by Chris Page
Chapter 8
When the history of this time is written, it will not speak of the heroics of ordinary Celtic folk such as Sam Southee and those of his cohort and the many thousands who lost their lives for Alfred at Winchester or Chippingham. Neither will it make any mention of the pointless sacrifices made by Septimus Godleman and Ebroin and his fellow druids at the Order of Lacock, or any other of the many families and small gatherings swept aside by the vicious Viking as they charged through the Wessex countryside.
History relies on rulers, leaders, those at the top; therefore it is King Alfred who will carry the weight of recall of this period as did Arthur before and the Romans before him. And so on through time. The stardust of history only sprinkles the shoulders of the sovereign absolute. The rest of us remain in a kind of obscure thrall to their crowns.
The huge parts played by the Wessex venefici, particularly Twilight, will not receive much of a mention either, and, whilst the alpha skills of Merlin’s earthshine will vibrate down the years, he is an exception. The murky skills of the venefici are too oblique and misunderstood, nay, considered impossible even by those living with them and witnessing the day-to-day reality of the astoundments in action, to ever be considered real.
The general human condition of this time is programmed to accept only what it understands. Gentle, lyrical Celts worshipping the idols and symbols of their forefathers, united by shared customs and dialects, shackled by poverty and the bondage of serfdom. They will raise sacred altars to diverse deities, build shrines of earth and stone, fashion jewelled icons, charms, and luck pieces, and by these swear oaths, promises, incantations, and sacrifices, but none of it will relate to the venefical accomplishments. Why should it?
Inexplicable, ethereal, phenomena-changing, shape-shifting, mind communication, and immediate transporting between places belong to another world, another dimension, an alien place inhabited by demi-gods where nothing is as it seems.
The great advantage venefici have over all other real or imagined wonder-workers is that they walk among us, look like us, and live with us as ordinary human beings. For ten thousand years, right from the very beginning, Nuada the First Chosen, venefici have lived as those around them did. A brief walk through the venefical line from Nuada to the twenty-eighth, Malcolm of Marlborough, the forty-second Quendis of Bassett, the fiftieth Prefect Elaine, the eightieth Eleanor of the Horses, the ninety-fifth Zero the Romany, right up to the present holder Twilight, each and every one of them appeared and acted, most of the time, as ordinary mortals.
Even when they officiated at the annual ceremony of the cowering dead at Stonehenge, the prime reason for the Wessex venefical presence on this turning earth, they still looked and acted completely normal. This enigmatic ordinariness and its accompanying anonymity were deliberately fostered by the Wessex venefici.
Merlin made a bit of a mess of it by becoming famous alongside King Arthur, a situation he sought for the last fifty years of his life to rectify through the redemption of their time together. That he never succeeded was due to the golden glow he’d previously created around Dux Bellorum, the charismatic battle leader that King Arthur became in the eyes of the people.
Wessex venefici do not want to acquire the status of a special person or demi-god, or be on the receiving end of any form of worship or virtuous homage to their skills and achievements with the enchantments. Other astounders may be different, but the Wessex preference has always been to quietly go about their business without fear or favour, living normally and working for the collective good of the Celts and Wessex. Until someone threatens that collective good—then the responses are quicker and more deadly than a snake strike as the cloak of anonymity is thrown aside to defend the cause.
And still is to this day.
Freyja, welcome to my lands, where you will find matters far more difficult than those you left and from where I have just returned. I never forget an injustice to my people or my animals. That is why I have just destroyed your other odious twin, Go-ian, your son. He was responsible for the deaths of many Celts and animals whilst he was here, and for that he must pay the ultimate price. I gave him no more chance than your other half-powered girl Gemini, and his end was instant. From the very brief conversation we had before I sent him to Valhalla, he was a spent, miserable, and finished force. He told me that when his sister died by my hand, his life effectively ended. When you sent him home in disgrace there was nothing left for him to live for. Had I not finished his miserable existence, it was only a matter of time before he would have done it himself. That is what you and your brutal raiders have brought about by coming here. Soon all of you will suffer the same fate, most of it by my hand.
No more bears or eagles either, odious, motherless hag. They left your employ with the deaths of your odious spawn. All you have left are those useless pigs in ligamen to you. Other than grunting and squealing I cannot see what use they will be other than target practice, something else for us to kill and roast over our glowing fires.
So now, wrinkled replacement for mediocrity, you are old, childless, and in my land. The brutal Viking will not have a veneficus to take them forward when you are gone, and the entire civilization will be quickly wiped out. Which will be soon, evil little Freyja, so named after the Norse goddess of love.
Very soon.
Freyja was sitting with Guthrum, Ove Thorsten, and Olaf Tryggvason in the Combe Castle hall when she received this mind message from Twilight. For a moment she went rigid and then slowly got to her feet. Guthrum’s excessive and frenetic bursts of vein-straining, berserker rage were nothing compared to the one the wrinkled old venefica gave in to now. A deafening scream ripped out of her throat with the velocity of a lightning streak. Its piercing violence slammed through the castle and surrounding grounds, causing strong, Roman-built walls to tremble dust and mortar from the joints, and trees to topple over. Warriors dived for cover as it smashed down their tents and scorched across the landscape. The local rivers boiled and frothed, cattle were flattened, crops beheaded, and birds knocked from the air. Guthrum and his companions were driven back against the wall as if spun in a vast centrifuge and held there like human paintings. Solid oaken furniture disintegrated to splinters all around the room, and a mélange of pewter plates and utensils ricocheted around like red hot hell-cats. The only thing that didn’t move in the catatonic blast was the slight figure of Freyja herself. Who finally wound down.
Deafened and stunned warriors picked themselves from the floor, looking about them in confusion as debris fell to the ground. Gradually everything got back to normal, apart from the mess everywhere. Freyja stood silent for a long time, her gray old head down. Olaf Tryggvason was the first to approach her.
‘The Wessex veneficus has done something?’ he asked quietly, guessing that such an outburst could only be down to one person.
Freyja raised her wrinkled old face to the red-haired chieftain.
‘He has been to the lowlands and killed my son,’ she replied in an empty voice. ‘Both of my twin babies are now dead by his hand.’
For the next three days, Freyja brooded and dreamed of the many ways she would revenge her twins. Finally, leaving her grief aside, she decided that there was no vengeance in inactivity. The fight-back began with a swift transformation to the clouds over the Penbarrow hamlet where she waited until Ike Penbarrow and his son poled their early morning, roundabout way through the weed-clogged streams of the Levels. Eventually after much doubling back they tied up at a remote island. Dropping off various sacks of supplies on a shallow bank, they then retraced their route carefully to the main channels where they then began their daily rounds of bartering and exchanging goods. In the middle of the remote island, a wisp of smoke drifted from the old hovel well-hidden in a small copse at its centre. Guessing that Twilight was there protecting King Alfred, Freyja kept high and distant lest she be discovered. Eventually Desmond, the troubadour and companion of Twilight, came out of the h
ovel and began to carry the sacks inside. Got him.
That night she confirmed to Guthrum that she had discovered the whereabouts of the two people they all wanted dead most on earth and plans were made.
Ike Penbarrow and Ifor followed Twilight’s instructions perfectly for four days and on the fifth day stayed at home. Each day they’d poled the circuitous route to False Island and dropped off some sacks filled with earth. False Island was the name given by Desmond to this place. On the fifth day as the dawn light began to glimmer around the Levels, the soft splashing of many paddles could be heard converging upon the island where Ike and Ifor had been watched by Freyja delivering supplies. As the small flotilla of stolen boats of all shapes and sizes began to converge on the island, they fanned out to surround it. Each boat had between five and ten heavily armed Viking in it, some of whom were paddling quietly. The lead boat was commanded by Ove Thorsten, and Freyja was poised high in the air above.
A puff of wispy smoke eased skyward from the hole in the hovel roof, signalling that someone was awake and stoking the embers of the fire into life. Each boat pulled quietly into a landing area on the island and waited for the barrage to begin. As soon as everyone was in place, Freyja opened up with salvo after salvo onto the old hovel, which immediately disappeared under the onslaught in a cloud of smoke and flames.
‘Now!’ she shouted in Thorsten’s ear, and the Viking warriors poured out of the boats and charged into the blanket of smoke that had began to settle over the small island. Where the hovel had stood was a gaping great crater. All the trees in the copse around it had been blown to pieces.
There wasn’t a Celtic body in sight. No weapons, clothing, supplies.
Nothing.
As the eighty warriors stood around the still smoking crater where the hovel had been, the small island trembled for a moment, then erupted in a huge explosion, blowing every one of them to pieces. When the dust and debris finally settled down there was nothing left, just a huge muddy pool where the island had been.
And besides eighty warriors, Guthrum had lost his lifelong friend and second in command, Ove Thorsten. And Freyja had just learned why her children had failed to kill this Wessex veneficus.
He was very good at this sort of thing.
‘When False Island went up, I reckon you could’ve heard it in Combe Castle,’ said Desmond to Gode. Buried around False Island had been seventy-five big thunderbolts just waiting for Twilight to set them off. When he’d done so, he was almost directly above Freyja high in the air and had taken great joy in her stupefaction at the backfiring of her own plan.
Then, to rub salt into the wound, he’d whispered in her ear. ‘Soon it will be your turn, odious hag-mother. Very, very soon.’
Leaving a scream in the air, she’d immediately transformed back to the castle and Guthrum. He wouldn’t be very pleased either. They could both exercise their tempers in any way they liked. The Combe estate would become a graveyard under the piercing ire of their lamentations.
Twilight now had the problem with Ike and his family. Freyja’s wrath would be directed at them, especially Ike and Ifor, for leading her to False Island. He transformed immediately to Ike’s hovel and landed in the middle of a huge family argument. When they got over the shock of Twilight suddenly appearing in their midst, the argument continued.
The two sides were predictably Ike and Ifor on one side and Gretchen, her five daughters, two other sons, and two sons-in-law on the other.
Ike was doing his best to persuade them to leave immediately, but he was completely outnumbered. He turned to Twilight.
‘They all heard the explosion of False Island. Unfortunately none of them believes it was your doing. They think that it was the devil himself blowing up Alfred, who they are all against because he is a Christian. An incarnation of a so-called devil visited them here.’
‘He visited you here?’ asked Twilight. ‘He did. He came in response to my call as his bondswomen and bondsmen,’ Gretchen replied haughtily.
‘Don’t tell me.’ The astounder chuckled. ‘He had a black face with heavy horns and slanted, triangular, yellow iridescent eyes with the body cloaked entirely in a black silken cloth and a sharp, three-pointed spear held in his right hand. Like this . . .’ They all gasped. Standing in front of them was the same devil who had visited them before. Twilight chuckled again, a deep-throated rumble that seemed to shake the entire area. Then he was Twilight again.
‘Gretchen, that was Freyja, the Viking venefica, not the devil. Like me, she can change her appearance to anything she wants. She used it so that you would tell her how to find King Alfred and me. I knew she’d been here. We can trace where she goes. We then made a plan. Ike and Ifor made trips on the other side of the Levels to a place we named False Island to lure her and the Viking there. The plan was that they would think King Alfred and I were there. The explosion you heard was me killing eighty warriors and a senior commander sent by Freyja to destroy us. Freyja will know that Ike and Ifor set her up and will be coming for them very soon. After that she will come for you . . . all of you. I promised Ike that I would do my best to save you all. I can do that by transforming you out of here to a place Freyja will never find. If you choose not to accept that option, I cannot guarantee your safety.’
‘He’s right, Gretch, every word,’ said Ike quietly.
‘Every word, Mum,’ echoed Ifor.
Gretchen looked around at the rest of her family. ‘I don’t know what to think,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘He was so real, so . . . right.’
Then they all started talking at once.
Twilight motioned to Ike and Ifor for the three of them to go outside. Let them decide without any interruption. It took a long time for them to reach a decision. Their voices rose and fell, became agitated, exasperated, and reasoned. Finally Gretchen came outside.
‘We have decided. Everyone goes . . . except me. I am staying. Staying with my beliefs and what I hold to be true. I will not move from this place.’
Her lips were compressed into a thin line, and she folded her arms in a resolute gesture of immovability.
Ike’s shoulders slumped and Ifor burst into tears.
Twilight went inside.
‘Would everyone come outside and hold hands,’ he said sharply. ‘Now!’
When they’d gone, Gretchen stood in the middle of the hovel and closed her eyes. So much for their diabolical beliefs. It’s only when the going gets tough that the true bondswoman comes to the fore. The fires of conflict and death didn’t frighten her; that’s what the practice of devilhood was all about. Full of self-righteous fervour, she closed her eyes and began to call on Chaldean once again. Before she got the first line out, the deep voice interrupted her.
‘I’m here,’ said the voice of the devil. They should have listened to her, not that shaman shape-shifter.
Her years of diabolism had really stood for something. With a great feeling of passion and loyalty swelling in her breast, Gretchen opened her eyes.
To the sight of an old, withered woman standing in front of her. ‘I am Freyja,’ cackled the toothless vision. ‘Or, as you would know me, Satan.’
Freyja’s laughter rang around the small Penbarrow hamlet on the Cary River.
The loss of her twins and venefical pride at the False Island debacle came spitting to the fore. This large, stupid, devil-worshipping woman was all she had to salve her pain.
So be it.
The watching pica later told Twilight that Gretchen’s screams from within the hovel lasted a long time. Finally they died to a croak and then stopped altogether. Then Freyja left. Shortly afterward, thunderbolts rained down on the hamlet and, like False Island, the Penbarrow hamlet disappeared in a muddy pool of swirling water.
Two days later, Twilight was sitting with King Alfred, Edward de Gaini, Gode, and Desmond. He had just transformed back from Tintagel Castle in Kernow whe
re he had sat with Ike Penbarrow for a long time talking about Gretchen’s death. He’d spared Ike the gory details. Although the Levels boatman was expecting it, the news still hit him hard. As Twilight left him, he was tearfully preparing to tell Ifor and the rest of the family. The good news was that Tintagel and the surrounding area of Camelford were rapidly filling up with soldiers. Lured by the tales of the defeats at Winchester and Chippingham told by the returning soldiers and refugees to the West Country, men of Wessex were responding to Alfred’s call to arms. ‘There are almost two thousand men there already,’ said Twilight. ‘It’s putting a strain on the local food supply, and winter hasn’t really started yet. By next spring when you hope to face Guthrum, the land will be stripped of all possible means of support.’
‘With two thousand there already, I should be able to raise a force capable of inflicting a substantial defeat on the berserker and his clones,’ replied the king. ‘But how do I feed them all?’
‘First of all they need leadership. Two thousand leaderless men wandering around Kernow for the winter will get bored and get up to mischief. They also need proper military training to stop them deserting in the face of those howling savages.’
‘Sounds like a job for you, Edward,’ the king said with a smile.
‘I think you should all go,’ said Twilight. ‘Our plan to spend the winter here has been compromised. Without Ike to supply you here on Swifty’s Island you will all starve soon or get discovered by Freyja and the raiders as you search for food. At least Tintagel will be safe from the Viking. All the signs are they will winter in Combe.’
‘And you?’ Gode asked, still exasperated at the thought of the Viking tearing her beloved estate apart. ‘Where will you be?’
‘Here, there, and everywhere, but not tomorrow. Tomorrow is a very special day in my annual calendar and one I cannot miss. I have to attend to my venefical duties at the crucible of the cowering dead. It would suit me to have all of you secure at Tintagel before