As yet, Harald looked a mere boy, possessed of a ferocious and inexplicable blood lust. It would be many weeks before his appearance matched the savagery of his action.
At midday the Berserks rode from Urlsgarde hold, leaving the stench of blood thick in the autumn air behind them. A fire burned high where the long hall had been set to the torch, and in that fire a woman’s spirit died, although her body lived.
The Berserks rode south, back to join the long ships that were readying themselves for the next campaign.
PART TWO
Deirdre of the Flames
CHAPTER SIX
Drifting slowly out into the channel, the longship burned with an almost supernatural brilliance. While flame ate through the sail lashings, the great striped sheet unfurled and flapped loosely about the single mast (which had not been stowed), and soon fire licked and consumed it, great burning fragments falling into the dark waters, spitting and sizzling as their radiance was extinguished.
As the ship drifted away from the sandy shore, and from the terrified Norsemen who watched it from their night camp, so the hull spun slowly round and the great, grinning figurehead came to look at the men who had sailed the vessel across the raging northern seas. A moment later the head, darkly silhouetted against the flames behind it, itself burst into light. The great oaken keel burned and blackened and even below the water line it seemed to fragment and fall into flaming shards.
The warlord, jarl Olaf Hadric, came running from his tent, wearing just his linen under-britches. His eyes, wide in the darkness, burned with the light of his flaming ship. He disappeared for a moment, back into his low tent, and re-emerged pushing his simple metal helmet on to his head, and buckling his sword scabbard about his naked waist.
‘Who struck the vessel?’ he shrieked. His blade sang from its sheath as he ran down the dark sand towards the water’s edge. ‘Where is he? Is he dead?’
‘No man struck that ship,’ called a voice from among the ranks of silent raiders. They crowded the water line, staring at the strange and terrifying sight. ‘No man passed the line; no man swims. The fire struck of its own.’
‘Someone struck the ship, you fool, and he can’t be far away! Find him!’
Hadric felt a rage approaching, a deep-seated irritation and fury, almost Berserker-like in its intensity. He stood still and tried to calm himself, feeling his face burning and the blood throbbing in his head. His sleepy guards had allowed some Celtish slut to slip through the lines and fire his leading vessel. He watched, not quite in panic, but in considerable discomfort as the ship – capable of carrying eighty men – turned slowly round and round in the channel and began to sink as the fire burned through its strakes, letting water into the shallow hull.
The smell of animal hair was acrid on the onshore wind. The plugs and lashings were consumed and the vessel began to fall apart, sinking lower in the water, and then pivoting downwards. The great masthead seemed to rise against the dark skies, still burning, a beacon of Celtish fury in the silent night of the eastern lands south of Ulaidh.
At last the ship sank below the waters of the bay and the fire was extinguished. Darkness enveloped them, covered the secret camp.
He had been a fool to put in here, this shallow channel, where a sandy shore rose into low hills. If they were ambushed here they would stand less chance than he would have liked. He should have pressed on up the river until their camp could have been pitched at some better protected site.
It was too late now.
Jarl Hadric, on his way to join Gudrack’s forces and the new campaign against the northern peoples of this fertile and rich land, felt a moment’s premonition of disaster. He realised, however, with that more pragmatic part of his mind, that in the skirmishes to come they would lose many more than eighty men in honourable battle. The loss of the ship merely meant extra walking for eighty unfortunates on their way to join the great army of Norse – fifty miles away, assuming that the runner’s information was not too long out of date. The men were used to walking anyway, and would suffer the exercise without complaint, following the remaining six ships as they sailed as far up the river as they could.
‘Is he found yet? The slut that fired my ship?’
‘No man fired the ship,’ repeated the guard. Fear made his voice unsteady, but fear of what? Of Hadric? Or of some imagined magic force that had set an invisible ember to the salt-soaked wood?
‘Then how …?’
‘The ship just burst into fire, my lord. As Odin guards my sword, that is what happened!’
‘As mead addles your brain, you less-than-a-Celt, you were asleep on the line!’
Hadric forced his way through the gathered troops, who watched him darkly from unshaven faces and black-rimmed eyes. The journey had been a hard one; their fatigue was evident in their looks and bearing, and Hadric was sure that fatigue had just accounted for the loss of his ship.
He faced the guard and struck him with the pommel of his sword. The man stood straight and solemn and then backed away, drawing his own blade.
‘As Odin protects me, a faithful and honourable sword-wielder of Orndheim, no man fired the ship!’
His blade sang through the air and in the darkness there was just the sudden ringing clash of blade against blade to tell that Hadric had deflected the blow. His own sword, flashing in the faint moonlight, rose above his head for a return blow, when:
‘Look! The ship!’
All heads turned; all eyes stared at the second of the dark dragon ships that was run up on to the beach. The vessel was slipping, pulled by no human hand, back into the water. As it bobbed out into the channel the great black sail unfurled, flapping noisily against the mast; the rudder creaked and turned and the ship spun in the water, and a moment later it burst into fire. Flames licked from keel to masthead, enveloping the dragon’s head that turned, as the ship turned, to stare at the Norsemen. Then it was swallowed by the red and yellow inferno that consumed the ship in just a few seconds and finally sent it to the bottom of the channel.
The Norsemen backed away from the water as, for the second time, darkness fell across them, releasing them from the hypnotic fascination of the supernatural flame.
Hadric, a practical man even in the face of the god-whims, turned and stared at the low, dark ridges of the hills behind them; if all the ships were thus consumed, then they would become as sword practice for any Celtish forces that were gathering in the darkness of the haunted, mound-covered ground further inland.
Hadric knew well where they had camped. He had laughed in the face of the scout, the runner from Gudrack, who had warned against pitching cloth tent and easing the sea strain of their bodies in this particular place. Beyond the hills, for as many miles as a man could walk in a week, were the ancient lands of the Tuatha De Danann. Their burial mounds, great barrows, green-covered and sombre, were scattered through the valleys and across the tors, waiting silently for the foolhardy to venture among them.
Could the spirits of those dead warriors be responsible for this sabotage?
On the other side of the heaving oceans, in the beer halls of Ostgarde, Olaf Hadric would have spat at the rafters at the suggestion; but now, deep inside him, below the practical exterior of the man, that ancient fear of the dead and of the revenge they could reap was surfacing rapidly and possessing his arrogant soul.
‘We should not have landed here,’ he murmured, but because of his growing fear his voice was loud and all heard him.
‘Let’s sail while we still may,’ cried a voice, and a murmur of assent rippled through the gathered ranks of the invaders.
But even as the suggestion was carried away on the gentle wind, a figure appeared before the brighter clouds to the west, above the dark ridges where the moon hovered full and bright, shining silver behind the heavy sky-fog that hung over the inner lands. A woman’s figure, Hadric realised: long hair, flowing robe, a tall and slender shape with its arms raised towards the heavens. She stood there, quite motionless, and all
who gathered among the tents on the beach were immediately aware of her.
She seemed to glow with a blue light, a light that spilled from the darkness beyond the clouds. As she glowed they all imagined they saw her face, and her face was that of a young woman, full-cheeked and firm-fleshed, red lips pouted in the eternal gesture of the temptress and seductress of innocent mortals.
Her eyes were pits that saw into the seething, blood-spattered lands of the underworld, and, though this figure was Celtish, all the Norse recognised the sister of Hel, that dark lady who guarded the dark places of the dishonoured.
‘A prophetess,’ said someone near to Hadric.
‘A witch!’ cried another.
‘She directs the forces of the Celtish slut-gods at us. Odin, help us!’
‘Thor!’ cried a hundred voices in disharmony, and eyes turned up to the rolling clouds, but no sign of the great god showed itself.
‘Odin, save us,’ murmured Hadric, sensing disaster as he stared at the shimmering blue witch and watched her hands marking out the sky runes that meant she was sending a spell towards them.
Behind them, splashing gently into the lapping waters of the sea channel, the remaining long ships slid unprompted away from their sandy berths. No one moved to stop them, but all the warriors watched as their means of escape from these violent lands floated silently out into mid channel and stopped there, turning as if spun by ghostly hands, so that the fearsome heads carved upon the prows watched the Norsemen, no longer part of the Norse strategy of fear, but used against the very men whose brothers had carved the terrifying masks of the raiding ships.
No fires burst into life this time, but the ships were as good as destroyed if the enigmatic witch on the hill had decided that the Norsemen would no longer be able to use them for escape.
As the Vikings watched, the figure vanished and dark clouds rolled across the moon, increasing the darkness, compounding their fear.
Hours passed.
The sun broke above the horizon, a warm wind dispersing the coldness of night. A thin mist hung across the water of the channel. The surviving long ships floated in the middle of this fog, an occasional prow or mast showing through the whiteness. Eventually the summer breezes took the mist and scattered it in that nether land where the fearsome manifestations of the night disperse for the daylight hours.
Three hundred cloaked and armoured Norse lay or squatted on the sparsely vegetated ground above the sandy beach, but not a face smiled, not a voice was raised in jest. To these men a fight was the stuff of life – a clash of swords and spears, a death or a vicious wound were the raw materials of jokes and sagas and they were content to take their chances on the field of battle no matter what the odds. If they deserved to survive, then Odin would protect them; if they were fated to die, then they would die with a smirk of triumph on their lips and a curse directed at the sword-wielder who dealt the death blow.
This they expected; this they looked forward to; this was their life and death.
What they could not contend with were the immortal forces of the gods, be they Norse, Saxon, the naked and wild gods of the Celts, or the strangely benign god of the Christians. There was a place for the power of the supernatural and its place was not on the field of battle, on the death-lands of men and sword.
For Odin to bless a battle was fine; for Thor to protect a warrior already wounded in a previous skirmish was perfectly acceptable; but when the supernatural intervened to destroy the life ships of the Vikings, then somewhere someone was spitting in the face of valiant men, and no Viking could contend with that.
So they sat or stood, grim-faced and tense, watching the ridge between them and the valleys and hills of the ancient warrior race where their foolhardy leader, Hadric, had brought them. The fight, the campaign against the northern Celts, was some miles up-river and across the forested lands of the north – three days’ walk perhaps.
Most of Hadric’s warriors now felt such a battle was beyond them, that they would be spirited away long before they ever got to smell the blood of battle in their noble cause of conquest.
A year ago, or in a year’s time, they might have marched into the nearby ancient lands and looted the tombs and caves of the dead race with not a thought for supernatural consequences. Circumstance dictated the pattern of aggression. Now, this year, even the land and the sea were against the Norsemen. Destiny would be discovered on the tight curve of the beach and the lapping waters of the channel, into which no man would set foot to drag back the ships.
Shortly after dawn a foul smell on the air brought the warriors to their feet, staring expectantly inland to where the nearest ridge was a dark line across the bright blue sky. Blood and excrement, the typical smell of war, of slaughter, the sort of smell they expected to leave behind, or to carry with them if the fight had been particularly fierce and the odds well matched.
Now that stench drifted down the shoreline and all knew what it meant.
Men approached. Bloodstained warriors, triumphant, perhaps, from some skirmish further north, were creeping now towards the channel where Hadric’s men lay trapped and helpless except for the strength of their arms and the resolution of their swords.
Three hundred blades hissed from their scabbards, sparkled in the sunlight like three hundred points of fire.
Seven shapes appeared on the ridge, huge shapes, like shaggy animals, like bears … but not bears.
They were men, who stood there, surveying the beach and the gathered army. For a long time there was silence but for the occasional rustle of wind and the clank of shield against metal links.
Staring hard into the brightness of the sky, Hadric regarded the seven grotesque figures, his nostrils twitching and balking at the foul smell that spilled towards them.
‘Berserks, by Odin,’ he said at last.
No sword slipped back into its scabbard. Somewhere a young warrior fresh from his farm, new to fighting, asked why weapons were kept at the ready, why the Berserks were regarded as enemies …
Another Viking curtly told him; told him that these seven might attack for no reason if their blood lust was strong enough, if the need for death was in their minds. They might not recognise the Vikings as brothers, and though the odds were high in favour of the army, one could never be sure of victory. The Beserks were well nigh invulnerable when aroused to the height of their rage.
So the swords stayed out in the sunlight, and the Berserks walked slowly down the hill into the natural ditches that ran parallel to the shoreline.
At length they stood just a few paces from Hadric, looking about them. They grinned at the unblooded men before them, and then all ceremoniously spat on the ground.
The fever was not with them. There would be no killing.
Hadric sheathed his sword, removed the dull metal helm from his head and shook out his sweat-soaked hair.
By Loki’s guts, he thought, these creatures are fearsome.
Their stench was abominable; their leader, a great man with a necklace of bear and human teeth, was completely caked in the dried slime of spilled viscera, almost as if he wore the layer as an extra coat. Despite the hot day all seven wore thick fur garments, increasing their appearance of being giant men. Tangled beards hung low on their chests, save for one younger-looking Berserker whose wild appearance was less pronounced and more normal than the filth of the other six.
This younger warrior caught Hadric’s attention and he found his gaze drawn deep into brilliant eyes that peered steadfastly at him. There seemed to be a sadness there, a sense of urgency, a mannerism of face and mouth that suggested a lack of the blood-spilling arrogance of most Berserkers.
A young man, then; a newly initiated bear-warrior, perhaps stolen from his farm to boost the numbers of the almost invulnerable beast-fighters.
Looking back at the great bear who was the leader, Hadric said, ‘Where are you from? You have the smell of slaughter about you.’
The leader laughed. All the Berserks grinned, black teeth sti
ll flecked with the traces of raw meat they had consumed.
‘We have survived the skirmish at Armagh. Our blades have hewn more heads than the dead of our own army, but still the numbers of the Celts were too vast.’
‘Gudrack? Is he destroyed, then?’
‘Every man,’ said the Berserker, and again he flashed his black-toothed smile. ‘The fight lasted three days and three nights, and each time the Celts retaliated to our own attack with an attack of their own, and each time a thousand men fell on either side. But the Celts bred new warriors with every retreat, and every day their numbers were vast, far greater than ours. Gudrack sent we seven, with twenty other Berserker warriors, in at the front of every formed attack, and we hewed our way to the tent of Oengus mac Nial himself, and we hacked the man’s body into a hundred pieces, and each one of us consumed him. A very tasty Celt.’
‘Oengus mac Nial has fallen? Then who leads them now?’
‘A woman,’ said the Berserker. ‘And she is one who strikes fear as a sword strikes sparks from a flint rock.’
‘A woman leads them?’
In Ostgarde he might have laughed. Now the idea, preposterous though it ought to have been, sent a chill running down his spine.
He had heard tales of the Celts and their warrior women – but they were tales of old! He had heard of the bands of such women that had once terrorised the villages of neighbouring states in the land. He had even heard of the warrior queen who had fought the ancient Romans in the land of Angles and Saxons, where the myth of the Earth Queen, Gwenhwyfar, the queen who was given bodily form as the lover of the great Arthur, still was told.
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