Warriors of Ethandun (20 page)

‘Good luck,' he said and made his way back to Taliesin.

‘I've got an idea, Taliesin. I don't know if it will work but I need to get to Ursula and I'm not going to do it here or tied up as a human sacrifice.' Dan could smell blood; the smell carried on the smoky air made him hungry and that made him angry. The bear was still there, scarcely under control.

‘What do you want me to do?'

‘Can you still use the magic of your voice – like you could when you were only a bard in Macsen's land?'

‘I was never “only a bard”, boy. My gifts were always exceptional.' Taliesin had slipped into the Combrogi tongue. Dan explained what he wanted Taliesin to do and eased Bright Killer from its scabbard.

Taliesin produced his harp from under his cloak. Dan could sense the magic as soon as Taliesin plucked his first note; his voice had not weakened or coarsened over time and a hush fell upon the captives. The beauty of the sound even calmed the irritation of the guards. No one moved and Dan's attempt to be inconspicuous, running with his body in a crouch position over bent knees, ought to have been very noticeable, but no one saw him.

The largest of the guardsmen was still a few inches shorter than Dan. He was a thickset man, leaning with his back against the fence, staring out towards the distant bonfire. He was lost in the spell of Taliesin's music. It was not difficult for Dan to slip under the fence and grab him from behind. It was more difficult for Dan to keep his aggression under control.

‘You make a sound and I'll kill you,' Dan said and it was easy to make his words sound convincing because they were probably true. A part of him wanted to kill the guard. Taliesin was right: his soul was in danger. He had never felt that way before; he had never actually wanted to kill before. That shocked him. He let the man feel Bright Killer's blade against his neck. He had to be careful not to nick him with the edge. He was afraid that the smell of blood might arouse the bear.

The guard's companion, standing just a few feet away, gave no sign of having noticed anything untoward. He
was gazing at the misty haze around the moon, beguiled by the voice of Taliesin.

‘You and your companion here are going to escort me to the Goddess, and then you are going to leave me there, just as if you were on official business.' Dan did not succeed in keeping the pent-up aggression from his voice, but that might have been a good thing. The guard nodded his head rapidly, a tiny staccato movement; the blade was very close to his throat. Dan wrinkled his nose, as the man's personal hygiene was no better than Taliesin's and he stank of stale sweat.

There was a sound of struggle, a muffled shout and then silence. Dan hoped that the girl had subdued her man.

‘Do not try anything clever with me,' Dan warned. ‘My friend is gifted in magic. Should you disobey me, he will kill you when you sleep and it will not be the easy death of the sword. Let's go!' The guard believed him, Dan could tell. The man shook slightly as he beckoned to the other man.

‘We have to take this one to the Goddess.'

‘But we took all the ones she wanted already,' the second guard whined. Dan suspected that he wanted to stay and listen to the music. His eyes widened as he saw Dan's sword against his companion's neck. To do him credit he went for his own seax, but the man Dan held stopped him with a curse.

‘Do as he says. What is an extra prisoner to us?'

Dan allowed himself to be flanked by the two guards. He cut the rope which tied the gate of the corral shut with
one good blow of his strong blade. The Danes looked impressed and Dan realised that he had not yet seen a blade to rival Bright Killer in craftsmanship or edge. Dan waited for a moment to be certain that the rest of the plan would work. He nodded at Taliesin. The crowd parted to allow Taliesin through and when he got to the gate he changed his tune into something a little brighter, a joyous little dance. As he left the compound the Viking captives followed him in a daze, like rats enchanted by some Pied Piper. They were not far from the edge of Cippenham and in the darkness, with the town deserted, it might be possible for them to get some way along the road before their escape was noticed. Watching the hesitant way some of them walked, Dan was not certain they would get too far, but they would at least die free. The girl who had helped him blew him a kiss as she passed. She was little more than a kid. He nodded an acknowledgement.

Dan felt pleased. He didn't know what had happened to the third guard but he had achieved something without violence, without unleashing the wrath of the bear. He sheathed his sword, confident that the guards would not try to hurt him.

He had no idea what he would do next.

The blind girl stepped forward to stand in the open space between Ursula, the prisoners and the crowd. Her voice was not loud and no one caught the first few words that she spoke, but then a hush descended as each person present strained to hear what she had to say. Ursula tried not to listen. She was not successful. Finna was saying something about the offerings for Freya ensuring victory for all those in Guthrum's army. The crowd cheered at the end of her brief speech and the prisoners looked bemused. They did not stay bemused for long. Within moments it was very clear what was about to happen.

First the men were stripped of their tunics, so that they were naked to the waist. Guthrum picked the strongest-looking man first. The prisoner's face was lost in the shadow, but Ursula saw the way he flinched slightly as Guthrum stepped towards him and unsheathed his seax. The blade looked wickedly sharp. Guthrum bowed to Ursula.

‘May it please the Goddess,' he said in a bull's bellow,
and he began to carve the shape of an eagle into the man's naked back with bold, confident strokes. Somehow the man did not scream. Not that his outward stoicism made any difference to Ursula: Ursula heard the screaming in her own head. When he began to cut more deeply the man made a terrible little choked cry. Something about his agony reminded Ursula of who she was. More of Guthrum's men joined him in the ritual. The scene was loathsome and the ground around the captive's feet was spattered and darkened by blood and the men cutting him were splattered too. It was worse than battle, this cold deliberate infliction of pain. She remembered battles. The memory was hard to pin down but there was a time when she had fought and she remembered pain. What was happening was grotesque. The blind girl had her face turned towards the men, straining to hear what was going on. A small smile played around her lips. Ursula was truly repulsed. First she tried to run from the pain of it, but the girl Finna somehow, through the grim power of her will, kept Ursula there in the centre of the circle of bound and terror-stricken men. She could not escape; she had to watch and to share. The blazing bonfire bathed the rapt faces of the onlookers in demonic light. Ursula shut her eyes. She could do that. Finna could not stop her doing that, but it made no difference either; she could see what was going on through a hundred pairs of eyes; the horror was only magnified.

This was not the way things should be. This was not what she wanted. She had to stop this. She had grown unused to thinking like a person, she had trouble
concentrating on one thing, but she could not let this carry on. She must set the prisoners free. That was easily done. She released the men from their bonds; with a little flick of her mind the hemp cords that held them slipped like coiled snakes to the floor. One punched his captor while another ran.

‘Kill them!' Guthrum screamed when he realised what had happened and somehow the scene of sacrifice became a battle.

The prisoners were unarmed, so Ursula removed the knives of the Viking captors. They flew through the air like a hail of short spears and embedded themselves, blade first, in the earth around where she lay. That at least gave the captives a fighting chance, and fight they did. The air was filled with the grunts and thumps of men, with muffled war cries and the sound of impact and struggle. The captives were wrestling with their captors.

Soon armed men from the crowd joined in and blood began to flow. Ursula did not know what to do. For all her power she felt helpless. People were screaming and it was all confusion. She had to stop this madness. It was too complicated to disarm all those who now fought and she knew too well that a man's naked fist was sufficient to kill. In a moment of inspiration she called up a storm. Lightning crackled and it began to rain so fast and heavily that the ground became a mud bath in seconds, the bonfire went out and all was darkness. Finna's control did not falter; it made no difference to her whether the night was lit or not. She found her way to Ursula's side.

‘That was not clever,' she said. ‘You will damage your
reputation if you don't accept the gifts that are your due.'

Ursula refused to acknowledge her tormentor. It was difficult to narrow her awareness down to the scene before her, and when she managed to focus on the human beings involved it seemed clear that what she had done so far had resulted in more death not less. There was a wild animal loose among the struggling bodies and it was making things a good deal worse. She did not think that she was responsible for the presence of the beast but it was hard to be sure.

It took an enormous amount of energy to concentrate on the here and now. There were things that she ought to remember, things that had to do with the wild beast that was tearing its way through the tightly packed bodies of the men locked in such pointless combat. It was no good. She could not help. She could not keep track of what was happening and she could not think; she appeared to have forgotten how. She was trapped in this place that she did not want to be. Had she been just Ursula she might have cried tears of frustration, though she was not much given to such outbreaks of emotions; stuck in this one place with the body she had almost forgotten she owned, she let rip all her frustration and fury with herself, with Finna, with the stupid men who had gone on killing in spite of her best efforts. With one wild blast of power she reignited the sodden bonfire so it burned by her will alone. The flame towered above the desperate men fighting for their lives in the darkness. It reared up like some mythic creature made of flame, shaped like a bird; it flapped wings of fire and illuminated the whole horrible scene. It burned
with unnatural heat, fuelled by Ursula's unnatural power, and she could not keep it bound in the shape she had chosen to cast it. The firebird's wings were huge and when they flapped stray sparks caught the timber frame of a nearby building and in seconds that too had begun to blaze. The women ran to save their former homes and Guthrum, fearing that he would lose his treasure as well as his temporary shelter, shrieked above the tumult, ‘Cippenham is on fire! Save it!' Only then did the enemies pull apart.

Dan had arrived seconds before the rain came. He had known at once where Ursula lay. Each person had their own unique and distinctive smell; he had not always known that nor known that Ursula's was beautiful. That did not surprise him and he had no trouble recognising her scent, even though his nose had never been keen enough to perceive it before. She smelled like Ursula was. He stopped for a moment and sniffed the air, drinking her in. There had been moments when he'd doubted that he would ever find her again.

He began to run to her but there were people in his way and the scent of blood was maddening. The sounds of fighting excited him; he didn't like the way they made him feel. It was suddenly hard to concentrate. He felt that pulse of furious energy that signalled the beginning of change. The two men who were pretending to guard Dan took one look at the chaos before them and then at Dan's face. The bigger man let out a strangled cry and ran. His companion followed him an instant later. Perhaps he had
forgotten Dan's promise to have him killed in his sleep; perhaps he did not care. Dan did not try to stop them; they were an irrelevance. He began to pick his way across the soft mud towards Ursula. He thought of her and that helped to keep the urge for violence at bay. His heart was beating very hard and he felt very powerful. He also felt uncomfortable; his boots were far too tight and he prised them off, using his left foot to remove his right and vice versa. It was good to feel the cold sludge-like earth between his toes and he was immediately better balanced.

He could smell Aethelnoth somewhere in that crowd of men battling to stay upright on treacherous ground, struggling to avoid a knife thrust, fighting blind in this mass insanity. Even Dan, on the brink of entering his own private madness, could see that what was going on lacked any reason. Loyalty to his comrade gave him the excuse he needed to turn his thoughts from Ursula for a moment. Loyalty allowed him to enter the fray: he had to help Aethelnoth.

The moon had all but disappeared beneath a thick veil of cloud. When it emerged briefly, its light offered Dan little useful information: a glint of metal, the paleness of flesh – nothing more. He had to rely on his hearing and his sense of smell. Fortunately they were both inhumanly sharp. Dan thought that he would be all right so long as he didn't get angry, so long as he didn't lose his temper, so long as he thought only about saving Aethelnoth. No one spoke; no one had the energy or the breath. The only sounds were grunts and curses, heavy frightened breathing, screams, cries of pain and the uncomfortable noises of
impact – thuds, thumps, cracks and very occasionally the clash of metal or the sound of metal hitting flesh and bone. It was not noisy, not like some video game. Death came less dramatically, less neatly; it was all a horrible muddy mess and Dan threw himself into it with a kind of crazed joy, but he was still Dan. He gripped Bright Killer and began to slash his way through the packed melee to his former companion. Perhaps it was a mistake to believe he could retain control long enough to save Aethelnoth, perhaps it was foolish overconfidence, for the moment some poor unfortunate turned to retaliate for a glancing blow, Dan's fury blossomed into a wild anger that made his whole body sing with a kind of ecstasy of rage. He roared and ran the man through.