by MD. Lachlan
‘And the other, his companion?’
‘A sorcerer and servant to your northern gods. He bears a message for you and would seek an audience.’
‘What is his name?’
‘Hugin, my lord.’
Helgi swallowed. ‘Did he travel with another?’
‘His sister, my lord. The witch Munin, though she is dead.’
Again Helgi swallowed and called for wine himself. Then he stood and spoke:
‘Over the spacious earth each day
Hugin and Munin set forth to fly.
For Hugin I fear lest he not come home,
But for Munin my care is more.’
He sipped at his cup. ‘Do you know the rhyme, merchant?’
‘I have heard it at the fire, khagan.’
‘Do you know where it comes from?’
Leshii didn’t want to belittle the northerners’ religion by calling it a story, so he said, ‘Is it not holy lore?’
‘It is the sayings of the mad god Odin, god of kings, magic and the hanged. So Munin is dead.’
‘The sorceress died in Flanders.’
Helgi nodded. ‘I had never thought that verse could be a prophecy too.’
Leshii knew better than to question kings uninvited but he wondered to himself what exactly it might prophesy.
‘The signs are all here,’ said Helgi, ‘all of them. This fog is not natural and a mighty warrior walks out of the ice in the company of ravens.’
‘That is not as mysterious as it sounds,’ said Leshii. ‘We met another sorcerer on the boat, a man of great power. He guided us here, helped us on our way.’
‘How?’
‘He caused the wind to blow and the frost to melt away. We sailed past the lake and a good way up the river before he took the ship and turned back.’
Helgi went white. ‘No man has power like that. Magic is a woman’s art. Only the gods in man’s form can perform such feats.’
‘This was a man, sir, tall and pale. One of your people, by his hair.’
‘What of his hair?’
‘It was bright red. As red as the comb on a cock, all stood up in a shock. He steered us here himself and kept us from the shore, which was a good thing because the Franks and the Jomsvikings have the whole coast in flames between them.’
The prince threw his cup down. The god, the one who had wandered in from the blizzard – Loki, on a ship. Helgi recalled the prophecy:
A ship journeys from the east.
The people of the land of fire are coming over the waves,
And Loki steers.
There are the monstrous brood with all the raveners.
It was a prediction of what would happen in the end time, before Odin fought the wolf on the Gods’ final day. This ship came from the west, though. But what was west? It had come through the Eastern Lake. Prophecies, he knew, were rarely clear.
The khagan regained his temper. ‘See the merchant is rewarded,’ he said. ‘Give him fifty dinars and he may stay in our hall if he wishes. Or wherever he chooses. I expect he wants a bed slave, and these Slavs have a peculiar love of solitude in such matters.’ He turned to a druzhina. ‘It is time,’ he said. ‘Bring the girl to the gate.’
‘And the foreigners on the ice, lord?’
‘Kill them. Take sixty men.’
‘Yes, khagan,’ said the warrior, and ran from the hall.
73 Helgi’s Destiny
The shaft had been very difficult to construct and had already cost the lives of three eastern slaves when it collapsed half dug. Now it was done, smooth-sided, the depth of three men, sunk down to where Gillingr’s tomb had been.
Aelis was led forward, a spear at her back. The pebble was a dead weight and she stumbled forward through the fog. There was no need to bind her. Since the stone had been placed around her neck her mind had felt slow, her limbs heavy. She could not have run if she had tried. The runes were silent inside her. At the mouth of the shaft she stood and looked around. The fog had sucked all the colour out of the landscape; black rocks lay on a grey hillside.
A straggle of people followed – curious women and children glad to get out of the town under the protection of the druzhina after so long locked in by the fog. The merchant came along too, on his mule, though he had finally given up on his swords and left them in the hall. He had heard what was to happen to Aelis and had no appetite for profit.
At the mouth of the shaft he dismounted and hobbled over to Helgi. He seemed to be imploring the king or asking him something, but she didn’t understand what. Her Norse had faded. However, she had lived before, she knew, and she remembered much of what had happened to her then, not as a story but as flashes of images, faces looming at her, visions of ships, of a burning village, of someone she cared for dead, butchered on a bed.
‘What is to happen to me, merchant?’ she asked in Roman.
Leshii was pale. ‘You are to go down the ladder. I am sorry, lady. I took you from your home for profit. I thought you would be his bride. I did not think this fate awaited you.’
Aelis looked around her. She turned to Helgi. ‘Is this the island?’ She spoke in Roman.
Helgi replied in Norse and she did not understand him.
He saw by her blank look that she did not and tried again in rough Roman: ‘What island?’
‘The island where you buried me before.’
‘You make no sense. Have you lost your Norse?’ Helgi was more certain than ever that he was following the right course of action.
‘He came for me then. He will come for me again.’
‘What is she saying?’ He turned to Leshii beside him.
‘She says he came for her before and will come for her again.’
‘Who?’
‘The wolf.’
‘You are the only wolf, lady.’
‘You will not kill me.’
Helgi rattled off something in Norse to the merchant who repeated slowly, ‘He does not intend to kill you. He intends you to live.’
‘In there?’
‘In there. For protection,’ said Helgi.
‘To the dark?’
‘To the dark. Though you are …’ He couldn’t think of the right Roman word so he gestured to some baskets containing blankets, food, flint and candles.
‘How long must I stay there?’
‘Until things are put right.’
‘For ever?’
Helgi spoke to Leshii again, and the little merchant translated: ‘Do you know who you are?’
‘A little broken thing,’ said Aelis.
‘Three would become one,’ said Helgi in ponderous Roman. ‘Cannot happen. One conqueror, one lord. Odin must wait.’
‘If I am so magical, how can you constrain me?’
Leshii translated and Helgi tapped the pebble at her neck. ‘Loki, Odin. Great wolf. No magic,’ he said.
Aelis had seen the stone’s effect on Jehan and knew what he was trying to say. What had happened to the confessor without it? Was he dead or, worse, transformed, his jaws red with murder? She felt more connected to the gods Helgi had mentioned than she did to the faith in which she had been raised. Her faith had always been one of duty rather than passion – she spent dull Sundays in church more interested in catching up on the gossip than hearing the works of Jesus. When Helgi spoke of the wolf and of Odin, she felt the truth of it in her bones. Look around at the world, she thought, and say it was made in the image of a gentle god.
When the gods saw that the wolf was fully bound, they took a fetter and lashed it to a rock called Scream. Why were those words so deep in her mind, why did she recall them instead of a prayer or a psalm?
‘The ladder,’ said Helgi.
Aelis put her hands to her neck to remove the pendant but she found she still could not. Her fingers wouldn’t do her bidding and she could not make them remove the thong.
‘Good proof,’ said Helgi. ‘Lady, it is time. Go into the mine.’
Aelis looked at the northern barbarian, his
ridiculous kaftan, his ballooning trousers. She was of the line of Robert the Strong, more noble by far than he. So she would not struggle, would not weep. Instead she smiled at him. ‘When you war with gods, first be sure your grave is dug, barbarian. Your men who sweated to make this hole will sweat over their spades for you before long, I think.’ She spat at him, and from somewhere words came back to her: ‘I dag deyr thú.’
‘This will be my death day?’ said Helgi. ‘Perhaps, and perhaps not. Horse will kill me. Foreseen. Have no horse, so I am a safe man.’
‘The gods do not like to hear such talk,’ said Aelis. ‘They may take that as a challenge.’
Helgi understood little of what she said but grasped its sentiment well enough. He pursed his lips. ‘Fine woman, you,’ he said. ‘Sorry to do this. It is the only way.’
Aelis turned away from him to show that he was beneath her notice. Then she went to the ladder and climbed down. It was drawn up and the baskets were lowered after her. She looked up. There was a square of grey light. Helgi looked down at her.
‘Tunnels are warm lower down,’ said Helgi. ‘You live, I promise. Here to live, not die.’
From down the river a wolf was howling.
‘And you will die very soon,’ said Aelis. ‘My promise holds equally true.’
Helgi turned to his warriors. ‘Who am I?’
‘Helgi the Prophet!’ they shouted as one.
‘What is Helgi’s destiny?’
‘To be killed by his horse!’
‘How many horses does Helgi own?’
‘None?’
‘Then who can oppose him?’
‘No man!’
‘Who can oppose him?’
‘No man!’
From down on the river past the town came the sound of a great crash and then men shouting. Leshii looked around. Helgi’s men had found his friends.
‘Who can oppose him?’ Helgi had his sword in the air, waving it above his head.
‘No man!’
The druzhina cheered and howled, banging on their shields.
Leshii came up behind the khagan. He slipped the knife from his waistband, the silk cutter he had used on Aelis’s hair, and drove it hard into Helgi’s back.
‘I am your mule, khagan, so men call me,’ he said, ‘though in reality I am a just a little man, unconsidered by kings and heroes.’
Helgi’s hand went to his back and clawed at the knife, but it would not come out.
‘Sváva,’ said Helgi. He tried to say something more but couldn’t. He took a pace, stumbled and fell into the shaft.
Then the druzhina cut Leshii down.
74 Brave Fatty
Ofaeti and Hugin sat by the brazier with the guards.
‘This is a curious vessel,’ said Ofaeti, ‘a ship with no oarsmen but a deal of blood here frozen on the boards.’
Hugin stared into the mist. The riverbanks were no more than shadows, but on the one furthest from the boat was another shadow – not a rock, he was sure. He sniffed hard. There was a smell to it. Wolf.
‘There’s something out there,’ he said. ‘A wolf.’
‘Where?’
The Raven pointed. A howl came from the bank, eerily flat in the heavy air.
‘Our friend the wolf?’
‘I think so,’ said Hugin.
‘Then we are in good luck to have found him so soon. We can kill him and go home.’
There was movement on the ice – black shapes, fog spectres. But not spectres, men. Twenty paces from the ship the druzhina emerged. They were terrifying-looking warriors – gigantic in their furs, their breath steaming about them as if they were creatures of the mist. They faced the ship in a line, silently staring at the men by the brazier. The Raven’s sword was free from its scabbard and the two guards soon lay dead.
‘Too late to worry about what’s out there, I think,’ said Ofaeti, glancing down at the corpses. He looked at the fog; it was still reducing vision to less than the throw of a stone. He could run, he thought, lose himself in the murk. Maybe. But he would probably be cut down before he got away. Unlike the Raven, he wasn’t quick on his feet. Besides, he hadn’t been raised that way. Running was not for Thiörek, called Ofaeti, son of Thetmar of the berserker line of Thetleif. He vaulted into the ship and drew his sword.
The Raven gave him a questioning look.
‘Go if you need to,’ said Ofaeti, ‘but tell my tale. Say how the brave fatty faced the many at Aldeigjuborg and made a few widows before he died.’
‘Run. We’ll make the shore before they do. You are to tell my tale.’
‘And miss this glory? Find another skald to sing your songs, crow balls.’ Ofaeti grinned and raised his shield. The warriors advanced at the walk. They had cords tied about the soles of their boots and had a good grip on the snow that lay on the river’s ice.
‘They’re coming. Go on.’ The Raven held out his hand across the rail of the ship. Ofaeti took it. ‘Tell my tale,’ he said. Hugin nodded and was gone, a scrap of black fading to grey in the fog.
Ofaeti addressed the druzhina: ‘Now, my ice maidens, which one of you wants to face me in single combat here in the boat? What say you send forward your best man, and if I kill him you send me on my way with a pat on the back?’
Ofaeti forced his grip to relax on his sword. His mind went back to the victory they had won on the boat after the merchant had sacrificed the necklace.
The warriors kept coming, their pace increasing. ‘Come on then! But I warn you – you are many and I am one but I have Loki’s luck!’
The druzhina broke into a charge and Ofaeti prepared himself to die.
75 A Leap of Faith
The shaft had been cut down into a tunnel which was propped up with pillars of stone and baked brick and extended away from Aelis, ahead and behind. In the shaft she could stand and see, while the day lasted. To gain any shelter from rain or cold she would have to crawl into the darkness.
Aelis struck at her flint. The momentary flash revealed little. It was as if the tunnel ahead of her ate the light, sucking it down into two black pits. She struck again, got some tinder going and lit the little lamp that had been provided for her.
Aelis sat for a while. Her hands went again to the pendant at her neck but she could not remove it, couldn’t make her fingers lift it or undo the knot. She looked up at the sky. The greyness was losing its glow. Soon it would be night. Rational thought seemed to evade her. How to get out? She just couldn’t force her terrified mind to concentrate.
Slowly, some sort of calm returned. Being scared was not going to get her out of the pit. Helgi had called it a mine, and if it was a mine then there would be wood or something she could drive into the wall of the shaft to climb out. Yes, it would be easy to climb up the inside of the shaft if only she could find some wood. She put the flint and tinder away in its pouch, which she tucked inside her tunic. She couldn’t afford to lose that.
There was a thump and something hit her hard across the face, knocking the lamp to the floor. She put out her hand and felt something. An arm! She could just make it out in the guttering flame of the lamp. Aelis drove herself back against the wall to get away from the dead man. She heard screams and shouts from above, some in Norse, some in Roman.
‘Witch!’
‘She bewitched the merchant!’
‘Kill her!’
‘He’s dead, Helgi is dead!’
‘Troll-witch, houserider!’
There was a dead body in front of her. It was him, Helgi. There was no time for horror or elation;, she had to save herself. She forced herself to crawl forwards. Protruding from the dead prince’s back was the handle of a knife. She pulled it out, kneeling on the body’s blood-wet furs. It came free. She looked at it and knew who had killed the khagan.
Aelis picked up the lamp and scrambled into the tunnel. She crawled, putting the lamp in front of her. But the tunnel quickly became very low and she was panicking. As she moved the lamp forward, she drove it into a rock. Its
clay bulb burst. All she had was the oil on the wick. When that was gone she would be in darkness. She had gone no more than a body length when the flame guttered and died. Now she felt her way with her hands. The passage dropped steeply but she went on, scraping her knees and crying out when her head hit the low roof.
Men were coming down the ladder. Again the word she had heard so many times in Norse she needed no magic to translate it: ‘Witch!’
Aelis put her hand to the floor in front of her and felt nothing. The ground had disappeared. She turned around and dangled her legs into the void. They touched nothing, not even when she stretched them forward.
‘Get a torch!’ The voice was one of the khagan’s wider army because it spoke in rough Greek.
So many voices now, she wondered the shaft could contain them all. She could hear five men at least behind her and other more distant voices, shouting and angry.
What to do? It wouldn’t be long before her mind was made up for her. She felt for a ladder going down, a foothold, anything. There was nothing. A fluttering yellow light came from behind her. Her pursuers had their torch. They were coming, crawling down the tunnel. Something flashed in the dark. A spear tip.
‘Witch!’
The man thrust with his spear but he wasn’t near enough. He crawled forward and pulled back his arms to strike again.
She searched for something to pray to. God? He had gone from her life. The runes? Never. They had robbed her of herself. She could think of nothing to help her at all.
‘Die, witch,’ said the man.
Then a name came to her, a name at once familiar and strange, from the life she had lived before. Not a magical creation at all; now more a memory, like a bright flash of childhood alive for a second in the adult mind.
‘Vali, help me!’ she whispered and jumped into the darkness.
76 Down
Hugin followed the riverbank back into town. He would need to go in there alone. No matter; he had done that before. As he drew near to Ladoga’s walls he could hear voices – screaming and shouting – women, children. What had happened? A name was on their lips: ‘Helgi!’
