Warriors of Ethandun by N. M. Browne

found herself at the court of a king while he struggled through a mire. He smiled grimly to himself. It struck him that in his adventures through the Veil he had grown so used to discomfort that he did not even waste energy worrying about his own unpromising circumstances. He waited until the pain from his ankle began to pass before he struggled to his feet. The light was fading quickly and he forced himself to limp forward further and faster. It would not be clever to be lost in a marsh when darkness came.
    He followed his nose and the homely scent of smoke and baking until he stumbled on a small house, set on a sizeable piece of solid-seeming land, a small island surrounded by streams and bogs.
    It was not much bigger than a large shed, but he was very glad to see it. It was a long single-storey affair thatched with rushes and plastered with mud. Now that he was closer he could detect the stink of the midden, of ordure, of dung and damp dirt mingled with the pungent smoke from the fire, which glowed a welcoming orange in the murky half-light through the homestead’s open door. He saw a few pot-bellied pigs and three or four chickensscratched at hard-packed reed-strewn ground. It was clear enough from all this that he wasn’t in his own century, but he’d guessed that already.
    What he didn’t know was whether this was a land at peace or war. Should he take off his sword belt? He was about to call out a warning and a greeting, a request for a place at the sparking fire, but he had another problem: he did not know what to shout out. What language did they speak here? Thanks to his experiences through the Veil and, no doubt, a little bit of magic, he had mastered the languages of the Combrogi tribes and the Latin of the first and fifth centuries. He knew a few words of Aenglisc too, but only curses and the like. In the main he had fought the Aenglisc, not conversed with them.
    Dan hesitated for a moment outside the dwelling and gently eased Bright Killer out of its scabbard. It moved as smoothly as ever. Taliesin had looked after it well.
    â€˜Hey!’ he shouted. It was a kind of multi-purpose greeting. He peered through the open door into the fire of the single room; the smoke made his eyes water and the brightness of the fire blinded him to whatever lay in the shadowed gloom away from it. Gradually he made sense of what he saw.
    A man was sitting by the fire, facing the doorway. He had a knife in his hand and, as Dan approached, he got rapidly to his feet. Dan did not take in too much of the detail of his appearance other than the knife and the fact that he held it like he knew how to use it. He was an older man, well muscled but not tall. The hairs of his sparse beard looked auburn in the fire’s glow.
    Dan, crouching in the low doorway, moved his own hand away from his sword hilt and showed him his empty palms. The man spoke to him in a rush of guttural nonsense, a tirade of harsh syllables. Dan didn’t understand a word. He needed the warmth of the fire though, and the man made no effort to attack him, just looked ready to stab him if he did anything untoward. Dan was not much of an actor but he did what he had to do and put on a dumb show, moving deliberately so that his innocent intentions would be clear. He shivered melodramatically and rubbed his arms as if to warm them, then pointed first at the fire and then at himself.
    The man neither nodded nor shook his head. Dan took a gamble and, stooping, walked inside. The knife man watched him. Through the smoke Dan could see that he had very intense blue eyes in a weathered face. He didn’t look like a man who missed much. Dan was suddenly conscious that he was still dressed in his sweatshirt and school trousers, with his trainers hanging round his neck. It wasn’t a costume designed to make him blend in. Knowing what was to come he’d left his watch, phone and iPod in his locker at school, but there had been little he could do about