He looked into the waters. The wolf was feeding. A rhyme from an ancient prophecy came into his head:
I saw there wading in black waters
Oath breakers, murderers and workers of ill,
There the dread biter sucked the blood of the slain
And the wolf tore men, would you know yet more?
It was coming true, the prophecy that had been told to him by the woman who had led him and his sister to the hills, awakened what was within them and led them to the dead god. The wolf was free. He had missed his chance with him, maybe even failed to recognise Odin himself. That meant there was very little time now. It had occurred to him to put an arrow into the thing that guzzled, snuffled and sucked at the flesh of the bound monks. He knew it would be useless, though. The wolf was to kill a god, and the Raven and his sister, as that god’s servants, would die with him. Arrows couldn’t harm it. To protect his sister, to keep her from dying with the god, he needed to kill the lady as quickly as he could. He had horses; he knew where the lady was going; there was no reason to delay.
All he could have hoped for at Saint-Maurice was to see the wolf, to know his enemy. He had achieved that, and not in any vision, as he had anticipated. He ran from the crypt without looking back.
44
A Defensive Action
‘We should go to Miklagard. We could exchange this lot for coin there. We’d get the best deal by far.’
It was dreadfully cold and the horses had laboured for a day into a stiff north wind, sharp with sleet. Now they had found some shelter in a turn of the valley and had decided to camp. They made a fire from the wood they had split from the monastery benches, piled on the clothes they had stolen and sat eating some fowl they had decided were free of poison.
‘At Miklagard the merchants wouldn’t even bother to barter. We’d be up to our nuts in dihrams,’ said Egil.
‘No,’ said Ofaeti. ‘If the men of the church there discover these treasures in our hands, they will just kill us. The whole thing is fraught with peril. Home, I say, then to Haithabu with enough men to make any pirates or churchmen think twice. Shit!’
‘Shit what?’
‘Franks! Someone must have escaped the abbey and got word to them.’
Two hundred paces away, where the valley twisted to resume its main course, seven horsemen were approaching at the trot.
‘Shield wall?’
‘With ten of us? We’d be skittled. Bollocks to that. Get up the slope — they can’t ride up there.’
‘What about the stuff?’
The Norsemen had their minds made up for them by the charge of the knights.
To Jehan the whole action happened as if in a dream. He saw the Norsemen flailing and cursing, trying to drag the gold-laden packhorses up the side of the valley; he heard the hooves of the charge thumping through the ground, the cries of the riders, the whistling wind. Then the horses were upon them, upon him.
Jehan was the only one who hadn’t moved. He just stood there transfixed. Stupid thoughts came into his head. These are rich men. They have fine mail coats. Their shields carry the red and white thorny cross of Richard the Justiciar. These are not Franks but Burgundians. Small details seemed more important than the fact that a fully mailed warrior was charging towards him with a sharp spear levelled at his head. Jehan had a sword at his belt but he didn’t draw it. At the last second the knight thought better of risking breaking his spear on an unarmed opponent and raised it. An enormous thump drove all the wind from Jehan’s body, snapped back his head and smashed him to the ground. The man had spurred his horse on at a flat-out gallop and ridden Jehan down. Two other horses followed the first and both struck him, one with a hoof to the ribs and the other on his head.
For a second Jehan was convinced he was dead. He felt torpid and slow, as if he’d eaten and drunk too much at a monastery lunch. He was sated, full to bursting with food. And yet he couldn’t remember eating. He had a headache and felt drowsy, although he was sure these weren’t the effects of being knocked down and trampled. The cold didn’t mean anything to him — the spikes of ice in the biting rain, the stinging wind, all meant nothing. He was sleepy. He had eaten, he was sure, and now he needed to rest.
Jehan fought off his torpor as five more riders appeared over the crest of the valley, screaming at the Vikings in their thick Burgundian dialect, ‘Lay down your weapons! Lay down your weapons!’
The first party of Burgundians were urging their horses up the hill, but Ofaeti and his men had achieved a good defensive position. Astarth had his bow free and was loosing arrows at the horsemen, causing them to back off behind their shields. The fresh riders came by at a gallop, narrowly missing trampling Jehan. Now there were Burgundians blocking both exits from the valley.
The Vikings had only the slope behind them, which very quickly became so steep that it was impassable, particularly if they wanted to keep hold of their packhorses and plunder.
Jehan felt himself lifted to his feet. Two of the Burgundians had dismounted and seized him and another had a knife in his hand.
‘I am not one of them,’ said Jehan.
Jehan had only a smattering of the Burgundian language, but, faced by death, suddenly found words that might have eluded him sitting around a fire chatting to merchants.
‘I am a monk and servant of the Roman emperor.’
There was a babble of talk among the warriors, too quick for Jehan, though he could understand that they were debating killing him. One voice pointed out that Jehan alone had not tried to run; another said that his clothes were soaked in blood — what more proof was needed that he had had a hand in the atrocity at the abbey?
‘What is the emperor’s name?’
‘Charles, called Fat, who is ally to your great lord, Richard.’
The men glanced at each other. The mounted horsemen were still harrying the Norsemen, making abortive charges up the steep slope.
The man with the knife spoke: ‘I’ll kill him anyway. He’s with the Varangians, that’s as good as being one of them.’
‘I am an honest pilgrim. My monastery will pay for my return.’
Jehan would normally have scorned to have bargained for his life, but there next to him was the girl, pale and ragged. Her eyes looked north and he knew that she was there to guide him to Aelis. This didn’t seem at all strange; it felt natural that he should follow her, natural that she knew what he was thinking and would know where to take him. He had to save Aelis; that was why he had been freed from the fetters of his infirmity.
‘You don’t look like a monk to me. Which monastery?’
‘Saint-Germain at Paris. I have travelled a long road and endured many hardships.’
Again the knights glanced at each other. A rock came whizzing past Jehan’s head. Ofaeti and his men had found some stones and were beginning to rain them down on the Burgundians.
‘Bring him back to the monastery,’ said a tall knight, ‘and we’ll scale this valley and take those bastards on foot.’
‘No,’ said Jehan.
‘Why not?’
‘They are rich men in their own country — they too can be ransomed. I can broker it.’
‘They killed our brothers.’
‘You are monks?’
‘As good as and as good as not. Richard is the abbot. We are his men. You can come before him at the abbey.’
So Richard the Justiciar was now abbot. That had happened recently, thought Jehan, or was it just that the drowsiness that had come down on him was robbing him of his memory? Richard’s presence meant one thing for certain: all the Vikings were dead. He had fought a bitter and successful war against his elder brother Boso and proved himself an efficient and merciless opponent. Richard was a monk only in name and doubtless would soon be moving his retinue of whores, hawks and hunting dogs into the abbey.
‘Those men are not your enemies,’ said Jehan. ‘We are pilgrims and happened upon the slaughter at the abbey. I instructed them to take your treasures to Saint-
Germain. I did not know your lord would return and thought the abbey was at the mercy of brigands and thieves.’
The man with the knife laughed. ‘Good of you to be so tender-hearted. I suppose we’d just have had to ask for it back and Saint-Germain would have coughed it up straight away.’
‘I am not a thief,’ said Jehan.
More rocks showered down.
‘Tell them to lay down their arms then, and you can see the justiciar. He will see the truth, believe me.’
Jehan shouted up the hill in Norse. His head was still swimming. ‘Ofaeti, you have one chance. The treasure is lost. You have the choice: if you want you can die for it.’
‘I’ll do that then!’ shouted Ofaeti.
‘Give it up. I’ll lead you to greater fortune than this, I swear it. I led you here, didn’t I? I’ll bargain for your lives and lead you to ten times this gold.’
‘It may seem hard for you to understand, Christ man, but dying in a damn good scrap up to my knees in gold has been an ambition of mine for years. Bring your Frankish cowards up here, and we’ll make a nice pile of them for you.’
The pale girl at his side looked at Jehan and words came into his mouth: ‘I can take you to the girl. Aelis, the count’s daughter. I can take you to her.’
‘How?’
‘I know where she has gone.’ Jehan didn’t know where the words came from or what they meant, but he heard them spilling from his mouth. ‘You will-’
He never finished his sentence. The Vikings had decided to take advantage of the distraction caused by his attempt at persuasion to mount an attack. Ofaeti leaped down the mountainside with his sword swinging, Astarth and Egil behind him.
The Burgundian with the knife thrust it at Jehan.
The monk’s torpor seared away like silk under a flame, and Jehan’s thoughts shrivelled in his head, burned to nothing in the fire of his temper. He dashed the blade from the knight’s hand and the wolf ran free through the forest of his mind.
When it was done, when the bodies of men and animals lay broken, dead and dying on the frozen ground, when the snow was red with blood, and the fog fell on the valley as if the mountains could no longer bear to look at the slaughter, Jehan felt a small cold hand in his and recovered his calm.
In front of him nine men knelt, their heads bowed, their swords held forward like crosses. The damp rattle of a dying horse’s breath filled up his mind and made thinking all but impossible.
‘We are Christ’s men.’
Jehan looked around him. The Burgundians had been shattered as if a giant fist had descended from the heavens. A few had been cut down — fingers hacked to bloody stumps, a plume of scarlet spreading out from an eye — but most had not been so lucky. Limbs were twisted to impossible angles, heads wrenched to look almost backwards, ribcages dented like so much metal. The bodies had been stripped already and he noticed the men in front of him were wearing fine mail coats. Loose horses were collecting down the valley, seeking each other’s warmth.
‘We are Christ’s men.’ The fat one was on his knees.
There was a taste in Jehan’s mouth. Blood, rich and salty.
‘Lord, we must move or the rest of them will be upon us.’
Lord?
Again, Jehan felt dazed and dizzy. The young girl held his hand. He managed, ‘Would you be baptised?’
‘For a warrior such as you are we will undergo any trial,’ said Fastarr.
‘It is not a trial; it is to wash away your sins.’
‘Let that be done, but first let us be gone. We can’t stay here, lord.’
‘Why do you call me lord?’
‘You are a great man. A warrior, a berserker as they saw in my father’s day.’
‘I am not a warrior.’
‘If you’re not then I’ve never met one,’ said Ofaeti. ‘This is your work. No sooner do I think about following your god than riches beyond measure are deposited in my lap and my enemies are dashed to pieces in front of my eyes. Lord Tyr never brought such bounty. Christ has driven him out, as you said he would. We are for your Jesus and him only from now on. He is a warlike god indeed!’
Jehan looked around him, at the broken lances, the wide-eyed corpses. He now remembered how he had broken the knife man’s arm and taken his throat. He remembered the screams of the warriors who had leaped upon him with sword and axe. He had cast them down and they had not stood again.
His attack had taken the attention of the Burgundians, distracting them for just a breath, enough for Ofaeti’s charge to be upon them. And then Jehan had gone to work, dashing spears from men’s hands, tearing, biting and killing.
He trembled. He had killed Christian men and now his soul was in peril.
He looked at the Vikings in front of him. They seemed almost fragile to him now, their bones too slender to hold together, too brittle for the men to move without them cracking. An image came back to him. A man tied to a pillar, his legs submerged in water, his face contorted in agony as cruel fingers pared away his flesh.
Blood. There was the taste again. He was full of it, and the person he had been, Jehan the Confessor, was revolted by what he had done. He had fallen on Christian warriors like a lion upon martyrs in the Colosseum. Something else though, a part of him that was waking and edging out the thoughts of the monk of Saint-Germain, could not find it wrong. His shame rose and grew and then fell away. How did he feel? Exultant. Scripture came back to him. Leviticus: And you shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters you shall eat. And John, the gospel that bore Jehan’s name: Therefore Jesus saith to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, but ye eat the flesh of man’s Son, and drink his blood, ye shall not have life in you. He was aware that his mind was warping, that he was misinterpreting the word of God, but it seemed not to matter any more. At the siege of Samaria, in extremis the people had eaten their children, and the Lord had not punished them.
‘I cannot baptise you. Cannot save you.’
‘Convert us to your faith.’
The girl by his side looked up at him. Jehan shook his head. ‘Choose someone else for that.’
He walked down the valley towards the horses. The Vikings followed him. Nine now. Two had died in the snow. They were carried to spare horses and put over their saddles. The Norsemen wanted to take their dead with them, to honour them in their own way. Jehan thought of the bones of his brother monk, now discarded in favour of much greater riches. He wanted to care about what happened to them but couldn’t. It was all he could do to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other.
Jehan mounted. The sweat of battle was beginning to freeze on him. The pale girl sat in front of him on the saddle.
‘Leave the monk. We have riches enough. Leave him.’ It was Egil, fear in his eyes.
Ofaeti shook his head. ‘He is a great warrior. This man brings luck. Let’s stick with him.’
Jehan just shook his head and turned the horse down the valley. The bodies of their comrades secured on the horses, the Norsemen came after him at a trot.
Five days later they paused at a stream to water the horses.
‘Here, monk, great monk, wash us for your god,’ said Ofaeti.
‘I will not.’ Jehan hadn’t eaten in days.
‘Why not? You were keen enough to do it on the way here.’
Jehan knew that he would not baptise these men. He had tried to leave but they had followed him. Although the girl at his side guided him, he didn’t know where he was going or how long it would take. Francia and Flanders were to the north, Christian lands.
How long had it been since the abomination in the pool? A week nearly, and he still didn’t feel hungry. But Jehan knew that one day he would, that the hunger would descend upon him in a way that would not be denied. There would be no kitchen, no table that could satisfy him. The scent of blood was in him, and he knew that he would need the taste of human flesh again. He thought of suicide, but when he prayed received no guidance from God. Augustine, that learned father, s
aid, ‘He who knows it is unlawful to kill himself may nevertheless do so if he is ordered by God.’ Aquinas had shown it to be the gravest of sins ‘because it cannot be repented of’. Theology was clear. Cannibalism was the lesser sin. Was his thinking clear though? It seemed so but his head buzzed with a new energy, leaving him sleepless though not tired, unfed but not hungry. His thoughts were a jumble. Only one thing seemed clear. He had been hungry before. He would be hungry again.
He followed the child. Why? Because she had a direction. If he could not damp down the bloodlust that had grown inside him then he could at least ameliorate its effects. As he travelled north he would kill no Christian men. That, he realised, was why he had refused to baptise the Vikings.
Jehan tended the fire, shaking with fear at the thought of the hunger he knew was inside him.
45
Blood on the Sand
The estuary was enormous, mile after mile of slick flat mud, the morning turning the sky to mother-of-pearl, the water to a deep green. The fisherman had taken back their boat and told Aelis and Leshii that there was an abbey and village they could walk to at the mouth of the river — Saint-Valery. They were true to their word. The abbey was an impressive group of buildings of pale stone. It stood on a long promontory to the west, looking out over the wide sweep of ocean.
It was well positioned to see any attack coming, but the vantage point had clearly done it very little good. Three dragon ships had been pulled up onto the mud. Low, sleek and slim, they really did look like dragons, lain out asleep on the shining flats.
‘We’ll find no traders here,’ said Aelis. They were crouched behind some bushes on the bank.
‘No,’ said Leshii, ‘but we are luckier than you think. Come on.’
‘I am afraid.’
Leshii shrugged. ‘We have seen no birds for two weeks now.’
‘There are three longboats full of Danes,’ said Aelis, ‘our sworn enemies. Even if you can persuade them to take us, I can’t conceal my womanhood for weeks on the sea. Will I be the only man on the boat who doesn’t piss over the side? What will happen to me — to us — when they realise?’
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