Call of the Kings (11 page)

‘So it’s damage limitation then?’

The king stood up, then sat down again.

‘Can’t you use some magic? Blow them all to pieces . . . I don’t know, anything to make them go away?’

‘There are too many of them,’ Twilight said flatly.

The king threw his hands in the air in a gesture of futility.

‘How did it all come to this?’ he cried plaintively. ‘What is to blame for this chaos?’

‘It’s called progress, your highness,’ said Tara cheekily.

‘What are their terms?’ Twilight got back to the business in hand.

‘They want me to forsake the throne in favour of Harold Godwine and go into exile. His two brothers, Beorn and Swein, will replace my senior ministers, and the rest of my court either joins me or dies. What is left of my army swears allegiance to them or will also be put to the sword.’

‘What about Robert Jumieges and the role of Archbishop of Canterbury?’

‘They haven’t mentioned him, but as there is no love lost between them my guess would be that his days on this earth are numbered.’

‘Just imagine,’ Tara said with a half smile on her face. ‘Swein as the Archbishop of Canterbury. Every nun in the country would be running scared.’

‘Would you, could you handle the negotiations for me?’ Edward asked, working the silk square, damp from his perspiration, across his brow with a shaking hand. ‘There is no one else I can trust, besides which they’ll probably just kill anyone else I send.’

‘They hate me as much as anyone. Apart from holding me responsible for the death of their father at your banquet, and Swein’s banishment, I dispatched all the Viking in a raiding party sent to kill me. Their longboat disintegrated at sea in a massive explosion. It was overkill; my anger was great because they killed Katre, my tyro’s mother and my companion.’

The king looked at Tara. ‘I’m sorry to hear about the death of your mother.’ He turned to Twilight. ‘They may hate you, but they still respect your power and abilities. Will you talk to them for me . . . please! I appeal to you as your royal sovereign and king.’

He was trying to hold on to some vestige of monarchic dignity but failing in the face of the insurmountable odds he was faced with.

Twilight looked at Tara.

What happened to our edict to leave the big battles to the kings and queens?
he said, speaking directly to her mind.

The death of my mother happened,
the little redheaded tyro replied.

‘Alright, your highness, I’ll negotiate with them. What is the best you wish for?’

The king let out a great breath of relief. ‘Anything but exile. I would wish to stay in this country. Quietly, well away from all affairs of state with just a few retainers to look after me.’

‘I’ll do what I can,’ said Twilight softly.

Swein, the former Earl of Hereford, did a double take, then went for his sword. He was standing on the banks of the Thames with the surrounded palace of the king in the background, supervising the landing of soldiers. His two brothers, Harold and Beorn, stood with him beaming at the four-deep column of well-armed men stretching as far as the eye could see along the riverbank before curving inland to encircle the palace. Edward the Confessor and what remained of his army were trapped; the Godwines would control the throne of England by midday. It was a good feeling and they were manifestly happy . . . until a vision appeared behind his brothers that had Swein reaching for his sword as fast as he could.

Twilight and Tara stood there smiling at him.

With his hand locked solid on his sword handle, he snarled at the smiling venefici, a sound picked up by his brothers, who spun around and also went for their swords, with the same result.

‘Good morning,’ said Twilight cheerfully. ‘We have been asked by the king to join with you to discuss the terms of his surrender.’

‘You’re a dead man,’ spat Swein. ‘And that redheaded brat with you.’

‘In that case,’ said the old enchanter, ‘I will cast every one of these soldiers into the river. With all that heavy armor they will be drowned within minutes, and London will be awash with their dead bodies. Then we’ll see where that leaves your invasion.’

He raised his arm.

‘Stop!’ cried Harold Godwine quickly. ‘We will talk.’ He gestured toward a brightly coloured tent with a blue and yellow pennant fluttering from the top. ‘If you will just allow our legs to move we can talk in there.’

Tara glanced at Twilight. His bluff had worked.

With Swein muttering dark threats, they walked to the tent, ducked through the entrance, and sat down each side of a solid oak table with the remains of a meal and a parchment map of London on it.

‘Before we start perhaps you would care to place your weapons on the floor.’ Twilight’s voice was neutral.

Swein’s face turned a mottled red and he was about to explode in seething rage at the indignity of removing his weapons when both Beorn and Harold nodded in agreement and put their swords and a dagger each on the floor. Reluctantly, deliberately, Swein followed suit.

‘And the dagger in your right boot and the one up your left sleeve,’ said Twilight quietly.

Further angry looks but finally Swein complied.

‘First of all let me explain our position in all of this. We bear no loyalty or inclination to either side, despite the differences of the past. We have been asked to discuss his position by the king because there is no one else he can trust to undertake it.’

‘He’s a beaten man with nowhere to go,’ said Beorn, speaking for the first time.

Twilight nodded. ‘I understand from the king that your wish is that he is exiled and Harold here takes the throne?’

‘The same way we were exiled,’ sneered Swein. ‘And Harold will make a far better king. He was born and bred for it by our father, the man you choked on a piece of bread.’

‘If I may say so,’ Twilight ignored the choking remark and directed his remarks at Harold, ‘exile allows time to regroup out of the eyesight or knowledge of the throne and its agents. Armies, weapons, and ships can be requisitioned, support and money raised. You have just proved how effective it is to regroup in exile by the numbers and logistics you gathered in Denmark. They’re all around us outside. What’s to stop Edward from doing the same?’

The silence indicated that they hadn’t thought of that.

‘What else do you suggest we do with him?’ Harold asked.

‘Put him where you can keep an eye on him,’ said Tara. ‘Somewhere out in the country but isolated from the London spotlight and the politics of sovereignty. Give him a few retainers and a bit of forest with some deer to keep him occupied, and it’s our guess you won’t have any more trouble.’

‘Have you discussed this with him?’ This time it was Beorn. His tone was almost civil.

‘Briefly,’ replied Twilight. ‘He’ll accept it and we’ll have him out of the palace within the hour. You and your invasion will be remembered as being the only completely bloodless coup in the history of the throne of England.’

‘It won’t be bloodless if I have anything to do with it,’ snarled Swein, eyeing Twilight up and down.

Harold nodded. ‘The three of us would like to discuss this . . . alone. Could you give us ten minutes?’

‘Provided you stay in here and do not attempt to pick up any of the weapons or contact anyone else, we will wait outside.’

‘No tricks?’ Beorn asked.

‘I can’t think what on earth you could possibly mean,’ replied the magic-maker.

Ten minutes later they were back inside the tent.

‘We agree to your terms. Edward can stay on in this country at one of the country estates he no doubt owns, just so long as it’s remote. We will want two of our own men on his staff, which must number no more than fifteen in total.’

‘Just about enough to lift him to his knees after prayer,’ sneered Swein before turning his ire to Twilight and pointing his index finger.

‘You might have saved the worthless Edward, back-slayer, and worked your spell-bindery on my brothers here, but it doesn’t work with me. I won’t rest until you’re dead and your runt with you.’

‘Back-slayer, eh? You’ve been listening to some old Viking sagas involving the foul old venefica Freyja . . .’

‘Whose twin daughter, Go-uan, you killed from behind,’ interrupted Swein.

‘Not just killed,’ Twilight smiled, ‘but blasted into a spume of cosmic dust . . . like I can do with you . . . at any time. Remember this, foul mouth. I can kill you in any number of different ways whenever I choose to do so and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.’

Just for good measure Twilight’s black eye glowed for a moment as he planted a few permanent images in the berserker’s mind of some horrifically lurid deaths. That would keep him awake at night, especially as the head and body being separated and dispatched each time bore a remarkable likeness to Swein’s own.

Chapter 7

‘Plant-lore knowledge and husbandry have always been a great aid to the venefical cause. The long magus said that it was the purest form of sorcery, and its knowledge would always bring an extra dimension to any conflict.’

Twilight and Tara sat high on the Ridgeway path overlooking Stonehenge. It was the same place the long magus had sat fifty-five years ago with the thirteen year-old Twilight before his first encounter with the Equinoctial Festival of the Cowering Dead. Now it was Tara’s turn.

In much the same way as Twilight had at the same stage, Tara asked a thousand questions about the annual ceremony. Including the big one: what would happen if they didn’t do it? Twilight gave Tara the word-for-word answers that the long magus had given him. Some of them hadn’t satisfied him at the time and, purposefully, he’d been made to wait until a particular situation provided an answer, or he’d learned more, enabling him to work it out for himself. It would be the same for Tara, although he didn’t expect any unannounced meddling from an immortal as he’d had. Finally, there was the old Merlin mantra for her to take on board. In the presence of the nominated cowerer,
di mortius nil nisi bonum
, say nothing but good of the dead.

It was time to go.

As the swirling mists began to thicken, they stood in the centre of the great stone circle holding hands and awaited the first cowerer. Just before the mists thickened, Twilight gave little Tara a big smile and squeezed her hand. He had a fair idea who the first cowerer would be.

And he wasn’t disappointed.

Her father, Coyle Brogan, he of the Tara-induced bald head, was the first to begin the high-pitched scream in their ears. Mercifully he was quickly replaced by her grandmother and then the abbot. Skellighaven was to the fore, especially when the next one turned up at full volume.

Leannan Sidhe arrived to begin her upper-register rant. Then the evil Earl Godwine, his oily tones almost indistinguishable from the witch fairy who had gone before him.

Unknown others who had met their death at the hands of Twilight swooped, screamed their seething approbation, and just as quickly were flung away back into the emptiness of their self-induced hell.

Never once slackening his grip on the small hand of Tara, Twilight dealt with every one of the cowerers in the same gentle but insistent voice. Reasoned, softly mannered replies pointing out the way they had led an unsound life that directly contributed to the deaths and violent domination of others. For this they had been punished by a permanent place in the cowering mists. It would always be so, and the next in line, who was here with him today for the first time, would resume where he left off in due course.

Squeezing her eyes tightly shut, Tara concentrated on the vital linkage with her mentor’s hand. As wave after wave of high, scabrous, and utterly frustrated voices assaulted her consciousness, she began to realize something.

She could handle this. When her turn came she would cope.

From that point on she relaxed.

Then, to her sudden surprise, it was over and the darkness of early evening swept the gloomy mists away, and the mighty stone citadel of Stonehenge once again towered around them.

Twilight, still holding tightly to her hand, beamed down at her.

‘I felt the moment you conquered the mists and began to understand you could do it,’ he said in the same gentle tone he’d used with the cowerers.

‘It’s dark. Have we been in the mists all day?’

‘Time flies when you’re enjoying yourself, eh?’

They climbed the hills back to their vantage point and stopped to look down on the impassive circle of gray sentinel stones now standing out in the silver moonlight.

‘I feel a tremendous sense of achievement,’ said Tara.

‘So you should.’ The alpha enchanter smiled. ‘Today you fulfilled the great prophesy that was foretold before you were born. Today I and all the other astounders under their Destiny Stones at Avebury salute you and pay tribute to your great achievement. Today you, my special little Tara, braved the raging mists and became a true wizard . . . a proper venefica.’

Edward the Confessor retired to a small country estate in the Nottingham area, and Harold Godwine became Harold II, King of England. Robert of Jumieges, Archbishop of Canterbury, managed to escape to Normandy with his head intact, and the great religious position he’d occupied was given by Harold to the Bishop Sigand, a quiet and deeply pious Christian considered a safe and noncontroversial pair of hands.

Within a year Edward the Confessor was dead in suspicious circumstances that had Swein’s dirty hands all over it. Shortly after that the pathologically affected Swein was involved in another death. This time it couldn’t be ignored. This time he killed his elder brother, Beorn, in an ambush as he was returning from the supervision of naval training with a small escort of men on the south coast. One of Beorn’s men escaped the ambush to tell Harold. Who now had another problem. Was his own brother working his murderous way toward the throne?

Harold couldn’t trust Swein. There was only one solution - the deranged younger brother had to be killed, and there was a natural candidate for the job.

The old veneficus, Twilight.

It would require a certain amount of diplomacy, but Harold had come by some interesting information that just might help the cause.

He sent a messenger to Avebury requesting a meeting. As usual the pica forewarned their liege-lord of the impending visitor, who was waiting for him with Tara, Feasa, and Eoghan by her side at the gates of the compound.

As he said to Tara, when kings were beating a regular path to their door, the systems and laws of sovereign rule were failing. But, since nothing much was happening, as before, they would at least hear the king’s story. As with the same request from Edward the Confessor, Twilight and Tara appeared, purposefully without warning, at the palace in the same room as Harold pretty much before the messenger had remounted for the return journey.

Harold was seated alone in a window seat of the palace great hall gazing out over the Thames, the very part of the river that he had filled with ships the last time Twilight and Tara had arrived to bargain on behalf of Edward. As is usual the guards, four of them in close but not suffocating attendance by the two entrance doors to the room, began to draw swords and step forward when they’d had a chance to adjust to the sudden appearance of the old veneficus and his small, redheaded companion. Waved down by Harold they went thankfully back to attention at their guarding positions. They all knew the reputation of the old astounder and his tyro, and the last thing they wanted was to challenge them.

‘Come and have a seat,’ said Harold, waving to the empty space next to him in the window. ‘And thank you for coming.’

He then proceeded to tell them of the suspicious death of Edward and the proven assassination of his brother Beorn by Swein.

‘And you want us to take care of Swein?’ Twilight said, jumping immediately to the point.

‘Yes.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Ensconced in Winchester Castle with at least five hundred men.’

‘I know this castle well,’ said Twilight almost as an aside. ‘It is where the Viking Guthrum laid siege to King Alfred and his army.’

‘And you led four thousand men and the king and queen to safety through the old tunnels.’ Harold chuckled.

‘You know your history.’

‘A prerequisite of rule in this war-torn country,’ said the king quietly, looking out over the river. ‘Knowledge of the past shows us what will happen in the future.’

‘Why not use the vast army at your disposal to smoke him out?’ Tara asked.

‘Because it would take many weeks and cost unnecessary lives. I cannot afford the time or manpower. There are other pressing battles to fight in the north of the country.’

‘Give us one good reason why we should become your assassins,’ Twilight said bluntly.

Harold waved at one of the guards, who turned, opened the door, and waved to someone on the other side. A tall, flaxen haired, heavily bearded man with a large silver ring in one ear, great Norse tattoos snaking down his neck and bare arms, and Viking amulets on each wrist, strode purposefully into the room. A large, double-handed sword hung at his side. He bowed low to the king and stood at a respectful distance. He didn’t once look at or acknowledge the presence of the two venefici sitting in the window alongside Harold.

‘This is Hjordar Salonen, brother of Eric ‘Ekki’ Salonen,’ said the king. ‘Ekki led the Viking raiding party that was ultimately responsible for the death of your mother.’ He looked at Tara. ‘And your companion.’ His gaze switched to Twilight. ‘We have assumed that you caught up with the raiders at sea.’

Twilight looked at Hjordar Salonen and read his mind. A typical Viking warrior’s set. Lots of honour-bound, heroic Norse deity stuff. Loyal feelings for Harold, utter hatred for Twilight.

Is he genuine?
Tara asked using mind-speak and knowing that Twilight had given the warrior’s mind a cursory scan.

He is genuine . . . for a Viking,
Twilight replied.
This isn’t saying very much.

Harold spoke again. ‘As you have no doubt noticed, Hjordar, in common with most Viking, does not like venefici, especially you.’ He nodded in Twilight’s direction. ‘You have been responsible for the deaths of a great many Viking in the past and the eradication of their own venefical strain.’

‘And I will be gladly responsible for a great many more if they partake in any more brutal berserker raids on Wessex,’ replied the old astounder softly. ‘And as for their venefici, all three of them were an abomination of our code.’

‘I make the point,’ said Harold, ‘to qualify the veracity of the story Hjordar told me. This man has absolutely no reason to side with or say anything that is favourable to either of you. His intense dislike of Twilight and strict adherence to Viking honour sees to that. Therefore, his words can only be irrefutable truths if they are seen to help you in any way.’

Twilight nodded. Harold had become pretty good with words himself in the two years he’d been on the throne.

The king continued. ‘Hjordar is here as ambassador for the Danish lowlands. During my exile in Denmark with Beorn and Swein, Hjordar and I became friends, and it is now a pleasure to have him here alongside me again working for unity between our two very different cultures.’

Harold nodded at the tall Viking warrior.

Finally the tall Viking turned to Twilight and spoke, his voice studiedly neutral.

‘My brother, Ekki, who led the raid on your compound, was blackmailed into doing it. You were the target, not the girl’s mother. When he couldn’t find you he took the next best thing. He was desperate - if he didn’t take something worthwhile back with him, our own parents would have died. They were kidnapped and held as hostages pending your capture. In exchange for you they would have been released.’

‘The kidnapper was Swein?’ Tara asked.

‘Yes. Soon after you destroyed Ekki’s ship, Swein executed our parents.’

‘Where were you when all this was going on?’

‘Here, in England. Recruiting soldiers for the invasion on behalf of Harold, Beorn, and . . .’ he spat expressively, ‘that murdering pig, Swein. I only discovered the truth about the deaths of our parents recently.’

‘The other truth about this is, despite what you thought about our father, Beorn and I knew nothing of the captives and raid upon your compound. It was all Swein’s doing. In truth it is not the way in which Beorn or I operate. Much good it did him.’ Harold’s tone was bitter. ‘When the three of us were in exile together in Denmark, Swein took a liking to dry henbane pods. As you know, henbane is a powerful narcotic and when chewed can provide a powerful stimulant. Swein chewed them almost constantly and became even more twisted under their influence. He’d always been wild but tempered the wildness with a certain reason. The henbane seemed to strip out this ability, removing the only check on his actions. Everything he now does is governed by his most basic instincts; he has become a crazed killer fuelled by his addiction to the dry plant seeds.’

Hjordar nodded. ‘I have offered my services to the king to kill Swein, for the hatred I have for him is even greater than that I have for you.’

‘That would be the waste of a good man. Swein knows that Hjordar Salonen here is close to me and aware of how his parents died. He would have him killed the moment he set eyes upon him,’ said the king.

‘So you’re saying that my mother’s death was entirely down to Swein?’ Tara asked.

‘Entirely,’ replied Harold.

‘And that is evidence enough for us to kill him?’

‘Isn’t it?’

Both the king and Hjordar looked at Twilight.

‘I have already planted a few permanent images in Swein’s warped mind of some appropriately lurid deaths,’ said the old astounder. ‘My tyro and I will now consider if we should turn one of those images into reality.’

The king began to thank them for their consideration, but it was too late.

The window seat was empty.