Warriors of Ethandun (8 page)

‘She has woken!'

Ursula was aware of a crush of people all around her, while a bonfire burned not far away. The stars were briefly lost in the smoke from the flames and the pungency of woodsmoke was everywhere. Her eyes watered.

She could not easily turn her head, as it was wedged in place by a number of hard-edged objects. It was as well that magic heated her from within because the night was a cold one and she could see her breath in the crisp air. For
the briefest of moments Ursula was panicked by the sudden press of men staring at her, their faces curious, frightened, awestruck. She started to pay attention to them. They were all of them alert to any danger she might pose but not one of them backed away. They were ready for whatever she or anyone else might throw at them and that caught her interest. She wondered where she was and when. They were strangers to her, she knew that, and yet they were familiar; their readiness was familiar as was their suppressed violence. She had fought with men like these once, or maybe she had fought against them. It didn't much matter.

The crowd parted to let one of the richly dressed warriors she had seen before make his way to her side. He was young, not much older than she was, and he had a fierce, hawk's face – not handsome but arresting. When he spoke, it was without humility. He was a warrior and feared nothing. She liked that.

‘Goddess.' He bowed a quick bob of the head, nothing more – an acknowledgement that she was important and powerful. ‘We are honoured by your presence among us. How can we welcome you to our camp? We are merely a hunting party and our riches are elsewhere, but whatever we have is yours.'

Ursula wondered what response she could give. It was hard to collect her thoughts, which kept flitting round the camp like some hyperactive demon. She was in the fire, dancing in the flames, then flying overhead, hooting with an owl and then back lying on a fur-lined cloak, staring at a man with a proud face. Then her stomach rumbled in a
most ungoddess-like way and she realised that she was very hungry – and thirsty too. Her body felt weak, worn out, leached of all its natural health.

Everyone was staring at her. There was little sound but the clink of belt knives and coin pouches as men jostled one another to get a closer look. She licked her lips and used magic to give her voice a little extra resonance. There was no reason to sound as feeble as she felt.

‘I am hungry. I would have you bring food and drink.' She kept it short and demanding. She wasn't sure what a goddess might say and she didn't feel inclined to explain her true nature, whatever that was … She was an Ursula not a Freya, she knew that, and she had not always been in full possession of this power. There was more that she knew: she had not always been in this place; there were people she had left behind. She wasn't very good at concentrating on anything for very long. The magic coursed through her with all the force and relentlessness of waves crashing on a shore. Magic swept her away and she was powerless to resist its endless distractions. She closed her eyes and lost herself in the mysterious life of worms. Food was brought, roasted venison and a hare, bread and berries and a golden chalice of ale. It smelled enticing but she forgot that she was hungry. She got lost again, following wherever the wild, restless impulses of magic took her – away from her body, away from herself.

The light from the fire had all but died out when Dan woke. He had always been the kind of person who moved from sleep to full wakefulness in the space of a heartbeat. He knew at once something was wrong. He listened. Someone was moving around. He reached for Bright Killer and then remembered: the householder had taken it. The glowing embers of the dying fire reflected in the dull gleam of a blade, the glint of steel in the darkness. Dan could just make out the bulky form of a man leaning over his sleeping companion. Dan did not pause to think but was on his feet and pulling the man away as soon as he realised what was happening. The man was big, strong. He grunted his surprise at Dan's sudden arrival and turned towards him, his teeth bared like an animal's, a patch of lesser darkness in the shadows.

‘What are you doing?' Dan hissed, but the man's intentions became very clear when he raised his seax to strike Dan. The man did not speak but lurched forward. Dan saw the knife and launched himself at the bigger man in the same instant, using his weight to drive him backwards
so that he overbalanced. He hit the ground hard and groaned and cursed, making it easier for Dan to find the man's sword arm and to stamp hard on his wrist so that the man released the seax. In one swift motion Dan had it in his own hand. He felt better for holding a blade, however unfamiliar. His heart was beating too fast and his blood was up. He was on the brink of entering the dark place he found when he had fought as the Bear Sark, a berserker. He was not there yet, but even so it would have been very easy to stab the man with his own knife, it was difficult not to. He had been well schooled in the art of warfare and mercy was not a part of that training. He had to force himself to lower his arm to let the seax rest by his side. The encounter had taken less than a minute. Dan was breathing heavily: he was fit and strong but a fight was something different and he was out of practice. He had hoped to have remained that way.

Dan was suddenly aware that the woman who had offered them her hospitality had lit a tallow candle. The householder lay on the ground groaning. Dan suspected that he might have broken his wrist. The packed earth of the floor was hard and he had not been gentle.

‘What are you doing? You abuse my hospitality?' The woman's fury was tempered by the sight of her husband's seax in Dan's hand.

‘Your husband was about to stab …' Dan hesitated.

‘Aelfred,' his companion supplied, getting to his feet. ‘Aelfred, King of Wessex, in your debt.'

The woman gave a little cry and swayed as if she might faint, but she was made of stronger stuff than that. Instead
of fainting, she took two bold steps towards Aelfred and kneeled at his feet.

‘Begging your pardon, Sire. My husband is a good God-fearing man, but worried for our safety in such dangerous times. He mistook you for a bandit.'

Aelfred shook his head. ‘You offered me hospitality, for which I am grateful, but attempted murder at your hearth? That I cannot easily forgive.'

‘I wasn't going to kill you!' the householder protested, supporting his right wrist with his left hand, ‘You have a gold brooch on your tunic. I would have taken it to sell at Aller – there's things we need. Any man can claim to be King – how can we know you tell the truth?' He struggled to his feet, levering himself up on his elbows and wincing as this movement jarred his wrist. ‘By the Cross, how am I going to work now?'

Dan could not quite bring himself to feel sorry for a man who had just tried to kill him. He raised his sword arm so that neither the householder nor his wife could fail to see that he still had the weapon and was prepared to use it. He felt his heart sink at the realisation that in saving a king he had once more put himself at the heart of important events. He did not want to get involved with this King Aelfred. He wanted to find Ursula and slip quietly away, home. If he stayed in this world, he knew it would not be long before he killed again. His berserker madness was still in him, a great venomous viper of violence coiled in his brain and ready to strike: that frightened him more than anything else.

The King paused before answering the man, then
reached inside his tunic and pulled out a fine leather pouch from which he produced a seal ring. ‘This is the ring of the King of Wessex.'

He held it out to show the woman, who still kneeled before him. She brought the candle up closer to her face so that she could view the object more clearly. Dan could see only that it was a very large gold ring, shaped like a bishop's mitre and elaborately worked. It seemed to satisfy the woman.

‘Have mercy, for the love of our Saviour,' she whispered. ‘It is a hard life here. We have been flooded twice these last years and the swine drowned. Our son died of fever last Candlemas. My husband has not been the same since.'

The householder glowered at Dan and Dan knew he was weighing up his chances of snatching back his knife.

‘The word at market is that the old King was killed by the Danes at Christmas or that he fled abroad to throw himself on the mercy of the pope.' The man paused before continuing slowly: ‘There's talk that the young Aethelwold, son of the old King Aethelred, is ruling nowadays, with the support of the witan and with the might of all the Danes behind him. Makes no difference to me which King gives out gifts to the rich, there's none coming my way. Who's to say that you're not a Dane with the King's finger in your pouch as well as his ring?'

‘I say and I am holding the knife,' Dan said, for no better reason than to shut the man up. He couldn't see why a king should be wandering the marshes alone, but it was not his business. ‘Kneel to your King,' he added,
reasoning that a kneeling man was less likely to attack him.

‘Now would be a good time for you to retrieve our weapons,' the King said mildly and the woman got to her feet and reluctantly fished them out of the wood store near the door. Dan suspected that his sword was worth a good deal more than a gold brooch. He had little doubt that if he had not woken up he would have been the householder's next target. He glanced at Aelfred and wondered if he had been injured somehow before Dan had rescued him; he was pale and sweating despite the chill within the house. Nonetheless he kept his voice steady.

‘We will need food before we leave at dawn and the use of your boat. While we eat I will consider what is to be done with you.'

The woman nodded and Dan watched her carefully: he did not like accepting food off those he did not trust.

It was good to strap on his sword belt and to feel the comforting weight of Bright Killer at his hip. Aelfred too seemed relieved to have his own seax at his belt. The woman banked up the fire and fetched oats from a sack indoors and milk from a pail kept cool outside. There was nothing to sweeten the porridge and while Dan had grown used to sugarless food the last time he had been through the Veil, it tasted strange to someone who had readjusted to a twenty-first century diet. He ate nothing until the woman and her husband tasted their food and he noted that Aelfred did the same.

They ate in silence, the only sound coming from the flames and the scrape of bone spoons on wooden bowls.
Dan craved a cup of tea with two sugars, but had the strong feeling that it would be a while before he tasted that again.

By the time they had finished eating, the first feeble shafts of daylight could just be seen at the edge of the homestead's wooden door. Dan dressed again in his inadequate school uniform. He saw Aelfred staring at the crest of his school badge which was printed on to his blue sweatshirt. He stared at Dan's trainers equally curiously. They were not practical footwear for marshland – they still squelched slightly when he put his foot inside.

‘Your boat?' Aelfred asked the householder pointedly.

‘Sir, without that we'll struggle to keep body and soul together …'

‘You may treat it as wergild for your attempt on my life. You are lucky not to pay a higher price.' Aelfred glanced at Dan's sword meaningfully. Dan thought he looked ill.

‘You may return his weapon,' Aelfred instructed Dan, who gave the seax hilt first to the householder's wife: he did not trust the householder.

As Aelfred swept out of the small house with as much kingly splendour as one man in a shabby cloak could manage, Dan kept a wary eye on the woman and unsheathed his sword. ‘You should know that if your husband tries anything I will kill him.'

She nodded as though what he told her was not news. ‘Is he really the King?'

Dan shrugged. ‘Maybe.'

She looked miserable. ‘Then I hope he cannot find his way here again. Here.' She handed him an old
much-mended cloak. ‘We are not heathens and we have good reason not to trust strangers. There are people living hereabouts who've had to run for their lives. The Danes take what they want and there are other bandits newly come to the Levels who aren't any better. These are hard times. Perhaps you could tell your Lord that I meant no harm.'

Dan took the cloak gratefully. The draught through the open door told him that the morning air was damp and chill.

‘I am new to his service,' he said carefully, ‘but I will tell him of your kindness.' He did not know what else to say. He did not want Aelfred to be his Lord. He nodded a goodbye, not knowing quite what to think about the woman, then he ducked his head under the low doorway and followed King Aelfred outside. One way or another he'd had enough of kings.

When Ursula chose to look again through her own eyes, it was late afternoon and someone had taken away the food offering she had neglected to eat and replaced it with oatcakes drizzled with honey. Ursula found that her mouth began to water at the smell of such sweetness. She felt strangely light-headed – perhaps from hunger – and her body felt stiff and wooden when she finally decided to sit up. She was like some beginner puppeteer who hadn't quite worked out which string to pull. She lifted the wooden platter of cakes by the force of her will and set it beside her and then did the same with the gold chalice of milk. She was thirstier than she realised and almost spilled the milk down her chin. Her hands were shaking and her muscles felt weak, though the magic in her burned as strongly as ever.

The guards who were watching her – young men of around her own age – looked worried when she moved and one of them ran away. She guessed he had gone to take a message that she had woken again. She ate the
cakes too quickly and felt slightly sick but a little less feeble. She made a mental note to remember to eat and drink. She was confident that the magic would keep her alive but the idea of being little more than an animated skeleton was not very appealing. She got awkwardly to her feet only to find that her legs were numb and she might have stumbled but that she kept herself upright with power. She floated a centimetre above the ground then gradually trusted her weight to her legs.