Warriors of Camlann by N. M. Browne

a leader.’
    â€˜Is he one of the good guys?’
    â€˜He’s against Rhonwen and he says the Aenglisc are savages. Are they?’
    â€˜I don’t think I saw their caring-sharing side. They were going to kill me and let Rhonwen tell the future from my death throes. What does Taliesin think?’
    â€˜I think he sees these people as Combrogi, even though they seem more Roman to me and some of them don’t even speak the tribal languages.’
    â€˜You don’t seem convinced, Dan.’
    â€˜I’ve had enough fighting. All I want to do is go home.’
    With that, they were escorted back into Arturus’s council chamber where Dan greeted Bryn with a warrior’s embrace. Bryn almost glowed with joy that his Lord still lived. Dan fought a lump in his throat. He’d never realised how much he meant to the Combrogi orphan. He made a private vow to be more worthy of the boy’s absolute and unqualified adoration.
    There was a tension in the air that must have been obvious to anyone. Taliesin stood silently to the left of Arturus while Medraut stood to his right, looking remarkably cheerful in spite of his wound. He did not seem to be in any pain but was being persuaded to sit down by an insistent Brother Frontalis. The walls of the chamber were lined with men. The man Ursula knew as Larcius was lounging on the sheepskin-covered couch. Dan sensed Ursula’s sudden confusion when she saw Larcius in clean garments. He realised bleakly that she was very attracted to him. She even blushed. It made him feel acutely uncomfortable.
    Ursula had been too busy talking with Dan to change her clothes. She was caked in dried blood and dirt and stank of horses and stale sweat. Her pale blonde hair was filthy and hung like rats’ tails around her face. Dan thought she looked beautiful, if in an unconventional way.
    The Duke eyed her coldly.
    â€˜Do you claim to be the Boar Skull of legend?’
    â€˜I have been called that, sir, yes,’ she said calmly, undeterred by the tension in the air.
    â€˜But you are a woman.’
    â€˜Yes, that’s true. Didn’t Taliesin tell you that bit?’
    She was joking but Dan knew the moment she said it that Taliesin had omitted that part of the tale. Dan glanced at the bard; his lips were drawn into a thin line but his face remained otherwise impassive. Perhaps he’d thought her transformation into the mighty Boar Skull too unbelievable. Ursula was smiling; her joy at finding Dan had put her into an uncharacteristically buoyant mood. It worried Dan because to him she seemed enormously vulnerable. She was taller than almost all the men there, strong and athletically lean, but compared to the burly men all round she seemed young and slight and horribly, innocently, unaware of the disapproval she was generating. Dan felt the waves of it combined with anger that the hero Taliesin had promised was this tall, filthy, straggle-haired girl. He wanted to warn her. She had learned to fight well as Ursula but without her magically-enhanced alter ego, she was no more the Boar Skull than he was the Bear Sark. He sensed trouble.
    â€˜Taliesin neglected to mention that you were a girl, yes, and it makes me wonder how true the rest of his tales were.’
    Taliesin said nothing, but Dan felt Ursula’s anger begin to blaze. He wished he still had his sword. If they hurt her he was not sure he could keep from killing them all or dying in the attempt. His sword, still moulded to his own hand, was in Ursula’s strong grip. They had not thought to disarm her, which summed up their expectations of her.
    â€˜I don’t know why Taliesin did not mention my gender; perhaps he did not think it important. I have fought as a Combrogi warrior and I have proved my worth to those whose opinion I respect.’ Dan noted how she tightened her grip on the sword and subtly altered her stance. She was not unaware then. He could feel her rising anger but