Warriors of Alavna Read online

  Warriors of Alavna

  N.M. BROWNE

  For Paul

  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

  Afterword

  Also by N.M. Browne

  Chapter One

  Dan watched with horror as Ursula was swallowed by the yellow mist. He tried to call her name, but she didn’t stop. He had no choice but to follow her.

  It was obvious close to that it wasn’t a mist at all in the ordinary sense. He could see moving shapes through it, but they were distorted as if through rippled glass or water. He could not see Ursula. He didn’t like it. He took a step forward. The mist enveloped him, colder than ice and oily. It had a surprising solidity. He entered it and it surrounded him; a mass of oily droplets that held him like a fly in a web. No ordinary mist. He shut his eyes instinctively to protect them and took another difficult step. The mist clung to him, resisted his movement. He struggled forward and the mist released him with an almost inaudible pop into some other place. There was no sign of Ursula. He was standing in deserted marshland. It was warm and bright sunlight forced him to squint. There was no sound apart from the twittering of birds. No movement except for the ruffling of the tussocky clumps of wild grass in the breeze. He looked back; the yellow mist impeded his view of the frozen field he’d just left. Where was Ursula? She had left him at an angry run but even so she only left an instant before him. Why couldn’t he see her?

  He replayed their conversation in his mind. He hadn’t meant to upset her. They had been paired up for the history field trip round Hastings. Miss Smith thought girls kept boys out of trouble – she was an older teacher and must have been due for retirement soon. Dan had never had much to do with Ursula; she hung around with the other misfits in the year group. They were all lumped together in his mind, plain girls, fat boys, the non-starters. Ursula was one of those different ones – she was enormous, over six foot tall, fifteen years old and not just tall but heavy with it. She was solidly built, verging on the very fat. Broad shouldered and long limbed, she disguised her bulk in baggy tops and loose trousers. The effect was unflattering. She towered above her classmates, a massive cylinder of black sweatshirt and pale flesh. She wore her fine blonde hair very short at the sides and back but hid her cool, blue-grey eyes under a long fringe. Her impassive face was almost sullen. She rarely spoke. He’d been telling her about his training regime. She hadn’t volunteered anything, and scarcely answered his questions so he’d set up a steady stream of near meaningless chatter to pass the time. He’d got a trial for the local football club and was a county runner. He’d been showing off, in a half-hearted way and suggested that Ursula tried weight training. He hadn’t meant anything by it, but she’d run away from him. The mist had come down while he was talking. He was just about to comment on it because it had merely appeared. To the south everything was unchanged; to the north he could see nothing but the odd yellowness. She had run north. And this was what she had run into … except that it wasn’t. She wasn’t here. The marshland offered little cover and Ursula had been wearing a bright red anorak.

  It never occurred to Dan to go back without her, any more than it had occurred to him not to follow her. There was a small hill, more of a ridge really, to his right. Perhaps if she had really moved fast she could be behind that hill. She would have had to be a surprisingly good runner, though. Dan began to run too, but carefully, because the ground was uneven and soggy – ankle-breaking conditions. It was strange. The sky was blue here and it was warm. He took off his jacket and tied it round his waist. It was suddenly a beautiful day.

  It was not a beautiful day for Ursula. She had run from Dan because she was in no mood for any more jokes about her weight and height. She coped well, mostly, but it had been a bad day. There had been a letter from her father that morning telling her that it wouldn’t be convenient for her to visit as planned this weekend because his new baby was sick. This had produced the usual hysterical outburst from Ursula’s mother and the usual stoic response from Ursula. She sometimes wished he would give up the pretence of loving her altogether. Dan wasn’t really the problem, though she had enjoyed listening to him talk and show off a bit like he did for more normal-sized girls. It was everything really. The Richard twins giggling at the bus stop and some stupid stranger asking her what the weather was like up there. Everything. The mist was a surprise. She hadn’t been paying much attention to her surroundings but the mist she couldn’t ignore. The colour was sickly, like smog, or like smoke from a witch’s cauldron. It clung to her like a fine net, like a cold shroud, freezing the marrow in her bones with its oily touch. She shut her eyes as if she was underwater. Determinedly she strode through it. She wanted to wipe it away, her face felt slick with it and sick with the feel of it. It was not natural, not natural at all. She began to panic. As a toddler she had once got stuck in the small gap under her father’s shed. She felt the same fear bubbling now. Then, abruptly she was through it and somewhere else. She heard a pop, like the sound you hear in your ear when the altitude changes on a plane. She was trembling all over and dizzy. Everything felt wrong. She opened her eyes. Everything was wrong.

  She was in the middle of a stone circle, surrounded by people. There must have been six men, and a woman, dressed in some historical costume: cloaks, breastplates, strange hairstyles. She didn’t really take that in. All but the woman were armed with swords. All of the swords were pointing at her. It could not be real. Her mind rebelled at the evidence of her own eyes. She didn’t want to be there. This was not what happened when you were on a history field trip! Ursula was not a coward. Her brain didn’t really accept what her eyes told her but her heart did. It began to pump adrenalin at a fearsome rate. She stood up a bit straighter and squared her considerable shoulders. Trying to control her shakiness, she adopted her ‘If-you-mess-with-me-you’ll-be-sorry’ look, perfected at bus stops and in dinner queues over many years. They were all staring at her so she stared back. She looked at them one by one. Boys often backed down when she did that. These men did not. There was not one of them that did not have the cold hard eyes of a psychopath.

  ‘Oh God!’ she whispered in her mind and it was a true prayer.

  The woman threw back her head and howled. The sound lifted every hair on the back of Ursula’s neck and she shuddered. It was not a sound she would have thought a human throat could make. The men looked discomforted and she noticed one or two grasp their swords a little tighter. The woman began to chant. It was like the sound monks made. In contrast to the unearthly howling, her voice was deep and melodious. It reverberated around the standing stones until the air seemed to thrum with it. It was very beautiful but utterly alien. Ursula felt her body tingling and even her he
art seemed to slow to beat time to the woman’s chant. It was something more than music, the notes had a force to them that did something to the air. It was as still as the moment before a storm breaks but the very atmosphere felt charged with power. The air crackled as the woman raised her arms and Ursula felt a jolt like an electric shock on the skin of her own arms. What was going on? She strained to hear the woman’s words. They were in no language that she recognised.

  The woman’s voice was becoming more insistent, the rhythm faster, the pitch higher. Then the woman looked at Ursula. It was a very direct look. The woman’s eyes were an extraordinary emerald green, intense and searching. They were more frightening than the swords in the hands of the men. But Ursula was used to being afraid and of pretending not to be. She would not give this woman power over her by showing her fear. Ursula stared back implacably, her own eyes as hard as she could make them. The woman gave a little cry of surprise and crumpled to the ground in a graceful and dramatic swoon that Ursula would have been proud of.

  The rite, if that is what it was, was clearly over. With the woman’s fall into unconsciousness the charged quality of the air ceased at once, almost as if someone had thrown a switch and shut off the current. There was a strange noise, a kind of implosion almost out of her hearing range, that Ursula sensed rather than heard. A couple of the men muttered to each other and pointed. Ursula, swinging round to follow their gaze, half expected what she saw. The mist was gone. Not a wisp of it remained. There was nothing unusual in the view. Beyond the stones there was only flat and marshy land stretching as far as the eye could see. There was nothing unusual about it, except that it bore no relationship at all to where Ursula should have been. There was no sign of Dan or any of her classmates. There was no sign of the car park where their coach should have been parked. There was nothing but the marsh and the standing stones and no one but the men with their swords still drawn.

  Chapter Two

  Dan could run all day. It was what he did, but he could still find no sign of Ursula and he was beginning to get anxious. He was quite sure that if she’d been ahead of him he would have found her by now. He was the fastest runner in the school, even cross-country. He just knew that Ursula could not be that fast on her feet. He was thirsty. He stopped for a moment and bent to catch his breath. His watch said it was 2.00 p.m. It had stopped. The golden quality of the afternoon light suggested it was much later than that. They were supposed to meet back at the coach by 4.30 at the latest. Perhaps Ursula had turned back immediately. Maybe he’d missed her in the mist. It was frustrating but he’d have to tell Miss Smith he’d lost her. He didn’t like the thought. If Ursula wasn’t at the coach already, laughing at him, they would have to make a proper search party. He hated giving up on anything but what he was doing was mindless. He’d left a can of coke in his rucksack. He’d go back, drink it, find Miss Smith and then do whatever had to be done. He hadn’t finished the assignment, of course, so he’d be in trouble for that too. He had to admit he’d enjoyed the run in the clean air, silent but for the sounds of birds. He must have run quite a long way from his starting point because there was not even the distant hum of traffic.

  He turned around and began to jog back. The mist must have dissipated because he couldn’t see even a hint of a yellow tint in the clear air. He was pretty sure he’d run back to where he’d started, but he could not find the tree where he’d left his rucksack. He couldn’t see the car park or hear the road. The land was completely desolate. He was lost.

  Dan had left his mobile at home, which annoyed him. He had never needed it more. Still, he’d read somewhere that you could not walk for more than five miles in any direction in Britain and not come upon some kind of habitation. That then would be his plan. He’d carry on running until he found somewhere with a phone, then he’d ring the school to let them know what had happened. He’d be in trouble but that couldn’t be helped. He was more worried that if he got home too late there would be no one to put his sister, Lizzie, to bed. His father’s shift would start at six and he didn’t always remember to ask their neighbour, Mrs Ainley, to keep an eye on her. ‘I’m sorry I forgot. All right?’ was his father’s favourite phrase.

  If Dan kept running he would be OK. He quickened his pace, dogged by unease. It didn’t make sense for him to be lost any more than it made any sense for Ursula to have disappeared. He couldn’t come up with a satisfactory explanation for either event and that bothered him. The land changed as he ran. Marsh became wood. He hadn’t noticed any woods round the history study area. It was difficult to run. There was no obvious path. Somehow he had got himself very lost.

  Eventually he came to a clearing with a roughly made cabin. It was small and windowless, more of a hut really. The door had no handle and was slightly ajar. He pushed against it, gently. ‘Hello! Is there anyone there?’

  His voice was husky and the creak of the door made him jump. A couple of birds launched themselves, in panic, at the open sky. It was hard to see in the gloom but the cabin was not a wood store as Dan had expected. There was a blackened hearth in the middle of the small, single room. There was no chimney and a strong smell of woodsmoke pervaded the air. There were some shelves on the wall with pots and woven baskets on them. That was about it. Perhaps it was a den for some local kids. Whatever it was used for it was of no use to Dan, there was no phone there. He had a quick look outside just to check there was no one around. It was then that he found her.

  She was lying face down on the earth. She had some sack-like dress on and a shawl of a bright, coloured plaid. Long auburn hair spilled over her shoulders and made a kind of fan of reddish gold against the earth. Her feet were dirty and bare and she lay in a puddle of mud that he somehow knew was not mud, but blood. He knew she was dead.

  Conscience compelled him closer. There was a chance she was still breathing. He could not bear to draw back the hair to see her face, but he made himself touch her neck for a pulse. The flesh was quite cold. The woman was dead, murdered by the look of it. Flies were beginning to settle on her. He batted them away.

  He’d read a lot of crime books and watched a lot of murders on TV. It did not prepare him for this. Dan was trembling now quite uncontrollably. What if the murderer was still about? What if he’d got Ursula? A part of him wanted to run away. Another part, the larger part, was morbidly curious. His conscience told him it was his duty to attempt to identify her, so he could tell the police. He would need to tell them enough details for them to know that he had not made the whole thing up. As if anyone would.

  It was not the first corpse he had seen. He had seen his mother, after the nurses had tidied her up a bit. His grandmother had been furious about it, but Dad had insisted. He said Dan had to know it was true. Dan had to see that all that made her his mother had gone, so that he would understand. He had seen, but he hadn’t understood, then or now. He wasn’t at all sure that his father had either. Still, it meant he had seen a dead woman before. He could do it again. It had to be easier than before, this one was a stranger. He made himself pull back the beautiful hair. The girl was about his age, year ten or eleven. Her brown eyes were wide open. Their terrible blindness shocked him. She had been very afraid. Her mouth was open too. He let her hair drop and ran for the bushes. He was violently sick, just as he’d always read people were in such circumstances. The books had not prepared him for his own body’s shock and shivering outrage. Someone very twisted had killed that girl. Dan had a hanky in his pocket. He wiped his mouth, though he could do nothing about the sour taste in it. He had seen a young girl slaughtered and it seemed that nothing would ever be the same again. The world seemed a bleaker, darker place. He felt cold. He untied his jacket from his waist and, shivering, laid it gently over the girl. It seemed the least he could do.

  He didn’t think the killer was still about, but he looked around for a weapon just in case. Knives were bad, in a fight they could be used against you. You could be excluded from school just for carrying one, but something was better th
an nothing. He went back to the hut. He wanted to wash his hands, cleanse himself of the horror outside, but there was no tap anywhere that he could see. Keeping the door open for light, he looked around. He needed a weapon. He also needed some clue as to why the girl had been killed. What could have been going on for the girl to be dead in the middle of this wood, miles from anywhere? Could the girl have been living here as a runaway? Behind the door was a carved wooden chest, the only bit of furniture in the room, apart from the shelves. Even to Dan’s ignorant eyes the chest looked too valuable to be in a wooden hut. Nicked, no doubt, he thought. Pulling the sleeve of his school sweatshirt over his hand, so as not to disturb any fingerprints, he cautiously lifted the lid of the chest. Inside, the chest smelled of Christmas, of some pungent herb, was it cloves? He strained his eyes to see what was in it. He was disappointed. It was full of old clothes. He’d expected something that might be a motive for murder. He groped around, checking for something more. At the very bottom of the chest he could feel some hard object, wrapped in cloth. It was longer than a rifle and very heavy. Lifting it into the sunlight, he carefully unwrapped it from its layers of cloth. The last layer was thick with some foul-smelling greasy stuff. He peeled it back, gingerly, uncertain what it was and what it was covering. It was covering a sword. That he hadn’t expected.

  The hilt was breath-taking. It looked like it was made of gold and silver interworked on an elaborate pattern of knots and loops. The patterns were so complex; his startled mind could make no sense of them. The blade was very long and double-edged. It looked sharp as a kitchen knife. Even if it had been blunt the sword’s weight alone would make it a fearful club. Dan didn’t know what to do. He was sure it was stolen from a museum. He had a vague recollection that to take stolen property was also a crime, but it was a weapon, and he needed a weapon. He was a bit worried about fingerprints too. He didn’t want to spoil any that might be on the hilt, but if it was to be any good to him, he had to hold it. The unwanted image of the murdered girl haunted him. He was afraid it always would. He was in trouble already, but he was alive and he wanted to stay that way. He would take the sword as a weapon and turn it in to the police as soon as he could.