Wolfsangel c-1 Read online

  ‘Help me find the girl.’

  Hemming laughed and waved the back of his hand at Vali as if to swat him away. ‘She is Haarik’s taken in war. And besides I don’t think she’s even his to give by now.’

  ‘She’s been sold on?’

  The king didn’t answer the question but sat back and gave Vali that appraising look again. ‘What do you know of sorcery, prince?’

  ‘Very little.’

  ‘You are too modest. The lord Odin has his intelligencers and I have mine. Do you want me to tell you what my ravens whisper to me?’

  The priest shifted again.

  ‘Anything the king wishes to tell me, it will be my honour to hear.’

  ‘You fight foes with neither spear nor sword. Mighty war bands fall before you, defeated by mobs of boys and old men. You consult gods in the mire. You miraculously escape the most secure captivity and consort with wildmen and shape-shifters. Seers and wizards from the four corners of the earth look into their ponds or take to their hanging trees, and the visions they see are of the son of the wolf eating up the world. A boy escaped from some hags of the north of your country tells, as he dies, a story about a great enchantment being laid, again for the son of the wolf. Is that not how you are known, prince, as the son of the wolf?’

  ‘These stories are exaggerated. I am a sore disappointment to my father, I can assure you of that.’

  ‘I hear that as well,’ said Hemming. ‘If I believed half the seer babble I’d hang you now and take the consequences.’ He paused and seemed thoughtful, then looked straight at Vali. ‘Understand my problem. Your father is stricken.’

  Vali tried to stop the alarm registering on his face. He failed.

  ‘Yes, I know. Your mother rules in his place. That makes you very important, for the moment. If one of your cousins or uncles seizes the throne, however, it makes you less important in one way, more in another. Your value as some sort of bargaining counter drops, but I think the new king would pay well to have you returned to him, breathing or not. On the other hand, were I to give you a few ships to conquer your homeland then a good many of your kinsman would rally to you and, with luck, I would have another king paying me tribute from overseas, the proper oaths having been extracted. That said, I’m always interested in short-term gain. Forkbeard is keen on seeing you again. You could still be valuable there.’

  Vali opened his mouth to speak but Hemming held up a hand to silence him.

  ‘What am I to do? I’ve enough problems to contend with without this.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m looking for a reason to let you go but I really can’t find one.’

  ‘I eat a lot and am expensive to keep,’ said Vali. He tried to keep his manner light. If he had no bargaining power with the king at all, at least he could try to make him like him.

  Hemming smiled. The priest stood and whispered into his ear. The king listened impassively while the queen asked Vali how he liked the mead.

  The priest sank back to the floor.

  ‘You are important,’ said Hemming. ‘I can see that without employing seers and wizards. That’s common sense. Son and heir of that prodigious killer, your father, the Horda will want you on the throne if you’ve got even a sliver of that old steel in you. My priest advises me to kill you.’ He gestured to the man in the sackcloth, who actually coloured with embarrassment. ‘His religion finds practitioners of Seid threatening. Coincidentally, word from the west makes me even more inclined to kill you. Haarik wants you as a gift for the northern sorcerers. That’s why he came for you.’

  ‘He came to plunder,’ said Vali.

  ‘Hardly. He must have known Forkbeard would have hidden his gold very carefully, particularly while he was away. Why go storming in risking war with the Rygir when there are West Men who can’t muster a drakkar between them not a week’s sail away?’

  ‘I-’

  ‘Why three ships? He has near sixty, you know. Well, fifty-nine after you relieved him of one. What can you do with three? Hit and run, no more. If he thinks Forkbeard is stupid enough to leave his treasure so near the shore then he’s not the Haarik I know. It was people he was after, if not you then those close to you. That’s why he went for the girl.’

  ‘How could he know about her?’

  ‘How do I know about you?’ Hemming shrugged. ‘Haarik doesn’t have a large network of spies but he has his methods, I’m sure.’

  ‘No Rygir man would dishonour his lord by spying.’

  ‘Yes, he would,’ said Hemming. ‘Or he’ll talk in drink at markets or to traders. Some with ambitions of their own will go further.’

  ‘Name the traitor, and if I see him again he will die.’

  Hemming shook his head.

  ‘Well, I’d hardly be likely to do that, would I? The facts are these. Haarik wanted you. That’s the word I hear. You. Which is why you become important again. I mean, I might allow you to accept his hospitality, for a consideration. On the other hand, if I do that we all know that King Authun has his ravens too, and your mother Yrsa even more. If I hand you over to Haarik, I anger your father. While I have no doubt my men could crush the Horda in war, I also have no doubt your father would make us pay a high price for the victory. He may be sick, or that may be a bluff. Whatever, I think there’s a chance he would make a remarkable recovery and demonstrate his uncanny knack of finding the opposing king on the battlefield.’ He glanced at his bodyguard. ‘And it would be a shame to meet such a formidable, some say unbeatable, warrior and destroy the myth.’

  ‘Kings are for glory, not long life,’ said Vali, repeating the well-known saying.

  ‘Your father seems to have combined both to alarming effect. It would take a brave man — though needless to say I long for such a chance to prove myself in combat against such as he — a brave man indeed, to bet on ending either.’

  ‘I tell you this: Authun would let me die a thousand deaths before he gave you or Haarik so much as a coin in ransom. I am not so important. He can name an heir.’

  Hemming tapped his knee.

  ‘I disagree. You are important. Line of Odin and all that. What do you do in the far north-east?’

  The question surprised Vali, as it was meant to.

  ‘Nothing. I have been on one raid in the west but nothing further.’

  ‘To the land of the Whale People? Vagoy, the wolf island, or around there in Ultima Thule?’

  Vali recognised the old name for the islands at the end of the known world. He shrugged.

  ‘What do you know of the wolf island?’ said Hemming.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Haarik’s son was captured near there a year or so ago. I’ve wondered if that’s anything to do with all this.’

  ‘In what way?’

  Hemming shrugged in his turn. ‘Haarik loves his son, though why I cannot tell. The boy’s an idiot. I don’t know. There’s always been a rumour about the Whale People keeping a vast treasure up there — maybe he went looking for that. He’s the rarest sort of fool if he has.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the northerners are as poor as prophets. There is no treasure. I’ve sent men up there myself to check, but it’s a flat cold rock, nothing more. Whatever he was up there for, he’s got lost, and Haarik wants him back. But then Haarik attacks the Rygir instead of going after him. It makes no sense.’

  Vali was nervous. He drained the mead and the queen came forward with more.

  Hemming went on: ‘He could have you, but quite frankly Haarik went against my advice in raiding the Rygir, so I’m certainly not rewarding him with what he wants. What to do, what to do?’

  ‘I intend to find the girl I’m looking for and live as a farmer,’ said Vali. ‘I want nothing to do with kingship.’

  Hemming snorted. ‘Well, you’ll find that in this life what you intend rarely has any bearing on what you finish up doing, particularly as a king. If I let you go, you’ll become king or die. Whoever became king in your place wouldn’t want Authun’s son hiding like a wolf
in the byre. You’d be dead, and your family with you, within a year. Intend. Intend! I didn’t intend you to come here. If you’d passed through Haithabyr without proclaiming who you were I would never have detained you.’

  ‘We feared attack by the townsfolk.’

  ‘Haithabyr is the world’s biggest port,’ said Hemming. ‘People are used to strangers. You could have come and gone as you pleased. It isn’t some farmstead where you have to sound your horn as soon as you’re in earshot or risk doing the dead lord’s dance.’

  Vali felt stupid and angry. Why hadn’t Forkbeard allowed him one of these holy men — sitting on his shoulder, recording his orders so they couldn’t be forgotten, lost or argued about, and teaching him to speak like Hemming? Surely it was worth kneeling to their god for that, whatever you believed in your heart.

  ‘If you release me, you have my oath of friendship.’

  ‘Well, I had already considered that. I’d be something of a fool to let you leave without it, wouldn’t I?’ said Hemming. He smiled again at Vali. ‘If you and your friends could contrive to die in an accident then many of the problems this causes me would be solved, you know.’

  Again, Hemming’s face lacked menace, though Vali could see the danger was greater than his manner suggested. He was businesslike and thoughtful. Forkbeard would have been screaming in Vali’s face or sucking up to him.

  ‘If your majesty releases me then I shall endeavour to do my best to fulfil his wishes,’ he said. ‘I intend now to go to Haarik and ask him for the girl.’

  Hemming laughed. ‘Make sure you ask him when you’ve got your spear halfway through him or you’ve very little chance of a pleasant answer. Anyway, Haarik didn’t go home, so you won’t find him there.’

  ‘Where did he go?’

  For the first time Hemming seemed on the edge of anger.

  ‘Should I tell you that so you can hunt him down and kill him, he who swells my coffers with chests of silver and gold? If you intend to use me as your raven, prince, the least you could do is throw me a little corn.’

  ‘I have none to give.’

  Hemming turned his face away. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You don’t, do you? Go back to your quarters. I’ll decide whether to kill you, sell you or keep you by the end of tomorrow.’

  He extended his hand and the priest passed him up a piece of parchment. Queen Inga took the drinking horn from Vali’s hands and a bodyguard led him from the hall.

  31

  A Plan

  On his way back from Hemming’s hall Vali came across Bragi and Feileg looking out at the small harbour, the wolfman seeming almost slight next to the bulk of Bragi.

  ‘Hemming’s men must have a thirst on them. Do you think we’ll get any of that?’ said Bragi as Vali came to his side.

  On Skardi’s order the chain on the harbour wall was being lowered to allow a small squat boat containing five huge barrels of wine to enter. Bragi explained that the whole settlement had been talking about the delivery. A boy had arrived with a message from the town while Vali was seeing Hemming. Veles Libor sends his best wishes to the king, his finest wine a small token of thanks for all the king does for the people of Haithabyr, said the messenger.

  ‘It’s an apology,’ said Vali.

  ‘Right enough,’ said Bragi.

  Both men knew the real reason for Veles Libor’s generosity was that word had reached Hemming the merchant hadn’t informed him of his contact with a foreign prince. It wasn’t exactly a hanging offence but neither could it be overlooked. As soon as Veles could get his hands on quality wine he had sent it to the king to improve Hemming’s deliberations on what should happen to him.

  ‘I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t have to pay a lot more than that,’ said Bragi. ‘Authun would have had his head for such a crime if he’d been in the wrong mood.’

  ‘He’d be a fool then,’ said Gyrth, the Norse-speaking retainer who had been looking after them during their stay. ‘Veles is the best-connected merchant in the world. The tribute he pays the king buys many a byrnie and blade. And look! It’s Styrman the skald. Where did they get him from! Styrman! Hey, Styrman!’

  A man disembarking waved his arm in the air. He was tall and thin, though with a drinker’s face, and he carried a lyre under his arm, not wrapped up at all. There, thought Vali, was someone who valued his reputation as a skald more than the health of the instrument that earned him a living. Every skald he had ever met had been showy like that. They almost had to be, in order to succeed in their profession.

  ‘Veles sent his best boat east for me,’ shouted the skald, ‘and demanded that I accompany his wine here.’

  ‘A story! A story!

  ‘Tonight,’ said the skald, ‘when the mead is drunk and we are drunker!’

  The wine was heaved off the boat onto the foreshore and some men began rolling the barrels up towards the king’s hall while, from throughout the settlement, people came to see Styrman. Vali had seen skalds before and met a few popular ones, but this man seemed to have everyone’s attention. From the shouted requests of the crowd, he could see why.

  ‘Tell us of Ofeig the Hobbler and Ivar Horse Cock!’

  A young man cried out, ‘We will beat you in flyting. No insult contest can you win, you who was raised so womanly!’ He was laughing but good-natured.

  ‘I am afraid of flyting with you, young fellow. Your balls have to drop sometime and, should they do so during the duel of jibes, the noise might put me off what I have to say. Clang!’

  The crowd seemed to find this hilarious, much funnier than Vali thought it was. Still the skald was well liked, it seemed, and if he was an expert in flyting it would be interesting to hear him. People would come from miles around to test their wits against such a man. It was said that a good skald could best a hundred opponents in an evening’s drinking, each one dispatched with a different insult, usually in rhyme.

  Vali looked out at the chain and then at the river beyond. The longing he felt inside didn’t even come to him as words, just as a sort of hunger, an ache in his stomach.

  He had to find a way to get out. But even if he did escape from the settlement, Hemming would have no problem hunting him down. He would be stopped or killed by fearful farmers if he ran by land. By water the route was easier but still perilous — the best he could manage alone was a faering and even that would be difficult. It was some distance to the sea and the wind was uncertain. A drakkar would be on him before he reached the open ocean.

  He walked back to the gloom of the house and sat down. There was no one there for a change, not even women. Everyone had gone outside to see the skald. He picked at some boiled meat in a bowl. And then he came to his answer.

  The skald’s performance that evening would give him his chance. But escape was not enough; he needed to do something to stop himself being pursued. If the Danes thought he was dead, then they wouldn’t come after him. The wolfman was his double. He tapped a bone against the bowl and tried to think of a way around the path that had opened before him. He couldn’t. Vali would have to kill Feileg, dress him in his own clothes and then make off. It wouldn’t guarantee him escape — Hemming would certainly want to make a show of finding his guest’s killers — but the hunt would not be nearly so enthusiastic as if he was looking for Vali himself.

  He worked out the details. He would need to get a Danish cloak to wrap himself in. The guards would be drunk or distracted by the skald and Vali thought he could just walk out. The wolfman could steal a cloak. When he returned to give it to Vali, he would kill him. Vali said the words in his mind, to fix himself in his purpose: ‘I will kill him.’ It was the best way, he knew. And yet that vision kept returning — the cave, the wolfman’s body bent into the shape of that strange rune, his own body, and that of Adisla, similarly contorted. He felt anxious. What would happen if he failed? The wolfman would kill him and Adisla would be alone.

  Bragi had told him that his father Authun was famous for cold thinking — for seeing what needed to be don
e and doing it without regard to emotion or affection. Was it not rumoured that he had taken nine warriors with him to the mountain witches, knowing they would die? He had needed them so he had taken them. The wolfman was not Vali’s kinsman either, but an outlaw who had killed many men.

  Vali had not been disarmed — that would have been a dishonour too far and an admission that the Danes feared him. He only had to remove his sword when he entered Hemming’s hall. He remembered the beach, the wolfman thrashing after him in the water, and thought that he should have let him drown. He couldn’t account for what had made him risk his own life saving him. Perhaps it was fate, saving the wolfman for the greater purpose of aiding his escape, Vali thought.

  As the idea fixed itself in his mind, he found himself seeking justifications for what he was about to do. Feileg was dangerous. He had exposed them by his actions in the town. He drew attention to them wherever they went. On top of all that, he had some attraction for Adisla that unnerved Vali. Could he trust Feileg if they did find her? No. He’d seen the looks the wolfman gave him and could sense what Feileg felt towards him. Feileg wanted Vali dead but he needed him to find Adisla. As soon as that was done, Vali knew Feileg would attack him.

  ‘I am a wolf,’ the wolfman liked to say. So he needed to be treated like one.

  Still, Vali didn’t relish what he had to do. It was, he told himself, simply his best chance. Would he include Bragi in the escape? Yes, of course. Whatever the wisdom of trying to make it alone, he couldn’t kill a kinsman or abandon one to die. He had set sail to find Adisla but he would have done the same for Bragi. He may have found the old man a bore, but he was a bore he was related to, and that solid fact removed all debate.

  Vali drifted off to sleep, allowing the familiar aromas of the longhouse to take him back to his childhood at Disa’s hearth. He remembered Adisla and the warmth of her against him in the long winter evenings as they’d sat listening to the old stories of how the dwarfs made treasure for the gods, or of the never-ending battle fought by the war dead in the afterlife. There were other, better stories too — tales of farm life, of how Disa had tricked her husband into wiping his arse with a nettle in return for a beating he’d given her, of the funny things they’d said as children, of how the Rygir had suffered, fought and fled before marriage and trade had brought peace — or so they thought — to their lands. To find Adisla again, to have her sit by him as they listened to stories in the night, he would kill a thousand wolfmen, skin them and hang out their hides for the ravens to peck at.