‘Your brother monk.’
Jehan tried to spit but he couldn’t. His body twitched and convulsed; his lacerated tongue tried to push away the corruption that was in his mouth but the blood taste would not go. He called out, but his cry was nothing beyond a whisper.
‘Your friends are gone. Our man Hrafn is seeing to your lady; your merchant has fled, and your monk is your supper. I will perform your dirty ritual, you flesh-eater, who cowers in the face of his enemies and calls it virtue.’
‘Our father-’ Jehan began the Lord’s Prayer.
More of the filthy stuff was pushed into his mouth, fingers shoving it past his tongue. He tried to bite, but his mouth would not close and he realised his jaw must have been broken by the rope. The agony went right through him as Saerda forced open his mouth. There was something else in there, something slick and wet, which slid into his throat like a bloody oyster. Saerda had his hand on the confessor’s nose, clamping shut his mouth.
‘It’s one of his eyes, holy man. Come on, priest. This is the body, this the blood. Here, drink and eat to go to your god.’
He threw the confessor back on the ground and for a second Jehan thought his ordeal was over. It had only just begun. Saerda called out the names of the parts as he forced them into Jehan’s mouth — the liver, the kidney, the heart and the balls. Jehan vomited but the slick meat was only shovelled back in.
‘Do you think you could eat all of him, priest? Think how holy you would be, think.’
Jehan’s thoughts were scrambling under the horror he was enduring. In his mind he saw a plain with a hollow, dead light, a body in front of him, its armour torn, its spear broken.
Saerda was pacing around him, now, taking his time.
‘Stop!’
‘I won’t stop. I lost my king and my horse tonight; the Raven’s taken a lady who could have brought me riches, and all I have is whatever I can get for your useless bones. That has put me in a fearful bad temper. You’ll eat until that temper’s spent.’
He pushed something more into the confessor’s mouth, wrenching back his head. He cursed as the monk convulsed and shook from his grasp. Saerda pulled him up by his habit but the monk wrenched back in a terrible spasm, tearing away from his fingers to lie trembling and jabbering on the floor. Jehan saw a cave, saw himself lying unable to move, not because of illness but because a rope, terribly thin and strong, wound about him, lashing him to a great rock. He saw the Virgin and heard her screaming at him that his destiny was to kill and to die.
‘You broke my bastard finger!’ said Saerda. ‘Now you really are going to pay for that.’
The berserker took up the glittering rope of Abram’s bowels, sat astride Jehan’s chest, and thrust it into the confessor’s face, forcing as much as he could past his teeth.
‘You’ll eat, you’ll eat and you’ll eat again,’ said Saerda.
The monk’s whole body twisted and writhed, and Saerda could not hold him. Jehan threw him off. The monk felt as though every muscle was trying to break free of the bone. His head turned and shook, his legs kicked, driving him around in a wild spin. His lips foamed blood. All he could think of was blood, Christ’s blood, streaming in the sky. The sun was blood, the moon blood, the air blood, the water and the light blood. He heard the words of the Bible in his head:
He hath led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into light.
Surely against me is he turned; he turneth his hand against me all the day.
No, God had not turned against him; God had loved him and marked him out as special. But the words would not stop rattling through his head like a rat in an attic.
My flesh and my skin hath he made old; he hath broken my bones.
He hath set me in dark places, as they that be dead of old.
He hath hedged me about, that I cannot get out: he hath made my chain heavy.
Also when I cry and shout, he shutteth out my prayer.
The words seemed to speak to him, telling him something that was more bitter to him than any torture, any affliction or pain. God had deserted him. He could not believe it to be so. It was the work of a devil. Hell had set a worm in his mind.
He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath made me drunken with wormwood.
He hath also broken my teeth with gravel stones, he hath covered me with ashes.
And thou hast removed my soul far off from peace: I forgot prosperity.
And I said, ‘My strength and my hope is perished from the lord.’
Jehan screamed, more in his mind than with his voice: No! No! No! The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him. The lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him. The words were like a high and melodious music but underneath them something deeper beat out a dark poetry.
Much have I fared, much have I found,
Much have I got of the gods,
What shall bring the doom of death to Odin,
When the gods to destruction ride?
He had never heard that verse before but he knew the answer, it was on his lips.
Saerda drew his knife and leaped at the confessor’s chest, pinning him down, shoving the point into the side of his cheek.
‘Shut your rattle. You’ll eat him or you’ll eat yourself. I’ll cut you up and stuff you down your own throat.’
Jehan saw himself. He was lashed to the rock, his fetters tourniquets, his mouth wedged open by something sharp and strong. He knew the answer, knew who it was who would bring death to the pagan god.
The wolf shall be the bane of Odin,
When the gods to destruction ride.
Jehan reached up his hands and found Saerda’s head. He saw that cave in his mind, felt the sharp thin bindings cutting his flesh and pinioning him to the huge rock. The wolf, the wolf would bring death to the god. It was all he existed for, all that he did. There was a sensation of release and freedom. He was the wolf.
‘The fetters have burst,’ he said, and he broke the Viking’s neck.
22
Helpless
Leshii had come round to find himself alone. The Raven, he thought, must have gone straight by him.
It was morning. He thought of the lady. At first he found it hard to orientate himself to determine which way she had run, but a gasp drew him to where she was. He was about to go to her but a glint of steel stopped him. It was the Raven, he knew, that naked figure, pale as a corpse, crouching in the grey dawn light by the river.
Leshii wanted to creep closer but he couldn’t make his legs do it. Fear overcame his will and kept him from moving. He was in terror of that awful man.
For the first time since he had met the berserkers, he thought of Chakhlyk. Where was the wolfman? Dead, he didn’t doubt it.
He thought of that skinny berserker too: where was he? His mind came back to what it always came back to — value. He’d seen enough of the berserkers who had drunk his wine to know they owed no blood loyalty to the king at the camp. They couldn’t speak Latin, couldn’t bargain with monks. His one way forward, which was not attractive at all, was to ally himself to those men. He turned the arm ring over in his hand. At least he had something of worth, as necessary to him as a weapon to a warrior. Now he could buy and sell again, now he could trade, now he was himself.
He outlined his position in his mind, the deal he was making with fate. The least he wanted was safe passage home. Helgi might have him killed if he came back empty-handed, but his mission had only been to lead the wolfman to Paris. However, it would be much better to return with the lady because there was no guarantee how the king might react and it was better to be certain of a reward. Ideally he wanted the monk to sell and the lady too. The lady was about to die, he had no doubt, and there was nothing he could do to prevent it. So then, find the berserkers, employ them as bodyguards and get the monk, or his bones. He could promise to pay them once he was paid for the monk. He couldn’t ransom him, alive or dead, without someone to defend him.
But no, he wasn’t thinking str
aight.
Leshii fought to put his thoughts in order. He’d been Sigfrid’s prisoner. As soon as the king’s body was found the whole place was going to be crawling with Vikings looking for his killer and Leshii would be high on their list of suspects. The risk of going back to the Viking camp was just too great. He was faced with walking back to Ladoga with nothing to protect him but the coat he stood up in and his wits.
There was a movement in the trees. Horses, coming past at the trot, keening and fretful.
What was wrong with those animals? He’d heard that sound they were making recently, when the Viking horse had taken a throwing axe in the neck. It was the sound of terrible, mortal distress.
He looked through the trees, away from where the Raven crouched at the water’s edge.
There was more movement. Yes, the king’s big horse. A horse would make his journey much easier, if he could make it come to him. But it seemed to be having some sort of fit, stamping at the ground, sweating and frothing. It was looking towards where the Raven was crouching. It was Sigfrid’s animal for sure, the one Aelis had been riding. Further off in the trees he heard another call, a bray. It was his mule! Now he could get that. If Leshii knew anything, he knew mules, after thirty years on the trade routes. He felt sure he could catch it and got to within about twenty paces, whistling softly. He could see the animal was scared but it was in nowhere near as bad a state as the horse. ‘Come on, girl, come on.’
The mule took a few paces away.
Something came running through the trees to Leshii’s left. There was a huge cry, another answering it. Against himself he ran to see what it was. It was the wolf.
23
Wolf’s Blood
Death did not come to Aelis, but something like it did. The shadows unwrapped, reached forward and took the Raven to the ground before he could strike.
Hugin was standing again almost before he’d gone down, slashing up and around with the knife with a terrible speed. At first, as the two figures grappled in front of the sharp morning sun, Aelis thought it was a wolf. It sounded like a wolf and was as quick, but she saw, as an arm flashed out to block the knife, that it was a man, the same man who had come for her in the church.
‘Run, run,’ he was screaming. ‘He will kill me soon and then he will come for you again. Run!’
She tried to stand but her legs wouldn’t obey her; they were frozen dead. She got half to her feet but fell like a drunk, grabbing for a tree with an arm that was numb with cold. She fell, head smacking into the ground. Then she tried again, but she couldn’t even feel her limbs, let alone use them.
‘Run, run!’
Aelis heard that sound in her head — like a great rushing of water, the movement of wind in the mouth of a cave, the tide of the blood in the ears, but it was none of those things.
The Raven was on top of the wolfman. He had his knife in both his hands and was straining to get the point into his opponent’s neck. The wolfman had caught the blade, the blood on his fingers bright in the dawn light. Hugin gave a great hoarse cry and drove the knife down, but the wolfman snapped it and used the Raven’s downward momentum to drive his head into his opponent’s nose. Then he was on him, screaming and biting and punching and tearing. The sorcerer went for his sword but the wolfman pinned his arm, making it impossible to draw. The men were on their feet now in a brawling embrace, staggering from tree to tree. They fell, broke, got up again, but the wolfman never let Hugin get far enough away to free his sword. But the Raven didn’t need a weapon. With ferocious speed he smashed his knee upwards into the wolfman’s midriff, driving him up into the air. The wolfman hit the ground like something wet.
Aelis thought her mind was going to split. That sound was within her and without her, coming from that pulsing, breathing, running rune. What was it?
The Raven reached for his sword; the wolfman lunged to stop him, and for a second they stood swaying together by the river’s edge. Then the big horse smashed them both into the water. Aelis finally placed the sound. It wasn’t water, blood, wind or drums. It was hooves.
Leshii came running. The Raven was gone, but the wolfman was clinging by one hand to the branch of the tree that had saved Aelis. Leshii could see he wouldn’t last long. The horse had knocked him almost senseless and he was groaning. Leshii had never heard him acknowledge any hardship before. The wolfman was twenty paces out in the powerful current; Leshii was old, he couldn’t save him. But he had to. It was not heroism or fellow feeling that drove him on but, as ever, practicality. He needed a protector and he needed someone to help complete his mission. Chakhlyk was his only hope.
‘I am coming, dry one, I am coming.’
The king’s horse had knelt down beside Aelis, lightly pressing its body into hers, offering her its warmth. The other animals had come in too — Saerda’s horse and the mule. Leshii knew what he needed to do. The mule was a pack animal and wouldn’t like to be ridden, but it would be led. He took its halter and walked it out into the rushing water, standing upstream so his weight pushed into its side. He knew there was no creature on earth as sure-footed as a mule, and the animal went out into the river with a slow confidence.
About ten paces in, the pressure of the water became too much for Leshii and he draped himself over the mule’s back, driving it on with a slap on the rump. The water was only up to the top of its legs when they reached the wolfman, but the flow was so strong that the merchant knew he wouldn’t be able to stand unsupported. His plan was to wedge himself against the mule to resist the current. He dropped into the water and immediately realised he’d been too hopeful. The water caught his feet as the mule skipped free and back to the bank. Leshii slipped and grabbed for the wolfman on instinct, pulling him from the branch. The water took both of them, and drove them backwards but Leshii got some purchase on the riverbed and with a great heave shoved himself and the wolfman towards the bank.
The current pulled and turned them and then it had them, surging them on. For a few seconds they were lost, but then Leshii felt a great crack on his side, solid ground beneath his feet and grass in his hands. He’d been smashed into the bank fifty paces from the tree, where a bend narrowed the course of the river. He and the wolfman were alive. From across the river he heard something between a croak and scream. He peered across the bright water. On the opposite bank a naked figure with something tied to its back was pulling itself onto dry land.
Leshii coughed and stood, almost laughing.
‘Well, he won’t be coming back over here in a hurry. Chakhlyk, my dry one, you’re wet enough now.’
The wolfman heaved himself up onto his bleeding hands. Now Leshii could see the wound in his side, a thumb’s width of broken arrow shaft protruding from just below his last rib. No wonder people were scared of him, thought Leshii. He had fought the Raven with that in his guts. But the wolfman couldn’t be long from death.
‘He is calling to his sister,’ said the wolfman. ‘We need to go, and now. He has seen the lady and she is in great danger.’
There were sounds through the trees — shouting, lots of men.
‘No time,’ said the wolfman. ‘Come on.’
Aelis was trembling as the blood returned to her limbs. ‘What about the confessor and the monk?’
‘Murderers! King-slayers! They have his clothes, they have his clothes!’
There was one Viking, a boy, fifty paces off, just visible between the trees and the river.
‘Go,’ said the wolfman. ‘Now. I will find you. Merchant, get on that animal and take the lady to Helgi.’
‘I am going to my people,’ said Aelis.
‘No. You have very little time. The wolf is coming into flesh — it is foreseen. You must get to Helgi; only he can save you from what stalks you.’
‘What stalks me?’
‘Death, destruction, again and again in many lives.’
He lifted the lady onto the horse and Leshii got up behind.
Aelis looked down at the wolfman and stammered, ‘W-wh
y are you doing this?’
‘For love,’ he said. ‘I will find you. Aelis, Adisla, I will find you. Now go!’
A shadow sang across the light. The wolfman stepped forward and took it from the air. It was a spear.
‘Go. They are near.’
He slapped the animal’s rump, and it took off through the trees with the Norsemen at its back.
24
At Ladoga
Paris was still unscorched, Sigfrid living and the confessor still a lost child grubbing in the great forest of the Rhine when Helgi went up to the roof of the loading tower to survey his new lands at Aldeigjuborg, or Ladoga as he was learning to call it to please his subjects. He had something else to celebrate beyond taking possession of the town — the birth of a daughter.
The Viking king looked out over his lands and waters. Stretching out in front of him in the clear day was the river leading to the trembling blue of Lake Ladoga, its green islands just specks in the distance. Spread out around it like stars around the moon were the turquoise flashes of other lakes, so many he had never managed to count them. He looked at the winding rivers that connected them — some like threads, others more like blue roots, all reaching out from the great shimmering boss of the lake, stretching east to Miklagard and the steppes, west to the Eastern Lake, and north to home.
His men, the northerners, were lords of the water, kings of ships. No wonder the native tribes of Slavs and the Finns had asked him to rule over them. He had been surprised when he received their ambassadors asking him to be their king, but when he came to think about it, it was only a just reward. Who had warred more than he had? Who had stocked the All Father’s halls with so many dead warriors that his armies would stretch from horizon to horizon? Who had sacrificed slaves and cattle at summer blot and winter feast? Helgi. Odin was his god, the god of kings, and he had rewarded him handsomely.
Years before, his people had come in conquest, ruled for a while and been overthrown. But the chaos that followed was so bad and the memory of their easy and liberal rule so good that within twenty years a tribal faction, too weak to make a bid for power on its own, had invited them back.
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