‘Lord, a great victory.’ A hand was on his shoulder. It was Hogni.
‘The Danes have taken flight,’ said Orri, ‘and the win is yours to claim.’
‘My glory must wait a while,’ said Vali. ‘I have another battle to fight.’ He nodded towards the water.
It was just a pool, he told himself, something he would use for a purpose, like a plough or a sword.
Hogni and Orri looked at the noose Jodis was tying, the symbol of Odin, the triple slip knot - if that’s what you could call it. The dead lord’s necklace only slipped one way. Once it was on, you took it off with a knife or not at all. The men glanced at each other.
‘You are seeking answers from the gods?’ said Orri.
‘I want to find where Adisla has gone. Do you have a better way?’
‘They’ll take her to Haarik’s court.’
‘Maybe, and maybe not. They could sell her in Haithabyr or in any market along the way. She could be given to a mercenary as payment, and besides . . .’ He didn’t want to say it, the thought seemed too bizarre. He recalled that strange man in the four-cornered hat. What had he been doing there? Drengi’s words had sunk in too.
‘They came for her; they were looking for her. They called her name,’ said Vali.
‘Why?’
Vali shrugged. Whatever Adisla’s fate, it was surely not to be a straightforward slave. He was beyond explanation. He just knew that he had very little time and no scope to make a mistake.
‘This is the best way,’ said Vali.
Hogni nodded. ‘I performed this office for your father,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘There is a place in the Iron Woods, four days from his hall. Like this, it’s a pool of prophecy. Your father asked questions of it.’
‘How?’
‘In the same way that you will,’ he said. He looked at the coil of rope.
‘Did he find answers?’
‘It was when his difficulties began in earnest,’ said Hogni.
‘When was this?’
‘Four years ago. He hadn’t been well for years but . . .’
Hogni looked like he was too ashamed to finish his sentence.
‘He never came back from the woods,’ said Orri.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Vali.
‘Your father lives alone in the Iron Woods,’ said Hogni. ‘He has taken up the life of a mystic.’
It began to rain harder, a sudden sea squall coming in over them as fast as a bird.
‘The people say that Odin speaks to him in the woods, that he is granting the king his power.’
‘Do the people say that or does my mother?’
The two men did not reply. Things were worse than Vali had thought. If anyone suspected that Authun had lost his mind it would be a disaster for the Horda. The king had more enemies than any man alive. No time to think on that. Vali looked into the dark waters and stretched his neck forward, steeling himself.
‘Begin,’ said Vali.
Jodis told Orri to bind Vali by his hands and feet, while she put the noose over his head.
‘Is this the way Lord Authun went about it?’ said Vali. Jodis seemed confident how to perform the ritual but Vali’s nervousness made him look for reassurance.
‘He offered a dedication to Odin before he went in,’ said Orri.
Vali smiled. ‘Well then, since I’m bound, perhaps I should offer a dedication to a bound god. Lord Loki, who the gods tormented, guide me to the vision I need.’
‘You shouldn’t invoke that fellow, lord,’ said Orri.
‘Is Odin any more reliable?’
‘Nor him,’ said Orri. ‘Freyr for a fuck, Tyr for a fight and Thor for a fuck, a fight and the rain to wash you afterwards - you don’t need any more gods than that.’
‘Odin is the god of kings,’ said Vali, ‘isn’t that what we’re told?’
‘And berserk madmen,’ said Orri. ‘Sorry, sir, but it’s true. When I go into a scrap I want to know my god’s on my side, not likely to desert me if the fancy takes him. Odin is a treacherous god; it is in his nature. I respect Lord Odin, and his kings and lunatics, but I wouldn’t call on him, or the other one you mentioned.’
Orri wound the rope around Vali’s feet.
‘Loki is an enemy of the gods, not of people,’ said Vali. ‘When did you ever hear of him acting against men? He kills giants, he kills gods, but men he helps or leaves alone.’
Jodis spoke: ‘This is Odin’s ceremony. He’s lord of the hanged, the god who gave his eye for wisdom in the waters of the well. If you want help, it’s him you’ll call for. If you don’t now, you will when you’re in there, believe me.’
She put the noose over his neck.
‘I’ve sworn never to ask that god for anything,’ said Vali.
‘You will ask or you will die,’ said Jodis.
She adjusted the rope at his neck, almost like she would straighten her child’s tunic before allowing him to go to market. ‘Let’s hope we don’t need this. Stay away from dark things,’ she said. ‘Only speak to the god himself.’
‘How will I know the difference?’ said Vali.
‘I have no idea,’ said Jodis. ‘Magic is a puzzle not a recipe, so Ma Disa used to say.’ Vali nodded. His hands and his feet were secure and he couldn’t even balance to stand. She finished adjusting the noose and kissed him on the forehead. ‘Take him to the middle of the mire.’
Hogni and Orri lifted him but found him cumbersome to carry between them. In the end Hogni put him over his shoulder and walked across the squelching ground and into the water, Orri in front of him to test the way. In the middle they stopped. Hogni let Vali slide down and supported the prince as he stood precariously. The water was freezing, and it came up to their belts. Vali shivered.
‘Should I call for Odin?’ said Hogni.
Jodis shook her head.
‘The prince should call. You should save your breath. If he comes, you might need it to beg him to leave. Are you ready, Vali?’
‘Yes.’
‘Put him under and hold him there until I tell you to bring him up,’ said Jodis. ‘Hogni, hold him down; Orri, keep hold of the rope. And both of you stand by with your knives. He is going to the gates of Hel, and if something claims him there it can’t be allowed to live in this world. This is how the swamp monsters are born.’
The three men glanced at each other.
‘If you have to kill me, kill me,’ said Vali. ‘I won’t consider you kinslayers - Ma Jodis is a witness to that.’
‘Then sit down, lord,’ said Hogni.
The first time was the easiest. Vali just let his legs go soft and leaned back into the mire as if into the sea on a summer’s day. He closed his eyes and did not see the dark waters close over him. The panic kept away for a few heartbeats. At first it was as if he was not himself but an observer - the danger of his situation was not clear and he still thought he could just stand up. Then fear broke over him like a wave. He desperately needed air. He tried to stand, and when he couldn’t, he tried to sit up. Someone had a boot on the centre of his chest. He could hear distorted voices from the surface and had to resist the desire to cry out to them. He wriggled free of the foot, tried to get onto his knees and then felt a push at his side. It turned him over. Someone was pulling at his hands, then they were kneeling or sitting on him, he couldn’t tell which. Hogni and Orri were doing what they had promised - helping him to stay below the water.
He struggled to hold his breath. Dread overwhelmed him, he felt that he was drowning in fear as much as water. The bonds would not come off, the weight on his back and on his legs felt immense, almost part of him, as if he were some enormous giant too heavy to lift itself.
He couldn’t get the ropes off, couldn’t get free. Vali tried to remember that he had chosen to be here, that he wanted this, but it was no good. An instinct, animal and undeniable, rose up in him and he fought for the surface. He opened his eyes to look for the light and could see no more in the mud
dy waters than when they were closed. Then his will burst and he breathed in. He spat and coughed and then felt his throat clench shut. He had the desire to move his body but he could no longer do so, though he was kicking with his mind. His longing for the air seemed like something trapped in his head, thumping to get free. Still he struggled, the panic swamping even the emotions of despair.
Then, as suddenly as it had come on, the terror was gone and he felt peaceful, as if any cares he had, any frustrations and fears, were just silly things, almost incomprehensible under the calm that came down on him like a parent’s kiss on a sleepy child.
Light. And noise, hard blows and a sensation of movement. The grass felt cold. Someone was slapping him across the back of the head. He tried to defend himself but his hands were tied. A face came into focus. It was Jodis.
‘Nothing?’ she said.
Vali coughed, spluttering out water and mucus from his nose and mouth.
‘Nothing.’
‘Do you need a rest?’
Vali thought of Adisla, of what she would be enduring on the Danes’ drakkar. ‘No rest,’ he said. He could hardly get the words out. His throat was dry and sore from where it had constricted in the water and his muscles writhed on his bones in a deep shiver.
‘Put him back,’ said Jodis.
Time became flexible to Vali, a malleable thing, like a piece of hide to be stretched or shrunk, a smith’s ingot heated and cooled, bent and straightened. When he was in the water every heartbeat seemed a year. When he was out the sun seemed to dip and rise like a skimmed stone. Even though his will was strong, Vali couldn’t help but take rests. At first they untied him when he did so. Eventually they did not. He could say, ‘Put me back in the water,’ but he couldn’t make his body allow it, and the more times he went in, the harder he struggled. At first he could control himself until he reached the centre of the mire. After a day he began to fight as they led him to the edge. It was a place of horror to him now, though no visions came, no insight or revelation, just the awful black water closing in on him, the pressures from within as the air struggled to burst from his lungs, and without as the water rushed to get in. A weighty black mass seemed to pull at his brain, heavier on the left than the right, the asymmetry giving him a headache like he had never known. His throat was raw and he could hardly speak.
There was no crowd there to see the magic. The Danes had gone and the Rygir were at home, sitting in groups remembering the dead, tending the wounded or just keeping their children close and the door shut. Adisla was the only one taken but ten others had died and still more were wounded. People drank, though not in celebration, hoping to damp down the misery and accentuate the glory of the violent day. Only Jodis’s children and Bragi came to watch Vali suffer.
Jodis sent her girl away to bring soup, but Vali couldn’t drink it. His throat had clamped shut, so he shivered out the interludes between his ordeals starving and cold. On the first day he managed twelve trips to the water. On the second he did four. The third day, lack of sleep blunting the reality of what he was doing, he managed eight. And, towards the evening, he did begin to see.
Drowning beneath the dark waters, he was somewhere else other than the mire, somewhere equally cold but not wet or dark. At that turning point, the moment between the panic and the calm of drowning, he was in a confined space, a tunnel that seemed to glow, the rocks emitting a soft and alien light. Someone was there, he was sure, though he couldn’t say who. He could feel their presence as a tone, a mood or a pattern of thought. He had never known anything like it. It was a mind that seemed like a river - always moving, always the same - and, like a river, it had currents that might drag you down.
And when he was lifted from the water, he didn’t see Orri and Hogni but that strange red-haired man in the cloak of hawk feathers, taking him up and out into the clean cold air. He heard a voice that seemed familiar.
‘Give yourself completely.’ Then the man was gone and Vali could stand it no more. He knew what was required. You cannot go to the gates of death if you are still looking back at life. He needed to step forward boldly. The idea didn’t come to him in words but as a feeling of want, like a prisoner wants freedom. He was fettered by something and the fetters needed to break.
The men pulled him up and he lay back in their arms, limp as pondweed.
‘Lord,’ said Orri, ‘you have tried. There is nothing there for you.’
‘No,’ said Vali, though the word was more of a cough than anything understandable. The men started towards the bank.
‘No.’
They stopped.
‘What, lord?’
Vali made himself speak, forcing his aching lungs to expel the air through the constriction of his throat to frame the words. He was weak and tired and he needed to end this suffering whatever the cost. From behind the hillside, towards the sea, there came the sound of horns and a clamour. Forkbeard was returning. It meant nothing to Vali.
‘Do not pull me out,’ he said.
‘You mean to die?’
‘The water,’ said Vali, pointing into the mire. He was beyond explanation. The sky was a cave, black with rain, the light unnatural, a subterranean glow, like that tunnel. His senses seemed muted and dull, as if the darkness of the mire still clung to him.
‘You are raving, lord,’ said Hogni. ‘Ma Jodis, the prince says we are to put him in again.’
Jodis tapped the ground with her foot in thought. She looked back over her shoulder in the direction of the sea, thinking of the girl on the Danish ship. Of course, the prince would be taken out of the mire but perhaps it was time to give it longer. Much longer.
‘Do as he says,’ she said.
Now it was Hogni and Orri who hesitated, but Vali took the decision from their hands. With the last of his strength he kicked his feet away from under him and cast himself back into the water.
22 Magical Thinking
The witch queen was working on the Moonsword when she realised that the sorcerer had found Vali. She had taken Authun’s weapon on an impulse, not a whim like an ordinary human might have but in response to a magical feeling. She knew it was important and, in the years since the king had come to the cave, she had realised how. The wolf would kill Odin but then it would need to die. Ancient prophecy was clear on how this would happen. Odin would fall, and then another, kinder, more humane god would kill the wolf. If the pre-echo of that conflict really was to be played out in her lifetime then that god would need a weapon. The wolf could not be killed by any normal blade, otherwise it would not be able to defeat the king of gods in battle. So the sword would need to be enchanted.
In the lower caves there was a narrow wedge of rock where the jagged ceiling met an uneven floor. She had always thought it looked like the jaws of a wolf. Now she wedged the sword into it, as the sword was wedged into the jaws of the Fenris Wolf, and for months she concentrated on seeing it as something that could harm the savage god.
The witch was so strong in magic that she was half a god herself, and her perceptions were not like those of humans, things that flicker into being for an instant and then cease to exist when attention shifts. They were more like living things, spider thoughts that crawled from the egg of her mind over the object of her meditation - the sword - and waited to ensnare whatever encountered the weapon in future. She convinced herself that the weapon would kill the wolf, and the sisters sat with her, sharing that belief. At the end of their period of meditation that idea had entered the Moonsword and would warp the perceptions of all who encountered it in future, including the wolf himself.
Gullveig knew that anything that could defeat Odin would not be killed by a lesser magic, and all magics were less than that possessed by the king of gods, but she saw one hope. The prince, she knew, had been raised on tales of his father’s battles and had grown up hearing stories of the magical lost sword. When he was eaten by the wolf, his consciousness would mingle with his brother’s. That, she believed, provided the key to the wolf’s death. The
magic would not need to batter down the wolf’s defences; it would enter through a crack provided by the man who had given his life to bring the Fenris Wolf to earth.
The meditation was finishing when the witches felt a brief pause in the flow of things, like someone sleeping in a cart might suddenly become aware that it had stopped. Vali, in the mire, had stepped into the magic space of visions and prophecy where the witches lived, and it was as if they had heard his footfalls at its threshold.
The witch queen was aware of someone else too. She heard chanting and drums and saw the eyes of the sorcerer. Then she felt the delicious pull of cold waters, felt her throat constricting, the desperation for air, a thick despair in her head, and she fell into Vali’s mind.
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