Warriors of Ethandun Read online

  Warriors of Ethandun

  N. M. BROWNE

  For Owen and for all the fans of Dan and Ursula who have written to me anxious to know more of Ursula’s fate

  The Warriors Trilogy

  in reading order

  Warriors of Alavna

  Warriors of Camlann

  Warriors of Ethandun

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Acknowledgements

  Also by N.M. Browne

  Chapter One

  Dan stepped out of the Veil of mist. He had to let go of Braveheart’s collar to readjust his grip on Ursula’s inert body.

  ‘I can’t hold her like this, Taliesin. I think I’ll have to carry her over my shoulder.’

  Taliesin looked bleak. ‘This place …’

  Dan tasted exhaust fumes. He heard the distant roar of traffic and saw the column of giant skeletal pylons stretching into the far distance. He no longer heard the insistent jabber of voices in his head. He was home.

  ‘Take Braveheart and the sword and find somewhere to hide. Get away from here or they’ll blame you for Ursula …’

  Dan could not tell if Ursula was breathing. He could barely think of anything else.

  Why was Taliesin still with him? ‘Go, Taliesin! They’ll lock you and Braveheart up. Get away from here, go home, but look after my dog!’ Taliesin didn’t argue, but Dan thought he looked scared. It didn’t matter. Taliesin could look after himself; Ursula couldn’t.

  Dan was distantly aware of the bard grabbing the war dog by his collar and dragging him away towards distant trees. He sensed rather than saw Braveheart’s reproachful look. He would miss Braveheart, but this was no place for a war hound that tore out men’s throats at Dan’s command. Braveheart could not survive the twenty-first century. Dan was not sure that he could either – not without Ursula.

  He hefted her over his shoulder awkwardly. She was heavy, six foot plus of muscled warrior now pale and bloodstained and almost dead … His face brushed her cheek and he saw how her fine, fair hair was streaked with gore. She stank of sweat, offal and excrement – the stench of battle. He fought back tears and stumbled forward. He was strong – he’d spent the last who knew how long training and fighting. He had to get her to safety. He could not let her down. It was his fault she was in this mess. It was down to him to make it all right.

  He found the car park where he and Ursula had left the school coach some immeasurable span of time ago. He didn’t not know how long had elapsed. He was impressed that Taliesin had brought them back so close to their point of origin. He did not know if there was a hospital near. All he knew was that Ursula did not have much time. He tried to send her some of his strength but in this world he was neither Gawain nor the Bear Sark. He had no special power; he was simply Dan again. He felt that loss in the small part of himself that was not wholly taken up with Ursula.

  ‘Dan!’ A small older woman ran towards him. It took him a moment to recognise Miss Smith, the teacher in charge of the history trip. ‘Where have you been? I said everyone had to be back at the coach by … Oh my God! What has happened to you? What have you done?’

  Dan glared at Miss Smith. Was she stupid?

  ‘Get an ambulance. Ursula’s dying.’ Miss Smith responded quickly. Her face was ashen and she kept glancing at Dan as if she did not know him. His former friends stood apart from him, huddled in a group, staring and pointing. He was grateful that he didn’t have to hear their thoughts – that gift, or curse, had left him as he passed through the Veil. It was good to be alone in his own head again, free. His friends looked shocked, as if he were a stranger to them. He felt as if he were. They seemed so innocent-looking, so young. He hadn’t felt innocent, not since he’d crossed through the Veil. He felt tainted with experience, stained, exhausted. He could not look at them. Instead he watched over Ursula, stroking her hair, willing time to slow and her heart to keep on beating until the ambulance came.

  He had not noticed that he too was drenched in blood, drying dark and brown. It was lucky none of it was his, but then he had barely taken part in the battle. He’d left the heroics to Ursula.

  The tourniquet he had fashioned to stop her bleeding was soaked. He pressed his hand against it to try to keep her lifeblood in. They had left behind Ursula’s helm and facemask, but she still wore the light armour of the Sarmatians. She did not look like a sixteen-year-old school kid. She looked like some kind of warrior goddess – so beautiful, so cold. He leaned over her to lend her some of his warmth and wrapped his woollen monk’s cloak round her. He could not guess what the medics might make of that. It wouldn’t matter if only they would get there quickly. She was fading, he could tell. Suddenly there were lights and sirens. Too much ugly noise – he wasn’t used to it: it jarred his nerves. Uniformed bodies crowded round him. He could hear the buzz and static from their radios. None were armed with more than a baton, but he wished he still had his sword. He did not like being surrounded. His heart was racing. He saw the wariness in the officers’ eyes and knew that they were afraid of him. That made him feel a little better.

  A man with quiet authority spoke to him, asked him about what had happened, where Ursula was hurt. Dan’s throat was dry. He cleared it. How could he explain?

  ‘She’s lost a lot of blood from her thigh – a stab wound, I think …’ There were other injuries, he knew; she’d led a cavalry charge into the thick of battle, but he thought the blood loss the worst. He had seen men die from blood loss. His memory was so full of pictures of the dead and dying that he had to shake his head. That must have looked odd. He didn’t want the emergency services to think him odd. They did, he could tell. Firm hands detached his grip from her arm. He almost fought them, but he made himself let Ursula go. It was something he knew he had to do. He let them guide him away. He could not help. He had to pray that the calm man in the incongruous green jumpsuit could do what he could not, that he could save her.

  The emergency crew strapped Ursula on to a stretcher and hoisted her into the ambulance. She looked already dead. Dan tried to follow her, to scramble into the back of the van, to keep her safe from other danger whatever that might be. He dived after her, but they held him back. The men in uniform were not so bi
g or so strong that he couldn’t have fought them had he wanted to. He was not so lost that he didn’t know it wouldn’t help. He let his body sag, did not reveal his strength. He might need it later and it did not do to let a potential enemy know what you could do. He no longer trusted uniforms. He no longer trusted anyone.

  Doors banged and suddenly she was gone. He listened to the wailing siren change pitch and fade away. Miss Smith was sobbing, on the brink of hysteria. Dan and Ursula had been lost for about an hour and when they returned she did not know what had happened. She’d been teaching thirty years and nothing remotely like this had ever occurred before. It was not her fault.

  Dan had no sympathy to spare for Miss Smith, though she looked fraught and old. His legs felt cold and light without Ursula’s weight. Without her there he felt anchorless in every way. He was home, but there was no joy in that. He’d been a coward; he’d known how it must end and still he’d let her fight without him. He allowed the police officer to bundle him into a patrol car, allowed some man to push his head down so that he didn’t bang it against the roof. His hair was flecked with battle spatter. The officer stared at his stained hand in horror. Dan felt only contempt for the man’s shock. What did the officer know of death and killing? Dan knew himself to be an expert.

  ‘Is this Ursula’s blood?’ The big policeman was wiping his hand on a tissue and putting the tissue away in a bag. Dan considered his response. It might have been Ursula’s blood, but then he’d killed a couple of men on his way to rescue her. Blood and gore travelled in unpredictable ways and he had ridden into the centre of a tightly packed melee. He could not say for sure. He could not explain that so he merely shrugged. That probably looked bad, but he did not much care what these men thought. If Ursula lived, he’d pay whatever price they liked.

  Chapter Two

  Dan sat awkwardly between his father and the youth liaison officer. His father was in his only suit. He smelled of beer and fear. It made Dan queasy. Everything was wrong: this room that stank of vomit and disinfectant; his own skin, scrubbed raw to rid himself of the stench of battle; the plastic table and the moulded chairs. Everything felt alien, fake. The scent of shampoo and aftershave made him sneeze. It wasn’t right. Nothing was right since he’d come back through the Veil.

  ‘You understand, don’t you, Daniel, that the charge will be attempted murder? The girl you stabbed, er – a Miss Ursula Dorrington – is stable, but her injuries are so severe that it won’t do you much good. No one can believe she has survived …’

  Thank God! Something in Dan relaxed a little then. If she lived, it was all right. Ursula would live! He tried not to show his relief, his sudden joy; they would misunderstand that as they had misunderstood everything else. He allowed himself the slightest of sighs. His father shifted in his seat and laid shaking fingers on Dan’s arm to reassure him. Dan tried not to flinch away.

  It was difficult to concentrate on the police officer – on any of it. He was shocked to find that it wasn’t good to be home.

  They had kept him in a cell overnight. It was warm enough and, though spartan, a good deal more comfortable than a Celtic barracks in the winter. They’d fed him too and after the monotonous diet of a sixth-century army on campaign, even institutional battered fish and chips had tasted good. What had bothered him most was that he hadn’t yet seen Lizzie, his sister. He’d missed her while he’d been away and he’d worried about her through all the days of his absence. Fortunately, as far as she was concerned, he had never been away. He wanted to tell her that he hadn’t meant to do wrong. Maybe if she believed him it would be all right. How could he explain that he’d been further away than she could imagine? So far away that perhaps there was no real coming back.

  He kept having flashbacks. He’d had terrible nightmares in which he had fought and fought to save Ursula. The rotting corpses of the dead he’d killed were piled high all round him and he still couldn’t save her. He’d woken in a muck sweat crying out into the emptiness of his cell. They were only dreams, but dreams born of experience. He couldn’t remember how many men he’d killed. They haunted him, the dead men, but he made no attempt to count them. He was too busy trying to forget them and the smell of them in his hair and on his skin, so pungent that all he could taste was blood and death. He missed his sword. Things never felt so bad when he had it, the sword Bright Killer, in his grip. He hoped Taliesin kept it safe.

  Dan knew that he was good at killing people – really good at it. He was better than people who’d trained for it all their lives. It was his special talent and he was the best. He was ashamed of that talent here. He was, after all, some kind of psychopath and when the police found that out he would never be free. He could probably kill this police officer – if he wanted to. But he didn’t because killing was wrong. He knew it was wrong and back in his own world his skill did not make him a hero: it made him a murderer. He had not hurt Ursula; of that at least he was innocent. But it didn’t matter. They could do what they wanted with him because he was guilty.

  He was glad when the night had ended and they’d brought him in for questioning. Not that he could answer any of their questions. He could not account for his strange clothing nor for Ursula’s changed appearance. He could not account for Ursula’s mortal wound or his own bloodstained state. He wasn’t so stupid as to tell them that he and Ursula had magically gone to other worlds and fought with Celtic warriors to repel the Roman invasion and had fought with the High King Arturus against the invading Saxons. He’d mumbled general stuff about Ursula being attacked by someone he didn’t know. It was impossible to answer the police honestly and he was a terrible liar.

  The officers left him alone with his father for a few minutes. Dan would rather have preferred to have been locked back in the cells. His father could not sit still. He never had been able to – not for years. He got up and began pacing the room, as if he could walk away his tension. His father’s hands shook badly as he pulled a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, remembered where he was and put it back again.

  ‘Dan,’ he began, and Dan knew by his tone that he was going to try to have a fatherly talk. It was too late for that. ‘Look,’ he began hesitantly and coughed. ‘I know how it is.’ He coughed again. Dan wanted to tell him to get it over with, whatever this embarrassing thing was that he wanted to say. ‘I know I’ve not done much of a job as a dad since your mum …’ He let his words die away. He had never been able to talk about her. ‘What I want to say is, I’m sorry. I mean, I know I’ve spent too long at the Pig and Whistle but I didn’t expect all this … What’s going on?’

  Dan shrank into his seat and pushed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He shrugged in an exaggerated way, like the boy he’d once been. He didn’t want to meet his father’s eyes. He felt immediately ashamed. He wasn’t that boy any more. He’d spent too long with men, and if his dad was no warrior like Kai and Macsen, no wise man like Brother Frontalis, no loyal friend like Bryn, he was no villain either. Dan had seen villainy and it was uglier than anything his father could ever have contemplated. The worst his father had done was to lose himself in grief and beer, and Dan had seen braver men than his dad do that. Dan made himself speak.

  ‘This is not your fault, Dad. I didn’t try to kill Ursula, whatever they say. I’ve not gone bad because you’re too fond of a pint.’

  Anger flashed in his father’s eyes then, and his arm came up quickly to slap Dan, but Dan’s hand was there before he’d even thought about it, catching his father’s arm so that he couldn’t strike, holding it firm.

  ‘Not here, Dad,’ Dan said evenly. His father’s face was flushed, but he knew he lacked his son’s strength and he pulled his arm away.

  ‘You’re not too big to be taught who’s boss,’ his father said.

  ‘Yes, I am,’ said Dan. His dad seemed surprised; perhaps he hadn’t noticed before, but Dan was taller than him by a good three inches and now that they were both on their feet he could see where his father’s curly black hair was begi
nning to thin on top.

  ‘It’s not too late to be a proper dad to Lizzie,’ Dan said, softly. He hadn’t meant to say it, but in all the time he’d been away that had been his hope – that somehow his dad had managed to step up to the mark for Lizzie.

  ‘I don’t know who you think you are, but it’s not for you to tell me what to do. I’m your father and I’ll have some respect.’

  Their conversation was cut short by the reappearance of the police officer. He brought with him a tall, cadaverous man in an expensive-looking suit.

  ‘This is Professor Merlin, an expert on youth trauma. He has been brought in by the boss to interview you, Dan. This is an unusual case – not the kind of thing we see round here too often. I hope you have no objection, Mr Jones.’

  Dan was about to object as strenuously as possible until he looked into the grave face of Professor Merlin. Taliesin? It couldn’t be. It was.

  The tall man gave no sign of having recognised Dan. He waited until everyone was seated. Dan’s father crossed and recrossed his legs under the table, as ill at ease as if he were the one accused of attempted murder. Dan, on the other hand, did his best to appear as calm as possible, mainly because he didn’t want Taliesin to think he was like his father. Taliesin knew him as a warrior and a wielder of magic, a hero and a man. He could not act like a frightened boy or a sulky child in front of him.

  The police officer reiterated the charges against Dan and reminded him that he was entitled to the presence of the duty solicitor or another lawyer if they had one of their own. Dan was not listening; he was watching Taliesin. He had trimmed his white beard and cropped his equally white hair so that he most resembled some kind of Hollywood version of an elder statesman – hawkish and wise. What was he doing there? How had he acquired his disguise? Had Taliesin got real magic in this world? Magic varied from world to world. Neither Dan nor Ursula had magic in their own world, but Dan had no idea what Taliesin might be able to do. Anything was possible. Dan tried not to stare too much at his friend and one-time betrayer. He tried to stay in control and to reveal neither his curiosity nor his excitement.