The sea was not as she had imagined it. It lay silver, flat and wide under a grey sun. Her grandfather had said it roared but he was wrong. It whispered, as it lapped against the sand, as if trying to lull the land to sleep. But it was cold, colder even than the winter hills and she felt it almost sucking the heat from her. No chance of a fire here. A village lay at the mouth of the river and it was crawling with life – five longships on a dirty beach near a settlement by the broad mouth of the river, men conducting repairs on two of them. Smaller fishing boats lay beside them. This must have been where a good force of Normans had sailed up from the south.
Smoke rose from the low houses and men moved among them. The sounds of a smithy rang out up the hillside and, out at the limit of vision, a little boat cast nets into the haze.
‘We could never sail one of those,’ said Gylfa.
‘There are the smaller boats,’ she said.
‘The sea is a serpent that coils its way around the world,’ said Gylfa. ‘When that serpent stirs it can swallow a boat like that in a blink.’ He looked very pale and was sweating, despite the chill.
‘Serpents or dead men,’ said Tola. ‘We choose our way to die.’
‘If we hurry up,’ said Gylfa. ‘If we are slack, we will have no choice.’
‘We should take a boat and cling to the coast if we can; find a part of the country where these killers do not rule.’
‘I cannot carry what I have inside me for much longer,’ said Gylfa. ‘The wolf frightened the runes away but they are back now and they are a plague to me.’
‘Loys says you are an omen of bad luck.’
‘I’m still alive,’ said Gylfa. ‘Unlike most people in these parts.’
‘Are these the final days?’she asked.
Gylfa scratched at his chin. ‘The church says that on the final day, the graves will spill open and the dead walk again. I have seen this.’
‘Monsters walk among us.’
‘Thank God or we’d both be dead,’ said Gylfa.
They waited until night, clinging together for warmth. Gylfa was hot as a loaf from the oven, burning up with a fever but she didn’t fear to catch it. She knew what was inside him, gnawing away. She felt the wolf rune inside her stir. Was it calling to its sisters inside Gylfa?
Perhaps she was the cause of his pain.
The village was quiet and the moon a blade as they descended the hill. Tola had gone beyond fear. Having feared the risen dead, feared the cold, feared the wolf, feared Gylfa and Styliane she had become numb to it. There was no more room left inside her for fear of the men in the village.
Gylfa was in a bad way, limping as if his foot was broken. ‘It’s like my guts are on fire,’ he said.
‘Get to the boat. The big water must cool them,’ said Tola.
They skirted the village, going too slow rather than risk too quick, always watching for signs of movement. Grey smoke from the vents of the houses was all that they saw. A fishing boat lay behind two big longships. It was grounded on its belly but the longships had been brought further up the beach to rest on logs. One ship had planks missing from its side, clearly under repair. They crawled along the scrub as far as they could but saw quickly that there was no way out to the beach that didn’t expose them.
‘What?’ said Gylfa.
‘You’re the warrior.’
‘You’re the wise woman.’
Tola let her mind widen. There were no men awake, it seemed the Normans hadn’t even set a guard. A dog stirred in the darkness whining to be let out.
It caught hers, whining and pleading. A Norman woke up. She felt his irritation. A curse. Someone else, cursing the curser. The dog still pleaded to be let out, thumping on the door of the longhouse. More cursing. More men were awake.
‘We need to go,’ said Tola.
‘Where?’
She didn’t have time to reply. The door opened and the dog came bounding over the sand towards them. Gylfa drew the Moonsword but it was no good. Killing it would only arouse more suspicion.
It leapt up at her, wagging its tail, barking out a big greeting. A man emerged from the longhouse, his hose around his knees, ready to piss. Then he saw them and gave a shout.
‘Run!’said Tola.
‘Where?’
‘Up the slope!’
‘There’s no cover that way!’
‘The boats then!’
There was no plan now, no careful weighing of likely outcomes. The boat was a desperate hope but it was at least some sort of hope.
‘I can’t run.’ Gylfa was bent double, like a man who had taken a kick in the guts. She grabbed him by the collar and bundled him on towards the boat.
‘Can you sail it?’
‘You need to row it off the sand, there’s not enough wind.’
‘Can you row it?’
‘I can hardly walk. You’ll have to do it.’
‘I don’t know how!’
‘This seems a good time to learn.’
They stumbled across the dirty sand. The dog chased them, gambolling and baying, wanting to play.
Warriors came out of the longhouse, carrying swords and spears, a couple with shields. She felt a wave of curiosity, annoyance from the men, the routine animosity of the conqueror. No anger just a weary resignation to the duty of unexpected slaughter.
There was no urgency about the way they moved. They seemed more amused than anything else at the sight of a woman and a sick boy crabbing their way across the beach.
Three came towards them, swords drawn, their manner casual. Gylfa untied the mooring rope from a stake.
‘You’ll have to push it off the beach!’ he said.
‘How?’
‘Just shove it!’
She put her hands against the boat and heaved. It would not move.
A question in the Norman language behind her, the voice light and mocking. She guessed they were asking her if she wanted a hand.
‘Get out! I can’t push it with you in there!’
‘Oh Jesus and Odin preserve us!’ Gylfa climbed again to the rail and dropped over.
The dog left them. The men kept walking across the beach. Tola shoved at the boat. It moved, but barely.
‘You’ll have to help!”
‘Oh God! This magic is a terrible burden to me!’
‘Stop complaining and push!’
Gylfa half collapsed against the boat and it slid forward a painful pace. How many more steps to the water? Five?
‘Push harder.’
The Normans had caught them. They didn’t attack but stood in mock puzzlement. One had his hand on his hip, another held his head craned sideways as if trying to work out what they were doing. They spoke in Norman but Tola and Gylfa shoved again, the boat going forward another pace.
The dog barked excitedly away in the night. Then its tone changed and it cried out, a crazy squeal. The Normans looked up the beach. The dog stopped barking. A chink of mail.
Now the Normans were worried. They shouted up the beach for their friends. Six men went running over to the little cliff of the beach, jumping or climbing up onto it as their age allowed.
A soldier grabbed her by the shoulder, drew his sword. Another held onto the boat. Gylfa, his back to the prow, sank to the sand. Another Norman appeared at the top of the dunes. He had something in his hand. Tola took a moment to realise it was the dog but its head was gone.
The Norman with the dog gave a big shrug and then collapsed. At his back, the goose quill of an arrow stood up like a night flower. The Norman who had hold of Tola pointed up the beach with his sword and cried out.
‘Guenipe!’ a soldier shouted at her. The two standing Normans leapt towards her but she ran around the boat to avoid them, like a child playing a game.
More shouting from up on the dunes. ‘Goubelin! Gou
belin!’ She felt the Norman’s confusion wash over her. It didn’t stop them moving. One went one way around the boat to get her while the other stood still. She couldn’t avoid them any more and backed into the sea, knife drawn.
‘Goubelin! Goubelin!’
Ten or so men ran out of the village to its perimeter. They’d found their armour and formed a wall of shields, six men staggering back from the dunes to join them.
The dead poured out of the night, many, many of them, howling and leaping, crashing into the wall. The soldier nearest to Tola crossed himself, slack jawed at what he was seeing. Tola tugged at the boat, fear lending her strength. The boat moved another pace. Two more and it would be in the water.
‘Shove, Gylfa, shove!’
The young man moaned but she felt the boat move. She could not see him but he was pushing. The battle noise clattered down the beach, screams, howls, anger.
One more pull and the boat went light. It was floating. She pulled it three steps more. Gylfa was on his knees in the shallow water, spent. She grabbed him and dragged him to standing, almost throwing him into the boat.
Dead men threw themselves at the shield wall, screaming and skittering. She saw one take a sword through the eye but he kept stabbing with his broken spear.
One of the two Normans near her ran up the beach to face the enemy but the other stayed, looking at her, looking at his friends, stepping forward, stepping back.
The boat floated a little way out to sea but stopped again.
‘A sandbank,’ said Gylfa. ‘It’s beached.’
‘What?’
‘Shove. Again. Shove.’
Tola leapt out into the freezing water. It only came up to her ankles. She shoved but the boat would not budge.
The dead on the top of the beach broke the shield wall. The Normans were in disarray, each fighting three or four dead men. Cries and wails, a sound like a market shambles, chopping meat. The warrior who had run up the beach now tried to run back but three bounding dead men were on him, hacking him down.
The remaining Norman ran for the boat. Tola had left her knife on board and she stepped backwards.
The man ignored her, shoved the boat himself. It floated free. She splashed over the rail but the water suddenly deepened. The Norman warrior behind her was up to his waist. He chased the boat, grabbing at the side.
The dead were closing on the water. With an almighty effort she helped the warrior inside.
‘Oars!’ she said. He may not have understood her but he needed no instruction. He set the oars as a dead man splashed towards them through the surf, his axe high, his mail torn. He grabbed for the boat but lost his footing on the sudden drop. The Norman put his back into rowing and the boat moved free of the beach.
He shouted at her. ‘Qu, qu,’ or something like it. She understood and just shrugged.
‘Don’t know.’ She looked back to the land, under the hazy moon.
On the edge of the little cliff, a woman watched her from a horse. It was Styliane.
She pointed to the longships and the dead men poured towards them.
The cold and exhaustion, kept at bay by terror, hit Tola in a blast. Inside, she felt the wolf rune calling, a long howl echoing through her mind.
‘Come on, Loys,’ she said. ‘Where are you?’
53 To the Island
Loys lay still. The wolf raged inside him, despite the stone he had swallowed, and to move was to lose focus, lose humanity, to be just a monster stalking the night.
He slept for a long time and when he awoke on his bed of blood and bones under a cold moon an ember of disgust flickered inside him. He stood, squatted and shat, searching through the mess for the stone.
He held it again. The dismembered bodies around him moved no more. He coughed and spat, the taste of salt and iron in his mouth.
He had something to do. Someone to protect. Someone to harm. He cradled the stone in his hand like a candle in a breeze, a human light to keep the beasts away.
After a day he came back to himself, smelled the rot on the wind. The dead were moving. There were a lot of them; the gamey smell hung all over the trees. The wolf knew they had passed maybe two days before. The man knew that meant his promise to Tola had meant nothing.
A faint fog was still in the air and he moved towards the coast under a spiderweb moon.
There was no one and nothing around. He was unafraid of men when he travelled alone, so he dropped down among the little farms, not to kill but to see. See what? If life went on, if he was the last living thing on earth? That, he knew, was his awful destiny. Immortal, invulnerable as the wolf, to sit howling on the desolation of everything. What becomes of the killer, when there is nothing more to kill?
The farms were burned, all but one, and that was a corpse-hoard. Five Norman soldiers and three women lay dead by a house. Loys guessed they had preserved it for the shelter of troops moving inland. Someone had tied a blue ribbon on the thatch above the door. An emblem of life, lying limp in the land of the dead. He believed he could wander into Hel from here. His ancestors had believed Hel was a realm you could walk to if you went far enough beyond the mountains. This place with its burned settlements, bitter with the taste of ash, sweet with the tang of the fat of men and animals, could be Hel’s hinterlands.
He touched the ribbon, thought of his daughters in Constantinople, thought of the child he had taken back to Normandy to be raised out of sight of the gods. Sun, blond hair, a sweet voice. That was all that was left of them, everything else washed away, people no more.
There had been a fight and the warriors had died bravely, it seemed. An arm lay twitching still on the wet ground. They’d asked the dead men to pay a price for their passage.
Loys felt the slaver drip from his jaws. More meat. He studied his hand in the hazy moonlight. The claws were black, each as long as a man’s finger, the palm muscular and leathery. Not a wolf ’s paw but not a man’s hand either.
He bent over the succulent body of a man. ‘There is only one desire and that desire is death,’ he said. ‘All lesser wants must bow to it.’
He lay next to the corpse for a little while, drawing in its deep aroma, cuddling it like he was a child with a doll. He tried his jaws against the skull. Yes, he could crack it like a fox cracks an egg.
Enough.
A beast can’t wish itself dead. Only a man can do that.
He ran, out to the coast, through the dead lands where burned hands reached up from the charred shells of houses like black briars, where a whole flock of sheep had been shut in a house and the house torched. Their bones lay black, piled on top of one another in a tangled heap like the carcass of a giant insect.
He tracked the dead down the river, the salt of the sea already sharpening the air, bringing memories of cured meat, of a man and a woman on a boat going east, robbed and nearly penniless, of Constantinople, a meal, a sense of hope as he’d looked up at the giant edifice of the Magnaura university.
At the water’s edge he sat down and looked out on the corpse shore. Bodies of men lay all around, hacked and dismembered. A severed head blinked up at him from the sand, a look of uncertainty in its eyes, as if it couldn’t decide whether to die again.
A horse munched disconsolately at the salty grass of the dunes. He recognised it from somewhere, he couldn’t tell where. Yesterday? Last year? Another life?
Two longships lay in the bay. The tar smell of the hulls sparked a memory – a blue morning, a cold breeze. He was a boy, shoving the longship out of the great hall where it had been kept for the winter. The memory was not his. There was someone else inside him, someone the wolf had eaten and yet not consumed, someone who lived in the back of his dreams.
He padded back to the river, took a big drink. She’d gone from here, he was certain, he could smell where she had lain on the dunes. He threw back his head and howled, sending a blade
of sound out over the water. The thin moon looked down from its bed of gauze, but the water was silent.
Then, as the day dawned grey, he heard the rune calling across the water, an echo of his own wolf voice. ‘I am here, where are you?’ it said.
He put the stone beneath his tongue and set out into the water, swimming in the direction of the sound.
54 Rune War
They heard the longships behind them through the mist.
The Norman bent his back to the oars, pulling out beyond sight of the land. Tola felt his fear, bitter as the taste of an unripe apple.
She could not kill him but he could kill her. Gylfa lay holding his belly in the bottom of the boat. As soon as the mist swallowed the land, the Norman stopped rowing and put his fingers to his lips in a sign she should be quiet.
Across the water, she sensed the island calling. There was a rune there, a little whirlpool in the fabric of creation, pulling her in, wanting her. It was very far away.
She was terribly cold now, though there was scarcely a wind. The oars of the longships were loud on the water.
‘They will find us,’ she murmured.
‘How do you know?’ said Gylfa.
‘They found us before. They are drawn to us.’
‘Drawn to you. I never saw them before I met you.’
‘And perhaps you. You have the runes inside you.’
The Norman made a gesture with his hands. ‘Quiet!’
The beat of the longships’ oars drew nearer. She heard the throaty calls of the dead men, telling each other where they were.
‘You need to use your runes,’ said Tola. ‘You have magic inside you.’
‘I cannot. The runes are curdling in my guts. I can see them but I cannot bear to look at them.’
‘Do, or I will cut them out!’ said Tola.
‘Don’t do that!’ said Gylfa. He retched but had nothing to throw up.
‘Mal,’ said the Norman. ‘Hot.’
Gylfa was indeed roasting, the heat of his fever almost comforting in the boat. The longship oars grew fainter and then stronger. A ruby light swept the water.
Valkyrie's Song Page 31
