Gemini Thunder (9 page)

‘Or was.’ The wizard of Wessex smiled, holding his arm up.

Seconds later Bell, his lead pica, landed on his wrist, gave the claws-out salute of greeting, and chirped quietly at him. Twilight stroked his glossy head, then, pointing upward and motioning for silence, rendered all three of them invisible.

Almost instantly, a dark shadow passed over them, thrown by a gliding sea eagle. It had been following Bell, homing in on the pica leader and getting ready to pounce. Four times it circled the castle before three powerful beats of its wings took it off into the night.

I’ll be back shortly. Just taking Bell back to the safety of the compound out of the way of that murderous bird
.

‘It was called Ran,’ said Twilight, rendering them both visible again. ‘Named after the wife of the Norse god of the ocean, Aegir. It was also the mate of Boma, the one I dispatched.’

‘Vicious-looking beast.’ Desmond shuddered. ‘I could see the moon shining on those talons. What did Bell want?’

‘I sent Tryggvason and his men to a remote place far from here. Bell was just letting me know that they have arrived. So long as the twins don’t find out where they are, we are rid of them.’

‘Why didn’t you kill them?’

‘Because I’m a fool who will not take life unless it is necessary.’

‘But they are Viking! Look around you, the place is littered with bodies. How necessary does it have to be?’

‘I know, I know,’ sighed the young astounder. ‘But I’ll guarantee you one thing. Now they have landed I’ll destroy their long boats. They will not be able to leave the place I have put them because there are no trees to build new boats with, only scrub. Viking society places a premium upon the maintenance of personal honour among males. They do not have any women to maintain a balance and will therefore begin to fight amongst themselves within a matter of days. They are a race devoid of grace or delicacy. As long as their precious honour is being satisfied, the self- destruction will not be apparent to them. Within a matter of weeks they will have all but destroyed each other. Now, my young entertainer, let’s go and see King Alfred.’

‘I was hoping that I’d see you again,’ said Alfred. ‘I even prayed that it would be so.’ He looked tired; his pale complexion had dark rings under the eyes. He was sitting in the same room as before with the same companions . . . with one priestly exception.

‘Have you heard what happened today?’

‘I have, my lord.’

‘I should have listened to you, veneficus, but I didn’t. I allowed Septimus to blind us to your reasoning with his prophecies of divine intervention. We have lost nearly one-fifth of our soldiers today, and the town has been reduced to ashes in front of our eyes.’

‘Not to mention the plight of those poor women and children,’ sniffed his wife, Elswith. Both she and her companion Hild had red eyes from crying.

Alfred placed a gentle hand on her arm. ‘What of the third force of Viking?’ de Gaini leaned forward as he asked the question. Their very survival and that of the monarchy could depend on the answer.

‘I have taken care of them,’ answered Twilight quietly.

There was an audible sigh in the room.

‘Do you have any suggestions as to how we can get out of this mess?’ asked Alfred.

Twilight pursed his lips thoughtfully.

‘You have eight thousand men crammed into a castle built for fifteen hundred. You’re under siege from five and a half thousand blood-crazy Viking who have outfought you and sacked your town. Your food is running out, morale among your men is low, and your weapons are pretty puny against theirs. It’s only a matter of time before some evil form of pestilence sets in, which may even be preferable to facing these messianic lowlanders. As I see it you have two choices . . .’

‘And they are?’

‘Surrender or escape to fight another day.’

Hugh Easton snorted. ‘This Guthrum would never accept surrender. He would slaughter every defenceless solider on the spot. We saw how he reacted to parley with poor Septimus. Chopped him down with an axe, then had a bear chew his head off, all under a white flag.’

Both the women shuddered.

King Alfred looked at him for a long moment.

‘Can you show us how to escape, veneficus of Wessex? Can
you
get us out of here to fight another day?’

Desmond yawned loudly. ‘It’s all very well for you,
hic nunquam dormio
, he who never sleeps, but being a mere mortal of sixteen winters requires that I close my eyes for a few hours every day.’

They were again perched on the highest part of the Winchester castle roof, looking out at the embers of the slumbering Viking camp, their sentries prominent against the dawn, which was beginning to creep over the rolling hills of the Plain of Salisbury in the distance.

‘I am surrounded by speakers of the Latin tongue,
ubique vir doctus,
everywhere there are scholars,’ Twilight said with a smile.

‘I’m a quick learner. Get me down from here so I can find a quiet corner and sleep.’

‘I’ll do better than that. Your own bed awaits your slumber. Give me your hand.’

And there he was standing beside his own straw pallet in the Avebury compound.

Back on the castle roof, Twilight gazed deep in thought at the Viking as their camps began to stir. Below him a door opened, and King Alfred walked slowly out into the castle keep, clad in a long white nightshirt, the pale face showing even more fatigue. Guards bowed at his approach and backed into the shadows. A sleepless, besieged king must be given room to pace and worry.

The view from up here is very good. Do you have a head for heights?

He jerked his head upward, seeing the dark silhouette of the Wessex veneficus on the skyline.

‘Yes,’ he said to himself.

Then he was there, high on the castle roof, sitting next to Twilight in his white nightshirt. Holding his hands up to still the astonished guards below, who were undecided as to try and follow or loose off their spears at the stranger beside him, Alfred nodded a bemused greeting and looked around.

‘I could get used to this.’

‘Stick to horses, my lord, they’re easier to control.’

‘Can you do that to all eight thousand of us, spirit us out of here?’ he asked.

‘Only a few at a time. It would take far too long. It’s a question of my power and how quickly such acts of transformation drain it away. Low power makes me vulnerable.’

‘Pity, we could all be gone by the time the Viking wake up.’

‘You’re forgetting their venefici. They would soon know. Worry not, there are other ways,’ said Twilight.

For two hours as the sun rose gradually over the castle, the young king and veneficus sat pointing out over the battle arena spread out before them, making plans. Below them the guards tried hard not to look or even think the worst, but seeing their king sitting high on a roof with a sorcerer, in his nightshirt, didn’t make it easy.

When Twilight finally let Alfred down, the king was feeling much, much better.

‘The Viking,’ said Twilight, sitting on the side of Desmond’s bed pallet, ‘have two weaknesses that can be exploited in battle. The first is that they only know one way to fight; a headlong rush straight at the enemy’s throat, making lots of noise and waving their awesome weapons about behind brightly coloured shields. It’s a frightening sight for anyone on the receiving end and will win many battles before they even start because their foes turn tail and run in the face of it. This happened in Winchester yesterday. King Alfred estimated that one in three of his defensive line turned tail before the charging Viking got to them. You can’t expect young, new recruits with barely four weeks’ military training to stand up to such a charge from the screaming hordes, and so it was.’

‘It’s a wonder that only one in three buckled.’ Desmond tickled the ears of both the baby bears curled up on his pallet. ‘What’s the second weakness?’

‘A complete reliance on their Norse deity as witnessed by the pictures of gods adorning their bodies and speech patterns. Gods dictate their lives and act as a reference point for dreams and achievements. They pray long and loud to them before a battle—for strength, for valour, for victory, family honour, and good pillage—and when they go to sea it’s for a favourable wind and good currents. If they don’t get any of that, it’s because the gods are angry with them. Individually and collectively they have done something wrong to anger them and must make up for it.’

‘How do they know the gods are listening?’

‘A good question and one I have been devoting some time to through study of the Nordic culture. The simple answer is they don’t, but as with the Celts and other civilizations, they place a great deal of faith in runes, a mystic set of poems quoted or written to encourage great deeds or ward off evil spirits. The rune is a form of communication from the gods. I don’t know if you noticed when we walked around their camp, but all of those Viking wear an amulet on their right wrist, which has a rune scored upon it to safeguard the wearer. It’s a secret science that few understand and even fewer can administer, a chamber of innermost dreams and dreads. I, for instance, as the Wessex veneficus, am automatically imbued with the bardic runes of the Celts, a ‘rune-binder’ or ‘rune-knower,’ skilled in the mysteries of their execution. The Viking runes are more specific than ours. They have individual runes, for victory, fertility, births, thoughts, battles, weather, and so on.’

‘Do they have a rune for defeat?’

‘They certainly do. Seldom used but they will all know it deep down in their innermost self. Not that they would ever want to hear it because of what it signifies.’

‘Do you know it?’

‘I have become, shall we say, proficient in its structure.’

‘What happens when they hear such a rune?’

‘Someone or thing must be sacrificed to the gods. Could be a king, queen, commander . . . ‘

‘Venefici?’ interrupted Desmond.

‘Or the owner of a travelling
spectaculum!
’

‘Won’t be me, then,’ sniffed the young man. ‘I’m a valued companion of the best enchanter in the whole world, one who is skilled in all the mysteries of wizardry.’

‘Not all of them,’ the enchanter smiled, ‘not yet. Now, up with you. We have an invasion to repel.’

‘See that stream over there?’ Twilight pointed to a small stream meandering down the rolling hills in the distance.

They were once again sitting on the roof of the castle.

Desmond nodded.

‘The Viking have dammed it to form a large pool for water behind that small copse.’ He nodded at a clump of trees nearer to them. ‘It was also the main source of water for the castle, so they have cut that off.’

‘What are they building?’ Desmond indicated a great deal of industrious Viking activity in front of the copse.

‘Siege engines. Great wooden and rope structures to throw huge rocks and vats of boiling pitch into the castle. They’ll put wooden wheels on them and, under the protection of a sturdy wooden cover to keep out the longbow arrows, push them up close to the castle walls. They’re good with ropes and wood, comes from being seafarers. Must be thirsty work—I can almost see the sweat from here.’

‘They have plenty of water from the dammed-up pool to keep them refreshed.’

‘Precisely.’ The veneficus beamed.

‘You have been up to something with the pool?’ Desmond eyed him suspiciously.

Twilight chuckled. ‘Let me introduce you to three rather useful inhabitants of the local
herbarium
, known locally as
galdorcraft
, a plant-lore science the long magus was particularly keen on teaching me. He always said nature’s magic was the purest sorcery of all, and knowledge of her plants would always give an extra dimension to any conflict. First of all we have the black hellebore, a plant that grows hereabouts in shady woodlands and a strong narcotic. Secondly, the eyebright, or as it is known in Latin,
euphrasia officinalis
. This plant grows in well-watered meadows and is a forceful muscle relaxant. Finally, the foxglove,
digitalis purpurea
, which grows in great abundance all over the region and is a powerful heart stimulant.’

‘I think I can see where you’re going with this,’ said the young troubadour thoughtfully.

‘During the night I gathered a big pile of these three plants, mashed them up with plain water in a vat in the castle kitchens far below. Then I poured the whole vat into that dammed-up pool the Viking are using for drinking water. The effects should be showing any minute now. The narcotic effect of black hellebore will send them into a trancelike state; the eyebright will render their muscles inert, and the foxglove will start their hearts pumping like the pulse of a lothario after a fair damsel. Result, complete physical breakdown with massive internal pressure. Importantly, the symptoms are difficult to understand, and the remedy is complicated and individual. This means that if the twins decide to save them, it will take them a long time and allow us to get on with the rest of the plan unhindered. If they decide to ignore them, they will die by nightfall. That’s seven hundred less berserkers to worry about, all killed without any Celtic lives being taken and, my young companion, without any overt use of magic, just an intimate knowledge of the Wessex plant-lore. ‘