The Last Berserker
Page 11
‘No! No! Stop her!’ the Mikelgothi was shrieking, and she pointed her iron staff at the stern of the ship. ‘Seize her now! Somebody!’
Bjarki turned his head, already dreading what he would see. And there was Tor dressed in her usual leather trews and jerkin on the edge of the pit, in the act of leaping into the crackling holocaust that was the dragon-ship.
‘Noooo!’ Bjarki did not even know he was screaming. He watched in horror as Tor began her doomed run. That stupid, reckless, impossible…
Her short, spiky red hair took longer to catch than Helga’s and she was almost past the halfway point, the ship’s mast, before it vaporised in a single yellow flash. Then she tripped, her booted foot caught on a crackling log and she fell face first on to the burning deck.
Bjarki was suddenly freezing cold. He heard a sound like a torrent of water roaring in his ears and acted without a single conscious thought. He let out a roar and leapt forward. He seized the bottom edge of Angantyr’s heavy bearskin cloak in both hands and ripped it clean off the back of the Lodge Father. He swirled it around his head and shoulders and jumped into the burning ship at the prow end, landing with both feet in the sea of fire, feeling the half-consumed planks cracking and snapping under his weight.
He charged forward, howling as he felt the flames lick hungrily at his hands and forearms. He reached Tor in three strides, bent down and scooped her up, wrapping her in the heavy fur and turning in one smooth movement he hurled the girl with all his strength up, up and back towards the edge of the Fyr Pit. She flew high through the air, and landed with a thump on the ground, still entangled in Angantyr’s heavy bearskin cloak.
The water-barrel servants drenched her immediately.
Now, screaming with pain as the fire licked all over his body, Bjarki took two stumbling, running steps and jumped after her.
He almost made it.
His chest crashed into the stone lip of the pit, all the breath knocked out of him. The shirt on his back was burning, the skin blistering and bubbling under the linen. He felt himself slipping backwards, back towards the fire.
Two powerful hands seized him under the arms and he was jerked upwards and found himself face to face – their noses inches apart – with the head of a giant bear, with Angantyr’s angry red face somehow clamped between the beast’s open jaws. A bucket of cold water hit him squarely in the chest and another quenched the smouldering shirt on his back. More water cascaded down, blessed in its coldness, agonising in its heavy touch.
But he was alive. And so, he realised, looking over at the small writhing figure, rolling and jerking back and forth on the sodden bear cloak, was Tor. Angantyr’s face loomed back into his vision. The Lodge Father was stooping down to peer into his eyes. ‘That, little bear, was the single most stupid, reckless and idiotic thing I have ever seen in my life,’ he said. ‘And by far the bravest.’
Chapter Nine
The trumpets sound for war
Five days and nights of unimaginable pain. Bjarki lay on a pallet in the rear of his Lodge, feverish, moaning, dreaming of bears and fire, of dragon-breath shrivelling the skin on his naked body. Eldar, the Bear Lodge gothi, had given him the juice of the mandrake root and infusions of henbane for the pain, as much as he believed the young man could take without succumbing to death. He administered other potions and ointments, unguents and salves, using all his talents. But his skills could not entirely quench the agony.
The skin on much of Bjarki’s back and legs fell away in long strips, leaving raw oozing flesh behind, his hands and arms were blistered and red. His singed head, too, was pounding with an ache that speared from temple to temple. But he lived and, thanks to the gothi’s magic, he was beginning to heal. The first lucid dawn, when he managed to drink down a bowl of warm beef broth without vomiting, he asked after Tor.
Eldar sucked his yellow teeth and kept his counsel. Gunnar, who was sitting cross-legged beside him whittling a knot of elm wood, sang out: ‘Oh, she’s in bad trouble, Little Brother; that girl is in very bad trouble indeed.’
‘But she lives?’ said Bjarki.
‘She lives – she was roasted almost as crisp as you – but she’s alive. For now, anyway. They treated her wounds in the Wolf Lodge. I hear she’s on her feet again. But she will face a full tribunal tomorrow night. All the Rekkar of the Lodges and the senior gothi will gather in the Thing House to decide her fate. I wouldn’t be surprised if they decided to put her to death.’
‘She made a mistake – it’s just that she so badly wants to be a Rekkr.’
‘She profaned the mystery of the Fyr Ceremony, Bjarki. Made it a free-for-all. Her jumping into the Fyr Pit uninvited. Idiots like you diving in after her. A time-honoured ritual became a joke, a funny story to tell around the Lodge hearth late at night. The Mikelgothi will never forgive her for that.’
‘What about Ivar Knuttson? You were right. He was a cheat. We all saw him go before Helga – and before the dragon-ship was properly alight.’
‘That has already been decided by the Thing council. He is declared Rekkr. Angantyr made a big fuss – shouted and raved, apparently – but the Boar Lodge carried the day in the end. Ivar Knuttson is officially a Rekkr.’
Bjarki said nothing to this. He lay back in his pallet, exhausted.
‘That’s enough talk for this morning,’ said Eldar. ‘Let him rest now.’
Bjarki insisted on attending the Thing House tribunal the following evening. His raw back and legs were dressed with bandages thickly smeared in the Bear Lodge gothi’s concoction of goose fat and soothing herbs but it was still horribly painful for him to move. He tried to ignore the agony long enough to walk the few hundred yards to the Thing House, which was near the exercise yard on the west side of the Groves.
When he hobbled into the barn-like space, gripping Gunnar’s shoulder tightly, he was surprised to hear a tremendous cheer break out. He stopped and looked around him in total surprise. The Thing House was a rectangular, thatch-roofed building, with racks of stepped benches rising on all four sides so that all might be seated and still see the speakers in the centre of the open space. The benches were about three-quarters full when Bjarki came in, and he saw that men and women on all sides were standing up, one after the other, tugging their neighbour’s sleeves, pointing at him, shouting his name.
‘Bjarki… Bjarki… Bjarki…’ The sound came at him in waves.
It was terrifying at first. His instinct was to turn and run – and had he not been so crippled with pain he might well have done so. Then he realised they were actually acclaiming him, praising him for his actions at the Fyr Ceremony – and it became suddenly overwhelmingly embarrassing.
Bjarki wanted to curl up in a hole and hide.
Gunnar raised his own arm to acknowledge the chanting on his friend’s behalf and led Bjarki to a bench in the front row to the left of the entrance. The bench was full but the occupants shoved each other aside to make room for their hero. A few moments later, the Mikelgothi came in, dressed in a severe black hooded gown, followed by a half a dozen lesser gothi and the twelve Rekkar – not on this occasion dressed in their full animal-skin battle finery but, in stark contrast to the sombre gothi, wearing their finest clothes.
These important folk made up the Thing council, and they would make the final decision about Tor’s fate. Angantyr was dressed in a rich robe of purple velvet, fringed with little gold tassels, with a bright yellow satin cloak thrown over the top – no doubt a tribute or gift from some wealthy potentate he had served as a young Rekkr. Even mad Brokk had managed to wrap himself in a tattered crimson cape that was held in place with a heavy golden broach.
The Mikelgothi sat in the middle of the bench opposite the entrance, and the gothi and Rekkar sat on either side of her. Bjarki noticed that Ivar was wearing plain leather armour – probably, he guessed, because he did not yet possess anything in the way of finery. When they were all settled on the bench, Skymir stood and raised her staff, immediately quieting the House.
A roar of anger erupted from the whole Thing House.
Skymir bellowed: ‘Quiet! Quiet, now! Bring in the prisoner!’
The big door opened and little Tor came in, accompanied by two burly Wolf Lodge Barda carrying spears. Bjarki was shocked to see her like this. It had not occurred to him until now that she’d be under guard, a wretched prisoner. Her face was gaunt – Bjarki knew exactly how much pain she must be in from her burns – and she looked even skinnier than before. Her bald pink scalp was covered with a faint crop of ginger stubble. Her expression, however, was fierce. She glared like a demon at the assembled crowd, looking this way and that, as if daring any of them to do her wrong.
‘Torfinna Hildarsdottir, you stand accused by this Thing of profaning the sacred mystery of the Fyr Ceremony, the burning heart of the Fyr Skola, by leaping unsanctioned into the holy flames,’ intoned Skymir. ‘You are accused of polluting the Fyr Ceremony by your actions, of disrespecting the gods, this community and even the great Irminsul – and thereby breaking the solemn oath you swore when you joined our company. This sacrilege was witnessed by almost every person now gathered here, including myself. Do you dispute your actions – or deny your guilt?’
Tor said nothing. She glared even more fiercely at the Mikelgothi.
‘I ask you again. Do you dispute your actions? You will answer me.’
Tor remained silent. But she shook her head very slightly.
The Thing House made a collective growling sound, like a riled animal.
‘Do you wish to say anything in mitigation of your crime?’
Tor shook her head again.
‘You have nothing to say at all? No plea for clemency?’
Tor dropped her eyes and stared at the ground.
‘Very well. Since there is no dispute, no denial, and since you make no claim for mitigation, nor plea for clemency, we shall pass on straight away to your punishment. In the Fyr Skola, there are three serious punishments allowed by our ancient laws: you may be stripped of your rank as novice and reduced to the status of servant; you may be exiled from this place, banished for ever from our company; and the final punishment, reserved for the worst crimes of all, is that you may be put to death. I tell you now that this is the option that I personally favour. Since you do not choose to speak up in your defence, the Council of the Thing shall now deliberate on your fate…’
‘Wait!’ Bjarki did not know what impelled him to do this. He only knew that he must. He could not allow them to kill her. He climbed painfully to his feet, he could feel the stuck bandages tearing at his half-healed flesh. He ignored the searing pain and, holding up one bandaged hand as if he were at a Lodge lesson, he said: ‘Since she will not talk, with your permission, Mikelgothi, I would speak a few words on Torfinna Hildarsdottir’s behalf.’
There was a growing murmur on the benches, and Skymir looked left and right. No one on the council bench objected. She nodded.
‘I know Tor better than anyone in the Fyr Skola,’ Bjarki began. Then the words withered and died on his tongue. It felt strange to be speaking thus to a large audience, terrifying – yet Tor’s very life was at stake. He tried to imagine how Valtyr would talk in such a situation, or the Mikelgothi for that matter. He gripped his shyness, straightened his back, and took a breath.
‘Tor and I travelled down from the Dane-Mark together in the spring and, for many weeks now, we have been practising our battle skills together every evening – as some of you will have observed. And, in all that time, she has never said anything that might be thought of as disrespectful to the Fyr Skola or contrary to her sacred oath.’
He paused and took another breath. Don’t fret; just speak the truth.
‘In fact,’ he continued, ‘Torfinna Hildarsdottir venerates this place and all that it stands for. Her most fervent desire, many times expressed to me, has been to become Rekkr. That is all she wants from her life, to serve the gods as one of the sacred warriors of the Groves of Eresburg. Everything she says or does, and I do mean every single thing, is a way of getting closer to that one ambition. It’s her life’s dream. I think you must all recognise that.’
There was more rumbling on the council bench as gothi and Rekkar muttered to each other.
‘She has a strange way of showing it,’ shouted Ivar Knuttson. ‘By desecrating the Fyr Ceremony, she has made fools of all of us Fire Born.’
‘She should not have done that,’ said Bjarki. ‘It was clearly wrong. But she did it out of desperation – she wants so desperately to become a Rekkr that she was prepared to take the risk of passing through the Fyr without the proper rituals and permissions. She dared to risk her own life—’
‘And yours, too,’ shouted someone from the crowd.
Bjarki ignored the interruption. ‘She risked her own life in pursuit of a nobler aim – to realise her dream and become a Rekkr. She has shown great courage and, in a strange way, great dedication to the cause of the Fyr Skola. Surely that must count for her when it comes to deciding her punishment.’
And he sat down again.
Tor turned her head and glanced briefly at him. Her expression was unreadable. Beside him Gunnar said quietly: ‘I had no idea you were so eloquent, Bjarki – you spoke like a royal skald just now. Very moving.’
Bjarki shook his head. ‘I spoke from the heart. That’s all. Someone had to say something. She’s stubborn – too stiff-necked to save her own skin.’
Skymir the Mikelgothi got to her feet.
‘Thank you, Bjarki Bloodhand, for your wise words. The council duly takes note of them. Now, does anyone else have anything they wish to say?’
Ivar Knuttson got to his feet, his leather armour creaking as he stood.
‘I believe I, too, shall say my piece today. Bjarki Bloodhand’s sweet words notwithstanding, that girl has deliberately made a mockery of the Fyr Ceremony – I see her intrusion on the sacred rite as a personal insult to both me and to Helga Haraldsdottir, a gross and indelible slur on our honour.
‘We two became Rekkar that day, this is true, but the antics of Torfinna Hildarsdottir have for ever tarnished our achievement. The Fyr Ceremony is about more than running through a burning ship, it’s the culmination of months, sometimes years of hard work, pain and struggle, it is a holy thing, a sacred rite, and having that irreverent hoyden prancing about in the flames does not make her a Rekkr – and never will! She has shamed me; she has shamed the Fyr Skola, she shames all of us. Her punishment must be death!’
Angantyr stood then. He was clearly very angry. ‘You dare to speak to us about your honour, Ivar Knuttson, you cheating little toad—’
The Mikelgothi shut him down. ‘You will be silent, Father Angantyr – that issue has already been decided. Sit down. Now.’
The Bear Lodge leader subsided. Red-faced and muttering oaths, he plonked himself back down heavily on the council bench.
The Thing House had grown noisy, most were calling for Tor’s death, a few others saying Ivar was indeed a cheat, and it took the Mikelgothi several moments to quiet the assembly. ‘Does anyone else wish to speak?’ she said.
A figure stepped out from the shadows at the back of the Thing House, a tall, lean figure in a stained cloak and hood. Bjarki saw then with a little leap of joy and relief that it was his former travelling companion, Valtyr.
‘It is clearly not my place to dictate any punishment that may be due to Torfinna Hildarsdottir, for I did not witness her crime, nor am I a denizen of the Groves of Eresburg. But I know her – and I know all of you. And I shall say only this to you. It must not be death. I brought her to the Fyr Skola, and I believed the Groves were the place for her to discover her true nature. If she has transgressed against your laws, then the fault must partly be mine. I accept that responsibility. I will also say this
to you now. If you do not care for this brave, this clever, this battle-skilled – this most extraordinary young woman I brought to live among you, then I shall take her away. My advice to the Thing is that her punishment, if she even merits one, should be exile.’
Skymir smiled at the old man. ‘Thank you, Valtyr Far-Traveller. Does anyone else wish to speak? No? Then I believe I have come to my decision.’
She lifted her iron staff high in the air and waited till the Thing House had grown quiet again. ‘Hear me, Torfinna Hidarsdottir, as the Mikelgothi of the Fyr Skola, chief servant of the Irminsul, who is guided by the gods and spirits of these ancient groves, I hereby sentence you to exile for life. Our friend the Far-Traveller shall take you away from this place before the next sun dawns and you may never return, on pain of death. Do you have anything you wish to say before you are expelled from the Fyr Skola?’
Tor lifted her head, glared at the Mikelgothi and said: ‘I want my Wolfskin back. I want the skin of my father, Hildar Torfinnsson the Rekkr, which you took from me some months ago. I demand its immediate return.’
‘It shall be done,’ Skymir said gravely. ‘The Council of the Thing has spoken its mind and delivered its verdict, I now move to dismiss this—’
‘If I might just say a few more words, Mikelgothi,’ interrupted Valtyr.
Skymir stopped; she frowned but made a small gesture with her staff that implied that he might do so.
Valtyr bowed. ‘Since almost the whole Fyr Skola is gathered here at this hour, I have tidings that I must impart to you all. And an invitation.’
‘Speak, Far-Traveller,’ Skymir said.
The old man straightened to his full height. ‘Last month, the Franks came north in numbers, accompanied by a strong force of cabellarii. They occupied a piece of territory deep inside Westphalia, previously governed by the hersir of Thursby, in the far southwest of Duke Theodoric’s realm.’