Warriors of Camlann by N. M. Browne Read Free Book Online

smell and black smoke swirled around Rhonwen’s ankles, dark shapes blossomed from the fire: horned demons with the torsos of men and the hind legs of goats; goblins with huge misshapen faces, hairy as apes. Each of the apparitions was armed with a shining spear. They closed on Ursula menacingly hissing, grunting and brandishing their spears. Their eyes burned with malevolence, the goblins drooled and slavered and stank like the dead. The stench almost made Ursula gag. The Aenglisc stumbled back further from the glade in horror and fear. To Ursula the figures lacked solidity. She knew how they were made. Could Rhonwen only manage illusion or was there more? Rhonwen had made real fire once, in Macsen’s land, and bore the scars on her face to prove it – could she still? It was that power she feared, the magic that changed things, not this ghoulish, insubstantial, spectacle.
    â€˜Do you think I’m afraid of your puppets of air, Rhonwen – have you still not mastered real magic?’
    Ursula had mastered real magic, in Macsen’s land, and now it was lost to her. The bitter taste of loss was nastier by far than the acrid smoke and putrid odours of Rhonwen’s conjuring.
    Ursula had known she could not kill Rhonwen in cold blood. She lacked Rhonwen’s ruthlessness. She was surer of it as she felt her warm flesh under her knife;saw Rhonwen’s blood well from the tiny puncture mark she’d made with her stolen knife. Rhonwen was brave. She was Combrogi and she did not flinch. How was Ursula to break this stand-off? She was hampered by her ignorance of the Aenglisc language. She dragged Rhonwen closer to the assembled men, closer to Dan’s sword, stuck so strangely in the ground. The apparitions followed them of course and the men shrank back from the black smoke and the grotesque gathering of fiends. Ursula wasn’t even sure that the men could still see her. For all she knew they might believe that she was being slaughtered by Rhonwen’s demonic allies.
    â€˜Hey, you!’ she called towards the man who had spoken in rude Latin. She made her voice as strident as possible and hoped that Rhonwen’s magic would not distort it.
    â€˜Tell the men I will kill the Heahrune if anyone approaches my friends or me! I am a Heahrune too and her magic can’t hurt me. Now, pass me the sword and get me a horse and I will leave you in peace.’
    The man looked fearful, the more so as Ursula was clearly unafraid of the unnatural creatures that threatened her. He said something to his companions – she could only hope it was a fair translation. She squinted past the ugliest of the goblins to see one man, who did not appear to be armed, back away. She trusted that he had gone to get her a horse.
    â€˜Lady, Heahrune,’ the Latin speaker began respectfully, ‘I cannot take the sword as it is trapped in that boulder.’
    Dan’s sword was not a metre in front of her, trapped in nothing more than the soft loam of the earth, though it seemed that only Ursula and Rhonwen herself could see that truth.
    â€˜Try!’ Ursula said shortly. The man looked at Rhonwen who appeared to blink her agreement. Ursula tightened her grip on her captive and tensed. The man pulled at the sword with all his strength but was unable to move it. Ursula could see his muscles straining as he pulled, but the sword would not shift. He signalled to his younger friend, who had the sturdy frame of a man well used to hard physical labour. He too strained convincingly without moving the sword hilt so much as a millimetre. Perhaps Rhonwen’s magic was more potent than it appeared. It looked like Ursula would have to get the sword herself. She was trying to work out how she might manage that manoeuvre without relinquishing her grip on Rhonwen when she heard the approaching rumble of horse’s hooves.
    â€˜Ursula!’ It was Bryn’s voice. He sounded petrified.
    â€˜I’m fine,