Ursula became gradually aware that there was no one left to kill. The battleground was strewn with the bleeding, the dying and the dead. She turned to Cynfach.
‘I think we’ve won.’
He nodded grimly, exhaustion vying with triumph in his face.
Ursula thought someone should say something. As far as she could tell the Sarmatians were unhurt. There must be casualties but when she looked back there were still several hundred mounted men behind her, still broadly in a column formation.
‘Help me up!’
She could not stand in her stirrups – neither the Celts nor the Sarmatians knew of them. Her only recourse was to stand on her mount and wave Arturus’s shield high in the air as a signal of their triumph. It was still very early. Ursula estimated that the whole battle had taken less than an hour. Battle seemed too grand a word for it; it had been more like a massacre.
Arturus’s force cheered wildly at the raised shield, but Ursula had no words of triumph or praise that she could add – that was for Arturus. She dismounted and hung the stained shield over the pommel of the saddle. She ripped off the heavy, golden helmet and face-mask and secured them to her saddle too. They were splattered with soot and flecks of things she’d rather not identify. Her heart was still pounding and she felt breathless. She stuck the bloodied kontos into the ground with such force that it quivered. There were things under her horse’s hooves she did not want to see.
‘Cynfach, take control till the High King comes, I need some clean air. Oh, and thank you.’ She managed a weak smile, ‘I would have had it, if you hadn’t ridden to rescue me.’
Cynfach still looked stunned, though whether by the ease of the victory or the carnage all round them, she did not want to know. His smile was warm and genuine.
‘Your courage inspired us all, Lady Ursa, if I had not been prepared to lay down my life to save yours, my men would never have forgiven me.’
She could not think of a suitable reply to that, so merely nodded and began to walk away. She had to get away from the smell, the charred, burnt smell that was the fire’s last endowment; the smell of blood and slaughter and the lingering scent of sickness.
‘Dan?’ She sought him out, knowing that he would understand.
‘Ursula, you are safe!’
Dan’s mental voice sounded weary and strained, what it must have been like to experience the suffering of all those dying Aenglisc did not bear thinking about.
‘Ursula, wait for me. Taliesin saw Rhonwen leave the battlefield. There’s a chance that she might—’ He dare not even finish the thought. He dare not hope that Rhonwen might try to escape the best way she knew how.
Ursula did as she was told and stopped walking. Everything felt unreal. She recalled the soft jolt of impact as her spear had skewered an Aengliscman. She could still feel the reverberation of it up her arm and in her memory. Such things were better not remembered. Braveheart bounded to her side and butted her affectionately with his head. She patted the matted hair of his skull absently. It was far worse than she could have imagined. She wanted to go home.
It was not long before Dan rode towards her, his dark robes flowing. He did not pause to explain. ‘Get up! I think she’s about a mile from here. Taliesin thinks she’ll try to get away.’
Ursula did not argue but mounted up behind Dan, hoping his pony, which would not have been used in the charge for a good reason, was up to carrying the additional weight. Neither of them spoke. Braveheart loped beside them, his long legs easily keeping pace with the pony. Ursula knew that Dan was aware of her mixed emotions and her revulsion for the horror she had helped perpetrate. She was grateful that he did not say, ‘I told you so.’
The battle stench did not abate perceptibly as they rode. So powerful did the vile stink remain that Ursula began to wonder if it was herself she could smell. Would she ever be able to smell anything else?
Dan saw Rhonwen first, kneeling by a grove of trees. She had put to one side her cloak of skulls and wore only a thin, stained, silk shift. Her luxuriant, dark hair fell to her waist. She was singing, crooning almost, in a low voice and Ursula felt her nerves tingle and jangle at the magic. Rhonwen was raising the Veil.
Ursula and Dan dismounted as quietly as possible, much to the relief of the pony. Rhonwen showed no sign of having heard them. She was deeply involved in the ritual of her own technique for calling the yellow mist, dissolving the barrier between worlds. Ursula closed her eyes against a sudden attack of dizziness. She could feel the Veil pulling at her at some deep level, calling to her, and she had not the power to answer. Dan obviously perceived her distress. He did not speak for fear of alerting Rhonwen but reached for her hand and held it. She fought to stay calm. Something began to be visible, metres from Rhonwen’s kneeling form. It began as a small yellowish blur, like nicotine-tainted air, and then grew until the area of swirling yellow was perhaps two or three metres wide.
‘Where do you think she will go? Back to her brother, to King Macsen?’ Ursula asked.
‘I don’t know, but I can’t stay here. Taliesin thinks swapping worlds changes your abilities. I would do almost anything to be rid of this bloody empathy.’ Dan’s mental voice sounded desperate. Ursula sneaked a glance at his shadowed face and was shocked by the pallor and the tension there. She thought about what he said. If, say, they followed Rhonwen back to Macsen’s world there was a chance that Ursula would once more be able to wield the magic. Once she had the magic back she could raise the Veil herself and steer them both home.
‘What do you think?’ Dan was responding to her close scrutiny of him with a hard look of his own.
‘I want to risk it,’ Ursula said firmly.
‘What have we got to lose?’
‘Well, we could die.’ Honesty required that Ursula did not spare him the truth. Bryn managed to follow them successfully through the Veil, but he might have been exceptionally lucky. Ursula knew that in Macsen’s world she had wielded more power than Rhonwen commanded even here. What if Rhonwen’s way through the gate was more unstable, not strong enough to allow the passage of two more people?
‘What about Bryn?’ Their responsibility for the young Combrogi struck Ursula forcibly and she spoke out loud.
‘Taliesin would care for him, I’m sure. He is very gifted. He might be the bard’s apprentice Frontalis thinks he’s looking for.’
‘Would he want that?’
Ursula knew that Bryn would not want that but she hoped by asking the question, Dan would realise it for himself.
‘If I go back for him – we’ll miss our only chance to get home.’
Dan’s face was growing paler by the minute.
‘Ursula, I swear, if I stay here I’ll die. I cannot endure all this pain. I can show you what it feels like if you want.’
Ursula shook her head. She believed him. She did not need the kind of proof he had in mind.
‘Dan, how can we leave a message for Bryn?’
‘He can’t read.’
‘But Arturus can.’
They both looked around wildly for something to write on as the power building in the Veil grew towards a climax. Ursula thought her head might burst with the intensity of it. The mist’s power was like an impending storm and they would need to be ready to enter into the eye of it. Braveheart wore a heavy, leather collar that one of the grooms had fashioned from a damaged leather belt. Ursula grabbed and removed it with trembling, eager hands and scratched a message with her belt knife into the soft leather.
‘HAD TO GO, BRYN, OR DAN DIES. SORRY.’
‘I feel terrible – it will be the third time I have let him down.’
Ursula closed her eyes against the pull of the Veil. Rhonwen was standing and beginning to step through. Ursula could bear it no longer; grabbing Braveheart by the scruff of his neck and Dan by his arm she dragged both of them towards the swirling yellow mist and walked through to its heart. She recoiled from the oiliness of the yellow droplets of mist, from the coldness and the strange way it made her feel. It was wrong to leave Bryn behind. She knew it was wrong and she had no excuse. She wanted the magic again and she wanted Dan to live. That was all there was to it. She was sure, even as the mist engulfed her, that those were not good enough reasons to abandon an eight-year-old boy in an alien world.