‘We will pay,’ he said.
‘What did I tell you. Speaks Norse like a Haithabu whore — that is to say, well enough for what we want him for. Frank, you are going to help me sell his bones.’
‘To Saint-Germain?’
‘No chance. You’d like that, I bet. We’re going east, son.’
Men were streaming past the confessor into the trees.
‘You don’t know me?’
‘No, should I?’
‘I’m the confessor. I’m the one you took from the church.’
‘Of course you are. You’re blind, you’re crippled and you’ve had half your face eaten by ravens. On top of that you were shaved bald on top yesterday and today you’ve got a fine thatch. For someone who’s been tortured to death, I must say, you look pretty well. Now get that mess over there into a sack. Once you have, we’re going on a little journey.’
The confessor touched his head. His tonsure had grown out. It was only a small detail but it left him mildly panicked. It was if part of his identity had been removed. He looked down at his body. It was wasted and thin still and yet it moved. He could walk. God had released him. It was all too much to take in. The implications of his cure were so huge. Jehan breathed in and tried to focus on what he needed to do rather than what had happened to him. If Aelis was with the merchant, she would be on her way to Ladoga by now — he had heard the easterner pressing the case of Prince Helgi.
Jehan knew he had no way to get back to the city, or even to Saint-Germain. Could he rescue Aelis if he followed her? That morning, standing upright, the sunlight through the trees dappling the forest floor and turning it to a shimmering stream, he felt anything was possible. Everything was so beautiful. But it was more than that. He felt bound to the girl, almost compelled to follow her. God, he felt, had picked him out for the task and cured him so he might accomplish it.
And there was one further advantage of travelling east. The sea way would be impossible, thick with Norse pirates, so they would go by land and he would learn what stood between him and the lands of the Rus. It was a chance to gain information about the enemies of God, even to seek out evil and uproot it.
He looked at the fat Viking, the one who seemed to be the leader, if not in name then in the respect the men gave him.
‘I am a monk and I can help you. There is a monastery I know that is in need of some relics and would pay well for them,’ he said.
‘Where’s that?’ said Ofaeti.
‘In Agaune, to the south and east in the Pass of Songs,’ said the confessor. ‘The abbey of Saint-Maurice.’
‘Why so far?’
‘You need to step out from the shadow of war to a land where you will be seen as merchants, not pillagers. If you approach an abbey in this land then you will be cut down. Not all monks are men of God, as you know, and some grew up with a sword rather than a Bible in their hands.’
Ofaeti looked the confessor up and down. ‘A word spell,’ he said. ‘Magic or sense? There’s no way back to our boats, for sure.’ He snorted. ‘Yes, Fastarr? What do you think?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then follow,’ said Jehan.
Saint-Maurice, thought the confessor, was where the Raven had said he was found and lost by God. The Raven had been described by Sigfrid as an intelligencer, so someone had sent him. Jehan had no idea who but he thought the abbey of the black saint was as good a place as any to try to find out.
26
Shelter
‘Melun,’ said Aelis as the horse slowed in the trees. ‘We’ll go to Melun. The town is loyal to my brother and the Northmen have not come so far down this time.’
Leshii nodded. He didn’t like the sound of that. In Melun the lady would go back to her people. Yes, they might reward him for looking after her, but then again they might not. He knew very well how capricious and unpleasant rulers could be. What if her brother decided that cutting her hair had been dishonourable or that no foreign man could have stayed on the road for so long with a young woman without taking advantage of her? He didn’t even know who was in charge in Melun — some local noble or bishop who would want the glory of finding the lady for himself? Helgi and his promised reward remained the best bet.
The trouble was that the lady had got her bearings and knew exactly where she was going. He had thought he might fool her, take her on his path and call it her path, so to speak. But he could think of no other option, so if the lady wanted to go to Melun, then he had to go there too. Her horse pressed forward through the trees, heading south down the river and Leshii followed, leading the mule.
‘Lady, following the river’s too obvious; they will think of searching for you there.’
Aelis said nothing, just kicked her horse forward. They travelled all day, passing the burned remains of three monasteries. The Vikings wouldn’t make a full push without their ships but were willing to make the occasional incursion on foot.
Eventually the trees thinned and gave way to a conglomeration of little fields and houses. It was dusk and a big red sun dipped behind them as they approached. Peasants came out to look at them, at first shouting and hissing and fetching staves, but Aelis spoke to them in Roman, calming them and telling them she was the cousin of Robert the Strong with a message from Count Eudes to the bishop on his island monastery. She had killed the Viking king and was here to encourage the men of the countryside to take heart and rally to Paris’s defence. She did not reveal herself as the count’s sister because she knew her people. It would have been too much for them to take in that she was dressed as a man, let alone travelling unchaperoned with a strange foreigner and her hair exposed for all to see. They would kill the merchant and brand her a whore. The disguise would have to remain intact for now.
The news of Sigfrid’s death soon spread through the farms and quickly there was such a throng that Aelis and Leshii could go no further. The farmers called out questions — ‘Did he die well?’ ‘Is his head on the city walls?’ ‘Do his men withdraw?’ — and offered ale and bread, praising the lad who had done such a fabulous deed. ‘Stay with us tonight and tell us your stories,’ someone called. ‘Please, lord, favour your people.’ Aelis was tired and suddenly the cold she had felt in the river came flooding back to her. It would be good to take a bed among these people. She looked to Leshii and he smiled. The merchant reflected that it was bad luck to lose the chance to take the lady east but consoled himself with the thought that at least he was used to it. The way the fates had treated him in the last few days would have been too much of a shock for a man accustomed to good fortune.
Leshii and Aelis were taken to the biggest house in the village. It was a mean place, low-roofed with walls of wood, straw, mud and dung, but the fire inside was warm and there were chairs to sit on and a bed to lie down on. Aelis did not dare remove her war gear for fear of exposing herself as a woman, but was so tired she fell asleep on the reeds of the floor and was covered with a blanket by the farmer’s wife. Leshii fared less well. Foreigners were always suspect and he was left to sleep as best he could. These were not the cosmopolitan people of Paris but peasants, some of whom had never even been to the town of Melun, whose walls they could see from their own fields.
Aelis slept dreamless and deeply with the farmer’s family around her, some on the floor, most in the bed they had been glad not to have to give up to the young lord. The fire was low and the night was dark by the time the first raven alighted near the smoke vent, its landing as soft as a raindrop’s. Then a second bird joined it, and a third.
27
Munin
A shape emerged from the shadows to stand by the seated figure of the woman with the ruined face in the firelight. The man himself had a face that was ravaged and torn and in his hand he carried a cruel curved sword in a scabbard.
‘Not yet,’ he said, ‘though it will be death by water, I know.’
The woman did not turn from the fire. The voices were few and distant in the empty spaces of the evening but the woman knew the
y were not alone. Men were camped around them among the trees. She could sense their breath, sense the heat of their animals and the sour note of fear on their skin, fear of what was behind them in the camp and what was in front of them in the half dark. They were scared of her, she could tell, but they were not there to kill her. Murmurs stirred in the trees like the rustle of leaves. ‘What next?’ ‘She will know.’ ‘She is a Norn and weaves the skein of our fate now.’ ‘What does she want?’ ‘What they always want.’ ‘What?’ ‘Death.’
Hugin ignored the whispers behind him and took his sister’s hand. She squeezed gently on his fingers. He uttered a single word: ‘Success.’
The woman turned to him on instinct, though her eyes did not see him. As she moved, the whispers fell silent.
‘I saw her face,’ said Hugin. ‘We will catch the monster now; it is only a matter of time. Don’t be scared, my sister. Our struggles and sufferings will bring their reward.’
Munin squeezed her brother’s fingers again. ‘You’re troubled,’ she said.
‘It’s nothing.’
‘You’re troubled.’
‘The wolfman found us again.’
‘He has the stone and I cannot see him. But that is not what is troubling you.’
‘I have seen her before,’ he said.
The woman now put her other hand over his. ‘Here?’
‘Not here. Before.’
‘This has happened before. It’s a powerful magic that she carries with her. You have had a glimpse of something, that is all.’
‘Of what?’
‘She and you. In another lifetime. It has been revealed to you already. She was the god’s death before, and unless she is stopped she will be once more.’
Hugin nodded. ‘Then she will be stopped.’
A horse somewhere breathed out and a man said a word to calm it.
‘Who are these?’ said Munin.
‘Grettir’s war band. Hated by Rollo. Their ships have been seized and they have put the thread of their fate in my hands. They are here if we need them. They are two hundred and fifty men. Will we need them?’
The woman bowed her head in thought. Beside the fire was a tangle of branches bearing the long-leafed fingers of the ash tree. Hugin took one up and cast it onto the fire. Then he sat back by his sister, gave her his hand again and listened as she chanted.
‘Blood, by blood begot,
Flame, by flame begot,
Death, by death begot.’
Over and over again she intoned the words until they were no more than an numbing haze of noise. There was restlessness around them. The war band now depended on the guidance of the sorcerers but were very uncomfortable in their presence. Some men paced back and forth. Some went and sat deeper in the trees. Only a few stayed to watch the chanting woman spin a web of sound through the forest.
Hugin felt something move in his head, as if his brain had acquired a terrible asymmetric weight and was far heavier on one side than the other.
Images rose in his mind and he knew his sister was taking his thoughts to use for her magic. Hugin had his own magical abilities, gained through privation, ritual and contact with the gods, but he was a man and he could never have what Munin had — runes, the symbols that express and shape the energies of creation. Her strength was so much greater than his. She concentrated on the symbol that grew within her, feeding off her and feeding her, sustained and sustaining. Hagalaz, the hail rune, symbol of destruction and crisis. Hugin felt its presence as his sister touched his mind — the driving wind, the sting on his face, the vision dying under the needles of ice.
As the coldness entered him, he knew that he and his sister were becoming one person, the division of their flesh an unimportant detail, nothing beside the unity of their minds. He saw a boy in the water, helpless, his lips blue and his flesh pale with cold. No, it wasn’t a boy; it was the woman, the one they had been following. They had known she would be in the church, so their visions had suggested, but they had been unable to see what she looked like. All they saw when they tried to summon her image was the jagged rune, the Wolfsangel, with its three meanings, storm, wolf trap and werewolf. Now Hugin had seen her and Munin could see her too. In her mind Munin was not blind, and Aelis was as clear to her as if she had been standing in the firelight in person. The sorceress looked into the lady’s pale blue eyes. Then she breathed in the scent of the ash fire.
The ash was the world tree on which all creation sat, gnawed at by the serpents that writhed in the earth beneath it. She said their names in her head. Nidhogg, the malice striker, Iormungand, Goin, Moin, Graftnitvir and Graback. But one was missing, the one she was looking for. She saw the world tree towering above her, and her mind seemed caught like the moon in its branches, a shining thing that spread its silver light over the trunk as it searched for what it needed. She let herself sink, falling through the leaves and the loam and the roots to the unstill earth beneath. She seemed to drop through writhing bodies, feel coils around her, things that crawled and crept over her skin. Then she had it, the one she was looking for.
‘Svafnir,’ she said. ‘The masked one.’
Hugin and Munin felt the serpent writhing in the cavern of their shared consciousness, squirming through their thoughts like a worm in the soil, curling around the thin bars of the hail rune that enchanted it. Then it was as if something had gone wild inside them, thrashing and turning. Images of hate and death sprang up, Danes and Franks with twisted faces dying under Hugin’s sword, a body found cold in the morning, a woman weeping with only the mocking call of a crow for an answer.
A raven descended from the tree.
Blood, by blood begot. Hugin could not tell if the words were in his head or were spoken aloud.
The bird hopped up onto Munin’s shoulder and pecked at her ear, drawing blood.
Hugin heard his sister’s voice in his head, addressing the bird: You shall find her.
A second bird dropped onto her other shoulder and drove its beak into her neck.
Fire by fire begot.
A gout of blood ran down her breast.
You shall mark her. Munin to the other bird.
Now a third, a black leaf dropping from a branch. It too drew blood on her neck.
Death by death begot.
The bird sat looking at her, as if waiting for instructions.
And you shall carry the blood of the serpent to where she rests.
The first raven gave out its cracking cry and flew up into the night, the other two calling after it as they chased it into the dark.
Hugin felt the heaviness in his head shift. He was cold, tired and vulnerable, though he still got to his feet. ‘The birds will do for her?’
The woman said nothing but Hugin nodded anyway. ‘Then I will go to make sure. Grettir’s men will burn the earth to find her.’
‘Take forty men to the farms to the south, and if you cannot find her there, she will no longer be your concern. You have business elsewhere. The girl has been seen. If she can be killed then I will kill her.’
‘And if she can’t?’
‘Then a hard road opens to us. We must find the wolf and contain him.’
‘So where for me?’
‘The road east to the dead lord’s well. The wolf will seek the god’s trail there. We must see him at least, to know how to act.’
‘How shall I summon him? I am a man, not a woman. My magic is a weak thing.’
‘Yes.’
‘So?’
Munin’s head bowed for a second. ‘You know who is in the hills and streams of Aguanum. You know what he wants. Give it to him until he reveals the wolf to you. The waters of the temple are hungry. It is up to you to feed them.’
‘How many?’
‘How many what?’
‘How many deaths?’
‘All of them,’ said Munin.
Hugin breathed out and glanced towards the men in the trees. ‘You will not come with me?’
‘I will stay here and try
to kill the girl.’
‘What of the rest of the war band?’
‘They will travel with me to track the girl. If I cannot kill her by magic they can do it by more usual methods.’
The Raven bent down and squeezed his sister’s hand. ‘It’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘We will survive this.’
‘That doesn’t matter,’ she said.
‘It does to me.’
‘The god must live.’
‘And you too, my sister, and you too.’
The woman said nothing, just felt for a bundle of yellow rags at her side and pushed it into Hrafn’s hands.
He could feel something solid beneath the cloth. He shook it and heard liquid. He touched his tongue to his lips.
‘All of them?’ he said.
‘All of them.’
Hugin kissed his sister on the forehead. He went to the men waiting among the trees and told them they were to split into two groups. The two hundred-odd who were to stay with Munin gave a cheer and tall Grettir himself shouted that they had a powerful witch on their side and that their fortunes were now secure.
‘We will have our boats back!’ he shouted.
Hugin nodded. ‘She will help you get into the camp,’ he said. ‘If you take twenty men you can get your boats. Then head down the Seine and meet your main force there.’
‘When will we be reunited?’ said Grettir. ‘I am lending my men, not throwing them away.’
‘You will be reunited,’ said Hugin, ‘before the year is out. You have my word. My sister can find me through her art.’
Grettir smiled, though Hugin noticed some concern in his eyes as he glanced towards his sister.
‘She is a good woman,’ Hugin said, ‘and you will prosper by her side.’
He raised his arm as a signal to his chosen men to follow him. The forty hurried to shoulder their shields, to be out of the presence of the torn and tattered thing that sat by the fire in the woods relaying messages from their gods. Then they followed Hugin as he walked into the forest night.
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