Warriors of Ethandun (28 page)

She stepped into the centre of the ring. She was not quick and agile like Dan; she was strong and deliberate and calculating. If they had fought with shields, she would have been given a chance to hit her opponent first. She thought that bizarre and was quite relieved that this would be a free-for-all. Ursula licked her lips and tasted the salt of her sweat. She felt hot, but that might still be the magic burning away, eating at her from the inside.

‘Steady.'
It was Dan's voice in her head. ‘
He's right-handed.'

What kind of idiot did Dan think she was? Of course he was right-handed.

Dan did not respond. Her opponent moved in quickly, charging at her. She met his blade with her own and there was a horrible clang of metal. Ursula realised too late that these weapons were not designed for swordplay but for butchery. The clash of seaxes had left both blades damaged. He was close to her now, murmuring insults about her body, about her sex. She could not afford to lose her
temper or she would annihilate him, and that wasn't what this was about. She kicked him sharply in the kneecap and he went down on one knee. She thrust her blade towards his chest but he dodged and countered with a thrust of his own – Ursula was still standing and danced out of his way. He was beginning to take her more seriously, as were the crowd. Ursula waited until he had regained his feet.

‘Have you had enough yet?' she asked sweetly. He spat a reply she didn't hear and immediately began to aim his blade at her abdomen. She could see why these men relied on their shields – she could not block his seax with hers without risking further damage to the blade. She was more used to fighting with a well-tempered sword. The obvious solution was to use her long legs to kick him away, and when he shifted his weight to move in for a close attack she stuck out a size eight foot to trip him up, so that he lay sprawled on the ground. His seax was flung from his hand and lay in a bed of mud-splattered straw. There was a hoot of laughter from the crowd, swiftly suppressed, and Ursula saw her opponent's face flush dark red with humiliation.

Once more she allowed him to get back on his feet. Rather than wait for him to retrieve his seax, she threw hers to Dan, who was standing at the edge of the crowd, watching her every move. He caught it deftly. Ursula's opponent seemed surprised. Perhaps he assumed she'd given away her advantage, but Ursula did not see how she could avoid killing the man if they continued fighting this way. Any hit would have to draw blood to count and she knew how easily a wound festered without the benefit of
antibiotics. She did not want to kill this man just because he had had the temerity to assume she couldn't fight.

She had not done much unarmed combat beyond the odd fist fight in Macsen's world, but she knew she had a good punch on her. Of course you could kill a man with a bare-knuckle punch too; she'd just have to be careful.

‘
What are you doing, Ursula?'
Dan's voice in her mind sounded confused. She ignored him. His job was to prevent her from turning to magic, not to advise her on her fight.

The man weighed her up properly, perhaps for the first time. Maybe her blonde hair had truly blinded him to the fact that she was six foot one and built like an athlete. She did not know. She would have liked briefly to see what he saw, just to understand how he'd misjudged her. Dan answered her request by sending her the briefest image of herself, crouching, ready to pounce. She was taken aback. Her eyes were hard and green as emeralds and they blazed with a cold fire. If she needed proof of how completely the magic possessed her, that would have been it: her eyes should have been blue.

She was distracted for a fraction of an instant – time enough for her opponent to go in low and rugby tackle her to the ground. She was winded by the force of the impact and angry with herself for getting sidetracked. It was her fault. She reached for the magic to blast him off her and Dan's voice in her head rebuked her. ‘
No! You can beat him. Fight back, Boar Skull!'
He was right. His arms were around her knees. She brought them up sharply, knocking him hard in the jaw, and then twisted out of his grip.

She launched herself at him as he began to find his feet, pinning him with her weight and grabbing him by the throat. She had big hands for a woman and her grip was relentless. He struggled under her but she winded him with her knee and he was at her mercy.

‘That's enough now, Ursula,'
Dan commanded as the man turned blue under the pressure of her hand. She looked to the King, who had paled visibly.

‘Let him go!' he said imperiously. She thought he seemed shaken.

Ursula obeyed and her opponent gasped and panted for breath like a fish out of water. She stretched and clenched her hand repeatedly. The man turned his head away as if he did not want to see such weapons on a woman. Ursula wondered how long it would take for him to live it down.

The crowd was strangely sober. No one stamped or cheered and she found herself a little disappointed. She had not used magic, she had not killed him and she had won fair and square. She accepted that it had not been a very entertaining fight – it had been too quickly over and too decisive, but still she had expected more than this shocked, uncomfortable silence. She bowed her head to the King and picked up the abandoned seax to return it to its owner.

Her opponent was on his feet again now, unbowed and bristling with outrage. He almost shouted at the King, ‘Sire, you cannot let this rest. She bewitched me with her green eyes. Did you not see how they flashed? She is nothing more than a Viking seith-wife. This is not justice.'

There was a murmur of agreement from the crowd. Ursula could feel herself getting hot and angry.
‘Ursula, don't lose it now! They'll think you cheated in the fight. Stay calm.'
Dan's voice in her head was irritating, but he spoke the truth. She would quite like to thump him. She found even good advice hard to take. She swallowed down a blunt response and ground her teeth.

The King turned to Ursula gravely. ‘And how do you answer this accusation?'

She almost said what she thought of people who could not lose gracefully but managed to bite that back too. She made herself speak calmly and with as much icy dignity as she could muster. ‘Your Highness, I fought him fairly. When I brought him down I allowed him to regain his feet; when he dropped his seax I threw mine away. I tripped him, but I was not given any rules by which to fight this fight. And as for sorcery, ask your bishop, Asser. He will attest that I used no sorcery in this fight. He is a man of God and he always knows.'

Asser managed to look both pleased and embarrassed by her claim. All eyes turned to the dark-robed shadow standing like a gaunt crow at Aelfred's side. She wondered for a moment if she had made a mistake. She had believed Rhonwen when she claimed that Asser always knew when magic was used, but what if her silent mental conversation with Dan was a kind of a magic? Perhaps she had miscalculated.

Asser looked at her coolly for a full minute while she sweated under the hostile gaze of every man present, then he nodded, and she could release the breath she did not
know she had been holding.

‘She is telling the truth. I fear that Ealdorman Redwald was indeed bested by a woman and, if skill at unarmed combat be a qualification to your Council of War, she has every right to be present.' He sounded reluctant to make that admission, and, knowing his opinion of women in general and herself in particular, she was impressed by his honesty.

Ursula sensed Aelfred's surprise at his judgement. ‘Then Ursula shall be deemed a worthy victor.'

Ursula beamed at Asser, whose face turned an unattractive shade of mottled purple. He gave her the curtest of curt nods and looked away. He had surprised himself too.

The man Ursula had bested would not meet her eye. He was lucky to be alive if he only knew it. But she had not made herself friends at court by proving herself a warrior. She did not understand it. She had led men before – many had been willing to follow her to their death – but here the mere fact that she was a woman was proving a serious sticking point. The King moved swiftly on, which was perhaps the wisest course. They all trooped back into the hall for the real business: Aelfred's Council of War.

Dan was not sorry to leave Ursula's mind. It had felt almost like being Ursula for a while, and being Ursula was not that much fun – not the way things were for her in this world. He understood that now and it frightened him. Sharing thoughts had always frightened him – the intimacy was disturbing, disorienting – but each time he had done it he had coped better, and so had she. This time, however, this time he knew how much trouble she was in and he was very afraid.

It was hard to concentrate on what Aelfred was saying. Dan's eye was drawn to Ursula's face. With his own more acute senses he thought that she even smelled of magic, a hint of something spicy, something strange under the distinctive and familiar smell of her sweat. He wanted to make it OK, to set her free, but he did not know how.

He wished her eyes were not so green, that she did not glow with magical heat. How long could a person live with all that power flowing through them? She was tough and strong, but how much could a body stand and how much mental strength would she need to resist its pull?
They might end up being part of this world for their whole lives. That thought made him angry and he couldn't risk being angry; seeing Ursula lost behind her green eyes made him angry too. He could not look at her any longer. Instead he turned all his attention to the King and to the assembled group. Somehow, during Dan's absence, the King had made contact with many more thegns and ealdormen, as well as with churchmen of every kind. Athelney had become a court in exile, and the Council of War an altogether more official body than Dan had envisaged; what finery still remained in Aenglisc hands was on display in the mail shirts and decorated helms of the aristocracy and the fine cloth and gold thread of the churchmen's copes. He was worried about the security of such a meeting. If word spread to Aelfred's enemies of his precise whereabouts, he might yet be attacked in Athelney, and though it was better run than previously, Dan did not think they had what it would take to withstand a siege. Aelfred, however, seemed relaxed and more regal than before.

‘My grandfather, my father and my brother all laid down their lives for this land and while strength lies within me I will not let it pass from my hands. We will rebuild this kingdom so that it will rival the court of Charlamagne.' He got up from his chair, which Dan saw was a kind of carved wooden throne, and made eye contact with all those present. His pale eyes had a strange kind of power and for a sickly man Dan was surprised by his charisma.

Aelfred continued, ‘We will regain our wealth and our
land and those who are loyal now will be amply repaid for their honourable service, their courage and their strength. We have all lived through dark days, days in which the heathen hordes have run amok among us, but now is the moment when the tide turns. We are sorry for all our failure, our faults and sins for which our God has punished us deservedly, but we have spent our days of repentance in the wilderness and now, by God's grace, we will emerge purified and consecrated to take back what is ours.'

The assembled nobles then stamped their feet in an unexpectedly passionate response. Aelfred was still without his kingdom, his army and his wealth. He still had little to give to those binding themselves to him with their renewed oaths of allegiance, but something had changed: he had started to believe he could win.

Dan did not grasp all that went on. There was detailed discussion of which ealdormen could be trusted, how many thegns would fight for them, of men killed in raids, horses and weapons lost, and food supplies running low. But in the last few days Aelfred had got a grip on more than the refurbishment of the fortress: he was getting a grip on the situation in his kingdom and on his own self. Gone was his indecision and uncertainty; instead Dan found himself faced with someone he could serve.

He had stopped paying close attention when the discussion moved on to specifics that he didn't understand, but then Aelfred mentioned him by name and he was drawn back.

‘Your fighting prowess has been much talked of, Dan. We need to train our coerls and even some of our thegns
in both armed and unarmed combat. It would help us greatly if you and your comrade-in-arms would assist us in that. We must all accept new ways of doing things if we are to overthrow the Danes, and expertise is to be valued from whomsoever it comes.'

Dan recognised that his somewhat reluctant compliment was aimed at Ursula. He wasn't sure that these men would take direction from her as so many other men had done. She caught his eye.

‘
I will find a way, Dan. Don't make a fuss. I've done this before. How hard can it be?'

The answer was, very hard indeed. Aelfred wished his army to be prepared by Whitsun, when the weather ought to be fine enough to move troops without too much trouble and when much of the early planting and labouring on the land would be done. Aelfred understood all too well that men did not fight well when they were worried about whether there would be food enough to eat at the end of the season.

‘If I had more men I'd have two armies, so that there would always be men enough to tend the fields and our defences,' he confessed to Dan in one of their many private conversations, ‘and I'd make sure that a good many of them could read. The job of gathering men would be so much easier if I could write to them in my own hand and be understood, rather than having to rely on messengers. How am I to be sure that they pass on my words and not some travesty of my intentions?' He fretted a lot about such things and about the spiritual welfare of his men. He was not at all what Dan had first believed him to
be, but a thoughtful man who had lost everything and blamed himself.