Lord of Slaughter

by M. D. Lachlan

  ‘Yes, they do,’ said Snake in the Eye, ‘which is lucky, because here I am.’

  The runes in the cavern began to hum and shake, and what seemed like a wave of excitement rushed from them like, thought the chamberlain, the roar of a crowd greeting a favourite charioteer.

  48 No Way Back

  I am on my way to death. Loys, where are you? I cannot die without saying goodbye. Where are you? Come to me. Don’t come to me – these people are killers. Run, Loys. I’ve brought you to this. If I’d never smiled at you I would never have been here and you would be in the monastery, safe and warm.

  Beatrice was dragged, bound at the hands, through the dark of the Numera. The effort was excruciating, and she cried out for them to go more slowly, that if she fell and killed her baby it would be her death too. Her legs were so weak, she was so heavy, so ungainly with the burden of her belly among these hateful men. The northerners pressed on. They were grim-faced dirty savages, she thought. She’d seen their like at her father’s court, but there they had been out of place, hesitant, fearful of offending a lord whose customs and ways were unfamiliar to them. Here they were at home, marching through the darkness, torches blazing, swords drawn and spears before them.

  So much slaughter, so many dead. Corpses everywhere, from the burned and blackened men at the entrance to the prison, to the prisoners dead in their irons, to butchered and beaten guards. Beatrice had been heavily sick on the way in and even some of the Vikings retched. The street level of the prison held no one alive. Bodies lay torn by ragged wounds, hands severed, heads smashed in. One man had a broken spear through his chest – someone had clearly tried and failed to get it out of his body. Stranger though were the men who sat dead but unmarked in their irons, the dancing girl who clung to a fat old pimp, both wide-eyed, pale and dead, as if killed by fear.

  Beatrice did not wonder people died that way here. Her father had said of all the tools he had at his disposal to govern, nothing worked as well as terror – King Fear, he called it. If there was such a ruler, this was his palace.

  They came to a door. That too had been burned away – the invaders clearly improvising to make up for their lack of siege equipment. Down, through more silent galleries of the dead, the torchlight bright on harsh faces, the terrible woman who had ordered Beatrice taken at her side. Somehow the men, full of grim purpose, hostile and rough, were easier to bear than her. Beatrice glanced at the scar on the woman’s face – no worse a deformity than on any beggar on the church steps on a Sunday, but something about it frightened her. It seemed like the expression of an internal agony, like a blister that had bubbled to the surface from some heart-deep fire.

  ‘Where, Vala?’

  ‘Down, down. He is here. Look around you. He is here.’

  Beatrice was pulled on, through doorways, down stairs. She retched and staggered. Against herself, she wept. ‘My baby. My baby!’ Screams and shouts from below. A Viking walked towards them out of the gloom.

  ‘You’re late to the fight, lads. We’ve had some slaughter here tonight.’

  ‘How do we get below?’ The big one, the one in the red tunic and trousers, was curt, ill-tempered.

  ‘Along there and down. They’re all dead. The Greeks must have killed them all rather than let us collect their ransoms, though how I can’t see.’

  They pushed on through another doorway and Beatrice saw steps descending into a huge room. As she was pulled down she cried out – the torches of the Vikings revealed a slaughterhouse. Hundreds of men lay dead on the floor, their bodies copper in the torchlight, like the fallen leaves of a hideous autumn.

  ‘This is hell,’ she said. Clad only in rags, the corpses were in various states of emaciation. Some were little more than skeletons, bones showing through the skin, others were merely thin; some were decomposing, others newly dead. Even the warriors with her murmured at the sight.

  ‘Down again.’ It was the woman who spoke.

  Beatrice now had to be carried by one of the Vikings. Her strength had gone. He picked her up in his arms as if she was a baby herself and walked her across that terrible floor. She tried to blank her mind, closed her eyes and breathed through her mouth to avoid the stench.

  ‘Here, it is as was revealed.’ The woman’s voice again.

  Beatrice felt herself lowered to the floor and opened her eyes. A darkness gaped at the foot of the wall.

  ‘Not in there. Not in there!’ said Beatrice.

  What were they doing with her? Did they plan to entomb her? She was quite convinced they were all mad.

  ‘Lady!’ The big red Viking shook her and stared into her face, speaking Norse slowly so she understood. ‘I will go first. We will not leave you alone in this place.’

  ‘Am I to die?’

  ‘We’re all to die one day.’

  He lay flat on the floor and crawled within. One of his men followed him in. Another gestured to her that it was her turn. She had no choice, and whatever was in that hole could not be as bad as the charnel house she was standing in. But how to get in? She had to lie on her side, holding her belly. The man behind her pushed and the one already in the tunnel pulled at her arms. ‘Be careful, be careful!’ It was agony, as if they’d tear her arms from their sockets and crush the child inside her. The woman came in after her, then the other men.

  They were in a long tunnel stretching away into darkness.

  ‘Why am I here?’ Beatrice wanted to weep but she wouldn’t give the savages the satisfaction. Her legs cramped and her vision blurred. She needed to lie down but there was nowhere to lie. She had to go on, so she went on.

  No one replied to her question; they just pressed on, sometimes carrying her, sometimes making her walk, sometimes making her crawl. Loys. Loys, where are you? She thought of her happy times with him – the woods near Rouen, kissing him in the wet dawn, the cold of his cheek against hers, watching the sun rise and pull the mist from the grass, the smell of the earth and the feel of his body next to hers as they walked in the morning light.

  ‘Why am I here?’

  ‘You have dreams?’ It was the woman.

  ‘We all have dreams!’ Her anger came bursting out of her but she checked herself. She depended on this woman and the Vikings, if she was ever to get out of this place.

  The woman spoke and her voice was soft. ‘The wolf. He is coming for you.’

  ‘I have seen him, yes.’

  ‘So we will see if he can be stopped. You are a lure to him.’

  ‘I would rather have a million nightmares than experience this reality.’

  ‘You know they are more than nightmares. You see reality. In here –’ she tapped Beatrice on the head ‘– when you are sleeping. You go to the river and he comes looking for you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He must not find you.’

  ‘No one will ever find me down here.’

  ‘He will.’

  ‘Are you bringing me to him?’

  ‘No. I am trying to save you. If not now then in times and lives to come.’

  ‘That is sacrilege.’

  The woman took her by the shoulders. ‘Look at me,’ she said. ‘I have lived to see men born, grow old and die, though I have never aged. I have been the mother to a god’s sons, again and again. I tire of seeing the same boys born, knowing they only exist to satisfy a god’s need for sacrifice. Sacrilege, maybe. Truth, yes.’

  Beatrice took a pace backwards. The woman scared her and Beatrice was convinced she was mad.

  ‘What do you intend to do to me?’

  ‘At the waters we will see. You need courage.’

  ‘I have none.’

  ‘Then you need endurance. The rope will provide your courage.’ She touched Beatrice’s bound hands then turned to the Vikings. ‘Keep going. Soon the way will become harder.’

  ‘If it’s open,’ said one of the men.

  ‘It will be open.’

  ‘The one on the hill wasn’t open and you foresaw that.’

  ‘T
his is the way we are destined to come. The Norns have woven our thread,’ said the woman.

  Down and further down into the dark. The court slippers Beatrice wore were completely inadequate and quickly fell to pieces, but there was no respite for her bleeding feet.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ she said. ‘I can’t escape. Why am I tied?’

  They said nothing, but when they came to the tighter crawls untied her. Beatrice shuddered at the start of those breathless squeezes and several times panic took her as the lamplight was obscured for a moment and darkness came down. Her belly was so big and she instinctively sought to protect it. She was a small woman, which was lucky. Bollason had to remove all his clothing and crawl through naked. At one point his men had to tie his hands and pull him through. He made no complaint, just stood up smiling, filthy and obscenely nude at the other end.

  ‘Don’t think of one of your women while you’re in there, Bolli. If you get a hard-on we’ll never get you out,’ said a Viking. They all seemed to find this hilarious.

  Splashing and shouting ahead. Flints sparked, lamps lit. Bollason picked up his sword, not bothering to dress. Beatrice had not noticed the sword before – a curious curved thing. She had never seen its like. Bollason hurried forward into the dark, two men behind him, one with a lamp.

  Beatrice heard a shout. ‘Ragnar’s here! He’s hurt!’

  The rest of Vikings ran down the passage, the woman following. There was no thought of tying Beatrice now – they knew they were too far in – but like a lost ship she followed any light.

  The tunnel dipped and then widened. To her left a broad pool of water spread out into darkness, the reflections of the lamps shimmering like buried treasure among its pillars. On the floor lay a man, tall, lean, white-haired. She put her hand to her mouth when she saw him. He had arrived at her father’s court only days before she left. He was a cousin of Lord Richard and, it was said, the fiercest warrior who had ever sprung from the north. He had come for only one reason. To take her home and – she knew her father – to kill Loys. Mauger was his name.

  Was he dead? Had God blessed her? No. He was coming out of a stupor. One of the Vikings brought him water from the pool.

  ‘You are a great warrior, Ragnar,’ Bollason was saying, ‘and to honour you I shall not let you die. Give him the drink.’

  A Viking put a horn to Mauger’s lips. Mauger whispered something.

  ‘He’s raving,’ said the Viking.

  ‘He spared me,’ said Mauger. ‘He spared me.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The boy, for the service I did him.’

  ‘Which boy?’

  ‘Snake in the Eye.’

  Bollason took the horn himself and put it back to Mauger’s lips.

  ‘That is an odd fellow. I have seen him too cowardly to strike another youth who called him womanly. Yet I have seen him charge the Greeks, a hero in every appearance.’

  ‘My life is a flame. He blew upon it and knocked me down.’

  ‘Troll work!’ said Bollason.

  ‘Seid magic,’ said the woman with the scarred face. ‘If the boy spared Ragnar and left him like this then we need look no further for the source of the deaths that have been stalking the city.’

  ‘We will kill him and win great honour with the emperor!’ said a Viking Beatrice had heard called Gregnir.

  ‘That may be,’ said the woman, ‘or it may not. We must get to the waters.’

  Mauger came back to himself.

  ‘They’ve gone through those waters,’ he said. ‘The way is not easy. I have tried it.’

  ‘Beneath the pool?’ said the woman.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It is as was foreseen. Bolli, this will test even your courage.’

  ‘What do I need to do?’

  ‘Go under there and emerge the other side.’

  ‘If there is another side,’ said Gregnir.

  ‘There is,’ said the woman.

  ‘I cannot go in there!’ Beatrice couldn’t control herself. She heard her voice echoing off the cavern walls. Mauger glanced up at her, a faint smile of recognition on his face.

  ‘You can and you will,’ said the woman. ‘Bolli, you will take the rope. If you make it to the other side you can pull the rest of us through. It will be easier for those who go second.’

  Mauger sat like a troll in the torchlight, his gaze unmoving upon her. What choice? The waters or here with him.

  ‘You said “they” had gone beneath the waters,’ said the woman.

  ‘Yes, Vala, a wolfman and the scholar Loys too,’ said Mauger.

  ‘You are looking to kill the wolfman?’

  ‘No, lady, the scholar.’ His gaze never left Beatrice. She leaped forward to strike at him, but Gregnir caught her.

  ‘He’s talking about my husband. Half my fortune to the man who strikes him down.’

  ‘You have no fortune, lady,’ said Mauger. ‘Your father will pay no dowry for you now.’

  ‘If you help us we will give her to you,’ said the vala.

  ‘No!’ said Beatrice. No one answered.

  ‘I will pay a man to stay here with the lady while I fetch the scholar,’ said Mauger.

  ‘Not possible,’ said Bollason. ‘She must come with us. If your scholar is on the other side then you will have both your quarries together.’

  Mauger kept staring at Beatrice. ‘I won’t let any harm come to her,’ he said.

  ‘What harm comes to any of us is in the lap of the Norns,’ said Bollason. ‘You are a mighty man, Ragnar, and a bold killer. But so am I. Widows curse my name from the shores of Britannia to the Caliphate. You know my fame.’

  Beatrice shivered. She recognised what was happening. Her father had done his best to take on French ways when he arrived in Neustria, but in an argument or a fight he went back to being the Viking he had been. His language would become elevated, more ornate in a clear message to his enemy – ‘I am preparing to write myself into a saga. This is how heroes talk.’

  ‘I do,’ said Mauger, ‘though I should like to test your worth.’

  Bollason raised his sword but the old woman stilled him with a glance.

  ‘The way out is sealed,’ she said to Mauger. ‘Three hundred men guard the Numera now, and in the unlikely event you could cut down Bolli, you would not escape them. Nor me.’

  Mauger looked into the woman’s ruined eye and bowed his head. ‘You are a vala and a great troll worker, I can see,’ he said.

  ‘The work we do here is for no earthly lord,’ she said. The sorceress too spoke in a self-consciously high manner. She was honouring Mauger, Beatrice understood, but at the same time emphasising her own position as someone who demanded respect. ‘Our destinies are set. The girl goes beyond here to the well. That is foreseen.’

  Nothing was said for a while but it seemed Mauger had accepted he could not challenge the woman’s plan. Bollason spoke: ‘Give me a rope.’ I will go first. Tie the girl and she can go through bound if she’s going to become hysterical. Put one of those dead men’s helmets on her head. You have tinder for the lamps?’

  ‘Yes, lord.’

  ‘He is a killer!’ Beatrice pointed at Mauger.

  ‘The Norns weave out our fate, girl,’ said Bollason. ‘Accept yours once you see you cannot influence it. Better to go smiling to hard places than cowering like a child.’

  He waded out into the water, only his sword on its belt about him, a helmet on his head. He paused as the water reached his waist.

  ‘Cold?’ said Gregnir.

  ‘It’s like a bath compared to Eithafjord,’ said Bollason and waded on.

  Beatrice was prodded into the water with the butt of an axe, the Vikings following. The water was freezing and she cried out but Mauger’s hand at her back pushed her on.

  Where the ceiling of the cave met the water Bollason turned. ‘Here?’

  ‘The wolfman went through a little to the left,’ said Mauger.

  ‘Then wish me luck, boys,’ said Bollason. He
took three sharp breaths and dived under. It was quiet for a very long time. And then …

  ‘He’s tugging the rope,’ said Gregnir. ‘He’s through!’

  ‘The lady goes first,’ said the woman they’d called the vala. ‘You have a helmet for your head and try to go on your back and push away from the ceiling with your hands. It’ll be easier without breath in your chest, but you won’t believe me. You’ll have to discover it for yourself.’

  They looped the rope to bind Beatrice’s hands, Gregnir grabbing the end to stop it being pulled all the way through.

  ‘If I lose my child then I will die and all your efforts to bring me here will come to nothing!’

  ‘You will not lose it,’ said the vala. ‘Your destiny lies deeper than this.’

  From away in the caverns, up towards the surface a howl chilled the air.

  ‘Be quick,’ said the vala.

  Beatrice turned back to Mauger. ‘You have come to find my husband?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, lady.’

  ‘Well, so have I,’ she said.

  One of the Vikings gave two good tugs on the rope to tell Bollason they were ready; Beatrice took a big gulp of air and was pulled forward into the water. The cold clamped down on her terror for an instant as she was tugged under as if someone had placed icy bands of steel about her head and chest. Thought was impossible. The pull forward suddenly ceased and the rope went slack. She tried to cry out but the water forced its fingers into her throat, choking her, freezing the words inside her and she slipped into blackness.

  49 Death by Water

  Loys listened to the boy speaking. He was mad, the scholar was convinced. They had thought it was Mauger and had quickly taken to a side passage to hide, dimming their light. Only the lamp ahead and the glow of the rocks provided any vision now.

  It was not Mauger, but the boy, wandering along as if he was out for a stroll on a sunny day. He mumbled to himself in Norse as he went.

  ‘Speak more of your stories to me. Do not run ahead so. How shall I fight this wolf? Not to fight? I am a warrior and must always fight.’ He became angry. ‘I run from him by the riverbank because I have no weapons to face a wolf. Give me a spear, sharp and cruel; give me a sword to cut him or a hammer to crush him. I will offer him blood all right, I’ll offer him his own. Here, wolf, I make a sacrifice of yourself to yourself. See how your hungers fare on your own flesh. Do not run from me, my friends; come back, let me touch you again. Send me to that place again and I will face him. He took me by surprise before. I am not a coward. Do not think me a coward. My destiny is death in battle. I am death. Do you not see the corpses I made for you? I have made a city of the dead for you. Come back. Hey, bright symbols, come back. I will build you houses of bones. Ho, what’s here and who’s here?’