A Matter of Will
The berserkers were sleeping at the feet of the mules, lying on Leshii’s bags, when Aelis came outside.
Leshii had paid them to guard his goods. The merchant had vowed to himself to have the money back off them in some way before he left, particularly as their services hadn’t been necessary beyond some initial scuffling. When the people of the camp discovered the wine had gone and there was no food on the mules, interest quickly waned. You couldn’t eat or drink silk and the only trade anyone was interested in doing was for a square meal, so when Leshii showed them a length of yellow silk, they had gone back to what they had been doing before — starving, complaining and preparing their weapons.
Leshii was tired but he’d been unable to sleep. He felt old and cold in the morning mist. He’d seen the creature leave the house and had recognised him for what he was — a shaman, a magician and very likely a madman. The strange figure made the merchant shiver. Never mind, he told himself, he’d seen more terrifying men. At that instant, though, he couldn’t recall where.
The king came out of the house. He bowed deeply, wondering how he would explain it when the king didn’t realise it. He too hadn’t slept, Leshii could see.
‘On your feet, warriors!’ he shouted.
The berserkers creaked up slowly, shaking the dew from their hair and then wishing they hadn’t as the reality of their hangovers dawned on them.
‘Get the monk up into the woods, to the Raven’s camp.’
‘I’d prefer not to go up there, sir,’ said Fastarr.
‘And I’d prefer you did.’
Aelis went to the merchant. He was red-eyed and yawning.
‘I had to watch all night,’ he said. ‘That should have been your job.’
Aelis gave him a look to tell him that though she was disguised as a slave he shouldn’t make the mistake of treating her like one. He smiled. She wasn’t a slave, for sure; more like a precious possession now.
Ofaeti brought the monk from the house, carrying him over his shoulder. Leshii could see the confessor’s pain and his efforts to hide it.
‘I’m not traipsing all the way up there with him, merchant; lend us a mule,’ said Ofaeti.
‘The one that had the wine will be considerably lighter, practically unburdened,’ said Leshii. ‘Put him on that. I’ll take my animals to a safe place in the woods.’
‘No,’ said Sigfrid. ‘You are to do me a service, merchant, and can accompany these men.’
Leshii forced his face into a smile. ‘As ever for you. I only aim to please, lord,’ he said.
‘Follow the monk. Be with him for the coming day. Do not leave his side and report to me what he says.’
‘Always your servant, great lord.’
Sigfrid looked at Leshii oddly and the merchant thought he might question his familiarity, but the king just said ‘You can leave the bags and the mules you don’t need here.’
‘My lord, I prefer to guard them.’
‘It was an instruction, not a request. The packs will not be stolen from, nor your animals eaten — you have my word. You can have them back if I find your report satisfactory.’
Again Leshii smiled. This place, he was sure, would be the death of him. There was no trade to be had one way or the other, no entertainment and not even any food. The best he could hope to come away with was a case of scurf. The worst, well, that would be not coming away at all. Still, Leshii was a practical man and knew the northerners stood by their oaths. The bags might be safer with the king than at his own side. And at least the Vikings had not mentioned that he had claimed to have known the king since he was a boy.
They went out past the smouldering fires of the camp, through the bands of mist and up the incline for a very long way. Leshii looked behind him as they climbed. The mist sat in the shallow valley of the river like broth in a bowl. And what a broth, a brew of trouble, plague, suspicion and death. They reached the edge of the forest, where already people were chopping logs, and went under the trees. There was a narrow track, just a depression in the grass really, and they followed that. The woods were wet and lovely: the dew sparkled in the pale sun and bluebells flashed like jewels in the web of the low mist. Leshii could not enjoy the morning, though. He was a captive. He glanced at Aelis. What was she? The captive of a captive. Quite a fall for a noblewoman in just one night, he thought.
They were no more than a spring hour into the woods when they came to a clearing. The trees were high here, huge oaks budding into leaf.
‘It’s here,’ said Fastarr.
Leshii could see nothing to indicate a camp. They went into the clearing.
‘Hrafn!’ shouted Fastarr. ‘Hrafn!’
From up in the trees a raven stirred from its nest.
‘Wrong one,’ said Ofaeti. No one laughed.
The bird sat looking at them from a high branch.
‘They’re strange things, those,’ said Ofaeti. ‘They won’t nest together, but as soon as one of them gets a sniff of food they’re cawing their heads off calling for the others to come and join in.’
‘Let’s hope there’s no more like Hrafn around,’ said Fastarr.
‘You should let me gut that corpse-muncher,’ said Ofaeti.
Fastarr smiled. ‘If we ever meet him out of the protection of Sigfrid’s people then I’ll race you to cut his throat.’
‘You shouldn’t say that,’ said Svan. ‘He’s a priest of Odin. He cures people, and he’s worth ten men in battle, I’ve seen it.’
Fastarr grunted, clearly unwilling to debate the subject. ‘Hrafn!’
There was a stirring down in the wood.
‘Oh, on Freyr’s fat cock, it’s her,’ said Ofaeti.
‘Let’s leave the prisoners and get it over with then,’ said Fastarr. ‘I don’t want to be around to watch this.’
‘Are you so soft, Fastarr?’
Leshii looked around. It was Saerda, the hard little man who had delighted in tormenting Aelis.
‘I have killed a score of men,’ said Fastarr, ‘but they have been the honest deaths of sword, axe and spear. This offends me.’
‘You don’t like to see your enemies suffer?’ said Saerda.
‘I like ’em dead and quick,’ said Fastarr, ‘the quicker to return to my ale and my women.’
‘Each to his own,’ said Saerda with a shrug, ‘I can stay with them if you like.’
‘Do as you want,’ said Fastarr. ‘Just the sooner…’
His voice trailed away. Leshii’s mouth fell open. Aelis actually screamed, but no one seemed to notice, they were too busy holding on to their own stomachs. Leshii had encountered a leper on his travels, though he had run from him quick enough. This, though, was another kind of deformity entirely.
A woman had appeared at the edge of the clearing. Her hair was black and disordered, she wore a dirty white shift stained red with blood at the front from two raw wounds at her neck, and she swayed as if almost too weak to stand. It was her eyes, though, that caught Leshii’s attention. She didn’t have any. Her face was marked with cuts, like her brother’s, but much more numerous and severe, and her head was swollen, almost spongy in appearance, like a monstrous oak gall. There was no discernible nose, just a ragged slit for a mouth, and where her eyes should have been were torn and vacant sockets, the shape of them hardly distinguishable. What had done that to her? Leshii wondered. Disease? It looked like no disease he had ever seen, though her face was bruised black and red with infection, puffed out unevenly on one side, almost shrunken away on the other. Her, eyes, though, her eyes were truly terrible. He remembered fetching bread from his grandmother to his mother when he had been young. The old woman had given him half a loaf, and on his way home he’d thought he’d just take a nibble, so he’d pinched a little off as he walked. It had been delicious and he couldn’t resist taking another pinch, then another, until the inside of the loaf was nearly hollow. That was how the woman’s eyes appeared, like the inside of that loaf, ruined by tiny degrees.
The woman swayed forward across the clearing and then tripped and fell, groping blindly on her hands and knees, sniffing and feeling her way towards them.
‘What do we do?’ said Fastarr.
‘Don’t look at me,’ said Ofaeti.
‘This is their camp. She wants the monk; give her the monk,’ said Saerda.
‘How, in the name of the Norns’ icy tits, do you know what it wants? Are you a bastard mind-reader now?’ said Ofaeti.
The woman heard their voices and craned her head. Leshii watched as she got to her feet and stood facing them, arms by her side, about twenty paces away. This was becoming rather too weird for the merchant’s tastes. He was, he thought, only a morning’s hard walk away from the area the Norsemen controlled. If he could, he would take the lady and just strike out for Ladoga. He’d have to leave his silks and his mules, but the prince would provide him with ample compensation for those if he delivered him the girl. For the first time since he’d left the east, Leshii wished the wolfman was back by his side. He at least would give him a chance of escape.
‘This is meant to be where we leave the monk. Let’s just leave him and get out of here,’ said another berserker.
Fastarr shook his head. ‘We need to find out where this girl is. If that’s what the Hrafn’s after, we need to get to her before him. We have to hear the prophecy and react before he gets his claws into her.’
‘Well, shall I get the monk down or not?’ said Ofaeti.
‘Yes.’
Leshii looked around. The tall figure of Hugin had appeared from the other side of the clearing. He was carrying three small bags across his shoulders and wearing a pair of ragged trousers and a torn smock of dirty grey wool, still greasy as if it had just come from the animal and had not been soaked in hot piss to get the grit and the grease out of it. At his side was that cruelly curved sword. Leshii had heard of such swords, of course — they were a legend among the Moors and the blue men of Africa — but even when he had travelled down the camel roads to Serkland, he had never seen one and wondered what smith had the skill to make such a weapon.
‘Leave the monk,’ said the Raven. ‘Set him down here, at the edge, under the branch of this oak.’
Leshii watched as the confessor was taken from the back of the mule. It almost broke his heart to see. The value of a saint had to be huge, he thought. Even the man’s bones would be worth a fortune to the right monastery. Perhaps, thought the merchant, he might get a chance to steal the corpse — as he was certain the confessor was about to become — once Hugin had finished with him.
The confessor didn’t complain as he was taken down. The Raven kneeled beside him and put his hands on his brow and on his chest. Leshii thought he almost looked as if he was tending to him. It was when he saw the noose, with its tricky, sticky knot, that he knew for certain he was not.
The Raven cast the rope up over the branch of the tree and then slipped the loop over the head of the monk. He took up the slack, pulling the confessor up into a seated position. The rope was not strangling the monk, Leshii could see, but it was forcing him to work for his breath. The merchant was meant to stay to find out for the king what the confessor said. As far as Leshii could see, the confessor would do very well to keep breathing, let alone issue any prophecies.
‘You can discover where the girl has gone like this?’ said Ofaeti.
‘Perhaps,’ said Hugin.
The monk groaned and then was quiet. Leshii admired him. He could tell that he wouldn’t give in to pain, to argument or to pleas. The confessor was the stuff martyrs were made of. Leshii’s mind was ever on profit and he thought that he might be able to get a few hot meals out of monasteries in return for an account of how the man had died.
Hugin opened his first bag. It contained a white powder. He took a handful and smeared it on the confessor’s face and hands. The sorcerer wasn’t rough, Leshii noticed; in fact he was very careful, patting at the powder, wiping it smooth with his thumb like a mother taking dirt from her son’s face in preparation to meet guests. Then he opened the second bag and removed a very curious item indeed — a carved wooden shape, like a short double-headed spoon with ties of leather coming from each end. Hrafn held it up to the monk’s eyes. Leshii could now see what it was — some sort of eyeguard, like the metal ones the Norsemen occasionally put on their funeral helmets. These were impractical for fighting use — the metal would like as not direct the tip of any thrust into the eye as much as away from it — but they looked impressive. This one, though, was not attached to a helmet and had no holes in it. Anyone wearing it would be able to see nothing. Hrafn did not tie it on; he seemed to think better of it and put it to one side. Then he opened the third bag. In it was a human hand, one finger tied to a looped cord. The shaman put this around the monk’s neck.
Leshii glanced at the berserkers. They were muttering to each other. The merchant could see the ritual — as it appeared to be — made them very uncomfortable.
Hugin walked to the ruined figure of his sister in the middle of the glade. He took her gently by the hand, guided her across to the monk and sat her down beside him. She put her arms around the confessor and sang.
Her voice was beautiful. It was a song in no language Leshii understood but it seemed almost to chime and ring as she sang. It was dizzying too. He felt himself drifting off, as you might doing dull work while the sun shines outside. The song carried him away and he forgot where he was. Presently he noted that it had become darker. The light had begun to fall. At first he thought it must have gone cloudy, but then he realised that it was dusk. There was a smell of fires from down the valley and the sun was low through the trees. The berserkers were quiet, laid out on the grass, as if asleep. The woman thing, the faceless horror, still cuddled and crooned at the monk; the Raven still sat on his knees nearby, staring into the middle distance. There was a noise Leshii couldn’t place. At first he thought it was the wind in the trees. It had that quality to it, rising and falling, but was not quite like the wind. More like the breath of a great crowd, a babble of voices.
The woman’s song went on. Leshii looked into the trees. All around them, silhouetted against the falling light, ravens were assembling, scraps of black dropping onto branches. They were beneath a ravens’ roost, where the birds gathered from their nests at night to seek the protection of numbers until the dawn.
Now one fell like a dark leaf from a tree and alighted on the woman’s shoulder, its head turning this way and that in apparent curiosity. Leshii watched as she held up her finger. It pecked at it, drawing a gout of blood. The woman seemed not to notice but slid the finger under the bird’s foot. It took hold and she felt with her free hand for the monk’s shoulder. Then she blew on the bird and it hopped forward onto the confessor. Leshii watched as the monk sensed its presence. He tried to draw his head away but it was held firmly in place by the noose. A normal man may have been able to writhe away, to frighten the bird, but the confessor could not. A tiny turn of his head was all he managed. The raven pecked, but not at the monk. It stripped off a tiny piece of meat from the hand hanging around Jehan’s neck and gave a loud caw. Leshii thought that if the night had a voice, that was what it would sound like. Now other birds tumbled from the trees with cackles of delight. The merchant watched as the birds tore into the hand at the monk’s neck.
There was another sound, an exhalation, a deep sigh, more like one of despair than of pain. The monk, noticed the merchant, had blood running from his cheek, then from his forehead, then from his neck and his ears and his lips.
Hugin went back to the confessor and crouched at his ear.
‘Odin, lord, in this offering of pain,
Odin, lord, your servants beseech you,
Odin, lord, who in agony won lore,
Odin, lord, direct us to your enemy.’
The words were a mumble, repeated and repeated.
The monk’s body convulsed, and one or two of the birds took flight, but four remained to tear at his flesh.
They seemed almost leisurely in their feeding: pecking, swallowing, turning around, cawing and calling and pecking again.
The berserkers were standing up, some shaking their heads, some turning away and feigning indifference, one watching in fascination. Saerda seemed to be enjoying the spectacle. The merchant saw that Aelis couldn’t look away and was trying to speak, her voice reduced to an appalled stammer by what was happening. In a few seconds, thought Leshii, she was going to betray herself. He put his arm around her as a token of comfort but also as a means of restraint. He knew it must look odd to treat a slave that way but no one was looking at him; all eyes were on the confessor’s suffering. The red sun cast long shadows through the trees like welcoming arms to greet the incoming night. Leshii realised they had been there for hours.
The monk could hardly move but his voice was strong, passionate even. ‘I have come back for her. She is near me.’
The merchant pulled at Aelis. ‘Come away,’ he said. ‘Come away.’
‘She is here!’ screamed the monk. ‘She is here.’
‘Where? Where is she?’ Raven was at his ear, speaking low like a parent coaxing a fretful child to sleep.
‘Here, she is here.’
‘Can you see her? Where is she?’
‘Near me, she was always near me. Lord Jesus, let me resist this. I will not reveal her.’
A raven hopped up onto the monk’s face and took a tentative, inquisitive peck at an eye. Hugin held the monk’s hand and intoned again.
‘Odin, lord, take this agony for your agonies,
Nine days and nights on the storm-racked tree,
Odin, lord, who gave your eye for lore,
Lead us to your enemies.’
‘Aelis! Aelis!’ the monk was screaming. ‘Come to me, come to me. I have looked for you for so long. Aelis. Adisla, do not go from me — it will be my death!’
Adisla? Who was that? wondered Aelis. It sounded like a Norse name. And yet it seemed strangely familiar to her. She was overwhelmed by the urge to help the confessor. She started towards the monk but Leshii stopped her. His solemn faith that this magic would not work had been replaced by an equally solid conviction that it would. In a second, he thought, the monk would identify the lady.
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