The Last Berserker

by Angus Donald

  And she returned his gaze.

  She was still breathing, and he could feel her ancient pain as an ache in his own heart. ‘Release me,’ she growled. ‘Keep your promise, man-child.’

  Bjarki drew his seax from the sheath at his waist. Its foot-long, single-edged blade was always kept as sharp as it could possibly be.

  The bear was slumped on its front, its massive head resting on the round boulder, the spear-shaft driven deep into the earth. The vast body was still twitching and the muscled forelimbs occasionally shuddering.

  Bjarki swung his leg over and sat astride the animal’s wide furry neck, feeling the soft warmth of the bear beneath his thighs. He reached forward with his right hand, the seax blade gripped tightly, stretched his arm around to the front of the bear’s throat, plunged the knife deep into the bear’s fur, then ripped the blade sideways. He felt a great hot gush of blood drench his right hand, and the beast’s body shudder beneath him like an earthquake.

  Then it was still.

  He suddenly felt freezing, colder than he had ever felt before; he heard the urgent sound of rushing water in his ears like the noise of a giant cataract. He found he was humming, deep in his throat, the same simple, four-tone tune, his mind was spinning, whirling. Time seemed to crawl, his vision blurred, then became tinged with red, then suddenly sharpened.

  He felt the spirit of the dead she-bear, his gandr, humming deep inside his own chest, he felt his own heart begin to swell and engorge, he could feel the blood pounding, slow, ominous drumbeats, in his hot, wide veins; he felt light, buoyant, stronger than ever, as if he could leap whole mountains in a single bound, reach out and touch the sky itself…

  Still sitting astride the dead creature’s neck he looked up and saw that there were men in the clearing, dozens of them coming in through the trees. Dark-clad men with scale-mail and steel helmets, all sporting black cloaks.

  His enemies.

  The Rekkr smiled.

  * * *

  He hopped off the body of the dead bear. He didn’t count the enemies, two score, three dozen? Who cared? There was no point in tallying them: they were just bodies, dead bodies who were for some reason still standing, walking around ignorant of their doom. And still more were emerging from the snowy trees in ones and twos, advancing cautiously. He pulled his sword from its sheath, tossed the sheath away, and walked briskly towards the nearest Black Cloak. His right hand was covered in hot, sticky bear blood and still held the dripping sax. His left hand held the shining naked sword.

  He was dimly aware that one of his foes, a big fucker, a leader, black beard, piggy eyes, was saying something about surrender. He didn’t listen.

  He was eager to begin the slaughter.

  The Black Cloaks were still drawing their swords when he slipped in among them, fast as the wind, and cut down the first man, and the second.

  They all seemed to move slowly, when he was so nimble. He sliced the seax through windpipes, slammed it into eyes, and plunged the slick blade into armpits, chests, thighs. His deep four-note hum became a chuckle, then a laugh; before long he was cackling with glee and he danced and cut and hacked and dropped man after man. The blood sprayed in wide slow glorious arcs, spattering on the white snow, so beautiful, so utterly perfect.

  He took blows, too, feeling weapons clang against his well-armoured body, but he heeded them not at all; he was in and among them leaping, striking, faster than a hummingbird, a heartbeat quicker than any of these dull men, and that made it easier for him and harder for the Scholares not to strike their friends. He was tireless, killing with a springy energy, which seemed almost to be replenished, redoubled even with each victim he felled.

  The big fucker, the black-bearded giant, struck at the Rekkr’s mailed left leg with his pole arm, and he felt that blow. But he recovered and dived like a cat on the man’s chest, his own weight knocking the big fellow down to the snow, and his right hand jabbed and probed with the long seax blade under the rim of the giant’s iron cuirass. The big one roared in agony, leaking hot, delicious gore, and hurled the Rekkr away from his prone body with the strength of his arms. The Fire Born landed lightly on his feet and the dance continued.

  Then another check to his gory flow, he jammed the long sword in a skinny fellow’s ribs, and the blade became wedged tight in the heart cage, he couldn’t haul the blade free. He cursed, tugged, twisted to no avail: then he booted the dying man away, relinquishing his long blade.

  He killed, then, with seax alone.

  He sank it deep into backs and necks, dodged and ducked down to jam the blade up into men’s exposed groins. He sliced, stabbed; he punched, scratched and even bit his enemies, when flesh came within range of his snapping teeth. He scooped up a discarded ridged iron helmet with his left hand and battered blurred faces with this makeshift weapon. He snarled at wounded men, already down. Stamping on them. Pounding and stabbing just to feel the sweet sink of the blade in a warm body. And then, suddenly, there was no one left. He stood upright, blade dripping, on the bloody field alone.

  A few dark shapes were fleeing through the trees; he saw black horses there too, and heard the muddled thudding of their departing hooves. And the snow, the snow, churned pink and brown and pure scarlet, was strewn with bodies, dead and dying all around him. Dozens of men destroyed. He could hear screaming, on and on, and could taste the fresh blood on his lips, salty, metallic, sweet. He wanted one more. Just one more enemy to kill; just one more soft white belly to thrust his slick blade inside…

  There were none left. He was aware of a great weariness, pressing down on his neck and shoulders. And a great, dark heaviness of mind. He looked down at his own body, slathered, dipped in gore, sorely wounded too.

  His gandr was leaving him. Slipping away. He felt dizzy, cold, empty.

  On the far side of the clearing, away from the blood, the ripped snowy turf and the bodies, he saw Tor, standing alone by the stand of ash. She was pale and shaky, holding a drawn sword, and gazing at him in amazement.

  ‘It came to you,’ she said. ‘At last. Oh my gods, you lucky, lucky oaf. Your gandr came. And I… and mine… mine never did…’

  ‘The monster of Egg… that great she-bear, yonder, she was my g…’ somehow Bjarki could not form the words. They just stared at each other mute across the churned and bloody snow.

  The sound of pain-filled laughter interrupted their silent communion. Bjarki turned and saw a huge, bearded man lying on the ground about two paces away. His lower body was sheeted in blood, his legs awash from deep wounds in his belly, up under his iron cuirass. His face and neck seemed to have been savaged, ripped by the teeth of a beast. Yet he was recognisable.

  ‘You followed us all the way here,’ said Bjarki.

  ‘I didn’t believe it,’ said Lord Grimoald. ‘I thought you were a sham, a fraud. I thought it was all tricks and mummery. And now I have seen it with my own eyes. Felt it. Been slain by it. You are, after all, one of the Rekkar.’

  ‘Why?’ said Bjarki. ‘Why are you here?’

  Tor was coming over, picking her way delicately through the wrecked bodies of the dead and dying Black Cloaks. ‘I think I know,’ she said.

  Bjarki looked at her. He wanted to ask but found he had lost his words.

  ‘Captain Otto was always your man inside the Auxilla, wasn’t he?’

  Lord Grimoald tried to smile; his expression a pain-racked grimace.

  ‘Otto told you who was loyal to the king in his company, and who was not to be trusted. I was not to be trusted. We were both not to be trusted.’

  ‘He was a fool. But a useful one for some years,’ grated Grimoald.

  ‘I could not understand,’ said Tor, ‘why such a poor soldier, such a sad ninny as Otto, should command an elite scara – I do now.’

  ‘He served the king well, in his pathetic little way.’

  ‘Why did you not simply have us executed in Aachen? Why follow us all the way here and attack us in secret? You have more power than anyone.’

>   Lord Grimoald did not answer, his eyes were tightly closed in pain.

  Tor kicked his boot. ‘Don’t die on me yet, old man,’ she said.

  The King’s Shield opened his eyes a fraction.

  ‘He likes you,’ he hissed. ‘The king. Karolus likes your man, says he sees something in him.’ Grimoald made a jerk of his head towards Bjarki. ‘He’s right – but also badly mistaken. The Dane has the Beast inside him.’

  ‘We admitted we were Rekkar,’ Tor said. ‘We were open about that.’

  ‘But dishonest, too. You never meant to keep your oaths – to His Majesty or to God. I told him you would prove treacherous. I saw that plain as day. I knew you’d never serve the king, or Francia, or Christ willingly. You only wanted to get close to Karolus and stick a blade in him.’

  ‘So why not just execute us?’

  ‘I urged him. He decided to spare you. He said we must put you to the test. If you returned from this absurd mission, if you willingly came back to his side in Aachen, then you could be trusted. I said no. But he’s the king.’

  Lord Grimoald began to laugh again, more weakly, and as his chest convulsed in mirth, something tore and a squirt of fresh blood shot out from under his cuirass and spattered his already gory legs.

  ‘What’s funny?’ said Bjarki. ‘Why do you laugh at your own death?’

  ‘I have… achieved… my aim,’ said Grimoald, fighting for each breath, forcing the individual words out through his mirth and his red agony.

  ‘I have… protected… the king… after all.’

  ‘How so?’ said Bjarki.

  Tor answered for him: ‘Because we can never go back to Karolus now. Not now we’ve slaughtered half a cunei of his Black Cloaks – and this big old bastard, too. If we went back to Aachen, we’d be dead inside the hour.’

  Grimoald’s laugher had subsided to a few soft heaves and wet coughs.

  ‘There is more… that makes me… content,’ he said. ‘Karolus will hear of this bloody day… and come after you… with all his strength and power. To avenge me… and because you broke… your oath to return.’

  The King’s Shield was suddenly racked with a coughing fit. He spat a gobbet of something red on to the snow and said, ‘I am being called to the Lord’s side now… this is my end. I am dead. And so are… both of you!’

  Part Three

  Chapter Twenty-three

  A walk in the woods

  ‘So you like cheese then, do you, little one?’ said Tor in her softest voice.

  Bjarki opened his eyes. He had no idea where he was for several moments – then his mind adjusted and he peered through the gloomy half-light and recognised his friend, sitting with her back against a rocky wall on the far side of the space, holding what looked like a large black dog upside down in her lap. She was feeding it small pieces of a crumbly substance and playing with its thick, stubby paws at the same time.

  ‘What is that thing?’ said Bjarki.

  ‘Oh, you’re back in the world, are you, oaf?’ Tor gently set the animal down on the floor of the cave and came over to the mound of blankets and furs upon which Bjarki was lying. ‘Nice of you to join us at last!’

  Bjarki looked down at his own naked body, which was covered by a blanket. His right shoulder was bandaged with linen, as was his middle, and his left thigh, too, he discovered as he moved the limb sideways out from under the bedclothes. His body was covered in cuts, scrapes and bruises and throbbed, his head was splitting and he’d never felt so thirsty in his life.

  ‘You knew that monstrous beast was female, yes?’ said Tor. ‘Well, I found this little one in the back of the cave when I hauled your arse inside.’

  She gestured at the animal and Bjarki saw that it was a jet-black bear cub, only a few months old. The chubby little animal stared solemnly back at him. He noticed it had bright yellow eyes, the exact same shade as its mother’s.

  ‘I decided to call him Garm because his fur is so dark… after the fierce guardian of Hel’s realm, you know?’

  ‘I know. Good name.’ For a moment, the image of Freya flashed into his mind. In the dunes, with the three youths standing on the slope above.

  Tor handed him a large bowl full of water, which Bjarki drank down in three large gulps. ‘Where did the bowl come from?’ he said, wiping his lips.

  ‘Oh, I salvaged quite a lot from the baggage of the Black Cloaks.’

  ‘How long have I been lying here?’

  ‘Five days – or is it six?’

  ‘What? Why? We should have left. They will be coming for us.’

  ‘I could barely shift your great fat carcass inside the cave; I couldn’t go on the run with you, dragging you through the snow like a dead bullock.’

  ‘You should have left me and gone on alone. Tor, they will come looking, and they will find us here.’ Bjarki began to struggle out of his bed.

  ‘They won’t be going anywhere. The mother of all snowstorms hit, just after I got your unconscious bulk in here. And the blizzard has not stopped since. No force of Red Cloaks is going to venture out of Regensburg in this. And if they did, they would never get up here. We are safe while the storm rages. When it’s done, we’ll go before they find us. What are you doing?’

  Bjarki had got to his feet, and was painfully hobbling over to the entrance to the cave, which was almost entirely blocked with snow. A small window at the top of the space had been cleared, and kept open, an air hole, and Bjarki peered out of it into the grey maelstrom outside. The bitter icy draught stung his cheeks. Tor was right: nothing could be out in this and live.

  He ate a little soup, and slept some more, keeping one ear on the pitch of the moaning wind outside the cave. At one point, the little cub Garm came and licked his face with his fat pink tongue, and cuddled down in his arms to sleep. Tor huddled in under the blankets with them, too, for an hour or so, sharing the warmth, before getting up and pottering with bits of fir tree branch and rawhide thongs, constructing something, at the back of the cave.

  The next morning the storm died down and Tor, with help from a very stiff Bjarki, broke down the wall of snow and ice in the cave mouth. It was painfully bright outside, wide blue skies and a big pale sun, but the snow was several feet thick on the ground, deeper in the drifts; when Tor waded out into the clearing, the snow came right up to her skinny chest.

  ‘I know some of the Black Cloaks escaped the fight,’ said Bjarki. ‘But could they have made it back to Regensburg before the storm came down?’

  ‘We must assume they did. We must assume they know where we are.’

  Bjarki felt his heart sinking. He was weak and very sore, his head still ached, and the prospect of a long journey did not appeal. He wanted to rest.

  ‘We have to leave this place,’ he said.

  ‘And go where?’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious? We’re folk of the North. Clearly, we head north.’

  * * *

  Tor had fashioned snowshoes, of a kind, for them to wear on their feet. They were crude and clumsy – the smaller branches of fir trees lashed inside a circle of ash wood and strapped to their boots – but they made the going much easier. They packed their belongings, weapons and food – and a bulky mysterious package that Tor insisted they must take – and Bjarki scooped up Garm into his arms. By midday they were off, tramping over the unmarked snow in their new shoes, through the eerily silent woods.

  They followed no road, heading north as best they could through the trees, following the tracks of snow hares and deer, when they came across them, forging through virgin white crust when they did not. Bjarki found the going very hard; he soon had to give Garm over to Tor to carry inside her leather jerkin. His breath was short and his head light.

  The wounds he had suffered had been salved and bandaged by Tor, and he was a preternaturally fast healer but, nevertheless, by mid-afternoon, when it began to gently snow again, he could feel hot blood trickling down his ribs inside his shirt. He said nothing to Tor and they forged on. He knew that the furth
er they could get away from the cave, the safer they would be.

  Just before nightfall, when it began to snow properly again, and they were forced to stop, Bjarki reckoned they had covered only three or four miles.

  They made a fireless camp under the low boughs of an old yew tree, ate dried meat and drank water, with the little bear sitting on Tor’s lap and whining. ‘At least the snowfall will disguise our tracks,’ said Bjarki.

  ‘If they are coming after us at all,’ said Tor, stroking the bear’s soft fur. ‘We could be snug in the cave with a fire and some hot soup right now…’

  She stopped and looked at Bjarki. He had heard it too. The neighing of a horse somewhere close at hand. As quietly as she could, Tor got to her feet, passing the bear cub over to Bjarki. She loosened the seax at her belly, and peered round the trunk of the yew. Twenty paces away there was a rider, a Red Cloak, sitting on his dun-coloured horse and drinking from a flask.

  Tor kept her body flat to the trunk of the tree. The rider seemed to be alone. But that was very unlikely. They knew what Tor and Bjarki could do. There would certainly be many others near by even if she couldn’t see them.

  The rider put away his flask, and clicked his tongue at his horse to get it moving. It was coming closer to Tor, heading almost straight at their tree.

  The snow had been falling for a good hour by now, and when Tor looked round to see if there were any footprints that would lead to their little camp, she was relieved to see that there were none. The rider was a dozen yards away, his horse breathing grey smoke, and looking a little wild eyed and agitated. Tor wondered if it could smell the cub. She could see the face of the Red Cloak clearly: he was unshaven but handsome; his cheeks mottled with cold. She made her plans. It had to be silent, otherwise the other Red Cloaks would come and there’d be no end of blood. Her hunting bow would be good, yet he might cry out when shot and raise the alarm.

  No. It had to be the seax. She had to swing up behind him on that big dun horse, and slice his throat wide open before he could scream. It was a tall order, the silent part. But it could be done. He was six paces away…