by Severin, Tim
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Historical and Zoological Note
Prologue
AACHEN, AD 793
They think it is a fragment from a shattered human skull. Bone white, it has the same dished shape, and is thin enough to be from a dead child. The clerks in the royal chancery glance at it with distaste as they pass my desk, giving me a wide berth. Possibly they imagine it is a gruesome memento from King Carolus’s disastrous campaign against the Saracens in Hispania fifteen years ago. They know that I took part in that failed invasion and that, though wounded, I survived the bloody ambush of his army’s rearguard during the retreat through the mountains. If the clerks presume that my swordsmanship saved me, they are wrong. The real reason was my friendship with the Saracens after I had lived among them and gained their trust, even though I was a spy.
Doubtless they also puzzle why the king himself still consults me from time to time, bypassing the royal council. They would be surprised to know that their most Christian and devout lord, Carolus, believes that dreams are a guide to the future. He asks my advice because I am someone who has been known to interpret the meaning of dreams and is himself a dreamer. Yet I am increasingly reluctant to provide the king with clear answers. Experience has taught me that dreams are rarely false but they often mislead. When their truth is finally revealed, the shock is all the greater. In the year before the Hispania campaign I dreamed of a giant Carolus on his warhorse and he was crying tears of blood. I had no idea then that it signified he would lose a third of his army and his favourite nephew and my patron, Count Hroudland, in that wretched ambush. And even if I had foreseen what was to happen, I could not have changed the outcome.
So when a dream provides me with a glimpse of the future, the prudent course is to hold my tongue.
Recalling the past requires similar caution. The story I will set down touches on a royal secret being kept from Carolus, here in Aachen. Should he learn what I am concealing from him, I would be disgraced. So I intend the tale as a purely private record of a journey to distant, little-known lands. That is why I have placed the little bone-white chip with its ragged edges in plain view on my desk. People steer clear of bits of skulls – though that is not what it is – and this will keep my written pages from prying eyes.
Chapter One
THE NORTHLANDS
*
I LAY FACE DOWN on the soggy ground, trying to ignore the throb of pain in my left shoulder. The wound left by a Vascon spear point had healed cleanly, leaving a puckered scar, but the change of season still brought on a deep-seated ache. The dampness seeping through my clothes from the leaf mould beneath me was making matters worse. The only sounds were random splashes and drips as the oak forest around me shed a recent rain shower. Though it was mid-morning, the underfloor of the woodland remained gloomy and dank. The spring foliage of the giant trees blocked much of the daylight and the air was heavy with the loamy smell of decaying vegetation. Directly in front of where I lay, a glade some thirty paces across was open to the sky. Whenever a cloud moved away from the face of the sun the fresh raindrops glistened on blades of new grass and gave the clearing a clean, inviting look.
It was a deception. The centre of the glade was hollowed out. The pit was ten paces long, five wide and sheer sided. Dug to more than the height of a tall man, the empty space had been criss-crossed with a web of light withies to support a false covering of woven hurdles. The workmen had then spread a thin layer of turf sods that mimicked solid ground. In the very centre of the trap they had placed a pile of leafy branches cut from a bush believed to be the beast’s favourite food. The bait to the pitfall.
Very slowly, I raised my head and looked to my left. An arm’s length away Vulfard, the king’s chief verderer, was nestled. His leather leggings and jerkin, moss coloured and streaked with mud, blended perfectly with the shallow trench he had scooped out for himself. Even his weather-beaten complexion, darkened by a lifetime in the open air, matched the colour of last year’s leaf fall. His grizzled hair was cut very short, and his forest-green cap with its single eagle feather was placed beside him. He sensed my movement and turned to face me. Light brown eyes flecked with yellow reminded me of the gaze of a canny dog fox and his flinty expression told me that I was to remain absolutely still for as long as he decided was necessary. Otherwise we would waste the two weeks we had spent preparing for the beast: scouting the best spot for the trap, the breakneck dig and the tedious labour of carrying away the spoil, and a final meticulous sweeping up to make sure that no trace of man remained. The labourers had finished their task just before sunset and had withdrawn from this remote corner of the forest. After they had left, Vulfard had gauged the likely direction of next morning’s breeze. Then he had placed his watchers. There were just three of us. Vulfard and I were hidden upwind. His son Walo was stationed a stone’s throw to our right where he could look down the track along which we expected the beast to approach. Walo’s task was to scare away any large animal that might blunder into the pitfall. We did not want a stag or boar crashing through the flimsy covering. Our sole prey was the beast itself.
I relaxed and laid my head down into the crook of my arm, then closed my eyes. We had lain in wait for sixteen long, tedious and uncomfortable hours and nothing had happened. I was beginning to doubt that the beast existed at all. No one had actually seen the living creature. We were relying on reports of massive tracks left in soft mud; hoof prints larger than those of any known animal. Foresters had noted the stubs of branches ripped off seven and eight feet above ground, the splintered ends left pale and mangled. The best evidence of the beast’s existence was its dung. Great piles of it contained undigested twigs and leaves that allowed Vulfard to guess the creature’s diet and then devise a plan to catch it alive. The sceptics had laughed and said we were wasting our time. The unknown beast was nothing but a very large wisent, that breed of shaggy-headed, brutish wild cattle that roamed the forest. Wisents were rare but there were still enough of them in the forest for the king, who loved his hunting, to have killed one or two of them each season. It always put him into a great good humour.
Vulfard had disagreed with the doubters. He quoted a retired forester, dead these five years past, who had assured him that the gigantic beast and a few others of its kind had retreated into the furthest depths of the great forest and still lived.
A twig cracked loudly. The sound came from the far side of the glade. Startled, I raised my head, then remembered my instructions and froze in place. A hind was approaching. She was stepping delicately down the trail straight towards the pitfall. The swell of her belly showed that she would soon give birth to her fawn. She reached the edge of the glade and paused cautiously. At that moment there was a movement from my right. Walo, clad in forest colours like his father, had risen silently to his feet. Without a sound, he waved his arms. For a moment the hind failed to notice him. Then, with a sudden start she recognized danger and spun around and bounded away, disappearing back down the path she had come. Walo cast one quick glance towards his father, seeking his approval, then sank down again out of sight.
I breathed a sigh of relief. I had been troubled by the
heartless way the labourers had teased Walo. He was an easy target. His arms and legs were too short for his body, and the slack mouth and the half-closed eyelids in a moon face made it look as if he was about to drop off to sleep at any moment. Nor did it help that his speech was slow and often slurred, and what he said was sometimes what you might expect from an eight-year-old boy, not an adult. His appearance made it difficult to tell Walo’s age, but I guessed him to be in his mid-twenties. Vulfard was fiercely protective of his son. He had rounded angrily on the man who grumbled that Walo was too simple-minded to be made a lookout. The royal verderer had snarled that he would withhold the man’s wages on account of his insolence. Then he had sent the fellow packing. I feared that if Walo botched this task, the men’s taunts would make his life even more difficult.
I must have fallen into a doze soon afterwards, for the next thing I knew I was jerked awake by a deep wheezing grunt. The sound was so hoarse and powerful that it seemed to reverberate right inside my own chest. I had never heard a sound like it, but the message was unmistakable. It was a challenge.
I could not stop myself. I twisted round and looked behind me. The sight was something from a nightmare.
An enormous animal stood among the tree trunks, some thirty paces behind us. How such a bulky and massive creature had managed to come so close and in such silence was shocking. Even Vulfard, the most alert of huntsmen, had been taken off-guard.
The beast had ambushed us. At the shoulder it stood taller than the very largest stallion. The body bulged with muscle and was covered with a coarse blackish-brown pelt. The creature was a grotesque version of farm oxen that I had known as a child. They had been domestic animals, plodding, slow and placid. The creature that now stood close behind us was larger, stronger, hostile, and infinitely more dangerous. I stared with horrified fascination at its horns. They projected from its brow in a long forward curve, half the length of my arm, then swept upwards to end in a deadly sharp-pointed hook. They were designed to pierce, gore, and then fling aside a victim. They were weapons for killing.
Unbidden, the name of the beast surfaced in my mind. Vulfard’s informant had called it ‘aurochs’. In Frankish this meant ‘ancient ox’, an apt name for a throwback that belonged to a distant age when all manner of gross creatures walked the forest. I had failed to foresee that beasts that deserved this name might still claim mastery over their ancestral domain.
The huge beast gave a second resounding grunt. Louder, more aggressive than before, the challenge was even more obvious. The animal resented our presence. We were trespassers, and the carefully sited trap had gone disastrously wrong. We had planned for the aurochs to approach from the far side of the glade and we had placed ourselves downwind. But the beast had come from behind us, sensed our presence, and come to investigate. Now we were the ones who were trapped.
The beast tossed its head angrily. A great gob of drooling spittle flew through the air.
My guts turned to water. I was so frightened that I doubted I could even get to my feet. For a stupid moment I thought that if I stayed absolutely motionless the creature would ignore me.
Then the aurochs swung its head from side to side, displaying the terrible horns in a further warning, and I saw the creature’s eyes. They had a mad, glaring look, a white rim around the darker, gleaming centre. There was no chance that the creature would leave us alone.
It was so close that I could see the slick wetness inside the flaring nostrils of its broad black muzzle. The aurochs snorted angrily yet again, then gave another threatening side-to-side shake of the horns. The creature stamped down, pawing at the ground. The hoof dragged a deep furrow in the soft earth, and the monster lowered its head. It was about to charge.
At that instant, Vulfard saved my life. He was either very brave or very foolish. ‘Lie still, Sigwulf!’ he rasped, then he sprang to his feet, snatching up his cap. Spinning round to face the aurochs, he waved his cap in the animal’s face and taunted it with a shout. Then he turned on his heel and ran directly towards the pitfall.
It was impossible that such a huge animal could move so fast. One moment the aurochs was standing still. The next, it had gathered its huge haunches and sprung forward, head down, the great legs moving in a blur. The ground shook under me with the sudden thud of its hooves, followed by a waft of musty air as the animal raced past where I lay paralysed with fear. In a heartbeat it was closing the gap as Vulfard sprinted to escape the deadly horns.
He ran out into the glade. Now he was on open ground and totally exposed. Yet he kept his nerve. With perhaps three paces to the lip of the pitfall he glanced over his shoulder and, at the very last second, swerved to one side. The aurochs charged on past him, unable to halt its headlong rush.
As the huge beast stepped on the false ground the covering of hurdles collapsed immediately. With a great flurry of broken sticks and earth sods the huge creature tumbled into the pit, bellowing with rage.
Perhaps Vulfard had mistaken the precise location of the hidden pit. Or misjudged the length and reach of the long horns. The verderer was unbalanced and teetering on the very edge of the pit when the aurochs dropped forward. With amazing agility for such a bulky creature, the aurochs twisted sideways in mid-air. The tip of the right horn snagged the verderer’s jerkin, just below the armpit. One moment Vulfard was on the edge of the pit; the next he was dragged down with the enraged beast.
Aghast, I lurched awkwardly to my feet and ran forward, my legs already wobbly with fear. Reaching the edge of the pit I looked down. Nothing could save Vulfard. He had landed alongside the animal and managed to push himself upright in the gap between the side of the pit and the aurochs’ hindquarters. For a brief moment he was clear of its horns. But the enraged monster squirmed round and I watched as it drove a horn straight into Vulfard’s chest. The horn spiked Vulfard like a pig on a roasting spit, passing right through him. With a savage twist of its head the aurochs tossed Vulfard high into the air. The verderer spun, then fell back. The aurochs caught him on both horns, then tossed him again. I prayed that death would come to Vulfard quickly, so badly broken was his body. It flopped limply as the aurochs flung its victim upwards again and again. After several lunging, maddened attacks the brute allowed the wreckage of what had once been a man to drop into the churned mud of the pitfall’s floor. To my horror the aurochs then backed away into the small space available, lowered its head and deliberately spiked the corpse again. Lifting Vulfard on its head like some grisly trophy, the aurochs shook its head from side to side as a terrier might shake a rat in its jaws. A terrier would have growled its anger; the aurochs bellowed and bellowed hate and frustration.
Only when Vulfard’s mangled corpse was a bloody pulp did the aurochs finally drop its victim into the slime and mud. Little by little, the frenzied bellowing died away, and from where I stood above, I could see its flanks heaving in and out. Then the beast raised its huge head to me, its mad, white-rimmed eyes glaring malevolently.
In the terrible, empty interval that followed I became aware of Walo standing on the opposite side of the pit. He too had been looking down at the gruesome death of his father. Tears were streaming down his face, and he was shaking violently. For a desperate moment I thought that Walo would hurl himself down into the pit to try to retrieve his father’s body or avenge his killer. Instead, as the aurochs ceased its bellowing, Walo threw back his head and, between great sobs of anguish, let out an awful, long-drawn-out howl.
Chapter Two
MY SUMMONS TO the royal chancery had arrived three weeks earlier. The compline bell in the dome of Aachen’s basilica was tolling when a nervous-looking young clerk with rabbit teeth knocked on my door. He stared at the ground and mumbled his words because I had not had time to slip on the eye patch I usually wore in public. The Franks and my own Saxon people believe that someone who has eyes of different colours bears the mark of a person touched by the evil one. One of my eyes is blue, the other a greenish hazel. This oddity saved my life as a teenager w
hen my bitter nemesis, King Offa of Wessex, invaded and seized my family’s insignificant little kingdom. Offa slaughtered my father and brothers but, fearful that ill luck would follow my murder, he spared my life, choosing instead to exile me to the court of the king of the Franks and the most powerful sovereign in Europe whose rule now extends from the Atlantic coast to the dark forests beyond the Rhine. That exile had a cruel streak. Offa anticipated that I would suffer all the disadvantages and sorrows of a winelas guma, a ‘friendless man’, a prey to all who would harm or exploit him. Against all odds I had prospered. My service in Hispania had been rewarded with an annual stipend and the gift of a small house on the edge of the royal precinct.
The young messenger on my doorstep also made it clear that he preferred not to come into the house. I guessed it had something to do with the fact that I shared my home with a foreigner of sinister appearance. Osric’s dark Saracen skin, sardonic manner, and the twisted leg must have made him an alarming figure to the desk-bound gossips in the government bureaucracy. Osric had once been a slave, charged by my father with my upbringing. Now he was my trusted companion and friend.
I stepped back inside the house, put on my eye patch, and collected a heavy ankle-length cloak. At that late hour the braziers in the chancery offices would have been allowed to burn out, and the place was notoriously draughty. Then I followed the messenger along the footpaths that criss-crossed Aachen’s royal precinct. We had to go carefully in the fading light as the place was still a construction site. Piles of sand, brick or cut stone were dumped here and there, apparently at random. Temporary workshops and storehouses sprang up overnight, forcing one to make a detour. A familiar track was suddenly blocked by recent scaffolding, or fenced off by a barrier to stop one falling into a trench being dug for the foundations of a new building. For as long as I had known Carolus, the king had been pressing forward with his grand design to make himself a new capital in the north, the equal of Rome, and he was sparing no expense. His treasury, the tribunal building, and the garrison block were complete. But the towering council hall, large enough to seat an audience of four hundred, was still a shell, while his most ambitious structure, the royal chapel, was not yet ready for its ceremonial consecration. It had acquired bells and marble columns and a pair of great, ornate bronze doors that had been locally commissioned and made a fortune for the foundry owner. But an army of workmen still had months of labour before they finished cementing into place the brightly coloured mosaics that would dazzle the congregation.
