Valkyrie's Song

by M. D. Lachlan

  Dýri the Varangian stood close by her. Styliane had three of her guard with her and without such men she was sure she would be dead. They brought their tents, built the fires and kept low in the country. Her Varangians could pass for Normans and had cut their hair in the brutal, shaved style of the invaders. It had taken some persuasion to get them to do that. It was not manly to hide away from your enemies, to deceive them, they said.

  It was much less manly to be cut down for nothing, having gained nothing, she said. She reminded them of one of the stories of the old god Thor, when the giants stole his hammer and demanded the hand of Freya if he was to have it back. Thor dressed as a woman and pretended to be Freya. When the giant presented the hammer, Thor picked it up and ensured the giants knew him to be manly enough, despite his wearing a bridal gown.

  ‘You’re not cold, Dýri ?’ she said.

  ‘It’s half cold here,’ said Dýri. ‘A miserable, seeping chill but not a strong one. You compare this to Hordaland and it’s like the Bosphorus in spring,’ he said.

  ‘My father wouldn’t have bothered with his shirt in this,’ said Agni.

  God, how she missed civilisation and the company of intelligent people, rather than these boastful, showy warriors. She recalled all her homes, to try to make herself feel warmer. She remembered the flower garden at Baghdad, a tall beaker of sharbart in her hands. There she had thought ice a luxury – her drink chilled with it, brought all the way from the northern mountains. Here she hoped never to see another crystal of it again.

  They were in a big, frosty wood and the Varangians had built a fire hidden in a depression, placing their tents around it. She had no choice but to sleep under the same canopy as the men, though she resented it. She was very aware that she would resent freezing to death more.

  She was sure the girl was in the country. She could feel the nervousness of her own runes at her approach. They knew what she would bring in her wake. Would she be able to use her runes to get into York and find the well in the presence of that snarling, crawling rune? Probably, she thought. It was the wolf that followed that would bring the problem. No magic could stand before it. She would have to work quickly. An attack on the bearer of the wolf rune would summon the wolf. The girl needed to die before it had chance to reach her.

  ‘This fog is not natural,’ said Agni.

  Styliane thought him an idiot. It was entirely natural. It was also very cold.

  She allowed the Kenaz rune to light inside her, its light and warmth spreading through her body. Was the girl near? She could feel the wolf rune snuffling and rooting in the dark and something else too. Another rune was out there, she could sense it like someone standing on the shallow edge of a lake senses deep water beyond.

  She let the rune burn brighter. The Varangians couldn’t see it but they could feel it. Rannvér loosened his tunic, hot even in the icy fog.

  ‘Will she find us?’

  ‘She is finding us,’ said Styliane. ‘Ithamar has brought her near enough; she’ll sniff out the way.’

  ‘I don’t like that sorcerer,’ said Agni. ‘It’s not manly to use magic.’

  Styliane said nothing. Agni’s entire life seemed ruled by consideration of what was and was not manly. The ability to split a log with one blow from an axe, to best an enemy and outdrink a friend, was how these men valued each other. The most impressive man she’d ever known was her brother and he had been a eunuch; perfumed, hairless and long limbed. He’d been a lion among men. He would have been little use in that comfortless wood, she had to concede. The Varangians were peerless fighting men and if you wanted them for their prowess at arms you could hardly complain their dining manners would have disgraced a starving dog.

  Ithamar, of course, was not a sorcerer. He was a man who had sought the gods and had been taught a few impressive tricks of the mind but his was a male magic, all discipline and repetition. Hers moved to the forces of the universe. The runes that guided the path of the moon and told the sun to rise in the morning were in her. She felt the tides stirring in her body, the winds tearing at her mind.

  He’d been useful, though, sensitive enough to hear the girl’s wolf rune howling, resourceful enough to get her through the country to where she needed to be. She’d seen him, one night in the desert, clear as if he had been standing in front of her, peering at the runes that spun and sparkled above her. Then she had spoken to him and sent him on his quest.

  ‘What was that?’ Styliane spoke involuntarily, looking weaker and more worried than she would have liked before her men. She’d heard a sound, a guttural snort.

  ‘I heard nothing,’ said Dýri.

  The white wall of mist was unyielding.

  ‘No, there is something.’ Big Agni drew his sword.

  ‘You’re there?’ A girl’s voice through the mist.

  Styliane – who in her natural lifespan had served the dark Goddess Hecate; who now knew that all gods were the same god, of triple nature – paled. Hecate, virgin, mother, crone. Odin, all father, all hater, all wise. Christ, Father, Son, Spirit. Styliane had torn knowledge from the gods in ritual and suffering, most of all at the World Well where her brother had died and made her immortal.

  She was still shocked by what she heard. The girl’s voice was exactly as she had remembered it a century before. Styliane had watched her die.

  ‘Yes.’ Styliane walked towards the voice. She shivered with more than the cold. The rune she had lit inside herself illuminated and she saw the wolf rune writhing in the fog – long and sinuous, low to the ground. It turned its head towards her and its three meanings burst upon her. Storm, wolf trap and werewolf. She saw them now as she had never seen them before. Of all of them she had least understood the storm. The werewolf was self-evident, the rune drew a man who was a wolf. The trap was obvious too – the wolf was drawn on to die. But the storm? She had never penetrated its meaning. Now she did. Ragnarok. The end of the gods. Had that happened? She thought so. But the rune raged in front of her, rumbled with thunder, crackled with the smell of lightning rain.

  The Varangians could not see the rune but they sensed its presence, exchanging anxious glances.

  Rannvér now drew his sword. ‘What is this?’

  ‘What can you see?’

  ‘Nothing. But it’s like a goose has walked over my grave. Is this the hag?’

  Styliane’s attempts to explain the nature of her mission had met with incomprehension from the Varangians and, in the end, she had told them they were going to apprehend a witch who was a threat to her and to the stability and prosperity of the Varangian Guard in their favoured position as the Byzantine emperor’s bodyguard and, some said, controllers.

  ‘I think perhaps it is.’

  ‘Then I’ll kill her here.’ Dýri’s voice was an urgent whisper. He was afraid. He would not have concealed hostile intent from any man but he feared what was out there in the fog.

  ‘That won’t be possible or practical,’ said Styliane. ‘We’ll stick to my plan and I’ll hear no more about it.’

  ‘I am here.’ Styliane heard the howl of the rune, which was the howl of the wind, the howl of a wolf and the howl of a tormented man all at the same time.

  The girl emerged from the mist and it was as if she had stepped from Styliane’s memories. She had been pregnant then, terrified. She was not even a person, thought Styliane. Just a role to be played in a story throughout history. Now that story was over, what for its players?

  The woman terrified her. She knew what she was – a Norn, one of the women who sat spinning the fate of men at the centre of creation – her own people called them the Fates. Or rather, she was the dream of a Norn made flesh. To kill her was to kill destiny. Which was what Styliane intended to do.

  The girl stepped further out of the fog. She was not tall, though she was taller than Styliane, and she was blond and ruddy with the cold.

  She l
ooked at the Varangians with their drawn swords. Fear was in her eyes – Styliane’s guards were the biggest men of a big race and seemed as giants beside the ragged English bandits who took shape at Styliane’s side. The two women stood looking at each other.

  ‘You are not my people,’ the girl said.

  ‘No,’ said Styliane in her soft Norse. ‘But you understand me?’

  ‘I understand. My father was a northerner.’

  ‘Then be welcome. Share our fire.’

  Styliane allowed the rune to fade inside her until it was just a candleglow in her mind. She saw the wolf rune writhing above.

  ‘I’m afraid of you.’

  ‘Yes. And I of you.’

  ‘Am I right to be scared?’

  ‘Perhaps. We may, however, work to our mutual advantage. Do you know what follows you?’

  ‘It’s like a wolf. It’s there in my dreams.’

  ‘Well, perhaps we can get rid of him.’

  ‘I want to help my people.’

  ‘You will. He is cursed. You have heard of Ragnarok? The end of the gods?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He is Ragnarok. The final encounter is begun but not finished and it will try to play out here on earth, through him. In the east war trailed in his wake and now in the west it is the same. To free your land of slaughter, you must free it of him.’

  ‘You said we’d be paid. You said we’d have passage south,’ said Ceoluulf.

  ‘I need you for a while longer,’ said Styliane.

  ‘For what? I’ve done what I was asked and now I want paying.’

  ‘I require your service still. We’re going in to York. You will travel as if my slaves but you may be required to protect me while I’m there.’

  ‘That’s suicide,’ said Ceoluulf.

  Ithamar was not so bold but the bland mask of fear he had maintained in his mind for their journey now came down. He emanated a much more human, various fear, a sharper one too. He was scared of Styliane, scared of the Norsemen, scared of Tola.

  ‘I may need that from you,’ said Styliane. ‘But I promise a warrior’s death and a favoured place in the afterlife.’

  ‘Bollocks to that,’ said Ceoluulf. ‘Give me my money now!’

  ‘Or what?’ said Rannvér. He spoke in English. He wasn’t the biggest of the Varangians but he was a head taller than any of the bandits and his arms were as thick as their thighs.

  ‘You’re a big man but to me that’s just more to aim at,’ said Ceoluulf.

  Rannvér cut off his head. The movement was so quick that no one had time to react before Ceoluulf ’s body hit the ground, his head rolling away like a turnip from the back of a cart.

  ‘Aim then,’ said Rannvér to the corpse.

  Tola did not flinch but Ceoluulf ’s fellows fell upon his body, stripping it as quick as they could.

  ‘You owe us weregild for that,’ said one. ‘Compensation.’

  ‘Easier to kill you all,’ said Agni.

  ‘What’s the price for ridding the land of vermin?’ said Dýri. ‘You should pay us. I’d say that’s your booty they’re looting there, Rannvér.’

  ‘Let them be,’ said Styliane. ‘We have more to think about. When shall we make the town, Agni?’

  ‘How long will the fog last? I’d say dawn is a couple of hours. It might be good to get into the town now and hole up there until nightfall if the fog lifts. If it doesn’t, we do as we please.’

  ‘Then now.’

  ‘We can’t go in there,’ said a bandit. ‘The Normans have the whole land.’

  ‘We look Norman enough,’ said Dýri.

  ‘It’s too dangerous.’

  ‘A man lives for danger.’

  ‘A man lives for his belly.’

  ‘Look at you and look at me,’ said Dýri. ‘Ask which philosopher eats better.’

  ‘We should go,’ said Agni. ‘Or make ready to stay the day. We can cover our tents with brush and sit out the day.’

  ‘Rannvér?’ said Styliane.

  ‘I say now. Last night the fog lasted until mid-morning. If it does the same tonight, we’ll make the town easily.’

  ‘Then prepare to go.’

  ‘How will you know your way?’ said Ithamar.

  ‘I’ll know my way,’ said Styliane. ‘And so, I dare say, will she. Are you able to go, my dear?’

  Tola looked around her. ‘We have come a long way without sleep.’

  ‘Can you go a little further?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. You are an example to the men.’ She put her arms around Tola. She needed to say something to her, there was a pressure inside her, something that would not be contained. The girl would need to be killed. But that was not what she told her. ‘I swear, by my Goddess Hecate, by the runes within me, by Odin and by Christ, that I will not harm you. You are under my protection now.’

  The girl hugged her back and bile rose in Styliane’s throat. She had been quite clear this girl needed to die. Why, then, make an inviolable oath to protect her? This was magic, beyond reason. Carry on with the plan. Take her to the water. There, all would be clear. She shivered, not with the cold. What price would be asked of her? Last time it had cost her Freydis, a guard she had loved, perhaps more than one should love a guard. This time? She put the thought from her mind.

  The men stamped out their fire, flattened their tent and buried it in leaves. After a squabble, the Englishmen agreed to be disarmed for the sake of looking like slaves.

  They set off into the fog, almost sightless across the fields. Styliane did not hesitate. She could feel the well drawing her in and she could hear the wolf behind her, its cry eerie and flat through the dead air.

  She saw Tola cross herself.

  ‘You want to answer,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Don’t. He is destruction. Come. We will rid the land of this blight.’

  16 Fate’s Knot

  Heading south, Loys left the stone in his purse and tucked it inside his coat. The air was full of iron and smoke. He was on the trail of the rune and he could feel it winding its way through his thoughts, its presence long and lithe, drawing him on. He wondered if the others the Fenris wolf had set its eye on before him had felt this way. His friend Azémar, so long ago, had carried the curse sleeping within him. In the dungeons of Constantinople it had come crawling forth to save him. Azémar hadn’t had the stone to hold him to humanity. Had there been others, in lives before? Sometimes he thought he could hear them and at other times he thought he was mad.

  The way was easier for the boy now he had a horse. He could almost pass for a Norman from a distance, until you realised he slumped on it as if coshed. No Norman rode like that, only the Norsemen – many of whom grew to manhood without ever seeing a horse. The horses would not go near Loys while he didn’t wear the stone but he ran behind, which at least encouraged the animal to keep moving.

  He followed her trail across the hills for a while. The path she had trodden was clear to him; he could smell her, an odour that sent him back a hundred years to a girl in a rented room in Constantinople. He remembered he’d once bought her a peach from a stall and thrown it up to her. He saw it now, rising like a little golden sun against the blue of the sky. She’d caught it. ‘Thank you, serpent,’ she’d said. It was a joke. The Greeks – or Romans, as they preferred to be known – called peaches Persian apples. She bit into it and smiled at him. He hadn’t known it then but he’d been happy. It was the last time.

  His hand was healing. Had he eaten when he’d killed the Normans? It seemed so. He didn’t heal so quickly in that way without it. By the end of the third day they were in deep fog. His hand was entirely better. He considered killing and eating the boy, or rather, it was an idea that kept nagging him, like the thought of warm bread might nag a labouring man on a cold d
ay. He found his hands flexing, found himself recalling the satisfying click of a neck being broken. He spoke to his appetite as he ran, telling it that it would not be sated.

  They stopped by a sheltering cliff, a good overhang that would keep the weather off if it rained. The boy called out ‘Here?’ and Loys held up his hand.

  It would be easy not to put on the stone. He wondered how the boy would look in his death throes. With the wolf rising inside him, he found nothing so fascinating as the way that men die. He thought to leave the stone off. He breathed and looked into the fog. It was as if God was inviting him to kill, saying ‘I have sent you this fog as a sign that I am not looking.’

  He put on the stone with quick determination, not allowing himself to even think about it, like someone jumping through ice to bathe in a pool.

  His thoughts calmed as he watched Gylfa cutting up a bush for their fire. When he smelled the smoke, he approached the camp. He felt human and cold and the horse did not fret as he drew near. Still, when he first put the stone back around his neck he always felt as if he had left something behind, a little piece of him for the wolf to munch on.

  ‘I’ve never seen anyone like you,’ said Gylfa.

  ‘I’ve never seen anyone like you,’ said Loys. ‘An honest Norseman, who admits to being scared like the rest of us.’

  ‘I only said that for the pity it would bring.’

  Loys said nothing. He knew what the Varangians who guarded the emperor in Constantinople would say to that. Better twenty deaths than an enemy’s pity.