Ursula mounted her war horse. Arturus had given her a good mount, strong but lighter than the norm, handsomely equipped with silver mail. She fastened Arturus’s mask to her helmet, but did not put it over her face, and trotted towards the waiting Sarmatian troops. She did not know what she was to say to them. They were ready, of course, though not yet mounted as she rode up to them. Strangely, it seemed as if she should know these men, wearing armour handed down from their fathers. She saw the distinctive mail shirt of Cynfach and had to remind herself that he was long dead and that these men, in the same war-worn suits of scale and mail, were strangers. She cleared her throat nervously. She could feel their eyes on her. Most of them were in their late twenties or thirties though she spotted one grizzled veteran and a few younger men whom Gwynefa had not seduced. Ursula dismounted Combrogi fashion. She wanted the earth beneath her feet. She planted herself on the churned grass and stood very straight before them, conscious of her height and her hidden Boar Skull strength but all too aware of how she must appear to them.
‘King Arturus has asked me to lead the bravest of you against your former comrades,’ she began. Her voice was not loud and scarcely carried beyond the first rank.
‘Speak up young ’un – we can’t hear at the back.’ The voice, speaking heavily accented soldier’s Latin, was mocking, and Ursula’s heart sank.
‘You will not remember me,’ she began again, more loudly, ‘but I fought alongside your fathers, led them in the famous charge at Baddon Hill.’
There was a snort of derision from somewhere and Ursula fought to keep her temper under control.
‘That was Arturus – everyone knows that!’ someone called out. Then a voice spoke from the front rank – one of the younger men.
‘No, it wasn’t. It was a woman, my ma told me!’
‘Shut up, Caradoc – your ma tell you where babies come from yet?’
There was more laughter but it was not unfriendly and Caradoc ignored it. He was a strong-looking youth and addressed his mockers in a clear, ringing voice.
‘You all heard of my father, Cynfach, who led us at Baddon, well, he rode with the Lady Ursa. I have told the story before – it was the Lady who led the charge wearing Arturus’s face-mask!’
Ursula took her opportunity. She marched towards the youth and dragged him forward to face the troops. She spoke clearly as Caradoc had done, allowing each word to echo and die before continuing.
‘This man had a father to be proud of. Cynfach was my friend. Cynfach saved my life too, on Baddon field when the charge was over and the worst of the killing began. I carried this mask then and I carry it now.’ She waved Arturus’s golden mask before them.
‘Baddon was tough, but the task I ask of you now is tougher and I need to know if you are worthy heirs of your fathers.’
The silence of the assembled men had deepened as she spoke. She had their attention at last. Then the veteran she had spotted earlier pushed forward to the front and as he approached she recognised him as one of Cynfach’s corps.
‘Lady Ursa, I have not forgotten.’ He was a big man, heavily muscled and scarred. His voice was as powerful as his frame. ‘I have not forgotten those that fell that day and those who have fallen since and I have never forgotten you. I do not know what magic has preserved you unchanged through these long years which have seen my strength fade but, by all the soldier’s gods, it is good to see you again.’
‘Rhys! You’ve gained a few pounds, but I do not believe your arm is any the weaker for it.’ Ursula was relieved that her voice sounded firm as she grasped his arm.
Rhys spoke to the assembled men.
‘Do not be misled by this Lady’s beauty, by her youth or, begging your pardon my Lady, the slenderness of her frame, for this is the Lady Ursa, the she-bear of Baddon Hill, and I promise you – you will never see a better fighter!’
There was an instant’s silence and then the commander of the Cataphracts stepped forward. He was a handsome man in a blue-grey surcoat of much-mended horn scale. He moved with the easy confidence of command and his voice carried effortlessly in the still cool morning.
‘I don’t doubt your sincerity, Rhys, but we need more than that. If you are to lead us, Lady, why has Arturus not sent me orders?’
Ursula could not answer that.
‘Perhaps he hoped that you would gladly follow a hero,’ she said softly, ‘or perhaps he wished me to prove myself to you – again.’ She sighed. ‘There is little time, so let’s get it over with. I will fight any two of you if need be, to establish that I’m fit to lead. Who wants to test my mettle?’
She removed her armour so that she stood in just her tunic, bare-headed and shieldless, her sword in her hand.
Rhys grinned at her and the commander nodded his assent.
‘I am Vitus and I will fight you, Lady.’ He said courteously.
‘Anyone else?’ Ursula knew by the men’s reaction that Vitus was their best. She was not afraid, indeed her earlier nervousness had disappeared. She wanted this.
She did not take long. He was a good swordsman but she had fought the best and she was angry, not wild and out of control angry, but coldly furious that Arturus had deliberately placed her in this situation again, hours before he expected her to die for him and his doomed cause. Vitus could not parry the blows she rained on him fast enough, she was too quick and too strong. She came at him more fiercely than he anticipated, attacking constantly so that he was unable to think of anything but his own defence. He stumbled and she stopped, reining in her temper before she injured him.
‘Anyone else?’ Ursula repeated her earlier question. There was silence. She helped Vitus to his feet – he had overbalanced and lay, panting on the ground.
‘Right! I am the Lady Ursa, veteran of Baddon Hill, and I will lead you well if you will follow me.’ No one breathed and she knew that she did not have them yet. She had more to prove. She had made a speech before, in Macsen’s Hall on the brink of another battle, the Battle of Craigwen. She had found the right words then and she needed to find them again. She took a deep breath and began. She spoke more quietly, but the men listened, strained to hear as she began.
‘I know that you are loyal men. I know how it must pain you to lose brothers in arms and I’m sure brothers in blood too, but they are gone, lost to you. They have allied with our enemies. They have allied with the Aenglisc and we have to fight them. We have to fight them, those who were your brothers, because if we don’t the Aenglisc will sweep us away. Once, long ago, before Baddon, I was there when the Aenglisc burned down a village, cut down those that ran to escape and killed a young girl for sport. King Arturus is all that stands between us and that. We have to fight to keep Arturus’s dream of Britannia, our Island of the Mighty, alive. Arturus is Roman and Combrogi both, he carried the hope of all of us at Baddon and after twenty years of peace he carries it still. We walk into an ambush but we can win, must win. We will have victory if you have the heart and guts for a tough fight, more than that, a tough fight against fellow Cataphracts who have betrayed us all.’
She knew when they cheered that she had won them. All of them volunteered to follow her up the steep slope of the nearest hill and down again the other side, follow her through whatever mayhem and carnage lay between. Inwardly, she marvelled at their courage. She did not believe many of them would survive the day.
She allowed Vitus to choose the sixty lightest and strongest for the task ahead and rode with him, at the head of the Sarmatian column, towards Camlann.
When the largest of the three hills came into view Ursula peeled away from the main force, Dan rode over to her side. Her face-mask was up and she looked worried.
‘These men don’t know me, Dan – they didn’t even know I’d led the charge at Baddon. Arturus could have made it easier.’
‘Maybe he made it hard on purpose.’
Ursula pulled a face. Dan could feel her fear and her excitement. She was flooded with nervous energy. He wanted to hold her, but she was fully equipped with kontos, sword and bow. The hillside looked too steep for her to climb. There were too many ways she could be killed. There was so much he wanted to say and yet this was not the time to say any of it.
‘Good Luck!’
Ursula nodded, gave him a tight, terse smile and swung her mount away to join her men. Dan could sense their fear, too, and the beginnings of that strange adoration Ursula’s warrior-woman persona tended to engender. He almost went with her at that moment, to try to keep her safe, but he did not want to fight again and that determination could make him a liability. He returned to the main body of Arturus’s force as the High King was instructing his command group, and sought out Bryn and Braveheart.
‘Are you going with the High King?’
Bryn shook his head. ‘I will not fight my former Lord if I can avoid it and anyway, you have forgotten, Dan, my role is with you.’
‘But you think me a coward, for not fighting.’
‘I never said that.’
‘I knew you felt it.’
‘I was a boy then.’
Dan nodded. ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could sing it all into oblivion, make it all melt away like Rhonwen’s illusion at Baddon?’
Bryn grinned and the moment of awkwardness was over.
‘It wouldn’t work now – my voice broke some years back!’
They rode together towards Taliesin and Frontalis’s cart. Brother Frontalis was with Arturus’s confessor, blessing the Christian troops.
‘What happens now?’ Dan asked Taliesin.
‘Bedewyr and the infantry will advance and form their wall when Ursula reaches the top of the hill.’
‘And we’ll know she’s done that when …?’
‘When you tell us, my friend.’
Dan was not at all sure that he wanted to watch Ursula risk herself again. He was beginning to understand those mothers who looked away when their children did anything dangerous. He propped himself up against the cart and let his thoughts fly. He saw Ursula at once using the kontos like a walking stick and leading her reluctant horse. Her troops had spread out around her in a line rather than a column so that one man’s lost footing need not signal a major disaster. The ease with which Ursula climbed under the weight of her mail and helmet served to encourage the men. They were not going to be out-climbed by a mere girl. All the horses also appeared to be coping with the sharp incline. They were strong beasts but relatively lightly built, unlike the heavy, mediaeval war horses Dan had seen in pictures. It took perhaps an hour for all the men to reach the summit. Dan saw Ursula signal with a wave of her sword for her men to mount up. He saw her adjust Arturus’s cherubic, golden, face-mask. He shivered mentally as he saw the effect as her men fitted their own masks. Sixty human fighters were at once turned into sixty unearthly creatures, with bland, impassive, metal faces that did not register pain or fear. They stood proud, like inhuman centaur gods. They were outlined against the sky and visible to their enemies if not their allies. These sixty Cataphracts, so improbably positioned, were Arturus’s message to Medraut. Arturus was still High King, still in the game. It was not over yet.
Dan allowed his consciousness to sink back into his body and opened his eyes.
‘Send the infantry!’
One of the standard bearers immediately blew the advance and Arturus’s three hundred men marched forward the short distance to the valley. On a second signal the front row (and each of the men in the end column and the rear line) dropped to their knees and rested their oval shields on the ground. They pointed their spears forward at hip height, like the spines of some armoured, mythical beast. The horn blew again and the second row of infantry rested their shields on the shields of their comrades to form a wall as tall as a standing man. They held their spears at shoulder height. This second shield wall appeared on all four sides of the rectangular formation. It was a bizarre sight. A Roman tactic performed by the Combrogi. Each man had his own distinctive war gear. Some had mail shirts, some the battered remnants of antique Roman scale armour. Some wore the protection of boiled, hardened leather, others thickly padded woollen garments. Each man bore a shield painted with a different design, with their war gods or saints, with lucky symbols or sacred words, in every colour that their ingenuity could produce. They looked as different from each other as they did from their Aenglisc enemies but they moved as one.
It was only when Arturus’s battle horn sounded that Gwynefa noticed her danger.
Ursula heard the battle horn – it was her signal. Her legs ached from the climb and her tunic stuck to her, damp and itchy with sweat. The dappled, diffused light made the job of spotting the enemy harder, but the screaming of horses and cursing of armoured men told her all that she needed to know. Gwynefa had seen them and begun to recognise her peril and was ordering her men to face Ursula’s own force. She did not quite believe that Gwynefa would be so foolish. She lifted her mask briefly to grin confidently at the men nearest to her, Rhys and Caradoc. She had not wanted to bring either of them. She did not want their deaths on her conscience, but Vitus had chosen and was himself at the rear of his chosen men. She lowered her mask and patted the lathered neck of her mount. None of the horses in her troop wore armour now but, like the men, had to trust to speed, skill and the grace of God to stay alive. Ursula sat straighter in the saddle and raised her sword high in her own signal to advance.
Without willing it, Dan found himself flying above Ursula again, drawn by his need to know that she was safe. He heard Gwynefa’s shrieked orders. She attempted to send half her force up the hill to face Ursula’s smaller force. It was a naïve mistake. Gwynefa’s Cataphracts were too tightly packed to benefit from the limited cover of the trees, each man carried a kontos some two metres long, each horse required more space than was available to turn round and face up hill. There was chaos as the well-trained Sarmatians struggled to obey orders that were almost impossible to follow. Men and weapons became entangled with tree branches and each other. For those few who managed the manoeuvre, the prospects were scarcely any better. Gwynefa’s horses were armoured and trying to charge up hill, while Ursula’s, though unprotected, had the advantage of the downward slope, the element of surprise, and a commander who had fought on horseback before. Dan saw Ursula at the moment she raised her sword again in the signal to charge. He saw her ride forward, her golden face lending her a terrible calm assurance. She held her kontos like a lance, to impale anyone who got in her way. There were too many terrified men and horses ahead of her. Dan dreaded the impact, the moment when spear pierced flesh and all the pain and animal terror began. Gwynefa’s forces panicked. They had not had time to fasten their own masks, and fear was evident in their faces. Half were facing downhill and they rode, without any signal from Gwynefa, to escape the gold-faced goddess who led their former comrades like an avenging angel. Gwynefa’s strategic value to Arturus’s enemy died at that point. She had lost control of her men, and her men were doomed. Dan did not want to watch as Ursula’s men dispatched their former comrades. He did not want to hear the thud as living men, unhorsed, fell onto the rucked ground. He did not want to hear the fear and horror in their primal cries as they were trampled under foot. He did not want to hear the ring of metal against metal, weapon against weapon, and worse, the sound of the cracking and splintering of bone, the ending of lives. When he had been a berserker he had never been aware of anything but his own bloody purpose – to watch a battle was a terrible thing and to feel men die was worse.
Less than fifty of the rebel Sarmatians got away. Gwynefa was among them. She charged down the hill screaming words Dan could not hear. She was a princess of Rheged and rode like one, both hands holding the kontos, keeping her seat with superb balance and skill, her black hair like a dark flag, streaming behind her. It was a shock then, when her horse stumbled on a corpse and she fell from the saddle. She landed badly like a doll tossed from a pram, her limbs bent at improbable angles. Dan could not see her move. Dan turned and wheeled away – away from the hillside and the riderless horses stampeding over Arturus’s Queen where she lay, bloodied and crushed. She was dead, trampled by her own men fleeing the chaos on the hillside. Dan had felt her dying anguish, her panic, and her sudden peace.
He withdrew instinctively from the screams of combat and the soundless anguish that accompanied them and found himself flying over the plain where Larcius, too, had made Gwynefa’s fatal mistake and tried to fight on two fronts at once. Some of his light cavalry had successfully turned to face the bulk of Arturus’s Cataphracts, those that Ursula had not chosen, but most were fleeing the charging heavy horses, resplendent in their glimmering armour, fleeing the fierce strength of the armoured riders, with their inhuman metal face-masks. The greater part of Larcius’s force forgot all battle discipline and rode into the growing melee of men and horses across the centre of the plain. There, Bedewyr and the infantry held their square formation. They looked solid as a tank and deadly as a giant porcupine, sprouting spines of metal spears. Bedewyr’s men formed a formidable defensive weapon which hampered the movement of the surviving cavalry as they struggled to stay clear of the double row of spears. Larcius’s light cavalry were sandwiched between Arturus’s Sarmatians, the fleeing remnants of Gwynefa’s force and Ursula’s cavalry who had now swept down the hill into the central plain. There were horses everywhere rearing and kicking, dying or lying dead. There were bodies everywhere and small desperate battles in a confusion of contorted flesh and armour. All Dan could feel was pain. It almost drove him back to his own form, but he fought his own urgent need to flee: he had to find Ursula. At last, he spotted her golden face-mask and saw her fighting hand-to-hand with some light cavalryman, while her Sarmatians fought to get close enough to protect her. She was alive for now.
He flew away, instinctively, too fearful to watch. He turned and found himself observing the battered form of the High King Arturus, wearing Frontalis’s tattered monk’s cloak and fighting for his life. He had lost his horse and was bleeding from a blow to the groin. He was coming to the end of his strength and struggling against a gore-soaked opponent whom Dan belatedly realised was Larcius. His face was almost unrecognisable, dark with congealing blood from a major wound to his head. He had lost his helmet and seemed scarcely more alive than Arturus. As Dan watched, Arturus staggered forward and thrust his sword through Larcius’s chest. He put all his weight, all his anger at betrayal, all his vast disappointment behind it. For a moment it looked as though Larcius would speak, his mouth opened, then Dan felt him die. Dan found himself staring at the dead man through Arturus’s battle-weary eyes, eyes that stung with salt sweat. Arturus wiped his face and Dan shared with him the hollowness of the victory. Arturus was exhausted, he waited until his breathing became less ragged, resting his hands on his thighs as he knelt on the ground beside his victim. Arturus stretched forward and twisted the hilt of the sword, Caliburn, Dan’s own Bright Killer, which still protruded from the chest of Gwynefa’s lover. Arturus gazed at his handiwork; and then, with a trembling sigh, ripped Caliburn from the dead man, cleaned it roughly on the grass and moved on through the confusion of bodies, in search of a horse. Dan struggled to separate his consciousness from that of the High King whose thoughts were shadowed with battle lust and a grim, dogged desire for vengeance.
The sun was high now and the battleground reeked of death. The infantry had still not engaged. The only route to the enemy was still blocked with cavalry, fighting to get away, to stay alive, a sea of horseflesh. Ursula was nowhere to be seen. Dan circled, trying to ignore the grim sights and worse emotions that battered at his senses from all sides. It was worse than Baddon and even more difficult to find Ursula by eye alone and he dare not seek her thoughts. Her golden helm was almost invisible among the crowd of bodies. Some few of her men were with her, but there were many more of Larcius’s lighter cavalry. The battle no longer had any obvious pattern; men were fighting and dying without purpose, without reason. Ursula was swamped by men, fighting to retain her seat as her horse reared, fighting to parry the slashing swords that surrounded her. She cried out, with all the strength she had left. She knew she could not hold out much longer. Her cry broke through all the ambient pain and fear to deafen him.
‘Dan!’
‘Ursula! Hold on!’
He woke in his own body, breathing as if he himself had been stabbed. It was his dream made real. Who else could it have been, the Arturus who was not Arturus but Ursula, whose deeds had become entangled with Arturus’s own? He had never been more afraid.
‘Bryn! Must go to Ursula! Braveheart!’
Bryn reacted instantly, understanding everything, questioning nothing.
It all looked different from the ground. What had seemed like a series of separate skirmishes from the air was from the ground unreadable chaos: a cacophony of noise, a crush of roiling, twisting, dying men. There were bodies underfoot and everywhere the stink of death and dung. Bryn and Dan took the swift horses of two of the messengers. Taliesin flew as Merlin somewhere unseen. Braveheart ran at their side. They rode past the still intact infantry division, past the body of Larcius, closer to the road than Dan had thought it. He rode into the melee hacking at anything that got in his way, except it wasn’t anything but anyone, and every blow he dealt he felt. In front of him he saw the battered form of Arturus locked in combat with Medraut. The veteran was frailer and older than Dan’s memory of him, but he was still a wily opponent. Arturus was badly injured and without a horse. Arturus tried valiantly to hamstring Medraut’s mount but had not the strength. Dan could feel the life leeching from the King as, with an almighty cry, Medraut launched a frenzied attack on his former comrade. Arturus had found a shield from somewhere and held it above him, saving himself from the most vicious of the blows but, weakened from blood loss, Arturus fell, only to be crushed by the hooves of Medraut’s mount as it reared, and Medraut rode on. Arturus Ursus, High King of Britannia, died there unnoticed by any eye save Dan’s. Arturus’s face was an unrecognisable ruin, another anonymous corpse on a mortuary field, wrapped in a monk’s cloak. Later, there would be deep regret and even sorrow, but there was no time in all that madness, in the bloody maelstrom of battle. Dan dismounted, swinging down from his horse and vaulting straight back up, pausing only to pick up his own blade, Bright Killer, from Arturus’s still warm and bloody hand. Dan was so desperate to save Ursula that it did not even seem a callous act.
With single-minded purpose Dan refused to accept the pain he felt in every part of his being. He dared not stop to check whether he was truly bleeding from a hundred wounds, or if it merely felt like it. He could only think about Ursula. Her voice still screamed in his head, weaker but still desperate.
‘Dan-Dan-Dan-Dan!’
‘Hold on, Ursula!’
He could not tell if she heard. He was dimly conscious of Bryn behind him. Somehow Bryn had acquired an Aenglisc war axe – perhaps it had been in his pack, but he used it to brutal effect at Dan’s left while, at his right, Braveheart dodged the hooves of horses, snarled, and savaged, and stayed by Dan’s side. Ursula was still in the thick of the fighting. Her gold face-mask was in place but blood was pooling at her neck. A young Sarmatian fought at her right hand, fending off what blows he could but he was himself hard-pressed and tiring. As Dan watched, Ursula despatched a new attacker with a ferocious blow to his groin which sliced an artery. Blood pumped from the wound and only as the man fell did Dan recognise the aged body of Medraut and, riding towards him through all the chaos of battle, Rhonwen.
‘Get Rhonwen!’ Dan yelled over the battle noise.
Bryn seemed to understand.
A large Sarmatian was closing in on Ursula. Dan slashed Bright Killer’s sharpened edge into the man’s face and almost passed out with the pain. The world went black for a moment, but he kept upright and got to Ursula. She was barely conscious, only in her seat because one of her men held her there trying to defend her with his own shield. Dan fought to hang on to his own awareness, not to feel Ursula’s pain. He concentrated ruthlessly upon action. Dan could not lift her onto his horse but, instead, leaped onto hers. He timed it carefully and slapped his own horse hard so that it reared and startled the throng pressing against Ursula. The young Sarmatian, who wore Cynfach’s armour, left Ursula’s defence to Dan and was able to launch an attack of his own. Between them they made some space and rode free, Braveheart at their heels, Bryn fighting his way after them, herding Rhonwen and her mount, and keeping attackers from their backs. Ursula’s mental cry, almost like a mechanical distress beacon, had stopped by the time Dan got her back to Taliesin. Dan hastily sheathed Bright Killer, still sticky with congealing gore. In the distance he knew that the battle still raged. He heard the roar as the Aenglisc infantry charged, and spent their lives on Combrogi spears. It no longer mattered. The one remaining messenger helped Ursula from her horse and between them they carried her to a safe place. Dan ripped off Ursula’s mask. Her face was so white he was momentarily afraid that she had died. She was so covered in blood he could not see where she was injured. He made himself think and tried to focus his empathy on her alone. She was in terrible pain and had been cut in many places – the worst being her leg. He fashioned a tourniquet. Brother Frontalis shook his head. She’d lost too much blood.
‘I’ve got to get her to hospital – in my own world – get her a transfusion,’ said Dan. ‘If I could get her home – she’d be all right.’
Dan tried to do what he had once done with Medraut, tried to focus on his own health, and project that into her consciousness. It was too much. He could feel himself being dragged by the closeness of their rapport into the place of near-death where Ursula lay. He pulled away, physically gasping for air, tears of frustration and grief making it hard for him to see. Rhonwen dismounted and looked dispassionately at Ursula’s bloodless face.
‘She killed Medraut. She is a brave girl, braver perhaps than he was. She deserved Macsen’s trust. And yours,’ she added, looking into Dan’s haunted face. ‘She would not leave you.’
Dan looked at Rhonwen in surprise. She had dropped the illusion that had disguised her scars from all but Ursula. She looked tired, grief-stricken, and suddenly old.
‘How many Combrogi dead, Princess?’ said Taliesin bitterly. ‘You have killed off Macsen’s heritage true enough. Are you satisfied?’
Rhonwen said nothing.
Dan was checking Ursula for a pulse. She still had one, but it was weak.
‘I don’t care about that, Taliesin, this is no time to talk.’ Dan’s voice was sharp with grief, raw and wretched. He was willing Ursula to hang on, trying to lend her his strength without losing himself in her pain.
‘Rhonwen, please, raise the Veil! Please! By all you hold dear, she was never your enemy. Let us go home. We fought for your brother and we’ve fought for the Combrogi. We did all we could. Help her now! Let us go!’
Rhonwen silently turned her back on Taliesin. Dan thought she was crying; he could spare no empathy for anyone but Ursula, his fear for her blotted out everything. Rhonwen walked a small distance away and began to chant. To Dan’s eyes it looked at first as if nothing was happening. Every instant they remained in Arturus’s world the life ebbed away from Ursula. Then the first yellow tendrils of mist appeared and began to grow. At the use of magic, Ursula’s colour brightened, almost as if she drew strength from Rhonwen’s power. She found Dan’s hand and squeezed it. It was a weak squeeze, the slightest of pressures, but it was something. Dan dared to hope she might live. Taliesin and Dan lifted her between them and carried her into the growing vortex.
‘I love you, Dan. You came for me – fought for me?’Her mental voice was quiet but present. He clutched her hand, willing her to hang on, his tears uncontrolled and unnoticed running in rivulets down his face.
‘Of course I fought for you. I love you, too, Ursula. Rhonwen’s going to get us home. You’ll be fine. I’ll take you to hospital. You’ve only lost blood. You’ll be fine!’
He’d said what had seemed so impossible to say, now it seemed as easy and natural as breathing. Of course he loved her. He would not let her die. Frontalis and Bryn were on their knees praying.
‘Will you come, Bryn?’
He shook his head. ‘I have a son and I cannot leave him. God bless you, Dan, and know that in spite of everything I do not regret a moment spent in your service. You have been a worthy Lord.’
Dan could not speak in reply; his throat was constricted by tension and grief. He nodded and hoped that Bryn would understand and forgive as he had understood and forgiven so much else.
Braveheart stepped into the mist to stand beside Dan and pushed his nose into Dan’s hand, licking Ursula’s bloodied body.
‘Rhonwen?’ Taliesin met Rhonwen’s eye. ‘Will you come home?’
She shook her head. ‘Who is left to make sure the Combrogi are never forgotten if I go? You are ready to go now aren’t you?’
Taliesin, abashed, nodded.
‘Arturus is dead, Rhonwen. The Bear is no longer on the hillside and I fear it is over for us. We Combrogi had twenty more years because of him. That is better than nothing and perhaps it is enough to keep our memory alive. I have one remaining duty – to help take Ursula home. Her injury is my fault. She needs me now.’
Rhonwen nodded. It seemed as if Taliesin and Rhonwen understood each other very well, in spite of their differences.
‘You are right – there is no one left here I would trust to boil water. Cerdic cannot even make the battlefield on time. Tell Macsen I will make sure that the Combrogi are remembered here. I made a mistake, I see that now. I have hastened our end.’ She sighed, a sorrowful sound. ‘The Aenglisc have a word for fate, wyrd. It is my wyrd to put right what I have helped make wrong. That is what you want isn’t it? Isn’t that what you said this world needs?’
Taliesin nodded. ‘The Bear must be remembered too, the Bear of the prophecy – that’s important. He must be remembered as a good man. Maybe the memory is as important as the deeds. The Bear must be a beacon, bright in the dark chaos of this new Aenglisc world.’
Rhonwen was ashen faced, but more sincere than Dan had ever heard her. ‘I will see to it. Though it seems to me that this Ursula is as much the Bear as your Arturus Ursus. She is all that the Combrogi crave in a hero – and more, she leaves the field still breathing – maybe we can call on her again, when next we stand on the brink.’ She spoke with the strange cadences of a prophesying Heahrune, then stopped abruptly. ‘Do not worry, Taliesin, I have heard of the prophecy and I will ensure that the Celtic Bear is remembered. You have my triple oath.’
Taliesin nodded again, his eyes misty. ‘I will tell Macsen, if I should see him again, that he yet has a sister to be proud of.’
Dan was not interested in Rhonwen’s reputation; he only wanted to get Ursula home.
She seemed better, touched by the mist, but even so they had no time to waste.
‘We haven’t time for this, Taliesin. Can you direct the Veil to get me home?’ Dan no longer cared about anything but returning Ursula to their own world.
‘Goodbye, Rhonwen, my dear Brother Frontalis, Bryn.’ Taliesin sounded sad, chastened.
Dan grabbed Braveheart’s collar with one hand while, with the other, he helped support Ursula’s weight. The sadness was oppressive. Dan’s eyes were wet with tears. He would have liked to embrace Bryn and Frontalis, but there was not time. Dan placed his hand on Taliesin’s shoulder and thus joined, he allowed Taliesin to lead them all, Ursula, Dan and Braveheart, forward, through the yellow Veil, to home?