Warriors of Ethandun (21 page)

After that he lost it. He was aware of throwing men out of his way. He did not see how or where they landed and he ignored their screams and their palpable fear. Somehow he had the wit to sheathe his sword before his paws became too clumsy for such a delicate movement. He swiped at anything that got in his way. If it had been chaos before, the scene now became yet more hellish, as everyone tried to run from the monster he had turned into. Men trampled one another into the mud in their eagerness to get away.

The bear found Aethelnoth bleeding from an existing injury and struggling to defend himself. The bear charged towards his opponent, who dropped everything and backed away in obvious terror. The bear towered above the unfortunate Viking and raked him with his sharpened claws. The weight of his massive paw and the strength of
his assault knocked the man down. The bear wanted to finish what he had started, but Dan remembered Aethelnoth. He clung to the memory like a drowning man might cling to a raft. He was there to save Aethelnoth.

The bear snarled, fighting the urge to tear up and destroy all the frail human bodies that still, in spite of their best efforts to run, pressed too close to him. With monumental effort Dan picked Aethelnoth up and carried him through the remaining combatants as they struggled to get out of his way. Not all of them managed to move quickly enough, but the bear dispatched them swiftly and without pleasure.

Suddenly the doused fire rekindled and the bear was forced to back away from the scorching heat of the blaze. The fire grew and spread until it took on the form of a great eagle flapping its wings. Ursula. The memory of Ursula's need helped Dan to get himself back under control. Somehow, he recognised the strange fiery manifestation of Ursula's power as a cry for help. She had turned herself into an eagle once and this bird of flame was just another manifestation of her magic. She needed him. He felt himself shrink to normal Dan proportions and he set Aethelnoth back down on his feet.

‘Dan!' Aethelnoth gasped, gripping Dan's arm to steady himself. He was bleeding profusely but, as far as Dan could tell, not fatally. ‘We have to get out of here.'

‘Not yet.' Dan's words came out as a guttural grunt but at least they were comprehensible. ‘We need to rescue Ursula.'

Ursula was lost. Finna had fled when the heat of the
flames had become too great. Guthrum, with unexpected chivalry, came and led her away. The scorching heat did not bother Ursula, who was unaware of its proximity to her body. She had fled the instant Finna let her go. She fled to other places where the night was cool, and the night birds and the nocturnal beasts went about their business of living and dying undisturbed by the madness of men.

Someone was calling to her. She heard a voice from far away, a man's voice calling a name that might have been hers. It was not ‘Freya', nor ‘Goddess', but something else – a name that brought with it pictures of a past that could have been hers, that was so far removed from her present that it was hard to be sure.

‘Ursula.'

There was something about his voice that touched her, something that made her want to see him, to return to the hell from which she'd fled just to find out why his voice moved her. She forced herself back to the stink of smoke and the burning flames and opened her eyes. The heat was very intense and a man was lifting her over his shoulder. She was aware that her body was a dead weight but she seemed to have forgotten how to move it.

‘Aethelnoth, give me a hand.'

The words were hard to hear because the man's voice sounded dry and he kept coughing. It was hard to breathe in the smoke. It was probably time to put out the fire; it was so hot and so close her hair was singed by it. Her fire creature had gone wild and it took some concentration to get it back under control. It had divided itself, multiplying
until it was a flock of wild birds opening many wings to embrace everything in the world. It was beautiful and exhilarating and too much. She reached out her power and gently, regretfully, snuffed it out.

‘That was close,' a man said. He was very frightened. He had been one of the prisoners. His torso was naked and bleeding from several cuts and contusions. One eye was swelling and shaded like a ripening plum where he must have been hit. He was coated in mud and soot. He was probably lucky to be alive.

‘Dan! She's awake! Her eyes are open.'

If the man had sounded frightened before, he sounded terrified now. He was afraid of her. He saw her as the Goddess who had demanded his life as a sacrifice. She would have liked to explain that it was all a mistake, but no words came. The man carrying her, the man the prisoner called ‘Dan', set her down on her feet so that she leaned against him.

‘Can you walk?' he asked her.

She liked his voice. It reminded her of things just out of the reach of her memory. She struggled to focus on his question. She remembered about walking, of course she did, but she couldn't remember how to make her body obey her. She called to a horse in a field on the outskirts of the town so that it might carry her.

It was then that she saw him, this Dan. His face was blackened by soot but that only made his wild eyes seem brighter. He was tall – as tall as she was, and as strong as she had once been. His eyes scanned her face and suddenly he hugged her, kissing her face with a kind of
desperation. She was like a rag doll in his arms, unable to respond, and then with a different kind of magic he was there in her mind, in that lonely lost place within her.

‘Ursula?'

‘Dan?'

‘Where have you been?'

She could not answer, only let out a mental wail of anguish and relief. There was no word to describe where she'd been, but it had been very far away from Ursula.

She felt her body sag against him; her knees, which hadn't been doing a great job of bearing her weight, suddenly buckled as everything came flooding back. She started to cry. She could not help it. Great, ridiculous, childish sobs racked her.

‘What's wrong?' the other man cried out in alarm, but Dan had his arms round her, holding her up. She let her head rest on his shoulder and allowed the tears to come.

‘It's all right. She's come back to me,' Dan replied thickly. There was something not entirely right about him – Ursula knew that the moment his thoughts had touched hers – but for the present she was too grateful that he had found her to worry about what that might be. The horse she had called announced its arrival with a snort and a restless pawing of the ground. Ursula had given it orders and it had to obey.

‘We should go. We are in danger here,' Dan said without moving. He was holding on to her as if she were his port in a storm and not the other way around. He kissed the top of her head and hugged her tighter. Ursula could
not stop crying and was a long way off being capable of speech, but Dan understood her perfectly and that was all that mattered.

She felt the roughness of his tunic against her face. It was filthy, smeared with mud and blood and stinking of sweat, but she did not care. She tasted the salt of her own tears and breathed in the smell of Dan's hair. For the first time in a very long time she knew exactly where she was. She was Ursula and Dan had found her. She felt safe and she did not want to move.

‘This is Ursula, my comrade-at-arms, the person I have been trying to find since before I came to Aelfred's court.'

‘The Goddess?'

‘She is not a goddess, she is my …' Dan hesitated. ‘She is my heart.' That made Ursula want to smile. She was Dan's heart!

‘We can't take her with us. The Danes will come back from fighting the fire and they will kill us if they think we've abducted the Goddess!'

The other man was so fearful he was beginning to get on Ursula's nerves. Did he not grasp that Dan had just saved her from a kind of strange living death? Did he not realise how much she had needed saving? Did he not know how Finna had used her? Finna might come! The thought flashed into her head. Worse, Finna might call her like she was some kind of dog. Ursula's response was instinctive. She had to get away from her, hide from her, so that Finna could not use her again. She was quite pleased with herself for recognising that she had been used; it was the nearest thing to reasoning she had done in
a while. The need to get away from Finna forced her reluctantly from Dan's embrace.

Ursula still did not trust herself to speak and was glad that Dan seemed to see what needed to be done. He signalled for the other man to steady the horse and lifted her on to its back.

‘I'm going back for Taliesin and Braveheart. Look after Ursula. She's not herself yet. Take her away from here. Head back to Athelney and I will find you on the road!'

The words did not mean much, and she had to focus very hard to keep herself within herself as Dan spoke to her again.

‘Ursula. There are things I have to do. This is Aethelnoth, a comrade. He'll stay with you.' She sensed that Dan was as reluctant to leave her as she was to see him go. She still could not remember why they had become separated.

She did not enter Aethelnoth's thoughts or those of the horse. She did not even try to enter Dan's mind. She wanted to understand more of what had happened to her, but she did not want to use magic because Finna would know. She licked dry lips and touched the sword at her hip. She knew she was Ursula and that was a start.

‘I'm OK,' she said and her voice came out all cracked and croaky.

Seeing Aethelnoth's blank look, she realised that she had used the wrong words. The right words were somewhere in her head. Aethelnoth did not speak the language of Gunnarr. She found the right words and made an effort to sound more like the Ursula she wanted to be.

‘I can take care of myself. I don't need looking after. Just show me where to go.' The words came more easily. She cleared her throat and tried to smile. Her hand grasped the sword tightly and she remembered how to wield it. She straightened her posture. She knew who she was. She was Ursula, warrior and sorceress, and that was a good start.

She wanted to follow Dan, but knew that in her present state she would be little use. She had only just realised that she'd lost him and now he was gone again. She watched him walk into the heart of the town. He said that she was his heart. That made her feel so happy because … ? She pursued the question and suddenly she remembered the rest. She wasn't just a warrior and a sorceress; she was also Ursula Dorrington, who had screwed up badly. In a sudden flood of images she recalled what had happened in the library before she'd run away. She remembered hugging the tree and racing through the Veil, leaving Dan to follow behind. She hadn't behaved very well. She didn't like what she'd remembered, but Dan had forgiven her. She was his heart!

The magic she had craved so much had possessed and exhausted her and, sitting on her horse, leaving the scene of mayhem and murder, she felt like an old dried-out husk of a sometime person, worn out, weary and racked with sudden guilt. The buzz of magic in her blood no longer excited her; it felt as if it had eaten away at her until she was just this weak, enfeebled creature who had for too long forgotten even her name.

She had to pull herself together. The man, Aethelnoth,
who limped by her side, exuded resentment that he had been left to defend the very person for whom he was so nearly sacrificed. He was unarmed and in poor condition and the Danes would be after them soon.

It would have been easy to change her appearance, to heal her companion. Anything was possible with magic, but she dared not use it.

‘We look like we are running away. You look like a prisoner and I, well …' Words failed her. ‘We need to find you some clothes and I need a helm or something to cover my hair.'

‘You have a plan?' Aethelnoth said mockingly. ‘Why don't you just blast the Danes to hell, set fire to them? Why don't you use whatever demon power you have? I do not know where you and Dan came from but I think it would be better if Aelfred had nothing more to do with either of you. Your power does not come from God.'

Ursula was too tired to debate theology with her reluctant ally. Walking and talking took all her energy; thinking was still largely beyond her. She guided the horse to the edge of town and the bridge that led out of Cippenham. She did not know if that was the right way or not and Aethelnoth offered no guidance. As they approached they could see that there were guards on the gate. Ursula pulled the pony into the shelter of some trees.

She scraped her hair back from her head, plaiting it in the style favoured by some of the Danish warriors. Even such a simple task made her arms ache. ‘You are my slave,' she said. ‘Where can I claim to be going?'

Aehelnoth shrugged unhelpfully. ‘You are the Viking goddess. You know more than I of their heathen ways.'

Ursula kept her temper with some difficulty. She did not know what would happen if she allowed herself to forget herself even for a second. The magic was still there. Every moment she had to fight the urge to use it. She wanted to turn herself into Boar Skull, her male alter ego, but she resisted. She was Ursula and that would have to be enough.

‘Put your hands behind your back, bow your head and look beaten,' she hissed at Aethelnoth and rode confidently towards the bridge.

She greeted the guards in the bantering tones she had heard the warriors use among themselves. She kept her voice low and her body language masculine. It was a part she had played for so long in previous visits through the Veil that it came quite easily.

‘I am taking this Aenglisc dog to a lady I know – a gift that may bring me her favour,' Ursula said by way of explanation. She winked broadly and their response were predictably obscene, then they waved her over the bridge.

‘What did you say?' Aethelnoth asked when they were out of sight.

‘Nothing worth repeating,' Ursula said. ‘Barracks humour.'

‘And what would you know of that?' Aethelnoth snorted.