Chapter Fifteen

The sunshine seemed to cheer Aelfred up and he started to talk, or rather to ask questions – about Dan’s companion, about Dan’s own origins. Dan was as cagey as possible and decided to refer to Ursula as if she were a man. He thought it would be simpler that way. He would describe her as his male companion, his comrade-in-arms, and if she had any magic in this world he knew that she would be able to play the part of a male warrior – she had done it so many times already. The difficulty was that he could not then ask Aelfred for his help in finding a tall blonde woman who may have shown signs of magical power.

‘I do not understand how you separated,’ Aelfred said. ‘Surely you must have some idea as to where he went?’ Dan shook his head. He did not want to embroider a lie. He wanted to say as little as possible and lapsed into a moody silence. She could be anywhere. Perhaps if she had magic she might be able to find him – if she wanted to. The thought that she might not want to ate away at him. She had not been herself when she ran through the Veil. He had no idea what she might do, and with Ursula anything was possible.

After a while the river narrowed to nothing and Dan and Aelfred had to carry the raft between them and make their way over bogland. They had to stop often while the King dry-retched. He walked like a man in agony.

‘Should I not go on ahead to fetch help?’ Dan asked. His arms ached from the punting and the raft carrying. Although he was gym fit and strong he was not used to continuous hard physical work. Aelfred was breathing in shallow bursts and his face had turned grey with fatigue and pain. ‘No. You will be killed. I must come with you or they may think you kidnapped me.’

‘You didn’t leave without telling anyone?’ Dan asked, unable to keep the incredulity from his voice. In his experience kings were not inclined to wander hostile territory on their own. Aelfred bent double with some kind of stomach cramp.

‘Yes. May God forgive me. I had not planned on being away so long. I lost my way.’ His face creased as another wave of pain convulsed him.

‘This is stupid,’ Dan said. ‘If you lie on the raft, I can perhaps pull you across the marsh.’

‘No. I am all right. The pain will … pass … in a moment.’ But Dan had already unstrapped his sword belt and the leather belt that held up his school trousers and was trying to come up with a way of securing both to the bindings of the raft. The King took off his own belt that held his seax. ‘Keep your sword belt. We do not know that the Danes have gone and you may need your blade in a hurry. If I am lying on the raft, I need not sheathe my seax – I can hold it in readiness.’ Dan did not argue.

The problem for Dan was not so much that the King was too heavy, but that getting a good enough grip on the belts to get the raft moving was very difficult. Dan tried walking backwards and pulling the raft, then he tried walking forwards, dragging the raft, and neither way worked well. He took off his sweatshirt and tied that to the belts to make them easier to hold, but the knots kept coming undone. He wasted quite a bit of energy cursing under his breath.

The King did not complain as Dan jolted and dragged him across the uneven terrain. A couple of times Aelfred almost fell off, but he gripped the wood of the raft with a long claw-like hand and smiled at the craziness of it.

‘It is not exactly a king’s progress,’ Dan said through gritted teeth. His hair was plastered to his head with sweat and his muscles were trembling in revolt at the unnatural movement.

‘But it is progress and for that we must thank God.’ Aelfred responded.

Dan had little idea of how long he struggled with the raft but when the sun was quite high in the sky he had to stop.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I have to rest.’ He slumped on the damp ground exhausted.

‘That is fine. This is Athelney, my stronghold. My men are here now,’ Aelfred said, and suddenly his seax was pointed Dan’s way and three armed men emerged from behind low bushes all around him.

‘What are you doing?’ Dan asked, outraged.

‘I’m sorry, I do not know your loyalties. You speak Danish. For all I know you could be a spy.’

‘I saved your life. I’ve just dragged you for miles …’

Aelfred looked unhappy. ‘It grieves me, it truly does, but there is more at stake here than my desire alone. We are on the brink of destruction. I cannot risk all on a stranger I happened upon in a swineherd’s cottage.’

Dan could feel his anger growing. He reached for his sword and he batted Aelfred’s seax away easily, knocking it from his grasp with the ringing sound of metal against metal. He did not put his sword to Aelfred’s neck, though he was tempted. Instead he turned to face the armed men now running towards him.

‘My Liege – stay back!’ one of them called, and Dan was dimly aware of Aelfred hastening away on unsteady feet. Dan knew Aelfred had not recovered his knife and so dismissed him from his mind. He needed to focus on those who could do him harm – Aelfred was weak and unarmed.

The three men checked their pace when they saw the sword in Dan’s hand. They carried spears and long knives but not swords. Dan had no shield but the raft and that was too cumbersome to wield. He pulled it up so that it was on end and dragged it backwards to stand by a small tree, the only thing of any size likely to offer his back some small protection from the spears.

There was a kind of joy in losing himself to his dark place of madness. He felt himself slipping away and did not resist … Madness was his only hope and he embraced it – he let himself fall into the place where he and his sword were one.

The first warrior was a lanky man of around twenty. He charged towards Dan and drove his spear over the top of Dan’s makeshift defence. He had to come too close in order to get his spear over the top. Dan, cowering below the wall that the raft had made, sprang up and his powerful upward sword thrust found the unprotected area under the man’s arm. He screamed in shock and pain and Dan pulled the spear from his unresisting hand and turned it on the second warrior, who had circled the raft to come upon him from the rear. Dan’s speed startled the man who lost his footing on the uneven ground. That instant’s loss of concentration as he tried to regain his balance cost him his life. Dan thrust the barbed point of the spear straight at the man’s throat and pushed. The man toppled backwards. Dan placed his foot on the man’s torso, to give him the necessary leverage, and pulled the spear free. Now that he only had one enemy to defeat, Dan abandoned his position and ran to do battle with the third man.

‘Stop!’ King Aelfred staggered from his safe place and screamed at Dan. There was a moment in which Dan might have killed him too, but he was not yet so far gone in his madness that he could not hear and understand. Dan lowered neither his sword nor his spear but he stopped running.

‘There is no need to kill Eadric. They did not intend to kill you, only to take you prisoner.’ He was paler than ever and appeared shocked by the swift turn of events.

Dan was breathing heavily and, now that his brain began to clear, was beginning to wonder why he had allowed his madness the upper hand.

‘Sire, you pointed your knife at me and set three armed men on me – what did you expect me to do? I am a warrior. I fight and I kill.’

‘I can see that,’ Aelfred said, ‘and these deaths are also on my conscience. Will you drop your weapons?’

Dan dropped the gore-splattered spear on the ground. He did not much like spears. He wiped his stained sword on the grass, dried it carefully on his sweatshirt and sheathed it.

The remaining enemy let his spear and shield clatter to the ground and by the look on his face, pale beneath his helmet, was not sorry to let it end that way.

‘I made a mistake in trying to take you prisoner,’ Aelfred said quietly, ‘and I have no doubt that my men thought you wished me harm.’

‘I did not wish you harm, but attempting to have a man killed is not a good way of encouraging his respect or his loyalty – a true king should know that.’

Aelfred winced visibly: ‘You are right. Please accept my apologies. I still do not have your name and title.’

Dan hesitated. The adrenalin that had sustained him in the fight left him and he felt weak, drained and full of remorse. He had not wanted to kill again. ‘My name is Dan and I have no title,’ he lied. In Macsen’s world they had called him the Bear Sark, the berserker, but that was not a title he wished to deserve again.

‘I will send men to bring these fallen warriors back for a Christian burial. Dan, let me introduce you to what remains of my court.’

Dan averted his eyes from the corpses that had been the price of his welcome and followed the sickly King across the marsh.