Warriors of Ethandun (33 page)

‘Later, Asser. For now I am trying to find a song that Rhonwen knows, and sometimes the old ones are the best.'

‘I did not know that you could sing,' Asser said to Rhonwen in some surprise, as if he'd heard that a horse could recite poetry.

‘Once, Asser, my voice was regarded as a thing of beauty to vie with the perfection of my face,' she replied in that strange flirtatious way she used when speaking to him.

Asser made a disapproving noise, but he did not leave as Dan had expected. When Taliesin played again, it was Asser's voice, a surprisingly good baritone, that led the singing. Rhonwen joined him, and though her voice wobbled and creaked a little from long disuse, by the time they had finished that first song – an old Celtic melody – the lovely rich quality of her voice had begun to shine through.

‘Not bad,' Asser said. ‘Shall we try another?'

The music heartened the men and brought a genuine smile to the pinched and sickly face of the King. It calmed the beast within Dan and for a moment filled him with hope. In some wildly optimistic part of himself he had hoped that Ursula too might respond. Music had brought her back to him when once she'd been locked in the form of an eagle, but it was too much to hope that it would help her return to him this time.

At one point Taliesin switched tempo and sang songs that the Wessex men knew – sacred and secular all mixed up – and though some of the secular ones made Asser blush, he joined in with the parts he deemed suitable and did not stop Taliesin from singing the most ribald. Dan warmed to the bishop more and more.

‘You should learn to sing, Dan,' Asser said, observing Dan's continued silence. Dan shook his head.

‘I do not know these songs – and my heart is too full.'
He looked over at Ursula and Asser patted his shoulder.

‘All will be well, Dan. We will get her back. Perhaps the time is not right yet. The Lord moves in mysterious ways and everything happens in its own good time.'

‘Will the army come, do you think?'

Asser shrugged. ‘The men we sent out to raise the muster were confident, but the men we are calling have no horses and will be walking to us. They may have finished their work on the land before leaving. They will come. Our cause is just. The men of Wessex will not let us down. Have faith!'

Dan spread out his cloak on a dryish patch of ground next to the wagon in which Ursula lay. Braveheart, who had been keeping guard over her, lay down next to him and with the familiar warmth of the war dog at his side he sat down with his back against the cartwheel to rest. Somehow the robust rhythm of the music, the raucous male voices following Taliesin's harp in simple harmony, lulled him. It would do no harm to let Taliesin's virtuoso performance take him to another place. Within moments he fell into a dreamless, restful sleep.

Ursula struggled to reach out with her magic, to break through whatever held her in this curious, sensory-deprived state. She had more power than Finna – how could Finna hold her captive? Once she thought she felt Taliesin seeking her, trying to rescue her, and that gave her hope. She banged against the invisible glass of her captivity, trying to reach him, to let him know that he was close, but he went away again and she wondered if it had perhaps been nothing more than her own desire feeding her imagination. She almost despaired then, because in the other times she had been lost, or locked in magic, she had needed Dan or Taliesin to guide her back. How could she find her way out if even Taliesin could not find her?

She still remembered Taliesin's song that had brought her back from near death after she had overreached herself and turned herself into an eagle. She did not remember the actual tune, but she remembered that it was beautiful and it occurred to her that if Finna could trap her with singing and chanting she might well be able to free herself by the same device. She had no awareness of
her body, but that did not matter; she could sing in her head – recall somehow the music that meant something to her.

She remembered Bryn's Alleluia, the song he had sung to dispel Rhonwen's evil magic in the Battle of Baddon Hill. She remembered all the music her mother had played to her as a child and the music she herself played in the privacy of her own room. She wished she had a better memory for a tune, but even her rather impressionistic memory made her feel better and less alone. For a moment she thought she heard actual music: the unmistakable sound of Taliesin's harp, which held its own kind of magic, playing a strangely haunting air. She clung to that sound in the hope that it might bring her back from the nothingness of her strange captivity, but the harder she tried to grasp it, to connect with it, to allow it to catch in her mind and drag her free, the more elusive it became. Still, she felt she had found a small chink in her prison: Finna's trap was not entirely secure. Ursula had pushed against the invisible wall of nothing and allowed a tiny quantity of something to seep in.

She really needed to think hard about what the point of trapping her in this way might be: to prevent her power being used to the advantage of Aelfred? Or worse, to allow Finna to use her power to Guthrum's advantage. Memories of the horrible attempt at mass human sacrifice at Cippenham made Ursula recoil. She would not let that happen again. She was tired by her mental effort, ridiculous though that seemed. She let her mind drift into a dream-like state. She had to preserve her strength for the
moment when she would need it. She had to be ready. Finna might not have recognised that warrior Ursula had reasserted herself, but she would find out soon enough.

Dan woke to the sound of raised voices, his heart racing. Something had changed: he could smell it. It was second nature to slide his sword from its scabbard and to get to his feet, his hand ready to wield Bright Killer, like some gunfighter ready for the quickest draw. He checked Ursula first. She seemed the same as before, though there was perhaps a little more colour in her cheeks. Rhonwen said it was his imagination, but that as far as she knew Ursula was no worse. Still, something had changed, he knew it. There was suddenly a lot of noise and movement in the camp – the smell of food cooking and a strangely festive air. He sought out Taliesin, who was sharing a cup of ale with the bishop – a somewhat unexpected sight.

‘You see. All will be well. The men of Wessex are arriving in droves. We will take the fight to the Danes and restore Aelfred's throne!'

Events moved swiftly after that. Aelfred had picked an easy place to meet but was fearful of being caught in difficult territory. The men camped as best they could that night, sleeping rough around the campfires, sharing their rations and their hopes. Dan slept little, but patrolled the ragged lines of the campsite, Braveheart by his side. He was fearful as he had rarely been. He did not think he would die – the bear was a difficult creature to kill – but he was very afraid of ceasing to be Dan. Once battle began Dan knew he would not be able to hold on.

At daybreak the horde moved on. Aelfred had left men to guide any stragglers to the main group and a list of instructions for the preparation of latecomers which he wrote down, but which none of the men he left behind could read, while he led his growing army to the forest of Iley Oak. It was a huge area of dense woodland of the kind lost from the England of Dan's time. With the trees now in leaf it was a place big enough to hide an army ten times the size of Aelfred's forces. The smell of late spring was so powerful, it was almost maddening for Dan. He went foraging for food and he and Aethelnoth brought down several deer to go some way towards relieving the hunger of the horde. Nor were they the only ones to have luck in the hunt, and the smell of cooked meat and the sweet fragrance of woodsmoke lifted the spirits of the gathered army. No one now talked of defeat or of leaving Aelfred – all the talk was of victory and not of the grind of battle. Those with experience of the shield wall were suddenly ‘close-mouthed as women reluctant to scare a young bride with talk of child bed', as Taliesin observed. Dan confessed that he wished they were more realistic about their chances. Though the numbers had evened out, battle was more than a numbers game and much would depend on the spirit of the men, their courage and their willingness to die for Aelfred and for the idea of Wessex. And still the army grew.

In fairness to Aelfred, he at least had not fallen prey to the overconfidence of the men. ‘We need to train them. A shield wall stands or falls by the courage of the weakest man. We cannot afford to have weak men in the wall.
Every one of them has to be ready to die.'

Aelfred had a gift for delegation and he divided the men into units for the purposes of training, so that every man might get to know the men who stood beside him. Men from the same area had come together in any case, but Aelfred had also to build trust between strangers who had not laboured together on the same land, who had not intermarried and who had not served under the same thegn.

Dan begged to be excluded from leading the training. He had not fought in a shield war before, a fact that Aelfred refused to believe. Dan felt the bear growing ever stronger, feeding on the sharp musk of the men's excitement, the adrenalin and the testosterone which, to his animal senses, had a distinctive piquancy which flavoured the very air he breathed. Asser came to his rescue, persuading the King that Dan would be best used as part of a mobile force, the shock troops who must step into the breach when the wall looked set to crumble, who would need to reinforce the line and if necessary fight outside it should the line break and need to be reformed. Having no fixed place in the wall, Asser argued that Dan could continue to patrol the camp, and be in charge of the security of the army in training.

‘Thank you,' Dan said when Aelfred had gone to take his place in the training of the men.

‘Have faith. You have a part to play in this battle to come, of that I am sure, and it may be that God has a purpose even for that which we might abhor.'

Dan wished he could take comfort from that. He
checked the men on duty guarding the perimeter of the wood and then returned to Ursula's side.

He knew what magic could do. It didn't matter how well they had trained their troops if at the end they could all be drowned or burned if Finna should unleash Ursula's power against them. Rhonwen's face was pinched and tense. She had been busy dealing with training injuries and her own limited powers were stretched to the full keeping Ursula alive.

‘You are sure that Finna will use her, aren't you?' Dan said.

‘Pray to your God that she can't, Dan. More power runs through Ursula still than I ever have encountered before. I do not know anything about this Finna, but if Guthrum wins this fight through her, my guess is that she will rule Guthrum!'

Ursula's face was as white as marble, her lips bloodless and pale. Dan had to walk away. The sight of her like that while he could do nothing to help made him so angry he had to battle to keep the bear away.

They stayed in the wood for two days, but the longer the army was not engaged the more problems Aelfred would create. The land would need tending soon and it was no mean feat to keep four thousand hungry men fed and watered. If action was delayed too long the men would disappear as quickly as they came. Aelfred had to strike while he had numbers and passion on his side. If that was not a good enough reason to get moving, Taliesin had received word that Guthrum was mustering his own men. The good news was that usurper King Aethelwold
was having trouble raising the fyrd: the men of Wessex were loyal to Aelfred. The bad news was that the Danes were not. Gunnarr was certain that the Danes who had remained would fight to defend their right to the wealth of Wessex. It was not long before they discovered that he was right. Guthrum was on the march.

Aelfred's scouts reported that Guthrum had left Cippenham and occupied the high ground near the village of Ethundun, an ancient fort. Guthrum began with the advantage of favourable terrain as well as superior numbers. Dan thought that it was not a good start.

The troops, untried farm boys and veterans, all clustered around the royal party. Dan could smell the fear in the air and the excitement. Too much ale had been drunk the night before and the stale stench of it, mingled with the pungent odour of the latrine trench, reminded Dan of other battles and did little to help his own nerves. Aelfred was dressed for war, while Asser wore uncharacteristic finery, a mantle of white worked with gold thread. To Dan's surprise he spoke first. He reminded them that it was Whitsun, the time when fifty days after the resurrection of our Lord the Holy Spirit had descended; now, fifty days after Aelfred had fled to Athelney, the Spirit would be with those who fought to restore the Christian kingdom of Wessex. Asser was a good orator and by the time he had finished and blessed the troops the army
was already half won.

Dan had not expected Aelfred to have much charisma before a crowd. For all his wiry strength he looked frail. His beard was newly trimmed, which helped a little, and though his eyes were sunken they flashed with unexpected fervour and passion.

‘We have one job to do today,' he said, projecting his voice across the silent crowd. The wind had dropped so that he could be heard by every man. Dan suspected a Taliesin trick because his voice rang so clearly it was almost as if it had been artificially amplified.

‘We have to win. We have to break the ranks of the Danes with our strength, and break their spirit with our courage. We have to take back what is ours. I stand in the shadow of my grandfather and my father and I will not shame them by losing all that they had gained. We will fight and we will win!'

It was a very simple speech to Dan's relief and it was one which did the trick. The men roared their support and stank a little less of fear. The ealdormen, including Aethelnoth, organised them into fighting formation – one long shield wall moving slowly forward – and they began to climb the scarp slope of the ancient fort. Dan remained mounted along with the King, who would rally the troops and remain visible throughout. Dan's job was to tidy the line, to keep men firm and to fill any gaps that arose. He led a small party of grim-faced veterans. He called them to him, uncertain as to what he should say.