Valkyrie's Song

by M. D. Lachlan

  But the girl had slipped through her fingers and might still go on to kill the wolf. If that happened, disaster. If Odin was reborn he would not be torn and his runes scattered. What then? Whatever it was, the world would hold no place for her.

  She let the god slip back into the water, felt a thump at her neck. The dark wood blurred and faded. It was dark and it was cold and the goddess’s voice rang in her mind.

  ‘You must give something you hate to lose.’

  She heard a voice, ‘My love!’ and she was pulled from the water.

  26 Human Frailty

  Loys had to let the Normans take him. The blood-glutted wolf had been fettered inside him but he could feel it stirring in its bonds. It was a smirking, simmering presence, biding its time to chew on the bones of his humanity.

  ‘There’s no need to seize me. I am not afraid of Giroie and will face him willingly.’

  His words were useless, five men were on him, six, grabbing his arms and legs, lifting him bodily off the floor. He lost sight of Gylfa, felt his sword lifted from his side, his boots snatched from his feet. Three heavy blows were driven into his eye and the pain shot down to his guts. They were stripping him, robbing him at the first excuse.

  He was not afraid to lose his fine shirt, his cloak, his trousers, even his hose – but he was afraid to lose the stone. The weight of blood in his mind would drag him down, undo him. They didn’t want the stone, of course. Who would want a pebble when there were fine gloves to be had, a golden ring, a purse full of gold?

  In a thicket of torches, they ran him out of the church like plunder. The night was full of memories. Hagia Sophia, the great church of Constantinople, its gold burnished by torchlight, so many with their faces to the flagstones like Saracens at prayer but dead to the last man. He saw a broad, flat island, a church under flame. He had never been there but it appeared to him as clear as the memory of his last meal.

  They carried him out into the freezing air. A torch jabbed into him and he cried out with the pain. It jabbed in again and once more.

  ‘Leave him, Richard. Giroie will want him in a fit state to speak.’

  Heading up towards the unburned houses, they grew tired of carrying him and dropped him to the ground, kicking him on. All the breath went from him as a boot smashed into his back. He staggered, was shoved forward. The cold burned his feet and the sweat of the fight froze on his skin. On and on, through frozen alleys, up to a hall.

  They stopped, holding him tight against running away.

  ‘Hey, Giroie, come and see what we have for you!’

  The door of the hall swung open, an oblong of firelight framing Giroie’s big shape.

  ‘If it’s an Englishman, kill him.’

  ‘It’s the foreigner, we found him in the church.’

  Giroie came out of the hall, stepping up to Loys, his head jutting forward like a dog who has caught a scent.

  ‘A traitor. You cost me a prisoner, foreigner, how are you going to pay for him? You don’t look as though you’ve prospered since leaving us.’

  The cold was making it difficult for Loys to think. He could not let these men kill him, to be reborn, perhaps not knowing what awaited him, growing to adulthood and then seeing time stop for him, watching parents, brothers, lovers rot and die, feeling the animal snarling behind his eyes, the wolf padding through his dreams, dragging in his jaws the destiny of death.

  ‘We should have done this a long time ago,’ said Giroie. ‘It doesn’t do to bring a foreigner with us. It’s bad luck and, as we’ve seen, we can’t trust them. You killed Gervaise, didn’t you?’

  Loys said nothing. Even if he had wanted to speak he would have found it impossible. The cold had gripped his jaw, rattling his teeth and numbing his tongue.

  ‘You’re too cowardly to admit it. That skulking little boy you were in love with surely didn’t.’

  ‘He was with him, sir, but the little bastard gave us the slip in the dark. We’ve got men looking for him now.’

  Giroie snorted, the steam at his lips, the firelight at his back, like a dragon before his hoard.

  ‘He won’t last the night without this one to keep him warm.’

  Giroie leaned in to Loys’s face, taking the wolfstone in his fingers as he did. Loys looked down at it. To him it didn’t seem a stone at all but a tight sphere of darkness anchored at his neck.

  Giroie lifted it from Loys’s chest. All the night scents burst over Loys, the burned pig bones in the fire in the hall, the pork on Giroie’s breath, the campaign dirt of the soldiers’ clothes, horse sweat and human sweat, chalky soil and ashes, farmyard and riding tack. The wolf stirred inside him and the men holding his arms sprawled to the ground as Loys snarled, his teeth snapping for Giroie’s face.

  The knight jumped back and let the stone fall. The fog of human senses came down on Loys again. All the wind went from him as a Norman threw him down. The cold earth stung his knees, his belly.

  ‘Look at him,’ said Giroie. ‘The man’s a savage. He’d slaughter us all if he could. There’s one penalty for murder,’ said Giroie. ‘Get him down to the river.’

  Loys felt his legs go and didn’t at first realise he had been hit. The pain in his back only registered as he sprawled to the floor and rolled to see a soldier above him, raising the butt of a spear to strike him again. He curled up to shield himself and felt another blow sharp in his ribs.

  ‘That’s enough,’ said Giroie. ‘Defiance doesn’t warrant an easy end. Get him down to the water.’

  They sank a stake in sight of the bridge across the river and hung him from it. The mist had thinned and a pink sun smudged the steel sky but it was a cold sun and it brought no warmth. The day was windless and the river was grey and flat. Loys could not feel his arms, tied above his head, nor his feet. On the stake, so close to the ice of the river, he was reduced only to his breath. He marked each one, in with pain, out with pain, until his consciousness was just a pendulum swinging between two agonies.

  He forgot who he was or why he was there, his mind bound with cold. He thought he heard Jesus talking to him, telling him that his suffering was equal to the suffering of the martyrs, that many saints had enjoyed an easier death but that he was not a martyr nor a saint, but one of the damned, to whom the torments of the flesh were but a prelude to the torments of the soul. ‘As you abandoned me, I abandon you,’ said Jesus. Christ said this to him, Christ who was the pink of the dawn light, Christ who knew what it was to hang on such a tree and suffer. Loys tried to cry out that he had not abandoned Jesus, that he still walked the road of righteousness but that one other walked beside them – a grim companion he could not shake.

  The thought took form as a god. Odin came to him, also hanging, and spoke of runes and destinies and old pacts struck that could not be denied. He told him that the suffering was a gate through which you could walk as if into a perfumed garden. The river ran to the well and the well from the river.

  The wolfstone lay on his chest and he was tied in such a way that he couldn’t move it if he’d wanted to. It was a slab to seal his tomb. The wolf inside him watched with cold eyes. It was waiting for him.

  ‘Take off the stone,’ it seemed to say. ‘I shall not harm or eat you.’ He could not take off the stone, even if he wanted to. To remove it was just to choose another kind of death, an oblivion. The wolf would hunt the girl and kill her as it had done in lives past. No. Then what?

  In an instant of clarity he saw his error. He was thinking as if he still had choice. The ropes on his hands and feet had taken all choice.

  The cold of the day now burned him. He heard jeering and felt a thump in his face. Some soldiers were throwing snowballs at him. It was dark and even colder. He was an icicle hanging in a cave, water made rock by cold.

  He saw Giroie’s face sometimes. He had Loys’s sword, the curved sword, the Moonsword. It was poisoned with the dreams of
witches. That could kill the wolf. Perhaps he could strike a pact with Giroie? No. The girl needed to end it for him or it would just all begin again. Where was she? The Norman offered the edge of the blade to Loys’s torso, as if offering to kill him. Then he took it away.

  ‘I’m going to eat,’ he said and his words were gongs, struck in a vast cavern.

  Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps the vision he’d seen in the well so many years ago was wrong. The rebirth would not happen. He would die and be as unthinking as a stone for eternity or he would pass into heaven. Or perhaps he was dead and this was Hell, just a continuation of his earthly sufferings.

  It was night and the ice moon looked down on him, big and full-faced.

  ‘You got nothing.’ That was a voice nearby.

  ‘You got nothing.’ It spoke in Norse. ‘Is this a thing of power? Can I have this, my dead man? It brought you no luck but it is the symbol of my god so I take it as a sign.’

  He couldn’t see the man or even know if he was real.

  The wolfstone was lifted from his chest.

  Pain everywhere, from his toes to his fingers, his hands not quite numb enough to ignore the terrible constrictions at his wrist. The weak human who could not face his pain had fallen away, the strong wolf had risen. He cried out in his agony and bucked and twisted against his bonds but he couldn’t shift them. Then the man was gone.

  27 The Runes Unite

  ‘It’s all right, it’s all right, you’re where you belong. You’re with me now. You’re with me.’

  Freydis held Styliane close, cradling the lady’s slender frame against her. Five runes spun about her. She was wary of them and she sensed they were wary of her. If only Styliane could awake and use them. The lady had described them to her, told her each of their various powers. One was burning, a fiery arrowhead. The lady needed warming.

  ‘Wake up and call your magic to you, lady. Look there’s one here that is blazing. I feel its heat. Take it to yourself, gain comfort by its fire.’

  Styliane was insensible. Freydis saw she had cruel bruises at her neck.

  ‘What have they done to you? I should have stayed with you to cut down your enemies as they came close.’

  Freydis thought the wellspring of her tears had run dry years before with the slaughter of her kinfolk and her adoption by their slayers. She was a practical woman. But she wept now.

  She looked up at the runes, shining in the darkness. The walls of the tunnel were nothing to them. They seemed to float within the rock, even take their character from it. Here was one marking out its shape like a seam of gold, so like the real thing that she would have run back for a chisel in easier times. The one that burned like fire, the arrowhead rune, made the walls a dark glass.

  The horse rune was only a smell, but a smell that marked its shape in her mind. The torch rune lit the passage. She had never seen Styliane’s magic symbols before, though the lady had spoken of them.

  ‘Why don’t you go to her?’ she said. ‘Why don’t you wake her?’

  She reached for the fire rune, physically reached for it in the dark. It came into her hand, or rather the idea of it came into her hand. It sat there burning, like the odd curved sword of the wolf man, bright and warm. ‘I wish you would warm her,’ she said. ‘She is your mistress. Make her live.’

  The fire rune spread its light and Freydis felt the warmth fill her. The physical sensation was very welcome but it brought with it ideas too, the fire of the hearth, of the camp, the fire that wards away the bear and the wolf, the fire that bakes and boils.

  She sat for a while, cradling Styliane’s head. She wanted to move, to get the lady out of that grim place, but the warmth robbed her of all real will to do so. It was the warmth of the bed on a frosty morning, of a lover’s glow.

  Styliane stirred.

  ‘Lady.’

  ‘Freydis.’

  Styliane hugged her like a child hugs its mother in a storm.

  ‘Lady, I have tried to stay away but I was drawn here.’

  ‘Why, Freydis? I have missed you. I thought you had run away and the . . A¯d had enslaved you.’

  ‘I would never run from you, Lady of the crossroads, Lady of blessings and abundance.’

  Freydis recited some of the words of Styliane’s prayer to Hecate, her goddess, the one the Christians called Mary mother and Mary Magdalene and Mary Virgin, the one the northerners split into three and called the fates.

  ‘But you did, Bellona of the Battles.’

  All women are aspects of the goddess, Styliane had said and Freydis, though unusual, was no different. Bellona was the goddess in war.

  ‘There was a mistake. At the desert well. There was a mistake.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The rune entered me.’

  Styliane crossed herself and then made the triple touch, shoulder, shoulder, head of Hecate.

  ‘And you ran so you could not harm me.’

  ‘Yes. I must get you to safety and leave you now.’

  Styliane looked around her.

  ‘They have gone.’

  ‘What, lady?’

  ‘The runes. My magic. My immortality. I cannot see them.’

  ‘Don’t be foolish, lady, they are here. They warm us and keep us safe. Can you not see them?’

  ‘I see nothing.’

  ‘Then how do you see me, with no rune light to guide you?’

  ‘They are in the well, then. The well has taken them, or captured them. We must cut them free. If you have a rune inside you, use it to call the others.’

  ‘I have no need to call the others. They are already here. See, here’s the hoof rune and the lamp and the hearth rune and here is one like a seam of gold. They are wondrous things. Do you dwell every day in their company?’

  Styliane grasped at Freydis’s arm.

  ‘I can see the light. I can feel the warmth. But I cannot see them.’

  A noise from above, a curse. Weeping.

  Someone dropped heavily into the tunnel.

  ‘Oh, God and gods help me.’

  Freydis had her knife free. The space was too small for a sword.

  She crawled down the tunnel towards the noise.

  ‘Don’t kill me!’

  It was the lump of a boy the wolf man had kept with him. Immediately, with a warrior’s sense, she knew something was wrong.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The woman is lost, he is taken and the Normans are searching for me.’

  ‘Keep your voice down. Nothing will be helped by your wailing.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’

  She turned back to Styliane. ‘Lady, dim your magic lights.’

  ‘I can’t. They are not with me.’

  ‘Can you use them to affect harm to these men?’

  ‘Some. Perhaps. But they’re not here.’

  ‘Dim the light, you bitch, or you’ll have the whole Bastard’s army down on us.’

  Freydis took the boy by the tunic and spoke softly.

  ‘Insult the lady like that again and I shall present her with your tongue,’ she said.

  A voice shouted above, a question by the tone of it.

  She heard ‘Non’, which must be ‘no’, and a stumble, a cry. More cursing. A man had tripped in the dark. They had no light.

  Then more words.

  ‘They can see the light!’ said Styliane. ‘He’s asked “what is this?”’

  ‘I wish it would be dark,’ thought Freydis.

  The light went out as if by command.

  The boy’s breath was too loud, stifled sobs. She’d have killed him with the knife or by strangling there and then if she’d been sure it would make no noise. She couldn’t be sure, so he lived.

  They heard the men shuffling around above them. It would be only a matter of time before they got
a torch and discovered the hole in the floor.

  ‘You help me up,’ whispered Freydis to the boy.

  ‘How? We shall be undone. We shall be killed. Master Loys is the best fighter I ever saw and they took him easy.’

  ‘I shall not be taken easy,’ said Freydis. ‘Get me up there.’

  The boy knelt on all fours and she stood on his back, her knife in her hand. The light of a torch flickered. She kept her head below the lip of the hole. The light became brighter. More words. She guessed they’d seen the hole in the floor. Two men came near. One did not see her but the other let out a cry of surprise as he looked down into the hole. She drove the knife hard into his lower leg and left it there.

  The man screamed and cried out again, gripping at the knife. A bad warrior. He ought to have attended to the enemy before attending to himself. Pain was a luxury he could not afford.

  Out of the hole, she grabbed her sword and ran, the torch was on the floor, the shadows gobbling at its light.

  Four men. Now three as she hacked into the side of the head of the man with the injured leg. If she survived this fight it would be her right to boast of it, her duty, to set an example to other warriors. Then she might say, ‘He wore no helm but the helm of blood,’ or say, ‘Littleclaw liked to feed so well, he could not be pulled from his feast’. She could dress it up how she liked: the sword caught in the bone of the man’s skull and was dragged to the floor with him as he fell.

  Three opponents left.

  The torch guttered and went out. Confusion and fumbling. The torch rune lit inside her and, to her, it was like day. Three of them slashing at darkness, their mouths distorted by fear. One, more calm than the others, slashed with his sword while he felt for the steps to the crypt with his foot. She had no time. The noise might have alerted the rest of the camp. She retrieved her sword. Littleclaw was a good weapon – forged in Damascus by magical smiths. No need to kick it straight.