Lord of Slaughter

by M. D. Lachlan

  ‘What are you on about? Speak Norse or I’ll talk to you in a language all men can understand.’

  ‘The tree by which we organise our logic. The supreme genus is substance, all scholars agree,’ Azémar continued in Greek.

  ‘Strip it off him. He’s a madman.’

  ‘The differentiae are material and immaterial. The subordinate genera are body and living. These are the topmost part of the trunk.’

  The Varangians strode towards him.

  ‘You descend the trunk to find the proximate genera of animal. Beneath that we cannot accept this teaching for that is a pagan lie and contrary to holy teaching.’

  One of them had hold of him and pulled at his robe.

  ‘By Sif’s tits, he’s a guard. He’s built like a horse. He must be some sort of berserker. That’s why he’s raving.’

  The man backed away.

  ‘The differentiae below animal are rational and irrational. Below animal, they include the category of man. As a species of thinking beast. I cannot …’

  The sounds of battle drifted in from all over the palace. The second Varangian pushed past his comrade.

  ‘I don’t care if he’s built like Blind Hod; I’m having the robe.’

  ‘Substance, material and immaterial, body, living and dead, animal, rational and irrational. Man. Below the species is the individual. Where is God? Where is God in this?’

  The Varangian wrenched off Azémar’s robe.

  Azémar looked down at himself. He wore only a pair of light leggings and was bare-chested.

  ‘I’ll have those as well,’ said the Varangian. ‘Take them off and I might let you live.’

  ‘Here is God. Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?’

  Something was burning.

  Azémar’s head cleared for a moment. He felt ridiculous half-dressed in such a fine palace. He smelled the smoke, saw the axe the Varangian with the red beard bore, the dagger the one who had taken his robe had drawn. There was still something he didn’t quite understand about this situation. He spoke in Norse: ‘I can’t be naked. The tree of knowledge brought us shame. We know. Now we know.’

  ‘Well know this.’ The man with the dagger lunged.

  Azémar only realised what had happened an instant later. The men lay on the floor. He couldn’t make sense of why they were there. He trembled. There was an odd low gurgling noise and he realised it was his own voice. He was snarling, sitting on top of a body with one arm torn from its socket. The other body lay a few paces away. The man had tried to run, he recalled, but now he was bent double, the wrong way.

  Men in the corridor, screaming, fighting. A Greek fell with a short spear clean through him. A huge man with a bushy blond beard came howling towards Azémar. He stood. Where is Beatrice? These people were in his way. They weren’t going to help him. Animosity engulfed him like a lava flow.

  The big Viking didn’t even get the time to swing his axe as Azémar smashed him down. Azémar stepped past him and into the man who ran in behind. He swung him from his feet and banged his head into the wall. Slaughter beast, god killer, slaverer and slayer. The words went through his mind like comets across a black sky. He had a name, he knew, but what was it?

  More men died, torn and ripped, broken and dismembered. They thrust things at him, sharp things, slow things. He was so strong. He tore free of the fight and ran. The night air hit him as he spilled out of the palace door and into the street. His nose and mouth stung and he recognised the taste of the big white flakes in the air. Ash.

  Through the clinging fog he heard something. Not a voice, not an animal cry but something resonating deeper within him, an emanation of something older than sound. It called to him. He pictured a sign, a jagged slash with a line through it. His skin rose into bumps as he heard it howl. He understood it, knew what it said.

  ‘I am here, where are you?’ It was the lady, she was calling to him, or rather something inside her was.

  He looked back at the palace but then turned away from the fight with its delicious scents of murder and battle. He was summoned and he could not resist.

  Azémar threw back his head and shouted, ‘I am here! Where are you?’ But his voice was the howl of a wolf.

  45 The Bloody Waters

  Air! A hand pulled him out of the water. It was flat dark, no glimpse of light. He lay gasping on cold rock.

  ‘We are through. Those men were sent by the gods, but they did not serve the gods’ purpose. Who was the white-haired one?’

  ‘His name is Ragnar.’

  ‘He followed you?’

  ‘He was sent to kill me, I think.’

  ‘I have seen him before.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In a past life. I have fought him before. He is a powerful enemy. Did he have the sword?’

  ‘What sword?’

  ‘The one that is curved. Like a sickle moon.’

  ‘I saw no such sword.’

  ‘It will come, along with the stone.’

  ‘What stone?’

  ‘A magical stone. The Wolfstone.’

  Loys was so shaken he didn’t even think of the stone in his bag.

  ‘What is happening?’

  ‘A god is coming. His symbol is the three hanging knots; his presence is in the runes. When twenty-four are in one person, he is here, and the wolf will come to kill him.’

  ‘You have meddled with devils,’ said Loys.

  He longed to see. He took the bag from around his neck and felt inside, pulling out the flint, the lamp and the oil-soaked cloth. Very carefully he tore off a strip of the cloth. He placed it near the flint, which he struck against the iron. Quickly he had a spark, which he blew to a small flame. Now he could light the lamp.

  The chamber was almost a sphere, just big enough to stand in. Loys was sitting on a shelf of rock with the wolfman beside him.

  ‘What now?’ said Loys.

  ‘This is the world city. It is a flowering of the magical forces of the well. This is where the world tree draws its water. We’re on our way to that well.’

  ‘And if the god you’re seeking doesn’t come?’

  ‘He will come. The god is in three forms. He is one of them. The Vala’s vision revealed it. Beneath the comet, at that battle, the god who sleeps with the head at his feet. It was a sign – as Odin drank the waters of the well, next to the headless Mimir so the god would be found. He should have killed me when I asked.’

  ‘I thought you sought to kill him.’

  ‘He cannot be killed.’

  ‘I think Basileios can kill all the world if he so chooses. But he is far away.’

  ‘He will come.’

  ‘How can you avoid your fate?’

  ‘At the well. I will receive insight.’

  ‘How do you know where it is?’

  ‘I can hear it.’

  ‘What can you hear?’

  ‘The runes. There are runes within it. They are calling to others.’

  He stood and climbed to the top of the chamber. A small tunnel led away, scarcely wider than his shoulders. The wolfman wriggled in. Loys had no alternative but to follow, pushing the lamp before him. It was not even a crawl. He went forward like a snake, writhing on his belly, progressing by tiny increments. He had a terrible feeling of claustrophobia, a desire to breathe freely without the tunnel pressing in on his ribcage. He would have lacked the courage to go on if the wolfman had not been before him. Pulling himself through, using only his fingertips at points because his arms were so restricted, he found it very difficult to see, his head forced down by the narrowness of the tunnel. He moved the lamp on, fighting down panic.

  He had to go on, for Beatrice. He didn’t accept what the wolfman was telling him but it was clear there was demonic involvement. If Beatrice was caught up in this, he needed to get her out of it. That gave him strength.

  His knees were raw, his elbows too. He went on, moving the lamp a litt
le, snaking forward, resting, moving the lamp. The darkness around him seemed so tight, like a great hand that could reach out at any moment and snuff out his little light.

  Ahead of him, a light wavered. The lamp was taken from him. The wolfman signalled for Loys to be silent then helped him out. They were in another small cave, but this one was half flooded from a waterfall that tumbled down from a tunnel that entered near the ceiling.

  The water poured away down another low tunnel. In there was the light, not quite torchlight but a soft and constant red. The wolfman climbed down through the stream, his movements inaudible beneath the trickling of the water.

  Loys strained to listen. There were voices. A mumble of words, a drone.

  ‘In the sacred waters where the three streams meet,

  Goddess who is three in one,

  Goddess of the night and of the dark of the night,

  Here by the waters

  I pay the price of lore.’

  He recognised the voice now. It was unquestionably that of the chamberlain.

  Suddenly the voice faltered. Above him a skittle-skattle sound of someone bumping down the stream bed, a cough and a curse. Someone else was coming.

  46 A Girl Weaving

  In the cave’s pool sat a dead girl. Elai knew she was dead by the coldness of her hands, her absence of breath. The ritual of herbs and meditations had worked, and she had gone to the threshold of where she needed to be.

  In those three streams were the fates of all men. In that pool waters entwined, eddied and knotted to weave the skein of human destiny. Three faces of the goddess Hecate, three fates, three Norns – the name of those women came so naturally to her – three streams whose flow not even the gods could resist.

  But he had tried to resist. What was his name? Odin. Her mother had said the name and though it was strange to her, the syllables seemed to resonate in her bones. Her ancestors had followed that grim fellow, the waters told her.

  She put her hand above her to touch the stream that flowed into the pool.

  She said its name. Uthr. What was. To her right another stream trickled down. She said its name. Verthani. What is. A third entered in front of her under the surface of the water – she could feel its flow. She said its name. Skuld. What must be. The language was strange to her but completely comprehensible. Not the Greek her mother used to worship the goddess. Older, far older. She thought of Odoacer, who had taken his wolf warriors to Rome, who had made the emperor kneel. Had he spoken that way, her mighty ancestor?

  Her fingers played in the flow of the unseen stream. It wound and twisted in her hands. Its movement fascinated her. On impulse she went to where the stream left the pool, put her fingers into its sucking flow. It was so seductive. It did not feel like water at all, but rather like an endless length of beautiful thread, soft and pliable, moving through her hands.

  A rhyme came into her mind.

  Thence come the women

  strong in wisdom,

  Three to the dark waters

  down beneath the tree.

  Uthr is one named,

  Verthani the next,

  and Skuld the third.

  Mightily wove they

  the web of fate,

  While Bralund’s towns

  were trembling all.

  And there the golden

  threads they wove.

  And in the moon’s hall

  fast they made them,

  The wyrd of men and gods.

  One of those names resonated above the others: Skuld. What must be.

  ‘That is my name,’ she said into the ghost light of the rocks. ‘Something is owed here.’ Her voice came back to her as the dead echo of the small chamber.

  The well had asked for her death and that of her mother. It had showed her clearly what was her fate, and that of so many others if she was too weak to make the sacrifice.

  Death, eternally, again and again, agony and torture, denial and madness. Some things were in the water, bright shining things, and she wanted pick them up, as if her soul was a shrine to be decked with candles and trinkets.

  What were these things? Shapes, symbols, runes. That was the word. What did these runes do? They held the universe together. They were the connections between things – the things that allowed sense and reason. They were understanding – the foundations and the structure of the sane mind. But they were not meant to be seen, not meant to be touched and used. The ability to do that was the key to magic and to madness.

  ‘We have tired of the tale the god has to tell.’

  The god had intended to set his runes inside her, to drag her to his death. Did he think he could cheat her, blind her and control her? The water flowed around her and she fell in on herself. She was not sitting in a pool of water. She sat in a pool of thoughts, of visions and memories, a stream of words, fears, hopes and disappointments running out of it over her fingers into blackness. She could manipulate it, change its course.

  She saw the remaining symbols in the water, keening for their sisters. Her death, her self-sacrifice, had trapped the runes in the pool but not all of them. Some had gone away, fearing their fate, each one a fragment of a god.

  Where had they gone? Did it matter? She would call to them and they would come back, to be released by death, back to be trapped in the pool. Then the eternal dumbshow would stop.

  The god had not reckoned with her magic. He had asked for her mother’s death and for that of her brother but he hadn’t understood who she was. He knew only she was a magical creature, not who she truly was – a Norn, one of the three sisters who spin the fates of all humanity. She laughed as she realised what had happened. The god had mistaken her for an incarnation of himself, an empty vessel into which he could pour his runes. She was to die for him after the runes had assembled within her. But she had pre-empted him and gone to death before he could fill her with his magic. It had not occurred to him she could manifest herself in the realm of men too. As Odin began to claim her for his own, to put the runes within her, to inhabit her flesh and offer that flesh to the wolf so he might live, suffer and die, she had done what he had not thought possible. She reached out into the stream, twisted the current through her fingers, felt it as a multitude of threads and drawn out those she recognised as belonging to her brother.

  The threads trembled with the deep currents of his ambition, the hot flow of his jealousies, and she had weaved them together into a skein of murder. He had killed her and thwarted the dead god’s will.

  ‘Odin,’ she said, ‘you could not live in me. I am stronger than you and my magic cannot be gainsayed. Here by these dark waters that feed the tree on which all worlds grow, I will have what I am owed.’

  How many had he tried to set inside her? Twenty-four in their orbits of eight – twenty-four, a magic number, a god’s number. When twenty-four runes came to life inside any human, then the old god was present and ready to face his little fate on earth so he might avoid his bigger one in eternal time.

  He had tried to make her his sacrifice, as he had done to her sisters in times past. Sisters? Did she mean Styliane? No. Others – sisters bound to her eternally.

  Where were they? Uthr. Verthani. The strangeness of those words struck her. Have they taken flesh as I have? Where were these thoughts coming from? From the water. She saw the god’s wake, a trail of blood dripping throughout human history. He should pay the price for that.

  The raven’s wing is black

  Scarlet stains the snow’s white field.

  The dirge-voice was in her head. She didn’t like it. She didn’t like him, the one who was speaking. Are you here for your sacrifice? She’d known him a long time, longer than she remembered. The dead god. Odin, Hecate, Mercury – that many-formed fellow. He was near. She saw a hill, grey in a raw dawn, and on it a tree where men dangled and choked from hanging ropes, their legs doing the dead god’s dance. She saw the gold of kings thrown into waters rich with loam, holy slaves bound and drowned, around their necks the dead g
od’s symbol – the sticky, tricky triple knot.

  Then she saw him, near her in the water in the blood glow of the rocks – his bloated corpse face, the black rope at his neck, his good eye staring at her, the other torn and ragged. He chanted a dissonant song:

  ‘Under the gallows tree they worship me;

  By the moon they call me;

  Triple-knotted, triple-faced, triple-looking.

  Three times I suffered to sacrifice

  Myself unto myself. In the branches

  Of that terrible tree.’

  She heard mad bursts of poetry:

  ‘It is said, you went

  with dainty steps in the city,

  and knocked at houses as a vala.

  In the likeness of a fortune teller

  You went among people.

  Now that, I think, betokens a base nature.’

  The words seemed to have a great power. They fell as earth to bury her, and she stretched out her hands to shovel them away. She heard a drum, its beat toiling and slow above her. The god’s will was bound by cold irons to eternal death, and she knew what he offered. Death, again and again, spreading like a stain across the light of the world.

  ‘Lady,’ said the god, ‘it seems to me I know your name. I mistook you for someone.’

  ‘For who?’

  ‘For myself.’

  His mind roamed over hers, a sensation of cold fingers on her face, a desperate pulling and upending of things within her, as if her soul was a house and he a miser searching for a coin within it.