Warriors of Ethandun (2 page)

Dan knew that he was good at killing people – really good at it. He was better than people who'd trained for it all their lives. It was his special talent and he was the best. He was ashamed of that talent here. He was, after all, some kind of psychopath and when the police found that out he would never be free. He could probably kill this police officer – if he wanted to. But he didn't because killing was wrong. He knew it was wrong and back in his own world his skill did not make him a hero: it made him a murderer. He had not hurt Ursula; of that at least he was innocent. But it didn't matter. They could do what they wanted with him because he
was
guilty.

He was glad when the night had ended and they'd brought him in for questioning. Not that he could answer any of their questions. He could not account for his strange clothing nor for Ursula's changed appearance. He could not account for Ursula's mortal wound or his own bloodstained state. He wasn't so stupid as to tell them that he and Ursula had magically gone to other worlds and fought with Celtic warriors to repel the Roman invasion and had fought with the High King Arturus against the invading Saxons. He'd mumbled general stuff about Ursula being attacked by someone he didn't know. It was impossible to answer the police honestly and he was a terrible liar.

The officers left him alone with his father for a few minutes. Dan would rather have preferred to have been
locked back in the cells. His father could not sit still. He never had been able to – not for years. He got up and began pacing the room, as if he could walk away his tension. His father's hands shook badly as he pulled a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, remembered where he was and put it back again.

‘Dan,' he began, and Dan knew by his tone that he was going to try to have a fatherly talk. It was too late for that. ‘Look,' he began hesitantly and coughed. ‘I know how it is.' He coughed again. Dan wanted to tell him to get it over with, whatever this embarrassing thing was that he wanted to say. ‘I know I've not done much of a job as a dad since your mum …' He let his words die away. He had never been able to talk about her. ‘What I want to say is, I'm sorry. I mean, I know I've spent too long at the Pig and Whistle but I didn't expect all this … What's going on?'

Dan shrank into his seat and pushed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He shrugged in an exaggerated way, like the boy he'd once been. He didn't want to meet his father's eyes. He felt immediately ashamed. He wasn't that boy any more. He'd spent too long with men, and if his dad was no warrior like Kai and Macsen, no wise man like Brother Frontalis, no loyal friend like Bryn, he was no villain either. Dan had seen villainy and it was uglier than anything his father could ever have contemplated. The worst his father had done was to lose himself in grief and beer, and Dan had seen braver men than his dad do that. Dan made himself speak.

‘This is not your fault, Dad. I didn't try to kill Ursula, whatever they say. I've not gone bad because you're too fond of a pint.'

Anger flashed in his father's eyes then, and his arm came up quickly to slap Dan, but Dan's hand was there before he'd even thought about it, catching his father's arm so that he couldn't strike, holding it firm.

‘Not here, Dad,' Dan said evenly. His father's face was flushed, but he knew he lacked his son's strength and he pulled his arm away.

‘You're not too big to be taught who's boss,' his father said.

‘Yes, I am,' said Dan. His dad seemed surprised; perhaps he hadn't noticed before, but Dan was taller than him by a good three inches and now that they were both on their feet he could see where his father's curly black hair was beginning to thin on top.

‘It's not too late to be a proper dad to Lizzie,' Dan said, softly. He hadn't meant to say it, but in all the time he'd been away that had been his hope – that somehow his dad had managed to step up to the mark for Lizzie.

‘I don't know who you think you are, but it's not for you to tell me what to do. I'm your father and I'll have some respect.'

Their conversation was cut short by the reappearance of the police officer. He brought with him a tall, cadaverous man in an expensive-looking suit.

‘This is Professor Merlin, an expert on youth trauma. He has been brought in by the boss to interview you, Dan. This is an unusual case – not the kind of thing we
see round here too often. I hope you have no objection, Mr Jones.'

Dan was about to object as strenuously as possible until he looked into the grave face of Professor Merlin. Taliesin? It couldn't be. It was.

The tall man gave no sign of having recognised Dan. He waited until everyone was seated. Dan's father crossed and recrossed his legs under the table, as ill at ease as if he were the one accused of attempted murder. Dan, on the other hand, did his best to appear as calm as possible, mainly because he didn't want Taliesin to think he was like his father. Taliesin knew him as a warrior and a wielder of magic, a hero and a man. He could not act like a frightened boy or a sulky child in front of him.

The police officer reiterated the charges against Dan and reminded him that he was entitled to the presence of the duty solicitor or another lawyer if they had one of their own. Dan was not listening; he was watching Taliesin. He had trimmed his white beard and cropped his equally white hair so that he most resembled some kind of Hollywood version of an elder statesman – hawkish and wise. What was he doing there? How had he acquired his disguise? Had Taliesin got real magic in this world? Magic varied from world to world. Neither Dan nor Ursula had magic in their own world, but Dan had no idea what Taliesin might be able to do. Anything was possible. Dan tried not to stare too much at his friend and one-time betrayer. He tried to stay in control and to reveal neither his curiosity nor his excitement.

‘Well, thank you, officer,' Taliesin said when the
policeman had finished talking. ‘That is very helpful – a fine set-up you have here. Now, Dan, tell me.' He paused and his eyes glittered. ‘Isn't it time we got you out of this stinking hellhole?'

Ursula opened her eyes and then shut them again. She could not make sense of what she saw. There was a lot of blue that wasn't sky, and pinks, different shades of pink, and other colours too. There was a lot of electronic noise. Something was beeping and somewhere above her head a strip light flickered and buzzed. There was a powerful smell of disinfectant overlaid with the sweet, floral fragrance that she associated with her mother.

‘Sula, darling?' It sounded like her mother's voice. Only her parents called her ‘Sula'. She knew that her mother hadn't been at the battle. She did not want her mother to know about the battles. She opened her eyes again. The blue colour resolved itself into the form of a curtain and the pinks into her mother's face, red-eyed and exhausted. Somehow she was home.

Ursula tried to smile. Everything hurt and her mind felt slow as if some nutter had padded her skull with cotton wool. She was very thirsty.

‘Mum?' It took an age to form the word and longer still to make her dry throat and numb lips work. Her voice
when it finally emerged was little better than a croak, but it made her mother happy.

‘Sula? You're OK. Oh, thank God! Thank God!'

It was good to be hugged by her mother. It was good to be alive. From what she remembered, there had been a long period of time when living had seemed unlikely. Dan had saved her, rescued her from the Battle of Camlann, where so many had died, where she'd killed so many. She didn't want to think about that. She pulled herself away from those memories, though the general pain throughout her body suggested it wasn't that long ago. She'd been caught badly by a spear that had sliced through the top of her leg. She'd all but passed out from the pain, but the Sarmatians she'd led had fought to protect her. There were gaps in her memory but she remembered that Dan had used his magic and lent her enough of his strength to get her through. They must have gone through the Veil, but who had directed it? She knew that Dan would not have had that skill.

Someone – Dan? – had brought her to what she now recognised as a hospital. So where was he now?

She didn't ask then. She felt weak, and when she tried to hug her mother back she seemed to be tied to the bed by wires and tubes and it was hard to move. A nurse came in and did something and then she went away and Ursula found it impossible to resist sleep.

She woke briefly and slept for some time. There was a lot of pain and then there wasn't. Someone filled her brain with cotton wool and she didn't mind the cotton-wool feeling so much because it made the pain go away. People
came and went. Her dad came and the new baby cried and would not be shushed and her mother told him off for bringing the child. She had been glad to let herself drift away from that row. The bad pain went away and then she merely felt uncomfortable: stiff and achy and weak, as if her muscles had melted away to water. She knew that time was passing, the days marked by her mother's conversations and the changing of dressings and tubes, and then one day she woke up and felt OK. Not great, not normal, but OK.

It was only then that she was able to ask the question that had been bothering her for so long: ‘Where's Dan?'

Her mother paused in her bed-straightening.

‘How are you feeling, darling? The doctors are amazed at how well you're doing. They say you might be able to come home in a day or two and they are going to take the last of the tubes out today. I'm afraid the police are going to want to talk to you now …'

Ursula waited for her mother to finish, but she just let her sentence die away.

‘Where's Dan?' Ursula repeated. She was surprised he'd not been to see her. Surely all that had happened between them would still matter? Surely he wouldn't abandon her just because they were back home and he was with his friends again? Dan was not that shallow, she knew that, and yet she couldn't help feeling a little hurt and disappointed that she'd not seen him.

‘Dan? Is that the boy who was with you? The one who did this to you?'

‘Dan didn't do this to me. He saved me.'

Her mother shook her head. ‘The police have taken him into custody. They're saying that no one else was involved. Why are you protecting him?'

Ursula took a moment to make sense of this. Dan was in custody?

She tried to imagine what he might have said to explain her wounds – the state she was in. Would he have tried to tell the truth? She thought not. He wouldn't want to be locked up as a madman any more than he'd want to be locked up as a criminal: there had to be another way.

‘Mum, I want to talk to the police now. They've got to let Dan go.'

Her mother plumped up her pillows.

‘I don't know. You've been so ill. You've gone so thin. I can barely recognise you. I think you should leave it a bit longer. Even your father agrees that you shouldn't talk to them until you've recovered. The police are being very understanding. They know you've been traumatised, that you nearly died, that you've been pumped full of painkillers and I don't know what drugs …' Her mother sounded tearful.

‘Dan is my friend. He didn't hurt me. Tell the police I'm ready to talk to them.' Her mother gave her a look of surprise. ‘Please, Mummy,' Ursula added, suddenly aware that the old Ursula was never so forceful at home. She had grown used to command. It was going to be hard to be a child again. She washed her face and tied back her hair to face the police. Her mother did not seem to have noticed that her hair had grown five or six inches or that she had lost far more weight than could be possible in the brief
period of her convalescence. Her sleeveless nightdress revealed arms that any athlete would have been proud of. How had her mother not noticed? When Ursula checked her face in the mirror, she barely recognised her own reflection. Her face was a completely different shape, sculpted where it had been chubby. Her eyes looked enormous in this new thinner face and there was a hardness, a toughness in them that hadn't been there before. She didn't look like a young girl any more. She had killed, had seen sights no one else alive but Dan could even imagine. How could her mother not see all that she had lived through etched on her face, in the new muscularity of her body and in the darkness in her eyes? Perhaps people did not see what they did not expect to see.

She was unimpressed by the two policemen who arrived to question her. She would not have had the younger of the two in any troop of hers, nor would she have fought willingly at his side. The older man was all right, but he didn't really look at her. He treated her like a little girl.

‘Dan did not hurt me,' she said without preamble. ‘He saved me. Why have you got him in custody?'

‘There are a number of very confusing aspects to this case, Miss Dorrington. No explanation has been given for the curious costumes that both you and Mr Jones were wearing. Your injuries were very severe, consistent with being violently hacked by a sharp implement – a long-bladed knife or some such. Whoever did it to you would have been covered in blood. The only other person
present at the scene was Mr Dan Jones and both he and his costume were drenched in it. I believe that you are lucky to be alive, Miss Dorrington, and our only plausible suspect is Mr Jones.'

Ursula controlled her temper with difficulty. ‘I was there, remember, and I'm telling you Dan was covered in blood because he rescued me. My attacker was gone by then and I didn't know him.' That was true enough. In all the confusion of battle she could not be absolutely certain who had hurt her where, and many of the enemy had worn helmets … Was that near-fatal blow from the hand of Medraut, Count of the Saxon Shore in sixth-century Britain? She could not remember.

The policeman did not appear to believe her. ‘And what did he look like, this stranger who attacked you?'