Gemini Thunder by Chris Page Page B

find a quiet corner and sleep.’
    ‘I’ll do better than that. Your own bed awaits your slumber. Give me your hand.’
    And there he was standing beside his own straw pallet in the Avebury compound.
    Back on the castle roof, Twilight gazed deep in thought at the Viking as their camps began to stir. Below him a door opened, and King Alfred walked slowly out into the castle keep, clad in a long white nightshirt, the pale face showing even more fatigue. Guards bowed at his approach and backed into the shadows. A sleepless, besieged king must be given room to pace and worry.
    The view from up here is very good. Do you have a head for heights?
    He jerked his head upward, seeing the dark silhouette of the Wessex veneficus on the skyline.
    ‘Yes,’ he said to himself.
    Then he was there, high on the castle roof, sitting next to Twilight in his white nightshirt. Holding his hands up to still the astonished guards below, who were undecided as to try and follow or loose off their spears at the stranger beside him, Alfred nodded a bemused greeting and looked around.
    ‘I could get used to this.’
    ‘Stick to horses, my lord, they’re easier to control.’
    ‘Can you do that to all eight thousand of us, spirit us out of here?’ he asked.
    ‘Only a few at a time. It would take far too long. It’s a question of my power and how quickly such acts of transformation drain it away. Low power makes me vulnerable.’
    ‘Pity, we could all be gone by the time the Viking wake up.’
    ‘You’re forgetting their venefici. They would soon know. Worry not, there are other ways,’ said Twilight.
    For two hours as the sun rose gradually over the castle, the young king and veneficus sat pointing out over the battle arena spread out before them, making plans. Below them the guards tried hard not to look or even think the worst, but seeing their king sitting high on a roof with a sorcerer, in his nightshirt, didn’t make it easy.
    When Twilight finally let Alfred down, the king was feeling much, much better.
    ‘The Viking,’ said Twilight, sitting on the side of Desmond’s bed pallet, ‘have two weaknesses that can be exploited in battle. The first is that they only know one way to fight; a headlong rush straight at the enemy’s throat, making lots of noise and waving their awesome weapons about behind brightly coloured shields. It’s a frightening sight for anyone on the receiving end and will win many battles before they even start because their foes turn tail and run in the face of it. This happened in Winchester yesterday. King Alfred estimated that one in three of his defensive line turned tail before the charging Viking got to them. You can’t expect young, new recruits with barely four weeks’ military training to stand up to such a charge from the screaming hordes, and so it was.’
    ‘It’s a wonder that only one in three buckled.’ Desmond tickled the ears of both the baby bears curled up on his pallet. ‘What’s the second weakness?’
    ‘A complete reliance on their Norse deity as witnessed by the pictures of gods adorning their bodies and speech patterns. Gods dictate their lives and act as a reference point for dreams and achievements. They pray long and loud to them before a battle—for strength, for valour, for victory, family honour, and good pillage—and when they go to sea it’s for a favourable wind and good currents. If they don’t get any of that, it’s because the gods are angry with them. Individually and collectively they have done something wrong to anger them and must make up for it.’
    ‘How do they know the gods are listening?’
    ‘A good question and one I have been devoting some time to through study of the Nordic culture. The simple answer is they don’t, but as with the Celts and other civilizations, they place a great deal of faith in runes, a mystic set of poems quoted or written to encourage great deeds or ward off evil spirits. The rune is a form of communication from the gods. I