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taken.’
    ‘How did you manage to get from here to Lyme Regis so quickly? By my reckoning that’s a full day’s ride.’
    ‘You are familiar with the venefical skills?’
    ‘No. I have heard tales of great sorcery and, of course, listened many times to the tales of Merlin’s prowess with Arthur Pendragon and the Knights of the Round Table, and the both of you against Penda and the wolf woman, but in truth I always felt that much of it was myth coupled with circumstance that grew with each telling. Having learned of your exploits at Lyme Regis and what you have just said, I am beginning to think that I may have been wrong in that assumption.’
    ‘Venefici have a number of magical attributes that we pass down from one to the other. Merlin was my mentor. One of those attributes is the ability to transform immediately to another place.’
    Rawnie brought an earthenware pitcher of cool water and a roughly circular-shaped loaf of maize bread and placed them in front of Alfred. He thanked her and motioned for her to join them.
    ‘If your father still retains the ambition to add Wessex to his Northern regions, we could find ourselves on opposite sides,’ said Alfred, upending the pitcher of water and taking a long draught. ‘As the king of Wessex it’s my sworn duty to repel any invader.’
    ‘I doubt if my father will be engaging in any more warmongering,’ Rawnie replied quietly. ‘His foray into these lands was not successful and, due to my beloved husband here and the long magus, he was humiliated. His lesson was well learned. He will not be back.’
    ‘Good, that’s one less invader to worry about. Which brings me to the reason for my visit here.’
    He paused, gathering his thoughts.
    ‘My spies in the lowlands tell me that the Viking, under their king, a ferociously ambitious individual called Guthrum, is preparing a large fleet of long ships for an invasion. That invasion will be directed at Britain, and the word seemingly on everyone’s lips is that Wessex will be the starting point. The raid on Lyme Regis was a precursor to a much bigger invasion. There have been other raids further East on the Kentish coast. The next time they will come in their thousands and make landfall at different places before sweeping into Wessex, destroying everything in their path. My army is well trained and some ten thousand men strong, but it can’t be in every place they land, at the time they land, to face them. I need an advanced form of your early warning system in order to work out where and when each Viking force will land.’
    ‘I already have such a system in place,’ replied Twilight. ‘After
    Lyme Regis I thought it best to place pairs of my pica at intervals all along the Wessex coastline in case the lowlanders come back. One of each pair will patrol a small distance out to sea each day to pick up any long ships as soon as possible and track them to the shore, whilst the other flies inland to a staging post, where it will pass on the news to another, which will then come here to me. My birds are not fast long-distance flyers and can only fly so far, but they are clever, resourceful thinkers and can read a situation well.’
    ‘What are your intentions if the birds discover Viking ships?’
    ‘Like you, it is also my sworn duty to defend Celtic Wessex with all my might. I would attempt to stop them using all the astoundments at my command.’
    ‘We must join together as Arthur Pendragon and Merlin did,’ said the king. ‘My men and your sorcery will be a victorious combination.’
    It was Twilight’s turn to think for a moment.
    ‘I will gladly join you in repelling these heathens,’ replied the astounder eventually, ‘but there are no guarantees of our victory. As I learned at Lyme Regis, the Vikings have their own venefici. Also, my own philosophy, and one taught to me by the long magus, is that I will not side with anyone who seeks to dominate the people of Wessex for the sake of power or to spread a