being close to Guthrum. There was much ugliness in the camp, too much fear and brutality and wild and dangerous drunkenness. Guthrum had made no effort to rein in the excesses of his troops and conditions
in Cippenham were degenerating.

‘I doubt that we have that many Aenglisc men still living and the women are too useful to lose.'

‘Then find some men,' she answered. ‘It is not wise to upset the Goddess.'

The rain was unrelenting and Dan could do nothing but ride on and endure. He would have liked a raincoat or, better still, a car.

After the first shock of its encounter with Braveheart, his mount had calmed down. It was good to feel that unity of man and horse that he had known in Macsen's world. Without the saddle getting between them, he found Aelfred's horse responsive and easy to manage, though a little small for his frame. He felt sorry for the stoic mount, but he could not afford to set an easy pace with so much at stake. He was worried about Ursula and he was worried about the whereabouts of the fifth man – if there was a fifth man; it was always possible that the boy, Cealin, couldn't count.

Dan regretted his oath to Aelfred, which bound him to his cause, and to Dan it seemed like a lost cause. Not that Dan had been given much choice. It struck him that Taliesin had left Braveheart here for Dan and that Taliesin must therefore have known that the ridiculous crystal ball would not take him to Macsen's world but to this rain-sodden
corner of Britain where the King, to whom he owed reluctant allegiance, had lost the plot. He was a sickly man ridden with guilt and, in Dan's opinion, he needed to get over himself and get organised. Dan cursed Taliesin silently. Why had he manipulated him into this mess? Why had Dan fallen for it?

After a couple of hours of misery they stopped and ate some bread and cheese from Aelfred's pack. Dan would have welcomed a fire but everything was too wet. There were blankets and cooking pots in the pack, a metal tinder box and some quantity of bread and cheese and smoked, dried fish, but it was not a great deal, and Dan was still a growing boy with a healthy appetite: Aelfred was not. Aethelnoth had Aelfred's harp strapped across his spare mount and Dan wondered if maybe Aelfred had expected them to sing for their supper – which would at least account for the meagre provisions. It was too much to hope that Aethelnoth knew what to do with the harp. They could have done with Taliesin's skill or, better still, with Bryn; if Dan's old squire had been with them they would have lived well on what his music would have brought them. As it was, Dan remained hungry and thought he was very likely to catch pneumonia.

The land was still flat and marshy, the sky the dull steel-grey of an uncherished sword. The rain had made the going heavy.

They rode on rough unmetalled tracks that were little more than bridle paths, overgrown and muddy, and Dan grew quite nostalgic for a Roman road. Aethelnoth took care to avoid anything that looked like a decent track and
skirted around all the villages and hamlets that came into view. Dan did not understand why, for while both he and Aethelnoth looked half drowned and disreputable, he thought it likely that a lack of sartorial splendour would be acceptable in itinerant musicians. There was some coin in Aelfred's pack too, and Dan would have had no qualms about spending it for a waterproof cloak, some hot food and a change of tunic. Not that Dan made any suggestion at all – he had no wish to deepen Aethelnoth's mistrust because Aethelnoth knew the way to Cippenham and Dan did not.

Aethelnoth's silence was oppressive and irritating. There was little enough to do on a long ride and a bit of conversation would have been welcome. Eventually Dan broke.

‘Can you play the harp then?' he asked, indicating Aelfred's instrument strapped to Aethelnoth's back.

‘Well enough,' Aethelnoth answered and then, perhaps sharing Dan's need to pass the time more pleasantly, added, ‘Can you?'

‘No.' Dan's mum had tried to persuade him into piano lessons when he was small, but there was no way to explain that to Aethelnoth.

‘Do you know any songs?'

Dan shook his head. ‘Maybe you could teach me some? If we are going to pose as musicians, it might help.'

Although Aethelnoth expressed reluctance, the horses themselves were making enough noise to alert any enemy to their presence; there was nothing to lose by singing. It cheered Dan up and by the time the light began to fade,
much of Aethelnoth's more obvious hostility had faded too.

They camped overnight in the tumbledown ruin of an ancient Roman villa. Little of the stone remained but there was enough left to offer some shelter and to allow them to build a fire.

‘Should we not be rallying support for Aelfred's cause or, at the very least, seeing where loyalties lie?' Dan asked. This skulking around in the rain seemed to him a lost opportunity.

‘That's not what Aelfred wants. He wants us to get to Cippenham by the shortest way and return with news. The man we are meeting should be a little way ahead. The King doesn't want us to put ourselves in danger.'

Dan did not argue but he thought the decision foolish. More than that, he had hoped for a warmer bed that night.

When the grey dawn light grew strong enough, they rode out again, through mist and dew-damp grass. They found some new cart tracks a little way from the villa and followed them for a time until the ground grew so rough that it was hard to tell whether the trail had deteriorated badly or they had lost it altogether.

‘Do you know where you are going?' Dan asked.

By this time Aethelnoth was little more than a lumpy outline under a shroud of fog, and Dan was getting worried. It would be easy for his horse to lose its footing; it would be very easy to ride into a tree branch. He was not a fan of riding blind.

‘Ye-es,' Aethelnoth answered without conviction.

‘Maybe we should wait and see if the sun burns off the mist?'

‘This is fog and it could be in for the day. I think we have to keep going.'

‘If we're going in the right direction.'

The day had brightened to the extent that they moved through an all-pervading blanket of wet whiteness. The sun had risen but it was impossible to judge its position.

Dan's senses strained, but no bird sang, and then he heard a branch break with a sound as sharp as a shot, and a man's low voice spoke – in Danish. Somehow they had walked right into their enemy.

Dan signalled wildly for Aethelnoth to be silent, but he did not seem to notice.

‘No. We're going the right way,' he said.

Dan held his breath and unsheathed Bright Killer inch by careful inch. Aethelnoth understood that gesture at least. Braveheart gave a warning growl from deep within his chest.

‘You hear that?' the Danish voice spoke again, this time in a whisper that seemed to Dan's straining ears louder than a shout.

‘Yeah. Sounds like mounted men. Unless they bother us keep going – it's the farm we want.'

Aethelnoth still looked puzzled and Dan wondered if there was something wrong with his hearing. Aethelnoth was about to speak again when Dan put his finger to his mouth and scowled at him so furiously that he closed his mouth with an almost audible snap. Dan waited. His horse stamped and whickered. He tensed, aware that he was already moving to the dark place where his mad self was king. He took control of himself with difficulty. Sweat
beads formed on his brow. Braveheart was as tense as he was – every fibre taut, quivering, watching for Dan's hand signal. Dan waited still and no one came.

‘What?' Aethelnoth said.

‘Couldn't you hear them?'

‘Who?'

‘Danes. Over there.'

‘I can't hear anything.'