Wolfsangel c-1 Page 23

  Three skinny boys had made the top of the beach. They were all armed with sticks.

  ‘If I starve this winter, then your boons will not do me much good, sir,’ said Brunn. Vali did not have time to reply to him. He and Bragi began shoving the boat down the beach. It was not light but the slope was with them. Vali glanced over his shoulder. Two farmers from outlying farms had arrived next to the boys. They were only in Eikund to answer Forkbeard’s summons and Vali hardly knew them.

  ‘Are the thieves taking your boat, fisherman?’

  Brunn said nothing. It was an unusual situation and he was a cautious man. To call a prince of the Horda a thief was a boldness too far for him.

  More farmers and a few thralls arrived, though no warriors so far. Bragi and Vali kept pushing as the men made their way down the beach. When they came within eighty paces, the boat was still five lengths from the water’s edge. Vali realised that they would not make it. He drew his sword and turned. ‘There are ten of us, lord. Let’s make this easy,’ said a stout farmer who looked like a barrel with legs.

  ‘There will not be ten go back,’ said Vali. ‘You know Bragi, trusted bondsman of Authun the Pitiless. The wolves howl his name, so often has he fed them.’

  Vali was careful to use fine words, to impress the farmers.

  It had some effect and the men paused. Vali could see their courage had reached a tipping point and could go one way or the other. He began to walk towards them, sword pointed. Unfortunately two of the men were drunk and, slapping their staves into the palms of their hands, came on.

  What happened next was a blur. There was a scream from the farmstead as Ma Brunn saw what was coming. Across the beach, moving at speed, came the wolfman. He was not upright but running on all fours, his massive arms propelling him forward across the shingle. Suddenly he was between Vali and the mob, facing the farmers with a low growl. His face and hands were bloody, his eyes invisible beneath the wolf pelt. Truly he did appear to be a werewolf, a man-monster created by privation, ritual, blood and, most importantly, fear. Someone observing the scene from the safety of a boat might have simply seen a man with a wolf pelt on his head loping in a weird way towards the farmers. The farmers though, brought up on winter night stories of sorcerers who donned skins and ran as animals, saw something different entirely. Here was a creature of fireside tales come to life, staring them down beneath a black sky on a black beach, a fiend that could drag them down to Hel. The drink that had so emboldened the two men a moment before now reversed its effect, loosing unimaginable fears within them.

  Feileg lowered his head and then threw it back, letting out an unearthly howl. The two drunks turned and fled. The others held their position but Vali could see they were ready to run. They seemed almost to dance upon the spot, taking a step forward, then to the side. Knives that were drawn were sheathed, and knives that were sheathed were drawn, weapons moved from hand to hand. The men glanced behind them to look for support. There was none.

  ‘The boat!’ It was Bragi.

  Vali turned and resumed shoving as the wolfman stood seething and growling in front of the farmers.

  The boat scraped and slid across the stones to the ocean’s edge. Another push and it came upright in the water, floating. Vali and Bragi pushed for all they were worth and then jumped aboard, leaping to the oars.

  Vali bent his back, rowing hard. Twenty paces from the shore, he looked back at the wolfman on the beach. He was now running for the water. The farmers took courage from his flight and gave chase. Vali heaved at the oars, no time to get the sail up, as the wolfman splashed after them, thrashing through the surf in extravagant swipes. It was then that Vali realised he couldn’t swim.

  Willpower alone was keeping him going but he was taking huge gulps of water with very little progress to show for it. The farmers were now raining stones at them. Vali ducked and turned to Bragi. He had been going to tell Bragi to pull them out of range of the farmers as quickly as he could but he heard his voice say something else. ‘Get him.’

  Bragi didn’t hesitate, just rowed the boat around under the hail of missiles. A rock bounced off his helmet as they turned.

  ‘That works then,’ he said, tapping his helmet, but Vali could hardly hear him. They came alongside the wolfman not twenty yards from the shore. More stones crashed into the boat. Bragi had armed himself with pebbles for Ageirr’s hunting sling but his attempts to balance in the boat and return fire were doomed to failure, so he opted to do one task well rather than two badly and put the sling away.

  ‘I’ll come back on that beach and shove those stones somewhere they’re not meant to go!’ shouted Bragi. He took up his shield and started insulting the men on the shore, to draw their fire while Vali worked.

  Vali leaned over the side. The wolfman’s legs were pumping to little effect, his arms thumping at the water. Bragi moved to the opposite side of the boat as Vali bent down to grab Feileg. Every part of his conscious mind told him this was stupid. He didn’t know why he was rescuing this dangerous wildman. All he knew was that after the mire he would never be able to watch someone drown. But was it something even more fundamental? He remembered that rune, the floating body beneath him that he had seen in his visions — the body that was him, the wolfman and Adisla all at once. He grabbed the thrashing man.

  The prince took a couple of blows on the shoulder and back from Feileg’s flailing arms but then he had him. As he took the wolfman’s weight all the tiredness of the last few days seemed to descend on him — the battle, the ordeal in the mire, the pit, the flight to the beach — but then he looked into his face. It was his own, looking back at him.

  The stones suddenly stopped, which Vali thought strange. He hauled Feileg into the boat and regained his oar. As he and Bragi heaved on the oars to get themselves to a distance where it was safe to put up the sail, he looked back. Brunn the fisherman was standing in front of the stone throwers, begging them not to throw any more.

  ‘He thinks they’ll damage his boat!’ said Bragi. ‘You bastards throw one more rock and I’ll chop it to bits and swim just to spite you!’

  Vali felt guilty. He realised there was no hope of Brunn applying to his father if a war broke out and his promises had been useless. He had made a poor man poorer. Still, Brunn wouldn’t starve; the community would rally as it always did.

  One hundred paces from shore, they fitted the mast into the socket sailors called the old lady and let the offshore wind take the sail. As the boat surged forward, Vali allowed himself a glance back at the land.

  ‘We shan’t see this place again,’ he said.

  Bragi was lost in practical concerns.

  ‘There’s no chest for this byrnie,’ he said, stripping off the mail. ‘It’ll be a game keeping our war gear dry.’ He was right. The seats for rowing were just strengthening spars across the ship. They kept the vessel sturdy but they offered no storage.

  The wolfman lay coughing on the bottom of the boat, looking very ill.

  ‘No sailor,’ said Bragi, nodding towards him.

  ‘Well,’ said Vali, as the land receded, ‘he won’t be murdering us while we’re at sea, at least.’

  He looked down at the wolfman, as he had looked down on him in that vision in the mire. From now on, he knew, their destinies were inseparable.

  26

  Into the Unknown

  Adisla sat shaking in the bottom of the ship. She’d had the courage to do what she needed to do to her mother but her resolve had failed her when it came to herself.

  She had tried to get her mother out of the bed but it was no use. Disa was too heavy and in too much pain to be moved. Then they’d heard the Danes coming through the farms. Her mother had begged her to do it but the Dane had been grinning at her from the doorway of the house before she’d had the courage. He hadn’t tried to stop her until her mother’s throat was cut. Then she faced him with the knife. He was a jarl, a tough-looking man with a hard, lean face. He was wearing a byrnie and a helmet, carrying a shield an
d a long seax.

  ‘Come boat, quick,’ he said in bad Norse. ‘Boat now, quick. Bad for me no time with you. Knife down, break arm. Choose.’

  Adisla had heard his words and understood some of them but she could hardly make sense of what he was saying. She’d just stood sobbing, soaked in her mother’s blood, the knife loose in her hand. The Dane had taken it from her and led her out.

  She’d often wondered what it would be like to set out in a drakkar for one of the great markets, or to see the southern lands. Now she was going where she had dreamed of, but in the most horrible circumstances. She had feared what would happen to her on the ship but, numb with the horror of what she had done, real terror didn’t bite at first. They had said things, of course — how she was going to get it across a week of ocean until she’d never be able to put her legs together again. Some had even come and drunkenly tried to talk to her, a cross between taunting and a strange sort of wooing.

  There was one who chilled her even more than the rough warriors. He was a foreigner, she could see, wearing clothes of blue wool, trimmed with red. On his head was a four-cornered hat, he wore a thick sea cloak and on his back was a shallow round parcel, like a big disc, wrapped in seal skin. He came to her as soon as she was on the ship, examined her with his brilliant blue eyes as if she was a horse he was thinking of buying and then sat down next to her. Adisla looked back at the fires rising from her homeland and wept.

  The ship pulled away and the king stood up, declared her his prisoner and told his men that anyone who touched her would find himself swimming home. The oars moved in a steady rhythm, the men drank as they rowed, and Adisla wondered how long the king would be able to control them. He said nothing to her, just threw her a heavy cloak and went back to the tiller.

  Adisla resolved not to cry and tried to sleep, but every time she closed her eyes she heard the Danes at the door of her house, saw Manni, brave with his seax, heard her mother begging her to kill her, saw the blood and saw the fires. When she opened them, she saw only the strange savage in his odd clothes, staring at her from not two paces away. She didn’t see lust in his expression, or anything in particular, just an implacable, constant observation.

  After an hour at sea she allowed herself a look around. Haarik’s remaining drakkar was alongside but land was nowhere. Her hands were shaking with anxiety. Adisla had never been more than half a day away from her own home but she knew that ships had to cling to the coast. What other way was there to navigate? It was possible to take to the open sea in times of dire emergency, but sailors avoided it whenever they could.

  Thick cloud was rolling in and the sun was just a lighter patch on the grey horizon. She could see they were heading north. The rain came on, nagging at the sail in squalls so they moved forward in sudden lurches and drops, making Adisla queasy. Then it really began to pour, curtains of water sweeping across the ship in the rising wind. The crew had abandoned their oars and were now employed in full-time bailing, using helmets, bowls and wooden pails.

  Eventually Haarik shook his head. ‘Sail down,’ he shouted.

  The problem was not the wind, nor even the swell, which was nothing to trouble an experienced sailor, but the rain. The mast was lowered quickly and soundings taken. Then the anchor was dropped and the sail lashed across the ship, providing shelter but turning the world dark.

  ‘Join us beneath the blanket, darling?’ shouted one of the warriors to Adisla.

  She said nothing, just huddled into the side of the boat for shelter. The cloak at least kept her warm, and the sail kept her dry, though the stink of the men under the cover was terrible and the dark made her wonder how well Haarik would be able to guard her.

  Now the motion of the ship was frightful, a regular and relentless rise and fall that seemed to leave her stomach at the bottom of the wave while her head was sent to the top. She couldn’t help but retch and vomit. Her mouth felt dry and she was terribly thirsty, but she wouldn’t ask for water.

  Adisla lifted the side of the sail and looked out around her. The light was jellyfish grey, the sea a gentle but stomach-turning swell.

  She thought of her mother, she thought of Vali — she knew she would never see him again — and she thought of the wolfman. Had he survived the attack?

  She tried to remember the words of the prayer to Freya: ‘For the love I’ve known, lady, receive me.’

  Adisla lifted back the edge of the sail and slipped over the side.

  27

  Haithabyr

  The going was hard down the coast. Vali felt he couldn’t risk stopping at any farmstead or fisherman’s hut in case word went back to Forkbeard of the direction he had taken, so the men slept on beaches or in caves as they hugged the shore south. The advantage of the enduring daylight was that they could rest in shifts, Bragi working the sail for a time, Vali taking over when the warrior became tired. The wolfman could not sail or row, so he just sat, his head on his knees, staring at his feet and looking miserable.

  Feileg proved a much better asset on land. He was an accomplished forager, bringing back seabird eggs and bitter plants to chew. So they ate well enough, supplementing the wolfman’s food with seaweed and roots from the surrounding countryside. Water was easy to find; in fact, when it rained they had rather too much of it.

  Vali wanted to get on, so he only stretched the sail across the boat as a shelter when the rain was at its heaviest. The rest of the time he just worked the bailing pan as hard as he could. They were frequently soaked but making progress, and that was the important thing.

  This was hostile territory but their little fishing boat attracted less notice than a longship. Still, they had to be careful, rounding the lands of the Agder and the Westfold, sprinting across the bright broad bay of Vingulmarken and over to Alvheim.

  Then it was threading their way through the islands to Denmark and their destination — the trading town of Haithabyr. This was where the Danes would have taken a slave. They were in constant peril. They had to keep the coast in sight for navigation but this meant they risked being seen. Vali thought it would be a bored king who would launch a drakkar to catch some fishermen, but then again kings did get bored.

  The weather was rough at times but they were prepared, beaching the little boat, inverting it to use as a shelter and sitting out the high winds for a few days until the going was safe again. Vali knew that even if Forkbeard had sent a longship after them, he’d be no keener to sail in bad weather. Longships could strike across the open sea but, given the choice, clung to the coast and beached if they saw a storm coming rather than risk swamping.

  The boat seemed to crawl through the islands, though they were glad of them, the many coves and inlets providing good beaching and hiding places. And navigation was easy if circuitous at points as Bragi had travelled this way before. Once or twice they had to go west when their destination was south, but it was a small price to pay to avoid the open sea. Much of the journey was rowed, but they were following a trade route so the currents and the winds were favourable. From their final stop on a beach they could see a long promontory, a trail of smoke from a line of campfires stretching along it.

  ‘Is this the town?’ said Vali. ‘It’s no bigger than Eikund.’

  Bragi laughed. ‘That’s just the bjorkey at the mouth. That’s our first problem.’

  Vali had never heard the expression before so he asked what a bjorkey was.

  ‘It’s a collecting point,’ said Bragi. ‘If two big ships want to exchange goods then there’s no point them going all the way into port. They’ll do it at the mouth of the inlet. Also, if a ship is on its way somewhere else it can just pick up or drop what it has to here without wasting time stopping.’

  Vali found such haste difficult to believe. Who didn’t have time to stop? What could be so urgent that you had to ply your trade routes as if pursued?

  ‘Riches,’ said Bragi as if reading his mind. ‘The first sheep at the trough drinks deepest. You don’t want to turn up at a port with a cargo o
f whetstones if someone else has done the same the day before. These merchants want us to beg for their wares.’

  In other circumstances Vali might have found Bragi’s words exciting — a glimpse into a world that he knew nothing about. As it was, they just added to the sense of uncertainty he was feeling — of going into a situation unprepared. The vulnerability he felt did not come from the immediate threat of the Danes. Ever since his time in the mire he had felt fragile, slightly removed from himself, not fully in the present. Still, he couldn’t help wondering what else Bragi knew that he could tell him. Up till now the old man had only ever seemed to want to talk about battles, and Vali had made the mistake of assuming that was all he had to say.

  ‘Do you want me to pick a few holes in your plan?’ said Bragi as they got back into the boat and prepared to go across.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, we have stolen clothes of the Rygir nobility. The Danes have just attacked the Rygir and therefore could be considered to be at war with them. Haithabyr is in Denmark, which — the last time I checked — was full of Danes. Now I’m not a deep thinker like yourself but it strikes me that, should we turn up as we are, then we may as well put on the manacles ourselves, to save everybody the bother of a struggle. Do you see what I mean?’

  ‘There are problems with what I’m proposing to do,’ said Vali, ‘but I don’t think we’ll have any trouble. They have quite a few separate kingdoms. We’ll be all right as long as Haarik isn’t there.’

  ‘If he is?’

  Vali shrugged. The wolfman said nothing, just sat staring at the sea as if he hated it.

  Bragi said, ‘Well, assuming we get past the being-cut-down-where-we-stand part, what then? They’ll know that they can hold us for ransom or enslave us — both meaning a good profit. They may even think they can get the berserk back.’

  ‘The berserk is a mercenary and also not a Dane,’ said Vali. ‘They won’t bother about him.’