Berserker (Omnibus)

by Holdstock, Robert

  He was thinking of the ghostly Tuatha De Danann he had watched that night, and how they had urged their steeds into the very sky itself, until the glowing moon had swallowed them.

  ‘Gone,’ said Deirdre. ‘Gone upwards, outwards. But among those weapons is a tiny axe which, if I wear it when I am released, will take me after them. That too was given me by the Sky Rider, the brother of the man who died beneath my embrace.’

  ‘And the Dark Ones … the Dark Ones … perhaps they can help me.’

  She laughed. ‘The knowledge of how to reach them has been lost for centuries. I never knew how, myself, but I do know that scattered across the vast world there are the ancient runes that could be used to bring them out of their veil of darkness.’

  ‘Where are these runes?’

  Again she smiled, ‘My Berserker lover, my great hope … you crouch among them. If you can read them, then you may indeed be saved.’

  Harald looked about him, at the strange wavy lines and tight spiral shapes that had been carved into the very rock itself. Everywhere he looked, growing more and more excited, he saw the shapes and symbols of a forgotten race, the ancient language of the Tuatha De Danann, perhaps, or a language even older … a language, at any rate, that he had always thought depicted the exploits and heroism of the mighty spirits that resided in these dank tunnels.

  They were meaningless, of course, the strange shapes and fading symbols of the long-dead artists.

  He looked at Deirdre; there was anguish in his eyes. ‘How do I read them?’

  ‘The knowledge of reading them passed from this land only very recently. The understanding of them died centuries ago. There is no way, now, to uncover the wording of the secrets. I’m sorry. Perhaps elsewhere, in the great pyramids of the sandscapes to the south, perhaps there the interpretation of the incantations will be easier. Perhaps if you pray hard enough the Dark Ones will emerge on their own initiative. I will tell you this: the place where they reside, the gateway to their land, is a great stone circle across the sea, deep in the flat lands of the Saxons; it is ruined, now, but the power of the Dark Ones still resides there.’

  ‘I must go there, then!’

  Her gentle hand restrained him. Her eyes glowed green as she sought his gaze again. ‘You must begin your own quest as the dirk directs. It may be that the stone circle is a quest for another time, another year. Harald, for your own sake follow whatever wisdom is given you, in the order it is given. Perhaps the Dark Ones are reaching through to you even now, out of sympathy, out of love, suggesting through the mouths of others how you should seek the dispatch of this cruel possession. Don’t rush from place to place, never thinking of what you are doing.’

  ‘I must escape it,’ Harald moaned. How could this woman be of so little help? She even knew his name, and yet he had never given it to her! She was so powerful, and yet so helpless. The curse that held him must have been truly frightening in its strength. He sank in on himself, his head dropping on to his chest, a terrible depression consuming him.

  In his mind the bear stirred and its shrill cry was like a mocking laugh.

  Harald looked up sharply, bright tears in his eyes, a human mania etched in his face, a perfectly normal anger, not the blood anger of his bear spirit. ‘I must break the curse.’

  ‘Help me break mine first,’ said Deirdre, and a moment later she pulled the robe from her shoulders, allowing the soft material to gather around her waist, caught by the broadness of her hips until she reached down and gently pushed the garment away, exposing the length of her body to Harald’s hungry gaze.

  For a moment Harald froze, then passion became his master and he tore his own clothes from his body. He fell heavily against her, pushing her backwards on to the cowskin bed, in the blue-haze darkness of the tomb. His stiff member thrust against her sex, but she reached down and eased him away, kissing his mouth, running her tongue across his lips while she stroked the swollen tip of his penis with a finger as gentle and tantalising as any his wildest youthful dreams had created.

  As they clung and rolled together in this sensuous embrace, Harald ran his hand across her smooth belly, sliding his fingers through the sparse silkiness of her pubic hair and finding her moist and open. He teased the fleshy button that was the seat of her ecstasy so that she shifted and moaned beneath his body.

  She twisted away from him, her eyes closed, her fingers gripping his manhood almost convulsively in her pleasure. He kissed the side of her jaw and worked down along the curve of her neck, along the hollow of her shoulder, until his lips caressed the huge swell of her breast and finally caught an erect nipple between his teeth, teasing it with short, hard strokes of his tongue.

  ‘See me Mumaggara!’ she cried, her head twisting from side to side as she drank in the sensations of Harald’s caress. ‘See how I release myself from your curse!’

  Her legs spread and her back arched as she pulled his head from her breast and opened her mouth wide to suck his own lips into hers, pressing their heads together so that saliva and passion seemed to fuse them. His fingers slipped through the stickiness of her sex into the wet heat of her womb and she thrashed beneath him, her nails raking across his back, drawing blood and raising the skin in great weals that he sensed but ignored. He rolled off her, so their bodies parted with the sucking sound of their slick skins sliding apart, only his lips and fingers touching her, making her writhe urgently, tightly around him.

  He took his hand away and ran it over her thigh and then into the small of her back as their kiss ended and he relaxed beside her. She turned towards him, her green eyes alive with excitement, her face glistening with sweat, her full lips parted, her breath warm and sensuous. Then she lay upon him, hiding her eyes in his neck as she wept for joy, the tears running down his body. Her body shook with the closeness of her climax. He ran his fingers down her back and into the deep cleft between her buttocks, and she reacted with renewed passion. Again he found himself on top of her, his member caught between them, trapped hard and hot across their bellies. Her hand touched it while her mouth found his, her tongue brushing his lips before she sucked him into her, twisting her head from side to side as if she might swallow him whole. He held her like this, with one hand spread beneath her fleshy haunches and one on her breast, while she caressed and teased his member, his passionate eruption an aching pressure that he refused to release.

  At last he worked his legs between hers and parted them, pushing his shaft into the boiling cavern of her body. He thrust gently, then with increasing passion, until she screamed and tore at his back with the pain and the pleasure both. They finished, gasping and moaning in the silence of the tomb, his seed draining into her, her legs fastening about him in an unbreakable grip she did not release for long minutes. As they struggled for breath, they felt the breeze, blowing down the winding length of the tomb’s passage, cool on their skin and helping to calm their motionless bodies.

  After a while she said, ‘The curse is lifted. I can feel it. I know it.’

  ‘How will you make sure?’

  Beneath him, still joined, she smiled. ‘What do you want me to say? That there are half a thousand men in the valley of this river, and half of them – on your own words – are greater men than you?’

  He grinned. ‘Your Sky Rider will be waiting.’

  She turned her head away and closed her eyes, the warmth of her satisfaction and relaxation forming a layer between his naked back and the cool air that drifted through from the land outside. She shifted and he felt himself slip from her body. He rolled off her and sat up, running his palms down his chest to wipe the moisture from his skin. She lay still, her eyes matted and damp, her skin shining in the mysterious light of the tomb.

  Then she looked at him, and her hand reached up to touch his bearded face. She smiled. ‘I am eternally grateful, my young Berserker. Even my Sky Rider shall be grateful. I shan’t forget you.’

  ‘In a thousand years I may still be here, searching for release.’

  �
��No curse is unbreakable. Your quest must be to find the key to unlock Odin’s grasp upon you.’

  She sat up, wiped the sweat from her breasts, then drew one of Harald’s shirts – the Celtic shirt – across her head to cover her.

  She stood, reached up to the hanging weapons and took down a short dagger, sheathed it in a thin leather scabbard and hung on a thong-like belt.

  ‘Put it on,’ she said, and Harald accepted the gift. He pulled on the dark-blue breeks and the shirt of the fallen Norseman, and tied the dagger about his waist. Then he looked at Deirdre, a question in his eyes.

  She swept her red hair back from her face, using her hands to try and dry the dampness on her skin. ‘You must go down to the river and find a calm part of the water where you can look at your reflection. There you will see what you must do. I shall follow shortly. There may be a way in which I can help you further, before I depart to a place I have missed for far too many centuries.’

  As he stood there looking at Deirdre of the Flames, a cold wave passed through Harald’s body and he tensed, recognising the beginning of the rage that would turn him into a whirling death-monger.

  ‘Not now!’ he cried, and Deirdre backed away, surprised by the unexpected shout. The bear shifted and growled, and the growl emerged from Harald’s throat. His eyes saw red, just briefly, as the first flush of the Berserker rage coursed through his skin.

  ‘Go quickly!’ cried Deirdre, sensing that what was happening to him was the slow build up to what would be a brief rage in the absence of the blood smell stimulus that would ordinarily provoke him to a fury.

  Harald fled from the tomb, bumping his head on the rock roof, and emerged into the bright daylight. He stood, for a moment, clearing his lungs of the close smells of their two bodies, before running down the hill to the winding river at its base.

  The bear growled in his mind, attempting to control him. As he ran, he arched his back and stumbled when he fought for a moment to repress the rising spirit of the beast.

  He reached the water and ran along the bank until he found a place where the river widened and a shallow pool allowed him to peer into the depths at his reflection. For a moment he was startled by the bearded, wild image that he saw: the narrow eyes, so beastlike, so cunning … and for a moment, too, the mask of a bear stared up at him, fangs white as the mouth opened and snarled, eyes glittering as they sensed blood and fresh meat close at hand … then it was gone, and there was just the Berserker, and above him the clouds scudding across the pale blue sky.

  ‘How do I begin my quest?’ he demanded of the image. When nothing happened he cried again, ‘How do I release myself from this curse?’

  A second later his image dissolved and he saw, as through the shadows of some haunted night, the hut where Sigurd Gotthelm lay dying, and saw that warrior stretched on his pallet, the blood on his chest brilliant red and draining from his shattered body. ‘The warlock …’ breathed a voice on the skittering wind that blew across the river. ‘Find the warlock …’

  And Harald remembered what Gotthelm had told him. He realised that the old warrior had instinctively known what Harald should do, was reaching to him now through the medium of the ancient blade and its magic powers to remind him of where he must go first.

  He drew the small dirk and held it before him, between his eyes and the rippling image of his old friend. He saw a vision appear within the bronze blade itself, a vision of mountains and passes, the dark maws of caves high on the rock ledges that rose above the treacherous passes, many miles north of the lowlands where he had spent his youth.

  This, then, was where he had to go. There he would find a warlock who might hold the key to his release, an understanding of the spells that Odin could cast and the way to break them.

  As his mind grasped these things, he felt the blade turning in his hand and, as if to claim its price in blood, it cut across his wrist, shallowly, no more than a graze, so that the blood oozed and congealed in a thin, red line.

  The bear smelled blood, even though it was its own blood. It rushed out of the darkness to consume its host!

  His heart raced, his mind became a whirlpool, sucking the thoughts of the young Viking down into the abyss … his skin burned … his mind burned … whilst the blood hunger, the blood fury, raged as a storm inside his skull, claimed his arms and legs, and the voice that sprang from his lungs.

  Roaring! Growling and screeching – the war cry of the beast!

  Redness filled his eyes. Anger was his passion. He turned and whirled, and sought for a victim, anything, anyone, no matter who!

  Deirdre stood there, shapely and clad in the short green shirt. She had come to see if Harald had discovered his quest, but she found herself facing the unpredictable and ferocious animal that he could become at the swish of a blade, or the scent of a drop of blood.

  He rushed at her, and swung the dirk in a terrible blow to her throat. But she dodged him and cast a spell that hit the knife from his hand as if he had struck a rock.

  He fell upon her, claws reaching for her eyes, jowls wet with saliva, eyes alive with his lust for her death. She fought him, pushed him away and clutched at her face where his nails had raked it. As he sprang at her again, his voice a shrill screech, his lips dripping blood where his own teeth had torn them in his fervour to tear out her throat, she dealt him a huge blow to the side of the head with a rock that she grabbed from the ground.

  Harald staggered, rolled across the ground, then climbed upright again, the blow a mere feather’s touch to the all-nigh-invincible warrior he had become.

  The Berserk fury carried him back to her, reaching for her throat, her eyes. She again dodged his hands, and struck at him, her own face twisted into a mask of fear; for, despite the spells she had at her command, she did not wish to destroy this youth who had destroyed the curse that had restricted her for so long.

  Escaping his murderous clutches for a second, she screamed an incantation, and swiftly slit her wrist along the line of the inner tendon. Immediately Harald’s feet were rooted to the earth where he stood, as twisting vines sprang from among the rocks and gripped him. Thus he stood, still screaming his anger, still spitting bloody sputum as the bear writhed in the vice-like grip of the strange plants, unable to move, unable to achieve the satiation of its desperate hunger.

  At last the figure collapsed, then Harald moaned as he opened his eyes and saw Deirdre leaning over him, brushing his face with cool water from the river.

  ‘You survived …’ he murmured, feeling one confusion replaced by another.

  ‘Yes,’ she said with a grin, and leaned forward to brush his lips with hers. He noticed the cut on her arm, and for a second the beast that he now contained surged forward, growling, but he controlled it, his face tensing with the effort. She relaxed him, and covered her wrist. ‘A simple spell,’ she said. ‘But then, all my spells are simple, which is why I can’t help you more than a little.’

  ‘I know where I have to go,’ said Harald, easing himself upright into a sitting position.

  ‘Home,’ she said. ‘Like me. I’m going home too. Home to my Sky Rider.’

  ‘I hope you find him.’

  ‘I shall.’

  ‘Are you sure the curse is gone?’ Harald smiled. ‘You want to make absolutely sure?’

  Her laughter was brief, but she shook her head. Tears rose in her eyes after a moment and she blinked them away. ‘Release makes sentimental fools of us all.’

  ‘Cry all you want,’ said Harald bitterly. ‘When I cast off this terrible spell, I shall cry for a week.’

  A thought rose in his mind and he cursed quietly. ‘How do I get back to the northlands? Every Norse in this country is dead, save Beartooth and the others, and I have no desire to meet them again.’

  ‘The Berserks who fought with you?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sure they survived the battle.’

  ‘They did,’ said Deirdre of the Flames, looking along the river to where it wound out of sight between gentle hills
on its way to the wide ocean. ‘They have sailed a long ship out of the bay, one of the ships that brought the final company of your countrymen.’

  ‘Six can sail a long ship. One cannot.’

  ‘One can,’ she said with a mischievous grin. ‘My last gift to you, Harald, shall be a crew to take you home. And a small part of my love to give you strength in the trials to come.’

  As he climbed to his feet he noticed the miniature axe that hung from her waist. Cast in bronze, tipped with gold, it sparkled in the sunlight, and the mysterious runes carved along its handle struck Harald with their alienness, for though he had seen spells both bizarre and complex, never had he seen writing quite as weird as this.

  They ran along the river, and when they passed villages again, they concealed themselves in the woodlands or the undergrowth. If ever a dog barked Deirdre whispered something to the wind and the dog fell silent, watching, as they passed, through baleful eyes, until they were well out of earshot of the settlement.

  They passed the camp of the Celtic army first, of course, and to hide themselves Deirdre spun a web of darkness about them so that they waded, shadows against the shadows of the day, through the shallow river, passing the gathered, leaderless forces with only ripples and the splashing of water to mark their progress. If any sharp-eared warrior heard them, he assumed it to be a fish, playing as it swam upstream for spawning.

  At last, after travelling fast even through the night, they reached the shoreline where the great battle had been fought.

  The rotting flesh of corpses sent Harald’s mind reeling, but he fought the impulse to whirl into a fury, and even the bear seemed repulsed by the terrible stench. The sun, the flies and the crawling crabs had reduced most of the corpses to half-consumed bags of skin and bone, and empty eye sockets watched the two living warriors as they ran down the beach and stood staring at the shifting long ships in the bay.