Gemini Thunder (4 page)

Desmond Kingdom Biwater was not a young man who ran very deep; his face registered a number of emotions as he thought that through before suddenly opening up with an ear-to-ear beam.

‘Nation is going to have a baby?’ he exclaimed.

‘She is.’

‘And you knew all the time?’

‘From the moment I first saw you all performing at the settlement of Kennet from my vantage point in the trees.’

‘How can you tell such a thing? I can’t tell even now, and these bears are as close to my heart as anything ever will be.’

Rawnie answered for her husband.

‘A veneficus has amazing and sometimes perplexing powers. One of them is the ability to look inside the body—and the mind—of humans and animals. Believe you me, as a mother of two children, I have been on the receiving end of this internal body searching any number of times during my pregnancies. In both cases he knew before I did!’

‘Shouldn’t Nation be resting, taking it easy or something?’ Desmond looked at the two bears frolicking with the children.

‘Stop acting like a concerned father,’ said Rawnie. ‘She’s a fully grown, strong and vigorous bear. It won’t make any difference to her behaviour. Soon you’ll have three bears, and the children will love the baby to distraction.’

Desmond looked directly at Twilight. ‘Can you tell if the new baby will be a boy or a girl?’

‘Yes.’

‘And?’

‘What I can tell both of you,’ said the Wessex veneficus, ‘is that it’s more than one.’

‘Twins!’ exploded Desmond. ‘Nation is going to have twins?’

‘Nation and Combi—let’s not forget the part he played in all this—are going to have twins.’

‘Four bears. I’ll have four bears to look after.’ Desmond seemed slightly stunned.

‘I think it’s the other way around.’ Rawnie smiled. ‘You’ll have four bears to look after
you.
’

After a short period of silence as they watched the bears and the children, Twilight began gazing into space, muttering to himself. ‘Strike the stars, the
gemini
have turned up again. I had not realized. That’s twice now, once with the mad witch and now Nation’s baby bears. What do the fates have in store? Will there be a third set?’

‘What is
gemini
?’ asked Desmond.

‘
Gemini
is Latin for twins,’ replied Twilight. ‘Merlin had a theory about them coming in threes. His ‘three sets of two’ theory he called it. The last of three sets of twins in a short period of time means trouble . . . big trouble.’

‘But we have only encountered two sets,’ said Rawnie.

‘So far,’ he said reflectively. ‘So far.’

‘Behold the king! Behold the king!’

The soft thud of fifty horses’ hooves came to a halt outside Twilight’s compound as the leading horseman announced their arrival in stentorian tones with his hand held high.

Twilight rose from the fallen tree he’d been sitting on with Rawnie, awaiting their arrival. Desmond was inside the compound with the children and animals. The pica had warned him of their coming some time ago and also included the fact that they all had emblazoned on the front and back of their tabards a gold cross on a red background. There was also a standard bearer at the front of the group with a pennant of the same design held high above his head.

The pennant of King Alfred.

A tall, bare-headed young man, with light brown hair to his shoulders and a wispy beard, dismounted and walked purposefully toward the veneficus and his wife. An arms bearer immediately dismounted and followed him, carrying a lance in his right hand, a short sword in his left, and a bow and arrow quiver over his shoulder. The men on horseback tensed and placed their hands on their weapons. Aged in his early twenties, the first man stopped and observed them both with clear, gray-green eyes.

‘You are Twilight, the Wessex veneficus?’ he enquired softly.

‘I am,’ acknowledged the astounder, inclining his head. ‘And this is my wife, Rawnie.’

The stranger turned his clear-eyed gaze to Rawnie.

‘Of course, Princess Rawnie, the royal daughter of Penda of Northumbria.’ He dropped his chin to his chest in a gesture somewhere between a nod and a bow.

‘King Alfred at your service.’

‘You are most welcome, my lord,’ said Rawnie.

‘You knew of our coming?’

Twilight pointed to the surrounding trees where a number of pica flapped and watched.

‘My birds act as an early warning system. I have known you were heading in this direction since daybreak.’

‘Remarkable,’ said the king, glancing up at the trees. ‘Is there somewhere private we can talk?’

Twilight and Rawnie led him to a shady corner inside the compound where there was a sturdy oaken table and benches. The weapons carrier was waved away and the men told to rest. Rawnie left to get the king some refreshment.

‘I heard of your heroic efforts at Lyme Regis and how you dispatched two hundred raiders with their own oars,’ Alfred said quietly.

There was directness about him coupled with a complete lack of royal formality. He obviously preferred to engage with people himself rather than work through those who attended him.

‘If only I could have gotten there sooner I could have perhaps saved some of the villagers’ lives. By the time my birds got the message of the attack to me here, the settlement had been burned to the ground and all lives savagely taken.’

‘How did you manage to get from here to Lyme Regis so quickly? By my reckoning that’s a full day’s ride.’

‘You are familiar with the venefical skills?’

‘No. I have heard tales of great sorcery and, of course, listened many times to the tales of Merlin’s prowess with Arthur Pendragon and the Knights of the Round Table, and the both of you against Penda and the wolf woman, but in truth I always felt that much of it was myth coupled with circumstance that grew with each telling. Having learned of your exploits at Lyme Regis and what you have just said, I am beginning to think that I may have been wrong in that assumption.’

‘Venefici have a number of magical attributes that we pass down from one to the other. Merlin was my mentor. One of those attributes is the ability to transform immediately to another place.’

Rawnie brought an earthenware pitcher of cool water and a roughly circular-shaped loaf of maize bread and placed them in front of Alfred. He thanked her and motioned for her to join them.

‘If your father still retains the ambition to add Wessex to his Northern regions, we could find ourselves on opposite sides,’ said Alfred, upending the pitcher of water and taking a long draught. ‘As the king of Wessex it’s my sworn duty to repel any invader.’

‘I doubt if my father will be engaging in any more warmongering,’ Rawnie replied quietly. ‘His foray into these lands was not successful and, due to my beloved husband here and the long magus, he was humiliated. His lesson was well learned. He will not be back.’

‘Good, that’s one less invader to worry about. Which brings me to the reason for my visit here.’

He paused, gathering his thoughts.

‘My spies in the lowlands tell me that the Viking, under their king, a ferociously ambitious individual called Guthrum, is preparing a large fleet of long ships for an invasion. That invasion will be directed at Britain, and the word seemingly on everyone’s lips is that Wessex will be the starting point. The raid on Lyme Regis was a precursor to a much bigger invasion. There have been other raids further East on the Kentish coast. The next time they will come in their thousands and make landfall at different places before sweeping into Wessex, destroying everything in their path. My army is well trained and some ten thousand men strong, but it can’t be in every place they land, at the time they land, to face them. I need an advanced form of your early warning system in order to work out where and when each Viking force will land.’

‘I already have such a system in place,’ replied Twilight. ‘After

Lyme Regis I thought it best to place pairs of my pica at intervals all along the Wessex coastline in case the lowlanders come back. One of each pair will patrol a small distance out to sea each day to pick up any long ships as soon as possible and track them to the shore, whilst the other flies inland to a staging post, where it will pass on the news to another, which will then come here to me. My birds are not fast long-distance flyers and can only fly so far, but they are clever, resourceful thinkers and can read a situation well.’

‘What are your intentions if the birds discover Viking ships?’

‘Like you, it is also my sworn duty to defend Celtic Wessex with all my might. I would attempt to stop them using all the astoundments at my command.’

‘We must join together as Arthur Pendragon and Merlin did,’ said the king. ‘My men and your sorcery will be a victorious combination.’

It was Twilight’s turn to think for a moment.

‘I will gladly join you in repelling these heathens,’ replied the astounder eventually, ‘but there are no guarantees of our victory. As I learned at Lyme Regis, the Vikings have their own venefici. Also, my own philosophy, and one taught to me by the long magus, is that I will not side with anyone who seeks to dominate the people of Wessex for the sake of power or to spread a religious doctrine as you may do after the Viking have been defeated.’

Alfred looked puzzled.

‘But Arthur Pendragon, with the long magus by his side, fought all his battles—as I must—in the name of Christianity!’

‘That he did, but Merlin came to realize that it was wrong for him to do so. The latter half of his life was spent in repentance of those actions, and that is what he has passed on to me. I will join with you in repelling the rapine and slaughter perpetuated by these Viking invaders, but if we are successful I will not help you take other lives in other regions in Britain in the name of your religion. I hold no views on any particular religion; my views apply to all of them. Another one of the reasons behind this, and one everyone finds difficulty in believing, is most of the religions are formed around the eventual destination of the human soul. As the Wessex veneficus and guardian of the Equinoctial Mists, I know what happens to the soul in its many manifestations.’

‘That’s interesting. I wonder what Septimus Godleman will have to say about that.’ Alfred smiled.

‘Who is he?’

‘My household chaplain and advisor and scholar who advises me on religious matters. He is a former pupil of Saint Augustine and very much of the school that wants to convert all of these lands to Christianity, believing that the human spirit is formed to follow and needs to be led down paths that satisfy the soul. He also sees this latest heathen onslaught as a form of divine retribution for the non-Christian attitudes of the Wessex Celts.’

Twilight looked steadily into the king’s gray-green eyes. In deference to Alfred’s position he refrained from studying the man’s mind directly.

‘That is also how you see it?’

‘It is.’

‘Then you and your Septimus Godleman and anyone else of the same persuasion will not be able to call upon my enchantments to help you spread your word in Wessex,’ he said quietly. ‘Every plant, tree, blade of grass, animal, and human being in this abundant and elegiac Celtic land is an allegory for non-interference and independence of its chosen way. Why visit the drumbeat of war and the flames of conflict upon a peaceful, poetic, and elegant land in the interests of an alien doctrine that they will not accept and do not want?’

Twilight’s words fell between them like shards of cold flint.

Alfred considered this for a moment behind narrowed eyes.

‘Then there is nothing else for us to say to each other, veneficus, for besides defending these lands against the invaders, I must also spread God’s word.’ He stood up abruptly, gave a short bow to Rawnie, and walked back to his resting soldiers.

When the hoof beats had faded, Twilight turned to his wife and tenderly took both her hands in his and spoke directly to her mind.

It is time you and the children went to Avalon to stay with Guinevere and the lepers again. You will be safe there as before. I fear that it’s going to get very dangerous around Wessex. And though, as you have heard and know from your own experience, I will not assist this King Alfred in his religious domination of these lands, I must join with him and his army in repelling the Viking invader.

The magnificent wingspan of the sea eagle carried it high on the coastal thermals as it approached land. Its keen eyes picked out

every detail of the terrain far below, the crashing waves, currents, and gentle eddies, the random movements of shore-dwelling animals, the wheeling gannets and gulls, occasional humans throwing fishing nets, and smoke spilling from the holes in the reed roofs of hamlet hovels just off the shingle-strewn beaches. With its sharp, curved beak held slightly open it tasted and analyzed the fragrant scents of nature mixed with the unclean odours of human habitation drifting upward on the breezes. With all senses tuned to maximum and the spreading tail feathers acting as a rudder, the mighty bird wheeled and cruised up and down the long coastline for two days, until it found the pattern it was looking for.