by Joanna Bell
Was I dead after all? Was this strange forest the next life, where a man heard the growling of animals and saw none? It was getting louder, too. So quickly and so loud that the blood ran fast in my veins as it grew to a great roar. I lifted my head – and my sword – towards the beast's rumble.
And there, when I looked in the direction of the east, I did not see a wolf – or did I? I did not know what creature I saw, only that it was shaped like no beast I had ever seen, with no discernable face, no ears, no mouth, and traveling at such a speed that I tumbled over onto my side when it passed, at a distance I found myself unable to measure. And just as quickly as it had come to pass me, it was gone, the roar fading into the distance.
I fell to my knees, stupefied by what I'd just seen, and by the fact that I seemed, although still in a wood, to be in a different wood.
Death. The Lord's man had come back, unseen and unheard, and taken his King's revenge upon me.
Look what you have allowed that woman to do! I lamented to myself. She stole your senses, your attention, and now you've paid for it with your own life!
My hands found my neck, my chest, checking for wounds and blood, searching for the injury that had sent me into the realm of death. There were none, but I remembered something the gothi had said to me, when I was a boy:
"In the next life, all wounds are healed, all injuries mended, whether they be to the body or the heart."
My body seemed to bear out the gothi's words, but not my heart. My heart was seized with bitterness to know that in losing my life trying unsuccessfully to find Sophie, all I'd done was ensure it had been for nothing. Not even for one last kiss from her soft lips before I went.
As I contemplated how wrong the gothi had been, and how my heart seemed more injured now than it had ever seemed in life, another of the strange wolves, traveling again at a speed my eyes jumped and struggled to follow, came by. And like her companion, she passed me by without taking notice, filling the air with her great roar.
All I'd ever been told about the next life concerned the Great Hall, the feasting, the ale, the honor of sitting at the table of tables with the other warriors. But I was not in the Great Hall. I was not in any hall at all. I could hear no songs, hear no welcome cries from my forefathers.
Before I allowed the thought to take root in my mind, the one that whispered malevolently in my ear that I had not died a great death, and so was now to be denied Valhalla, I stumbled back to my feet. I would find the Great Hall. After a life of serving my people, of never turning away from battle, even when to do so would have been the wiser choice, of defending and protecting my people, was I to be denied a place at the warrior's table for one mistake?
It couldn't be. The gods would not be so cruel.
I kept my sword to hand and walked down the slope to the brook-bed, which I began to follow. Through the trees I could see a clearing, beyond which the two wolves had run past. Let them come, let them see me if they wanted to feel the cold bite of my blade in their necks. I would find the Great Hall, and force open its door with my bare hands if needs be.
Another wolf. Was it another wolf? It was growling, but the sound was different. I looked up, and then around me in the forest, and then up again. There was something above my head. Gray it was, like the pigeons the East Angles made delicious pies out of – but it did not fly like any bird I had ever seen. No wings flapped, there was no movement at all apart from the inexplicable and perfectly straight arc it was cutting across the blue sky.
An insect, then? It was small, like an insect. I reached up above my head, thinking the creature closer than I had initially assumed, but my hand took nothing but air. My foot caught on a root, then, and I looked down to see where I was going. When I next looked up, the bird was gone, leaving only its fading roar in my ears.
A roar like the sea, coming from a bird? From an insect? And all of it sounding so very real, so unlike what I had imagined the next life to be.
It occurred to me then that I was being tested. I'd never asked the gothi how to get to the Great Hall, because I'd always assumed that I would just... arrive there. That death would be like sleep that way, a slipping away and then an awakening in the Hall. It never crossed my thoughts that there would be a journey, although standing in the woods, and beset on all sides by baffling creatures, it seemed then to be the case.
Stop allowing yourself to be distracted. Go out of the woods, and find your place in the Hall.
My heart leapt when, from my new perspective, I spotted a structure – a very large structure, and to my eyes unlike any I had seen in the North – or anywhere else. It must be the place I sought. I set off towards it, my belly rumbling with anticipation of the feast to come.
The hall was quiet as I approached it across an open field, no songs echoed from within. And there wasn't just the one – there was two, one right next to the other. The one I was closest to was the largest, so I went to it first.
Holes stood in the walls, but staged and cut precisely, purposefully. Who would cut holes in their walls? But when I got close enough I saw that the holes were filled with glass. Not the muddy, imperfect glass of beads, or of the vessels and plates we sometimes found in particularly rich monasteries and Frankish towns, but colorless glass, as flat and clear as the surface of a lake on a calm day. I put my hand flat against it, marveling at the smooth coolness, so unlike anything else I had ever seen.
So unclouded was the glass that I soon noticed I could see right through it. Inside, the hall appeared empty, and filled with strange objects. I walked around the outer walls until I found a door – which, when it refused to yield, I had to kick down.
Once again, as I had in the forest, I found myself too overwhelmed by the odd sounds and textures of the next life to do anything but marvel and wonder. The ground under my feet was soft, almost like marsh. But when I reached down to touch it, it was as dry as a bone. The air was strongly perfumed, with a scent almost like a mix between flowers and the astringent salves the healers used to treat the warrior's wounds and cuts. I coughed and wiped my eyes when they began to water, and headed further inside.
I did not get far. There was a mantelpiece in the room where I stood, and I wished at once that I had not looked at the things that sat upon it, for they frightened me as badly as anything had since I was a small boy and my grandmother had filled my head with stories of ghosts and demons and men who could change themselves into beasts.
What was on that mantelpiece? Faces. People. Not images carved in wood but perfect likenesses, uncanny enough in their perfection to make all the fine hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stand up. I moved to pick up one of these faces and then snatched my hand away at the last second when I saw that I recognized who it was. Paige. Jarl Eirik's wife. I turned quickly, as if I had seen her reflection in the surface of a pool and expected her to be there behind me.
But no one was there. I looked back at the image. It wasn't an image, though, not a likeness. It was Paige herself. I could even see the way the sun illuminated one side of her face as she stood eerily unmoving, staring back at me with unseeing eyes. Was she dead, too? Was it a sign, or a premonition of some kind? And if it was, how was I to warn my friend Jarl Eirik of the danger to his wife if I was now in another world?
Deeply unsettled, I left the room of faces and entered the one the next one. Sunlight filtered through the glass-filled hole, showing the dust as it floated in the air, and a smell of old bread and cooking grease came to my nose. There was a wooden table, too, although it was bare of the roasted venison and dark ale I craved.
I do not know how long I spent in that room, opening small doors and examining the heavy, rounded objects inside, so regular in their shape, so matching each to the other, and all wound around with impossibly thin, fragile parchment that seemed to show images of food, bowls of stew, ripe red fruits and the like. It was not long enough to forget the face of Eirik's wife, or the shame in my soul for leaving my life – and my people – in such a way as I h
ad.
A sound interrupted my recriminations against myself and I raised my head, alert. Footsteps. Approaching footsteps. Instinct kicked in and I drew my sword at I whirled around to face whichever god it was that had come to tell me why I had not been permitted entry to the feast in the Great Hall.
But it was not a god who stood in front of me, eyes widening. It was just a man, whose expression said he was just as uncomprehending as I was to be in such a mysterious place.
"What the fuck?" He muttered, dropping a small, flat object that he held in one of his hands.
The two of us looked over each other, and I began, as I noted the man's dressings and his general demeanor, to realize that it was not his surroundings that he reacted to but me.
"Who are you?" I demanded, stepping forward as he shrank back, blinking like a bear emerging from its den in the springtime. "Who – what is this place?"
The man reached down, feeling on the ground for the object he'd dropped without taking his eyes off me. "Who am I?" He asked, backing away because he had surely noticed that I was twice his size – and he without even a blade to defend himself. "I'm Jim Roberts, with KLNG News. I – I – what are you doing here?"
Something in the man's words – and, when I thought of it, his dressings – reminded me of Sophie. The accent was the same, the same peculiar delivery she used sometimes, not intended to be disrespectful, I'd learned, but making others think it all the same.
"What am I doing here?" I replied, suddenly not so sure I was dead – although if I wasn't dead, how had I come to be in a different world? "I seek the Great Hall. I assumed myself dead. I assumed –"
"I'm sorry," the man laughed, shaking his head like he couldn't believe what I was saying. "Sir, do you understand that you're trespassing? I assume it was you who kicked the door down?"
"It was me," I conceded. "It did not open."
"Yeah. It was locked. This is private property, sir. You can't just go kicking down doors because they don't open."
I did not ask him what the purpose of doors was if they did not easily allow people to pass into and out of dwellings. Unless this man thought his dwelling an estate in its own right, a small territory inside four walls?
"Sir," he continued, "I don't know what you're doing here but you understand I have to call the police, don't you? I'm trying to keep the cops here on my side, and they won't be happy if they find out I came across some crazy Viking role-player dude in the Renner house and didn't call them."
The police. I knew that word. Sophie had used that word, on the beach that first day. A 'police officer' – that's what she'd said. That's what she'd claimed to be. And now the strange little man in front of me was threatening the presence of these 'police?' Was it possible this was a coincidence – the dressings, the way of speaking, the talk of police? How could all of these signs of Sophie be meaningless? Was she here, or nearby?
"Do you know Sophie?" I asked the man, as he ran his fingers over the surface of the object in his hands, and images began to appear on it like reflections in water. I took a step backwards, thinking maybe I wasn't dead but dreaming. Maybe I was simply in the midst of the oddest dream I had ever had in my life?
"I'm sorry, I don't know who you are or what you're doing here, but I'm calling the police."
Jim then began to speak as if there was someone else in the room, a third person – but there was only me. I listened, fascinated, as he carried on half a conversation with the object he now held up to his head.
"Yes!" he barked impatiently, "the Renner house – this isn't a prank call! Yes, this is Jim Roberts with KLNG News. Tell Jerry Sawchuk I'm standing here with the guy right now. What? No. No – I said he kicked down the door, not me. Just – OK, sure, I'll wait."
Unsure what use Jim was to me, I wandered back out to the first room, and then back out the door again when the images of Jarl Eirik's wife proved too eerie to bear.
"Hey!" The crazy man shouted after me. "Hey – wait a minute, where are you going? I'm literally talking to the cops right now, buddy, it's no use trying to run."
Even as I wandered down towards a strip of hard, smooth ground I could still hear him in the dwelling, speaking in urgent tones to himself. "Look, just tell them to get out here now. He's leaving! I don't – I don't know – he just walked out the damn door! He's ignoring everything I say!"
I knelt down and pressed my hand against the ground where it turned hard. It was surprisingly hot and I jerked my hand away at once. I didn't know where I was. I didn't know where Sophie was. I didn't even know if I was alive or dead. Should I return to the woods? Should I keep seeking the Great Hall? Because the place I had just found, with its strange objects and the even stranger man, bore absolutely no resemblance to anything I had ever been told about the Great Hall.
If I returned to the woods, I might be able to catch a pigeon, or a rabbit. I was very hungry by then.
"STOP!"
A male voice, coming from behind me. I drew my sword as I turned, almost grateful for the opportunity – a fight might help clear my head.
The man who confronted me was wearing dark dressings and a dark hat, the likes of which I'd never seen before. And behind him, the madman from the dwelling stood pointing at me, shouting.
"That's him! That's him!"
I took a step towards the man who had commanded me to stop and at once he reached to the back of his hip for a weapon. Except it was no weapon – it was simply a small, dark... object. He held it like a weapon, though, pointing it at me and wearing a look of confidence on his face like he was now safe from any attack. I took another step towards him, flipping the hilt of the sword over in my palm, readying for a fight.
"Sir, stop! Stay back! I'll – sir! SIR!"
I did not stop or stay back – what reason did I have to do so? Did I not have the right to defend myself when a stranger ordered me, in land my people now controlled, to stop and do his bidding?
The entreaties to cease my approach became almost hysterical as I refused to obey them, but it was only went I moved to lift my sword up, readying the blow, that a searing pain suddenly tore through my left arm. I dropped my blade, thinking my arm lost in an attack from some unseen combatant, sliced clean off without my even hearing it coming.
There was sound, too, that came at the same moment as the pain, thunder booming out of a clear, blue sky. I fell to my knees, howling with rage, clutching my arm where the pain was worst. But when I looked up to see who had struck me, to see the eyes of the man who I felt certain was about to send me to the next world – if it was true that I was not already there – there was no one else but Jim and the one in dark dressings. He had a look of shock on his face, and had, like his friend had just done in the dwelling, begun shouting at an unseen companion.
"Send an ambulance! Tell Jerry to get out here! Damnit, tell him to get out here right now – I just shot this guy! I shot him! And he's – he's not staying down. Goddamnit, buddy, don't make me shoot you again! STAY DOWN!"
But I did not stay down. My arm was badly wounded, and even in my anger and pain I could sense it was not the kind of wound that would be healed with salves and slings. The shouting man was going to die for what he'd just done. I was probably going to die, too – the blood gushed down the length of my arm and dripped from the tips of my fingers – but I was going to bring him with me.
I lurched to my feet and then stopped as the thunder came again. And that time, I saw where it appeared to come from. The shiny object clutched in my foe's hands – which now shook visibly – spat fire and sound so loud my ears rang with it and my head pounded. I stopped then, staring dumbly ahead as my arm began to tingle ominously.
Was this man a god? He'd just summoned thunder in his hands – an impossible thing – so he must be a god. But he did not look like a god – nor did he act like one. He seemed afraid, even as he held his hands level in my direction, warning me repeatedly that he would 'shoot' again. And then as we stood regarding each other in what I could not d
escribe as the usual way men regard each other when locked in combat, a pack of wolves like those I had seen from the woods came pouring across the landscape. White, they were, and quicker than any I had seen in my life. And then, when they got closer and I saw that they were larger than any creature I had ever known, it seemed that they were not wolves at all, although their howls filled the air. I did not know what they were, and the blood loss and shock sent me reeling, stumbling back as men – men! – poured out of their bellies.
The blue summer sky filled my eyes as I fell onto my back and a feeling of calm came over me, a certainty that this, now – surely – was death. My heartbeat fluttered weakly, my blood leaked out onto the earth and the only regret in my mind as I took in that last glimpse of the world I had loved so well, was that I had not found Sophie to tell her that I loved her before I died.
At night sometimes she would reach for me in her sleep, her hand would search for mine and I would take it, holding it up to my cheek, kissing her fingers when I knew she was not awake to see me do it. The blueness of the sky and the memory of Sophie's warm hand mingled in my mind with the remembrance of my childhood home by the sea. I accepted death as it came, the darkness encroaching across my vision and my soul slipping away into the place between the worlds.
Nineteen
Ivar
Who was I to assume I would be so lucky as to have my soul led gently away? To assume that my death would not be like those I had witnessed – some of which I had delivered myself – a final nightmare of pain and blood that dragged on and on as life stubbornly refused to give way?
I woke sometime later, surrounded by people. And when I tried to move, I found that my limbs were bound tightly, allowing no movement. They weren't going to kill me quickly. They were taking me somewhere to inflict tortures on me for the invasion of their lands. I leaned my head back, roaring, and struggled against my restraints.
