The Winter King - 1 by Bernard Cornwell Read Free Book Online

dismissively.
     
     
Tanaburs raised his moon-tipped staff and held it quivering towards the ghost-fence. King Gundleus watched his Druid's performance, then drained his wine and tossed the drinking horn on to the floor. "Maybe I shall sleep here after all," the King said, 'but first let us inspect the sleeping quarters." He waved Tanaburs forward, but the Druid was nervous. Merlin was the greatest Druid in Britain, feared even beyond the Irish Sea, and no one meddled in his life lightly, yet the great man had not been seen for many a long month and some folk whispered that Prince Mordred's death had been a sign that Merlin's power was waning. And Tanaburs, like his master, was surely fascinated by what lay behind the door for secrets could lie there that would make Tanaburs as mighty and learned as the great Merlin himself. "Open the door!" Gundleus ordered Tanaburs.
     
     
The butt of the moon staff moved tremulously towards one of the skulls, hesitated, then touched the yellowing bone dome. Nothing happened. Tanaburs spat on the skull, then tipped it over before snatching his staff back like a man who has prodded a sleeping snake. Again nothing happened and so he reached his free hand towards the door's wooden latch.
     
     
Then he stopped in terror.
     
     
A howl had echoed in the hall's smoking dark. A ghastly screech, like a girl being tortured, and the awful sound drove the Druid back. Norwenna cried aloud with fear and made the sign of the cross. The baby Mordred began wailing and nothing Ralla could do would quiet him. Gundleus first checked at the noise, then laughed as the howl faded. "A warrior," he announced to the nervous hall, 'is not frightened of a girl's scream." He walked towards the door, ignoring Bishop Bedwin who was fluttering his hands as he tried to restrain the King without actually touching him.
     
     
A crash sounded from the ghost-guarded door. It was a violent, splintering noise and so sudden that everyone jumped with alarm. At first I thought the door had fallen before the King's advance, then I saw that a spear had been thrust clean through it. The silver-coloured spearhead stood proud of the old, fire-blackened oak and I tried to imagine what inhuman force had been needed to drive that sharpened steel through so thick a barrier.
     
     
The spear's sudden appearance made even Gundleus check, but his pride was threatened and he would not back down in the face of his warriors. He made the sign against evil, spat at the spearhead, then walked to the door, lifted its latch and pushed it open.
     
     
And immediately stepped back with horror on his face. I was watching him and I saw the raw fear in his eyes. He took a second pace away from the open door, then I heard Nimue's keening cry as she advanced into the hall. Tanaburs was making urgent motions with his staff, Bedwin was praying, the baby was crying while Norwenna had turned in her chair with a look of anguish.
     
     
Nimue came through the door and, seeing my friend, even I shivered. She was naked and her thin white body was raddled with blood that had dripped down from her hair to run in rivulets past her small breasts and on to her thighs. Her head was crowned with a death-mask, the tanned face-skin of a sacrificed man that was perched above her own face like a snarling helmet and held in place by the skin of the dead man's arms knotted about her thin neck. The mask seemed to have a dreadful life of its own for it twitched as she walked towards the Silurian King. The dead man's dry and yellow body-skin hung loose down Nimue's back as she stuttered forward in small irregular steps. Only the whites of her eyes were showing in her bloody face, and as she twitched forward she called out imprecations in a language fouler than any soldier's tongue, while in her hands were two vipers, their dark bodies gleaming and their flickering heads questing towards the King.
     
     
Gundleus retreated, making the sign against evil, then he remembered