Gemini Thunder (32 page)

‘There is a big difference in putting away a handful of untrained rebels without a veneficus to protect them and dealing with this one. He is clever, innovative, and very quick on his feet and backed by a king who believes in him.’

The last reference was lost on Guthrum.

‘Then we have to come up with a plan that traps him. Before we are all doomed,’ said Tryggvason. ‘We must find a way of using his own cleverness against him.’

‘There’s an old Latin saying,’ said Freyja quietly.
‘Inter arma leges silent.
It means ‘in time of war the laws are silent.’ The Wessex rune-slayer will know it. Indeed, his actions indicate that he abides by it. His actions are innovative. He
thinks
differently about the conflict, turns the accepted custom of it on its head, and operates outside anything that has been done before, beyond all known laws or conventions of engagement. For us to win we
must
do the same.’

They spoke long into the night.

The dipping flight of Bell, the lead pica, took him directly to his master’s shoulder. After a brief exchange he flew off back to his Viking tracking duties. Twilight turned to King Alfred, Baron de Lyones, and Desmond.

‘Edward de Gaini and Gode are missing,’ he said softly. ‘They disappeared from their tent first thing this morning.’

A look of consternation showed on the king’s pale face.

‘Just when things were going so well,’ he said quietly.

‘What are they up to?’ Desmond said.

‘I don’t know, but sitting here on the top of Uffington hill won’t tell us. Come, Desmond.’ The young wizard reached out for his companion’s hand and they were gone.

Arrow and Bullwhip were standing guard outside the tent. Guards were on full alert all around the camp site.

Blinking at the sudden appearance of the astounder and Desmond, Arrow greeted them by opening the flap on the large tent that had been occupied by the battle leader and his wife.

‘I came here at dawn to wake them, and there was no one there,’ said the mercenary bowman. ‘Guards were posted all around the camp, and Bullwhip and I were next door.’ He gestured to a smaller tent nearby. ‘Nobody heard or saw anything.’

Twilight nodded, and he and Desmond stepped inside the tent. Everything was where it should be, including de Gaini’s broadsword, which was hanging neatly in its scabbard on a tent post with his boots standing underneath. His battle tunic, chain mail, and hat were draped over a makeshift chair along with the smaller outer garments of Gode. The linen blanket on the straw pallet where they had slept was thrown back, implying a hasty departure.

‘I smell the wizened hand of Freyja,’ he said. ‘Now where would she take them?’

Desmond shuddered, remembering when he’d been a captive of the twins and Guthrum and their brutal torture of Hugh Easton, the High Reeve of Winchester.

‘Wherever it is we’d better find them quick,’ he said. ‘Do they know the whereabouts of the queen, your family, and Guinevere?’

‘Edward de Gaini certainly does, and we must assume that Gode does as well. I will move them now.’

He was gone.

An hour later he was back.

‘They are all safe, including Elswith’s baby and her brothers. I have placed them somewhere else and told the king of my actions. This time no one, not even the king himself, knows where they are. I’m taking no chances.’

Desmond heaved a big sigh of relief.

‘Is there anything else that de Gaini in particular knows that would help them?’

‘I also discussed this with Alfred and the baron, and since everyone knows where everyone else is now, there’s nothing sacred about the information or tactics anymore. Both armies can see each other, and the Viking know all about the difficulties they face after yesterday. I have also warned the king that Freyja may use de Gaini as a stalking horse to get close to him.’

‘So all we have to do now is find them,’ said the troubadour.

‘I think it’s time,’ said Twilight purposefully, ‘to try out my new Freyja location system.’

Well done, foul hag. You succeeded in spiriting away two important members of the king’s command. Do you wish to meet to discuss the terms of their exchange or is it too late for that?

The young wizard of Wessex sent the message from a high point in the clouds over the Viking camp in order to get an exact fix on Freyja when she replied to his mind message.

Her reply came almost immediately.

The terms are simple, back-slayer of my children. You can have both of them back in exchange for your own head. Nothing else will do. You for them.

The location fix seemed to have worked. He immediately traced her reply to an old Roman lookout tower some ten miles to the west of Wantage. He collected Desmond and within seconds they were in the sky high above the tower. In a clearing outside the tower, two huge vats of boiling water bubbled and steamed over well-banked wood fires. Deeper than a tall man, with wide openings and well apart, the vats were being kept boiling by the constant supply of logs pushed under them by two Viking warriors. Hanging by their feet from two thick jute ropes, their heads down in the steam just above the boiling water, were de Gaini and Gode. With their hands tied behind their backs, they dangled over the boiling water each from an overhead branch. Sitting on the branches were two more warriors whose job was obviously to lower and lift the jute ropes holding the captives. Sweat ran in rivulets down their faces and into the water hissing and bubbling inches from their noses. Mixed in with her sweat were tears as Gode sobbed uncontrollably, and de Gaini tried valiantly to ease her pain and terror with soothing words.

Twilight felt Desmond stiffen beside him as the sight of Gode being tortured this way registered.

Standing to one side were Freyja and the redheaded chieftain and Guthrum’s next in command, Olaf Tryggvason. Freyja leaned on an old walking stick whilst Tryggvason leaned on his double-handed sword.

‘Stoke the fires up well and leave them to stew awhile,’ said Freyja. ‘They won’t be going anywhere.’

She looked up to the sky.

‘Doesn’t look as if that back-slayer is going to take me up on my offer,’ she cackled to Tryggvason mirthlessly. ‘Pity, I was looking forward to swapping these two prune-faced danglers for him.’

She looked up at the sobbing, sweating Gode.

‘Oh shut up!’ she cackled, waving her stick to freeze both Gode and de Gaini into silence.

The two Viking on the ground banked up the fires even higher as the two in the trees jumped down to join them, and they all went inside the tower, Freyja hobbling along with the aid of the stick, cackling and gesticulating to Tryggvason, who sheathed his big sword as he went through the door.

Twilight held his finger to his lips to warn Desmond to keep quiet.

He spoke directly to his mind.

We’ll release them, keeping invisible. It’ll have to be quick. You take the girl. Let’s go!

Twilight spoke soothing words into both the captives’ ears as he broke both the thick jute ropes holding them over the fires. Holding de Gaini in one hand, he helped Desmond hold Gode and, joined together, immediately transformed all four of them high into the sky. As they flashed into the clouds, Twilight caught the merest of looks from Gode. Although she was still silent from Freyja’s command, her eyes screamed terror. Stark, abject, frenzied, impotent terror.

Something more than Viking torture, something . . .

Then in an instant Twilight saw it, all of it.

Clever, very clever.

‘Desmond. They’re primed thunderbolts, both of them. Let go of her now!’

‘Noooo!’ The troubadour grabbed Gode with his other arm, wrapping her in an embrace just as the sky opened up, blasting them into the pink spume of total human disintegration.

The look on King Alfred’s pale face said it all. This war was taking a heavy toll on his ability to keep functioning as a human being, let alone a sovereign ruler, head of the Christian church, father, and shining beacon of hope to the entire Celtic nation of Britain. So many deaths, so much brutality, so little morality. Nothing but kill, kill, and kill again. Human life was being sacrificed over and over again and for what? To keep another civilization out of a country that had ample room for everyone. Was each little tribe of humankind so precious that its culture had to predominate over the others?
Why can’t we all live together regardless of our differences?

‘Because,’ said Twilight, his black eyes glowing in thought as he read the worried king’s thoughts,
‘abeunt studia in mores.’

The king looked at him and nodded.

‘Pursuits become habits,’ he translated slowly. ‘Y’know, I think you’re right. They’re also habits without any regard to the consequences.’

They sat in silence for a while; then Twilight voiced both their thoughts.

‘He just couldn’t let her go in the end,’ he said sadly. ‘Desmond still loved Gode, and in the instant when the decision to part forever had to be made, he chose to die with her.’

‘And Edward?’

‘I had hold of him and let go. Otherwise I, too, would have died with the three of them.’

‘How close was it?’

‘A split second. I’ve never been that close to death before and hope never to be again. As both of them exploded with the Freyja-planted thunderbolts in their clothing, I exited on the very outer edge of the explosive corona. Luckily for me, my acceleration rate was the same as the blast rim, and I just managed to stay ahead until it died out.’

‘I’m glad you escaped,’ said Alfred somberly. ‘Wessex and I are in sore need of your skills, especially now.’

The king felt Twilight looking at him, the bottomless, Cimmerian blackness of his eyes penetrating through to his very soul.

‘Wessex will not be beaten,’ said the young wizard softly. ‘And neither will we.’

And in that moment the king relinquished all his doubts and knew that victory was a given and Wessex and its future were in safe hands, so long as this remarkable young man was its veneficus and heartbeat.