by N. M. Browne
It was a few nights later that Macsen arrived. As he had promised when he had left Kai and the others on the road, he was back for the festival of Samhain. Ursula was obscurely comforted by that. Macsen was dusty from the road and nursed a terrible gash to his arm. He too had paid a price for the success of his mission. He was pale with fatigue. Ursula hung back from the welcoming party. She could feel pain in the air. It was a soundless wail that set her teeth on edge. Someone was suffering. She did not want it to be Macsen. Then she saw Rhonwen. It was just a glimpse. Ursula did not want to meet her. Rhonwen’s cloak was grubby from the journey, but she still wore a splendid gold brooch to secure it. She carried herself as gracefully as ever and her long black hair hung loosely down her back. In the months since her disfigurement she had somehow had a silver mask fashioned to cover her scarred face. From behind its smooth surface her green eyes glittered dangerously. It covered her whole face from hair line to chin and emulated her cold beauty perfectly. It was a sculpted replica of Rhonwen’s features, its silken smooth surface broken only by two elegantly curved nostrils and two upwardly tilting eye holes. The effect was deeply disturbing. Now Ursula knew undeniably that her dream had been true. Until that moment she had pretended that the rumours might have been false. Now she knew that behind the mask lay the wreck of Rhonwen’s beauty, horribly disfigured by fire. That was the pain that hung in the air. It was Rhonwen’s pain. It grew. It felt like screaming in her ear. She saw Kai wince and the bard pale. There seemed no way to block it out. Fortunately Rhonwen herself chose to muffle it somehow, and it quietened to a whimper. The men all looked taken aback when they saw her. The rumour of her terrible injuries spread as fast as the flames that had injured her. They were practical men; their thoughts fixed on survival. One thought united them, as Rhonwen must have been aware. What of the alliance with Cadal?
Cadal himself came to greet her. She had heard the men talk disparagingly of him as one not to be trusted, more interested in gold than honour, but to his credit he did not flinch at the sight of the silver mask. He knelt at Rhonwen’s feet and offered her the traditional words of betrothal. The whole castle held its breath for the reply. Rhonwen’s silver tongue was silent. She merely nodded graciously and it was left to Finn to stall Cadal and whisk him away to a private audience with Macsen.
There were no women to attend Rhonwen. Queen Usca had only brought one serving woman. Kai spoke briefly to Dan and then courteously asked Bryn to assist the Princess Rhonwen. It was not what Bryn wished to do but he could not refuse Kai, especially as he was clearly acting on Macsen’s wishes.
Ursula had forgotten the headache that had plagued her since she had crossed the Veil. It always seemed to occur when she was near Rhonwen. It was as if the presence of Rhonwen’s magic disturbed her thoughts, put pressure on her skull. With Rhonwen’s return that headache returned. It combined with Ursula’s dull awareness of Rhonwen’s own pain to make Ursula very short-tempered.
It did not help that no one else seemed to be aware of it or at least did not speak of it. Both the bard and Kai looked strained and Ursula wondered if their apparent sensitivity to magic also encompassed sensitivity to this terrible projection of pain. She did not like to ask. She was not at all sure that she wanted anyone to know that she thought she could hear silent screams. It made her own sanity all the more suspect. It was one of those many times when she longed to be home, safe with her mum. She was so tired of the pain and the fear, the hard, unforgiving nature of the Combrogi life. She was in no mood to deal with Huw when he made his move.
‘Hey, Boar Skull, you looking for your little bear sark? Very close friends, aren’t you?’
He was surrounded by his coterie of hangers-on. There were many more of them since the death of the King.
‘You’re not quite so impressive without your tame madman to defend you, are you, Boar Skull?’
It occurred to Ursula that he might have been trying to rile her, but her general irritation was such that she didn’t really care. Maybe a good fight would clear her head and if it did not, she knew it would feel almost as good to shut Huw up for good as it would to be free of the headache. With a warrior’s unerring instinct for a fight, men were gathering at the tension in the air. She knew they were a hair’s breadth away from taking bets.
‘Do you want to try your luck?’ She towered above Huw. She could feel the earth’s strength surging in her veins. He would be a fool to try his luck, but the Combrogi had no rules against being a fool. Maybe Kai was wrong and Huw was such a fool.
It is possible that Huw hadn’t looked at her too hard lately, because now that he paused to weigh her up as a serious opponent he blanched visibly. It was still true that she had only been training for months rather than years, but the hard, fit body that faced Huw belied that fact. Boar Skull had been the most incompetent warrior Huw had ever seen. He’d seen servants with much greater natural talent. Boar Skull had quietly endured the taunting and the other things he’d done. Huw had thought him a coward. The boy that looked at Huw now did not look like a coward or indeed much like a boy. It was a warrior that faced him with an expression as impassive and as immovable as rock. Huw had made a mistake but he could not back out now without a huge loss of face.
Huw drew his sword. Ursula found that she was not afraid. Had anyone pulled a knife on her at school she would have been a gibbering wreck. A sword was nothing more than an extremely long knife honed to a sharpness that a butcher would envy. She was a little surprised at her lack of fear and by the ease with which she had pulled out her own sword in response. She found herself eager to prove herself a man with one part of her mind just as with the other she was horrified at her casual acceptance of a level of violence a civilised person should abhor. Maybe she was no longer a civilised person. Maybe she had been desensitised by months of training and the sights she had seen since crossing the Veil.
Huw started to dance around her dodging and feinting. She watched him cold-eyed. She had no shield to hand so that was one less thing to worry about. Huw was very nervous. She could smell his fear as strongly as she could see its hectic glow around his body. She remembered her conversation with Kai. He had asked her not to kill Huw if he challenged her. She would try to do as he had asked, but she was suddenly coolly aware that what she had been learning were the techniques of death. It was hard to restrict injuries when you were wielding close to a metre of razor-sharp metal. This was no playground fight. If she wanted it to end in no more than humiliation for Huw she could not slash at him with her sword. She surprised herself by what she did next. As he dodged she raised her foot and tripped him up. As he recovered she punched him hard in the jaw. She had only seen that move in old films and was surprised at its effect. Her hand stung with the impact but her timing had been perfect. All her considerable force had been transmitted through that punch. Huw was knocked out cold.
‘He has bad manners for a boy of royal blood. He is lucky I did not think it fit to kill him.’ Ursula spoke very deliberately. There was no greater sign of contempt than to call a warrior of the Combrogi a ‘boy’.
She was not even breathing hard, though she felt quite shocked by what she had done. It had been a calculated alternative to killing him. She, Ursula, had considered killing someone. It was a terrible thought. She had not done so but she knew that the choice had been a real one – she could have killed him. That’s what she had been doing with all this work, learning how to kill. It was something to keep her awake at night and this was the first time she had really understood what Hane’s training had done to her. She, like Dan, was a potential killer now. It was not a happy thought.
To her surprise more than one of ‘Macsen’s men’ clapped her on the back approvingly. Huw was not a popular man. She caught Kai’s eye and he grinned at her. If Huw was made King she might have to leave Craigwen in a hurry, but then if Huw were made King she would not be alone in that.
Chapter Seventeen
Dan’s response to the news of Ursula’s encou
nter with Huw was not what she had expected. While he was pleased that she had come out of it well, he was very disturbed that he had not been there to help her.
‘I’m a big girl now,’ Ursula complained in irritated English.
‘Shhh! Don’t say that here. Do you want to be sent off to Ireland with Rhonwen?’
Ursula’s headache had not eased. She could also still feel Rhonwen’s pain, a dull ache like scarcely bearable toothache. She did not want to think about Rhonwen.
‘My dream was right you know.’ Ursula forgot her irritation. ‘She was burned in a magic fire. I don’t know how she did it. Before with the dragon it just seemed like a dragon. It wasn’t real.’
‘It seemed real enough to me.’ Dan was not sure what Ursula was getting at. Her talk of magic and dreams disturbed him. In this strange world he relied on Ursula being normal. That she was not ‘normal’ any more was a fact he consistently tried to deny to himself.
Their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of Kai and Gwyn. They were both dressed formally in their most magnificent and warlike best. They had washed their hair in lime so that it stood out from their heads as if sculpted in marble. Dan and Ursula automatically adopted a ‘ready’ stance. Kai approved.
‘You have both learned Hane’s lessons well. He is recommending that you both be accepted as warriors by the tribe. You will be the first outlanders to have lived so long and also to have proved worthy. We hope it will be to Macsen that you give your allegiance. Queen Usca is deliberating now.’
Both Dan and Ursula looked as taken aback as they felt. They had been with the Combrogi long enough to recognise the honour for what it was and to be overcome with it. To be made a warrior here, through their own effort, was like being given an Oscar or the Nobel Peace Prize. Warriors were born and raised and trained from childhood. They were not made of fifteen-year-old outsiders. Ursula spoke first.
‘Kai, we accept! It is an honour. We are proud that you think us worthy. What if it is Huw who is chosen?’
‘Don’t worry. Not every King lives to rule. Queen Usca chooses. Often as not the tribe decides. Go to the bathhouse and scrub yourselves clean. Bryn will bring you oils with which to anoint yourselves and special garments. At the moment of oath-taking you must appear before the King naked and then Rhodri will tattoo you with the sacred symbols of our people. My servant will fetch you when we are ready for you.’
Ursula had heard nothing after the word naked. She found herself colouring to the roots of her hair. It was like a nightmare. She was to appear naked before several hundred men. Instead of being accepted as a warrior she would be rejected and sent away from Dan and Kai and Bryn and Braveheart to another place where she didn’t know the rules and where everything she had tried so hard to learn would be useless. She gulped hard to prevent the tears from falling. Kai could see them shining in her eyes, but he might have thought them tears of pride. Dan did not risk looking at her until Kai had gone.
‘God, they are barbarians – they will kill Huw if it suits them without batting an eyelid. What are we doing here? Why are we so pleased to be warriors?’
‘Dan. Right at this moment I’m not interested in Kai’s ethics. I have to appear before Macsen or, worse, Huw, naked. What am I going to do?’
Dan looked at her blankly. ‘Oh, I see what you mean. Can’t you maybe plead extreme shyness? It worked with the bathhouse. They’ve never made you bathe with the others. They know our customs are different. Maybe we can say it’s the ultimate dishonour for us to be naked in front of several hundred warriors or something.’
It might work. Ursula found her breathing was returning to normal.
‘Dan, I don’t want to go to Ireland. How can I get us home if I’m so far away from you? I don’t want to have to be someone’s wife and have babies and everything. I’m really scared.’
Dan looked at her. He couldn’t bear to see her so upset.
‘Even if you do have to show yourself naked you’ve proved yourself, Ursula, as a warrior. There aren’t enough warriors. They might not make you go. You’re not Combrogi, not really.’ She could see him running through his mind the possibility of several hundred male warriors without their women knowing that Ursula was one. Dan blushed.
‘You might have to kill a few before they left you alone.’
‘I don’t think Macsen would risk that. I think he’d send me away.’
‘Don’t worry about it. We may get away with it. I’ll think of something.’
They walked to the bathhouse with heavy hearts. The Great Hall was filling up with warriors waiting to hear the judgement of the Queen.
Bryn had been loaned back to them for the ceremony. He was very keen to tell them of Rhonwen’s face, which he had seen without its mask. Ursula silenced him and made him explain what she had to do with the oil and everything necessary for the rite. Reluctantly Ursula bathed and anointed her body with it. Bryn had long ago ceased offering to help her. She got herself ready alone. At one point there was a huge roar from the Great Hall. Queen Usca had made her decision. She was no fool. It had been Macsen she had chosen as King. So it was to Macsen that Ursula would have to appear naked. It was a terrible, horribly embarrassing thought. She wanted to go home very, very badly. She could not even bring herself to imagine the humiliation she was about to undergo. There was no escape. When Kai’s servant came she struggled to pull herself together. She decided on a strategy. She would be proud. She had played a man’s game and won on men’s terms. She was a warrior. She would not let herself down. She had proved herself any man’s equal. What was wrong with being a woman anyway?
Dan watched her anxiously. Ursula had never looked less like a woman. Macsen and Huw and the others were in for a shock. She had her granite face on. Her blonde hair was oiled and scraped away from her face so that nothing detracted from the sharply defined planes of her face. She made a handsome-looking man, high cheekbones, firm jaw, piercing green eyes. Her muscles had bulked out quite incredibly in the months they had been with the Combrogi. Could she have always have had them? Had they just been hidden under fat before? It didn’t seem likely. This world had done strange things to them both.
He and Ursula walked side by side to the end of the Hall. It was Macsen and Queen Usca who now sat together on the couch. Rhonwen, Cadal, Kai, Rhodri and Hane knelt next to them and the rest of the Combrogi sat in their characteristic lotus position in front of them. Dan and Ursula felt and looked terribly conspicuous walking through the seated mass. All eyes were on them: the outlanders who could fight like Combrogi warriors: Boar Skull and The Bear Sark. Bryn had tried to restrain Braveheart but he did not have the strength. There was laughter as the great dog broke free and squeezed himself between the outlanders. The loyalty of the late Madoc’s Combrogi war-dog only enhanced the status of the new warriors. There was general agreement that this time Rhonwen had done well. And if there were only two, they were better than nothing. They proved that outlanders could survive on Combrogi soil and even thrive, if they had the good sense to submit to the discipline of the tribes.
It seemed a long walk through the seated men to Macsen.
Kai prompted them to kneel.
Macsen looked impressive in his regal finery, even his leather breastplate was gilded with elaborate swirls. Seated he still looked enormous to Dan. His eyes were warm and he whispered, ‘You are welcome, Bear Sark, and you too, Boar Skull.’ He then spoke formally to the assembled company. ‘It pleases me that my first act of Kingship is to take the oath of these outlanders who have served the Combrogi well since the Princess Rhonwen called them through The Warrior’s Veil. Let them show themselves ready to serve as warriors in traditional warrior dress.’
There was laughter at that, for once all the tribes had fought naked apart from their tribal tattoos. It was not useful when fighting armed and armoured Raven legionaries and the custom had more or less died out. Two servants helped Ursula and Dan disrobe. It was unnerving. Even Dan felt uncomfortable. He felt very expo
sed. To be naked, among so many elaborately clothed people! He felt acutely self-conscious and very un-warrior like. Ursula was like a block of stone. She was as much lost inside herself as ever Dan was in the midst of his bear sark phase. He shot her a worried glance. She did not acknowledge it. He tensed himself for the moment of truth. Neither of them had attempted to argue their way out of the ceremony. When it came to it, it was not something you could do. Dan waited. He held his breath, anticipating Macsen’s cry of surprise. None came.
Rhodri stepped forward to paint Ursula’s muscular forearms with the winding serpent of the tribe. Dan stared at Ursula in frank disbelief. The person standing next to him was as much a man as he was himself, if not more so. Ursula’s face was closed and impassive. It did not seem as if she was really there. Dan did not know what to think.
‘Stop!’ It was Rhonwen’s voice of command. ‘This is no man.’
Queen Usca responded with a low chuckle.
‘He’ll do well enough for me!’
Macsen looked at Rhonwen in confusion. Ursula looked at Rhonwen with very cold eyes.
Macsen spoke in an undertone. ‘What are you talking about? Kai, I fear my sister is unwell.’
Rhonwen’s voice was edged with hysteria. ‘This is an illusion.’ She pointed a quivering finger at Ursula. ‘This person is not a man.’