Valkyrie's Song

by M. D. Lachlan

  47 The Gate of Death

  Tola, who could hear the heart songs, to whom people appeared sparking memories and visions according to their dispositions, felt Giroie’s anxiety as they heard the English horsemen approaching down the valley.

  The Normans were rattled, scared. They thought there were too many to fight. Tola guessed they were outnumbered two to one. Giroie reassured his men. They had the high ground, they the bows.

  Had they been seen? They must have been, burning a fire in such a high place with no regard for who saw it. Giroie and his men thought themselves the lords of the land. Well, now the English were striking back.

  She saw the rune light up above Giroie, heard Freydis promise him her magic.

  The soldiers cut Freydis free and she stood.

  ‘You are a servant of Styliane? Did you come to kill me?’ said Tola.

  ‘Yes,’ said Freydis.

  Tola started backwards. The warrior smiled grimly.

  ‘The time for that is gone. Here. I’m sorry about the arrow, let me help you.’

  ‘No time!’ said Giroie in Norse. ‘I want the magic. I must have it working. It is a bane to me.’

  ‘I will live,’ said Tola.

  ‘Then show me the god’s grave.’ Tola led Freydis down the long scar towards the mire.

  Below them the horn sounded again.

  Freydis held a ring to her lips and kissed it.

  ‘A fine ring for a servant,’ said Giroie.

  ‘Too fine by far for you.’

  The big Norman grunted.

  With the rain and the snow what had been a mire was now a small lake, the marsh grass submerged under dirty water.

  ‘You know how to do this?’

  Freydis said nothing, just put the rope that had bound her about her own neck and tied the sticky, tricky triple knot that Styliane had shown her in the desert.

  ‘Strangle me,’ she said, ‘and push me in. Then the spear. A triple death for a triple god, that will let the runes fly out.’

  ‘You think this will work, sorceress?’

  ‘Magic is pain,’ said Tola. ‘When I saw the sisters here, I had to suffer.’

  ‘You cannot see them now?’ said Freydis.

  ‘Only stones,’ said Tola. ‘Though I hear them speaking.’

  ‘What are they saying?’

  ‘I can’t tell.’

  ‘Get on with it.’ Giroie shoved Freydis in the back.

  ‘Hey!’ A Norman loosed an arrow down the hill. Tola felt the panic in the men.

  A spear flew up towards them but fell short.

  ‘Tighten the knot and then stab me,’ said Freydis.

  Giroie picked up the spear as Freydis knelt at the water’s edge.

  ‘This is the gate of death,’ said Freydis. ‘And I go through it now, offering myself for the lady.’

  Giroie yanked the rope tight and kicked Freydis into the water. He thrust the spear down into her. The runes circled the moors, eight in an orbit, moaning and keening.

  ‘They are for me!’ said Giroie.

  A burst of light like a second dawn and the English warriors charged the hill on foot, the Normans loosing arrows as fast as they could, then dropping their bows to the ground to draw their swords.

  Giroie looked around him in wonder, lifting up his hands like a child trying to catch snowflakes. A flurry of hail burst on them, so much that Tola could hardly see. She curled up on the wet grass, sheltering beneath her cloak, nursing her wound.

  Figures loomed from the downpour. An Englishman split a Norman’s skull with an axe, spraying her with blood. A Norman hacked into the killer’s throat with his sword, more blood bursting over her. Men fought in the mire, one holding another down to drown him.

  The hail drove into the faces of the English but the Normans faced a light as bright as the sun.

  ‘These symbols are mine!’

  ‘No! Mine!’

  It was the boy, Gylfa, the wolf head tied about him.

  She rolled to avoid a stray horse trampling her. She couldn’t let Freydis die now, she was all Tola had to protect her. She grabbed for the woman’s body, freeing her knife from her belt.

  A severed arm hit the water beside her but she cut the rope at Freydis’s neck, pulled the warrior from the water. Freydis gasped and hacked, shoved at Tola, trying to force herself back into the water.

  The fight went on in the mire, men hacking and cutting. She saw the grim sisters flying on their horses of shadow, moving among the men, casting down spears. Freydis punched Tola, sending her reeling backwards.

  A runestorm swirled around her, the symbols howling and shrieking. The waters were bubbling with blood, bubbling with hail. A man smacked into the mire beside her, his veins blue against his white skin, his hands flailing, blood leaking from his skin and she knew he was dead of no natural cause.

  The dead sisters screamed out oaths to Odin, he who died and would be reborn.

  The runes howled and keened. She saw Gylfa running back and forth along the edge of the mire, no more than a shadow in the hail.

  A cry. ‘It’s me!’ in English.

  The tumult ceased, the hail died.

  ‘Well,’ said Giroie. ‘Now I see what needs to be done. All these runes have come to me.’

  He held out his hand and every warrior remaining fell into the mire.

  ‘The gate to death is open,’ he said. He was never to speak again in this world. The wolf ripped off his head.

  48 A Sacrifice

  The Valkyries were gone. Only the stones stood on the moor. Freydis sat on the bank, shivering deeply. Tola stood facing the monster in the corpse mire, frozen to the bone.

  It was a wolf, an upright, fleshy wolf, the fur in patches across its great head, its hands human but long and cruel-taloned. In one it held a head, staring at it as if to interrogate it.

  Tola saw that the waters about her feet seemed to mirror the sky, black clouds burning with the sun. At her feet, the headless corpse of Giroie. Something moved at the side of her eye. At first she thought it was the wolfman, but no. It was someone like him, but without his assurance. Gylfa.

  ‘Is that him?’ he said. ‘Is that Master Loys?’ He held the wolfstone in front of him, as if to ward off the great wolf.

  ‘Loys?’ The creature turned its slow gaze towards her.

  ‘Loys?’ She spoke again.

  Freydis emerged from the mire, which shifted and stirred with red light. She was heavily wounded in the side.

  ‘This is the gate,’ she said. ‘This is where I will find my lady.’

  ‘Fear me!’ said the creature. ‘I am a wolf.’

  ‘A wolf does not say it is a wolf,’ said Tola. ‘It sees itself, the meat that will become itself and the earth that cannot become itself. Man is made of earth, so the priests teach. You cannot become a wolf. Here, clasp the stone to your skin.’ She gestured to the stone Gylfa held in his hand.

  ‘I will not. I glory in this slaughter. All men are meat, all men in me. I hear them whispering, Lei werreurs de Normadie son mor. Sur le table de Dieu.’ He drew back his lips.

  Freydis was alongside Gylfa. She took the stone from her and put it in her own left hand.

  ‘Dread wolf,’ she said. ‘Be human again. I go to Hel, to bargain for my lady’s life. I have nursed children and know they will take medicine in a sweetmeat.’

  She leapt at the creature but it was too fast, too strong. It lifted her from the ground by the throat and drove its jaws towards her but Freydis threw out her hand, the one with the stone inside it, and punched it into the wolf ’s teeth. The creature opened its mouth and sank in its fangs, tearing and ragging at the arm, throwing Freydis from side to side. The warrior screamed and beat at the wolf with her free hand but in a twist and a shake of the head the ravaged limb was torn off and the wol
f threw Freydis back into the mire.

  It gulped and guzzled at the arm, throwing back its head to crunch and snap it down.

  From on high the runes, like gulls, dropped screaming into the water after her, splashing down. The wolf dived in, snapping and tearing at them like a dog chasing a fly. It picked up the corpse of a Norman soldier and held it in its hand like a man holds a chicken joint, ready to crack.

  The wolf hesitated, looking at the corpse as if it didn’t quite understand what it was. It let the body fall from its hands, down into the water, and then it sat down itself. Tola watched the wolf for a while. It seemed entranced, distant. Gylfa stood mute, afraid to even to move.

  The sun was up now and the water was stone grey beneath its light, all trace of the boiling red gone.

  She thought to walk away, but where to? This place, with its whispering stones, with its memories of dead lovers, friends and enemies was where her journey into this madness had begun. Was it a gate between worlds? She sensed it was something more – it was where a fragment of a tale of death told by a mad god still hummed in the stones and on the hillside. She was part of that story and, if she left here, she would need to find the next part of the tale, to restore order and sanity, if not peace. Otherwise, all roads led back here. The hill was a vortex in a stream, always pulling her back.

  She walked to the wolf. It watched her approach.

  ‘You have the sharp rune inside you. You can cut the weft of fate. You know.’

  ‘What am I looking for?’

  ‘Death. The place that you will die.’

  ‘I have tried to live.’

  ‘You will cut your own destiny. I, who could tear you and guzzle you in a breath on this hillside, promise you, you are not to die. I, who rescued you and defended you, promise you, you are not to die.’

  ‘And if you are no longer your own master?’

  ‘I have the stone inside me. If it comes out, I will find it and wear it.’

  ‘I need to be warm,’ she said.

  Tola came soaking and shivering from the mire. She made a fire from the clothes of fallen men, from the hafts of spears and axes. She watched its flames, warmer now in her steaming clothes.

  The wolf sat down beside her. Gylpha joined them.

  ‘How long have I known you?’

  ‘The lives of twenty men,’ said the wolf. ‘And you will be here or a place like it again for the lives of two hundred more if we do not complete the story as it should be completed.’

  ‘How is that?’

  ‘When we reach the place, you will know.’

  He reached out his arm to her but she shied away.

  ‘I mean only to offer you comfort,’ he said.

  Tola lay against the wolf ’s side, his arm around her. Gylfa went off to rekindle a fire. He would not leave. Even he felt the pull of destiny.

  ‘I have come back to you,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You will be a man again.’

  ‘If I keep the stone.’

  ‘Then let us go from this place to find some refuge where we can live out our days.’

  ‘My days are numberless. There is no refuge, only respite. Be rid of me, Tola.’

  ‘What were my names?’

  ‘You were Beatrice and you were Aelis and you were Adisla, or they took your part in the story.’

  She was sleepy, lulled by his animal warmth.

  Over the hills she heard the wind carry a song of a woman who was loved by two men, one who killed the other and then died himself to please the god.

  In the morning she awoke.

  ‘Death is in the east,’ she said. ‘Across the sea. The god’s bones hum in the deep earth and the song has found a singer.’

  49 The Land of the Dead

  Freydis fell through the dark water, through the tangle of moss and the roots of marsh violet, of fenberry and asphodel, past bubbles of shining light, in a wake of her own blood.

  She fell through the sparkling white roots of a greater tree, roots big enough to bear icy rivers, and she fell through those rivers to a black shore under a silver moon by a black sea.

  Giroie lay wheezing on the glittering sand.

  She stood. Her hand was gone but it was not bleeding and she felt no pain. Her body writhed with runes, images of spears and swords flickering across her pale skin. She watched Giroie, a great wound at his neck, the runes seething on his face, making images of storms, of feasts, piled treasure, bright sunrises.

  She felt for her sword. It was still there. Giroie got to his feet unsteadily. He was terribly hurt, a huge wound torn through the armour at his side in addition to the one at his neck.

  ‘Alive again! Each one of us a Jesus!’ said Giroie. ‘But by Christ, what is this place?’

  Freydis drew her sword. ‘I’m going to kill you,’ she said.

  ‘Look at your sword!’

  The blade shone, taking the light of the moon and fortifying it to an almost unbearable brilliance.

  Freydis strode towards him but he put up his hands.

  ‘Look around you. We were on a frozen hill in Yorkshire five heartbeats ago. Now we’re here, where the air is warm, in a place we’ve never seen. It’s as the waters promised. This is a magic land. This is where we might become gods.’

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘The land of the gods,’ said Giroie. ‘Look at us! See how the runes shimmer and shine. They are part of us! We are made of magic like the old god at the well!’ He coughed, held his side and sat down on the sands. He held out his hands, looking at the writhing runes.

  ‘This magic does not sit well with me.’

  ‘Magic is not for men,’ said Freydis, ‘everyone knows that.’

  Giroie shook his head, mystified. ‘This is a cursed treasure. Where is the future? What do we do? Is it this forever? I would go back to life.’

  He ran to the ocean, splashing in up to his thighs but stopped as if he’d hit a wall and gave a great shout. Freydis ran to the water’s edge. She saw it was full of corpses, white, fish-eyed, seaweed-haired, more like creatures of the ocean than the land. Giroie composed himself, like the warrior he was, and backed out of the black sea.

  ‘No way that way,’ he said. ‘We came by water, could we not leave the same way?’

  ‘Where is Freya?’ said Freydis. ‘She should be here to greet me. Styliane could only have died in battle, she must be here too. I want to find her.’

  ‘She has fulfilled the bargain,’ said a voice. ‘Runes are here in the land of the dead. The god may revive’

  Someone was watching them from the edge of the beach. He was a tall man, bearded and bloody, his eyes dead, his mouth slack with death but he stood, a great wound at his neck.

  Giroie drew. ‘A spirit!’ he said.

  The figure turned away and walked out into the grass, which sparkled like shards of black glass.

  Freydis followed it.

  ‘Is this wise?’ said Giroie.

  ‘I’m not wise enough to know,’ said Freydis. ‘It seems to mean us no harm, and we can’t remain on this beach forever.’

  They walked past a low hut where a three-legged stool sat on the ground outside. The hut was made of white snake bones and a noxious smoke poured from its smoke vent. The companions followed on, wordless.

  Freydis was gripped by a great unease.

  ‘Is this the land of Freya?’ she asked the man.

  ‘This is Hel,’ said the man.

  ‘My reward should have been Freya’s hall, Sessrúmnir. I died fighting. My lady died fighting! A bird brought me her finger!’

  ‘Valhalla is quiet, its warriors sleeping. The ways to the lands of the blessed are broken down.’

  So was this it? Eternity in this strange land of wide night, silence and foreboding?

  ‘Are
you a man of this place?’she asked.

  ‘He’s an Englishman,’ said Giroie. ‘Look at him, he looks like a thousand other peasants I’ve butchered.’

  The man extended his finger towards Giroie. The Norman crossed himself.

  ‘How do we know he’s not leading us into danger?’ said Giroie.

  Freydis snorted. ‘I think the time to be worried about danger is over,’ she said. ‘Look at this place. Remember the stories our forefathers told. We are dead, and this is the land of the dead.’

  ‘I expected a heavenly reward,’ said Giroie. ‘I have donated mightily to the church.’

  ‘And I expected the halls of Freya,’ said Freydis. ‘So it seems we are both disappointed. You, dead man. Can you lead us to my lady? Styliane, Lady of Constantinople. Is she here?’

  Silence.

  They walked away from the shore, following the man through dark glades and moonlit clearings. All around them were fires and Freydis became aware they were walking through a great camp. As they forded a river, she saw men huddled around a fire. Freydis approached them and saw they all bore signs of battle. One had two arrows protruding from his chest, another half his scalp missing.

  ‘A good wound, warrior,’ said the man with the arrows to Freydis. ‘Was it a dragon that took your arm? You see I was killed by a fine marksman. Two to stop me. One in the heart was not enough to stop old Ragnar.’

  ‘A wolf killed me,’ said Freydis. ‘But no ordinary animal. This was a fen dweller, a giant and a fiend.’

  ‘A great death!’ said Ragnar. ‘Sit by our fire and share your tales.’

  ‘I am Norman. You are pirates and Vikings,’ said Giroie.

  ‘And we, like you, are dead. Our wars have been fought. Here there is only waiting.’

  ‘For what?’ said Freydis.

  ‘For the goddess to release the god in the mire. For Odin to be reborn in Valhalla and all us dead scrappers go to our reward. The gates of Valhalla are closed and the god is not there to welcome the dead.’

  ‘That is a shame,’ said Freydis. ‘What of Freya’s halls?’