Wolfsangel c-1 Read online

  A man came in. He was smaller than the others and wearing a hat of four corners, like a parcel of cloth folded back on top. He nodded and smiled a greeting, sat down and put a hand on the wolf pelt Feileg wore. The wolfman felt no threat and allowed him to pull it aside. The man examined the wound. He shook his head and ran his fingers lightly across it. Then he turned and said something to the woman. She brought Feileg some stew in a bowl and he ate it gratefully.

  ‘Ruohtta,’ said the man to Feileg. He pointed at him and made a gesture of lying down on his side and turning up his eyes. Feileg realised he was telling him he was going to die.

  Feileg had never feared death. When he was with his family he had been told it was glorious; when he was with Kveld Ulf he had seen it as simply a happening — a transformation, a different kind of day among other days. He thought he would be happy to die in the little tent with its domestic smells, among the kindness of these strangers, although the peace of that place, the company of the children and the women, the smiles of the man in the four-pointed hat, made him want to live. He wanted this for himself, he thought. The words ‘I am a wolf’ came to him again, but what wolf ever thought that? He was separate from his forest brothers, for all that he had been raised to be like them. The man in the hat got up and left.

  Outside, stew was brought to Vali. He ate a little and drank some of the fermented milk drink he was offered. He could hardly stomach it and accepted only out of politeness. He smiled at the woman who had brought him the stew but the gesture was for him, not her. These rituals of etiquette and manners seemed vitally important to him now. He needed a link to the everyday, the human, he thought, to keep him from — what? He didn’t know, but he was afraid of the feeling within him, halfway between nausea and elation. It was something that seemed ready to evict him from his own head. The prince knew he was losing something valuable to him.

  Everything felt different. He had thought before that the sensation was a bit like being drunk, and that impression was stronger now. There was a feeling of freedom, like when the wine first takes effect. There was the knowledge that he was entering a different sort of consciousness. There was even some fear, but this was accompanied by an odd delight, an inner snigger that said, ‘Go on. Give in to it. Step away from yourself and change.’ He did not know where he was going, nor what had happened to him, but instinctively he knew he had to fight it. Mad thoughts jostled in his head: I am becoming not myself, but how can that be? Myself is what I am, therefore I am leaving myself to become myself. Myself is more than one thing. I am uncontinuous and broken, I am… He struggled to find a word to sum up how he felt. And then it came to him: hungry. Yes, he was hungry, but not for anything that the pot could provide.

  He looked inside the tent and realised that Feileg would not be coming with him. He wanted to leave right now, to find Adisla. The love he bore her seemed to take on even more importance. It was like a light seen through rain by a lost traveller, something to guide him to safety. He saw her face as he’d seen it for the last time when she’d kissed him goodbye — fearful, anxious but full of love for him.

  Vali waved to the man in the four-pointed hat. He willed his unwieldy brain to concentrate on what he needed to do, using Adisla as the focus for his thoughts.

  The man came and stood next to him. Without a shared language, they struggled to communicate.

  ‘Haarik’s son?’ said Vali. He scratched in the dirt a picture of a ship then mimed it being wrecked by smashing his fist into his hand. He drew a crown and mimed snatching it.

  ‘Domen,’ he said. ‘Where is Domen?’

  The man smiled at him and made a calming gesture with his hands. Then he turned, ruffled the hair of one of the children, kissed the woman who had brought the stew and set off across the plain towards the distant mountains. Vali felt helpless. He sat outside the tent with the reindeer family watching him, saying nothing.

  He began to lose concentration, to just exist beneath the changing light, the moving clouds. Vali didn’t know how long he had been sitting there when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘No tribute.’ The man spoke Norse, however badly.

  The man was back, and with someone else just like himself in a dark wool tunic and four-pointed hat. Beside them was a roped reindeer. The nervousness of the beast seemed to flood over Vali; he could taste its fear.

  Instead of a bow the newcomer had a broad shallow drum in his hands. Vali started. It was just like the one he’d seen in his dream on the boat, where he’d glimpsed Adisla surrounded by those odd masked figures. This one though wasn’t decorated with that crooked little rune that had tumbled from the skins of the drums in the vision, but with scenes of hunting and fishing.

  ‘No tribute.’ The man said it again.

  ‘No tribute,’ said Vali. ‘I’m looking for a person, not furs or gold.’

  The man smiled, and Vali saw that he had two extra teeth in his upper jaw. He knew this was how the Whale People chose their holy men — by physical peculiarities like withered limbs or odd-coloured eyes. Veles Libor had told him as much. The thought of the merchant’s name filled Vali with nausea.

  ‘Domen?’

  The holy man looked at him blankly.

  ‘Domen. Drums.’ Vali pointed at the drum. ‘Domen.’

  ‘Vagoy?’ said the holy man.

  ‘Domen.’

  The holy man shook his head and gestured inside the tent, pointing at Feileg. He scratched a sort of rough circle and a wavy line in the dirt. Vali didn’t understand. The man took up a rock. He scratched out a little hollow in the earth, put the rock in it and poured some water from a container around the rock.

  ‘Vagoy,’ he said, pointing at the rock. Then he howled, splashed at the water and mimed beating the drum.

  Vali suddenly saw it — he was showing him an island, an island full of wolves where the drum was beaten.

  ‘Domen?’ said Vali, pointing at the rock.

  ‘Ahhh! Dooerrrrrmaaan,’ said the man, and Vali realised he had got the pronunciation wrong.

  ‘Yes, Domen.’

  The man nodded.

  ‘Jabbmeaaakka,’ he said. Then he pointed at the tent, shook the flap that covered its entrance, said slowly, ‘Hel. Goddess. Fight,’ and snarled with a grabbing gesture.

  Vali pointed about him: which way?

  The holy man gestured east, waving his arm several times to indicate that it was a long way.

  Vali didn’t wait. He got to his feet immediately and strode off in that direction but the man called after him in his incomprehensible language. The prince turned and the man pointed at him, then at himself, then east again.

  ‘You will take me?’ said Vali. He echoed the man’s gestures.

  The holy man gave a slow nod and disappeared inside the tent.

  38

  What Is Within

  The sun set, which it had not since they had left the south. Autumn was coming and, soon behind it, winter. Feileg could almost taste the ice on the air.

  He had a freezing fever and his body shook with cold. They brought him out under the deep stars and laid him next to a fire. He smelled the chill on the grass but the flames were fragrant and kept him warm. A little girl stroked his hair and her mother brought him blankets. A small platform made from the stump of an uprooted tree was set down at his side. A stone was placed on it, along with a stick carved into the likeness of a man. Cheese and meat were laid out. Spruce twigs were put there too. The reindeer was tethered close by. The reindeer man came to Feileg. He touched his wound. Pain shot through Feileg and there was blood on the man’s hands. The man stood and walked to the reindeer, smeared the blood across its face and back.

  Something was cooking on a pot, though Feileg knew it was not food. It had a bitter aroma to it that he didn’t like at all.

  Vali was there too, sitting looking out to the east, talking to nobody and with no one trying to talk to him.

  One of the hunters took a cup from the pot and put it to Feileg’s
lips. He swallowed and, as he did, he recognised the taste — it was very similar to the brew that Kveld Ulf had fed him during their rituals, the drink that unlocked the doorway to his wolf nature.

  The reindeer man drank himself and passed the cup around. He went to Vali and offered it to him but Vali was blank and distant. The reindeer man was insistent and pushed the cup to the prince’s lips. Vali suddenly seemed to awake from his trance, took it and drained it.

  Then the drumming began and the reindeer man intoned a harsh but beautiful chant. A hunter accompanied him on a small bone flute and Feileg lost himself in the music. The drumming went on and on, as the chanting rose and fell like the sea, or like the voices of his wolf brothers in the hills.

  The skies were wide and beautiful and Feileg saw bright streaks flashing across them. He saw the people around him, caring for him, and he thought them very like his own family. He saw the face of his mother looking down at him, telling him she was sorry to have sent him away and he could come home now.

  The reindeer man was there, but he wasn’t the reindeer man; he was a reindeer and his antlers were made of stars. There was another presence too. The stars seemed to have taken shape and fallen to earth in the form of a man who rode a horse of stars and carried a bow of stars which held an arrow that was a comet.

  ‘Ruohtta… Ruohtta… Ruohtta…’

  The other hunter had the reindeer to the ground, though it brayed in protest. Then it screamed. There was the sound of sawing. Something was put into Feileg’s hands — a pair of antlers. He held the antlers out how the reindeer man showed him. The chanting went on and on. He saw the man of stars raise his bow but it was not pointing at him. He knew the figure for what it was — a god of death — and it had come for him, but the hunters had tricked it. The comet arrow flashed towards the reindeer. There was a final hideous bray from the animal and then it was quiet.

  Feileg trembled. The women and children came to lie close to him, warming the chill of the fever away, but the chant went on. The man of stars had not gone; he was fitting another arrow to his bow, though none of the hunters seemed to notice.

  Vali listened hard to the drumming. It was in him and around him and did not beat alone. From behind the mountains where the fat moon dipped another rhythm answered it. The taste of the holy man’s brew filled him up and he thought he might vomit but then he felt the drums commanding his own heartbeat.

  Someone was speaking to him from a long way away. The sound of the drums seemed to have a physical form, like a rope winding over the mountains to twine around him and pull him in, and he heard a voice from far away in that odd foreign language rasping out its chant.

  ‘Jabbmeaaakka… Jabbmeaaakka… Jabbmeaaakka…’

  Vali knew that the name was chanted in hate, not invocation. Something wanted Jabbmeaaakka dead and he was caught up in that wish.

  The brew was percolating through his mind, stripping away his reluctance to yield to the hunger that was calling to him. He looked at his hands. They were beautiful, and he spent a long time studying them. It had never occurred to him before just how long his fingers were, how pointed, more like talons than anything human. His teeth felt uncomfortable, too big for his mouth; he couldn’t stop licking them. There was that taste. There it was, iron and salt and a depthless beauty that held all the pull of roasting meat to a hungry man. The blood, the deep and alluring scent of blood, was in him.

  ‘I am strong.’ He said it out loud. The drum was faster now, the voices harsher.

  ‘Jabbmeaaakka… Jabbmeaaakka… Jabbmeaaakka…’

  And then the rhythm seemed to take a mad tumble, fast as a rock fall. She was there, he knew, the thing they had been calling to.

  He saw a child with a woman’s face, gaunt and lined. She was covered in gold, and precious gems stuck to her skin as if she were some shining snake. She was watching as the drumbeat curled around him to draw him on.

  The beat was telling him something. He had to go on a long journey. She was there — Adisla, the one he had come to find.

  His final thought, when it came, did not arrive from outside. It was not a stream of symbols seeping into his mind with the rhythm of the drums, though that is what the rhythm seemed to intend. Neither did it come from the grotesque girl-woman who looked on from the firelight. The magic around him was just a spark to a fire, igniting something far bigger than itself. The thought came from himself, from within. He spoke, to give it form.

  ‘I must fortify myself,’ said Vali.

  He stood. He felt very long and sinuous, more like something made of shadow than flesh. Things were moving around him. Vali reached out to catch them, to break them, to feed on them. He felt a blow and brushed it away. He heard screams but was lost to the taste of the meat. He fed deeply, feeling the stress of his prey seep into him with a gorgeous tingle.

  ‘I am fortified,’ he said. There were some broken things on the ground, things that had been useful to him, things that had been going to help him, direct him and show him the way. He didn’t need them any more; he knew where he was going. He was going towards the drumming.

  39

  The Nature of Magic

  Adisla had now been on the island for months and to her surprise had been treated very well. It wouldn’t have been her first choice of a home — a long flat rock rising out of a turbulent and cold sea — but her fear that she was to be some stinking Whale Man’s bed slave had not been realised.

  The people were kind: they brought her meat and bitter bread, berries and salted cheese, even gave her a rough beer to drink. She was also allowed to sleep alone — in a low conical tent which was open at the top to allow the smoke of a fire to escape. Although the tent was tiny, the little old woman detailed to care for her was skilled at building the fire and Adisla found it less smoky than a longhouse.

  Her arrival had been terrifying. The whole rock had seemed to swarm with men — thirty or forty of them, all in animal masks, but not like the pelt that Feileg wore. These were skilfully constructed from supple twigs, shaped into the likeness of a bear or wolf, a bird, reindeer or seal, and covered in fur or feathers to terrible, frightening effect. The men drummed and sang and peered at her closely, but they didn’t touch or harm her.

  Haarik had been given instructions on where he might find his son and been told that a scout was watching from the mainland, ready to ride a reindeer hard to the young man’s slaughter if he tried anything. The Whale Men had dealt with Norsemen before and were careful to extract oaths that they would not be harmed once Haarik’s son was released. For all his talk of violence, the king looked pleased to leave. He had a warrior’s distaste for magic and wanted to collect his son and then put as much distance between himself and the island as possible.

  Most of the Whale Men soon left the rock — including the sorcerer who had travelled with her — but Adisla remained with the old woman to care for her and in the silent company of a man called Noaidi. He was small, even for a Whale Man, dark-haired with very blue eyes, and he habitually wore a wolf mask as he moved about the rock. At nights he usually went down towards the sea on the open ocean side and sat at the mouth of a huge cave, playing his drum and singing in a way that seemed to echo the sounds of the wind. Noaidi said nothing to her for days. And then, when she had been there about a week, she realised she had not actually tried to speak to him.

  One night when he didn’t go off to chant Adisla saw him remove his wolf mask and go to his tent. She went across and knelt at the entrance. He was lying on some furs and the little fire had been fed until the inside of the tent was as hot as a smithy. In the firelight, without his mask, he was a shocking sight. He must have been around twenty-five but was terribly drawn, his cheeks hollow and his eyes red. He hardly seemed to notice her at first and she saw he was trembling.

  ‘Why am I here?’

  Noaidi looked at her. ‘I am sorry,’ he said. He clearly had to think hard to remember the words and spoke Norse in a thick accent that reminded Adisla more of a ca
t than a man.

  ‘You speak our language.’

  ‘I know your people. Too well.’ He smiled a brief smile and she could see that he was very ill indeed.

  ‘Then why am I here?’

  The man thought for a moment. He coughed and took a swallow of water from a cup. Then he gestured her into the tiny tent. She crawled in and sat down, very near to the blazing fire. It was uncomfortable but she wanted to question her captor. The sorcerer seemed if anything rather cold. He smiled again though, and seemed pleased to be able to talk to someone, although he was breathless and his words were halting and slow.

  ‘I will not lie to you. In our visions we saw a spirit that we foresaw would do us great harm — Jabbmeaaakka, the death goddess, lady of dark places and the dark places of the mind. The prophecy was clear: she would destroy us. So we looked for magic to protect ourselves. First we struck at her. It did not work. A year ago the spirit met one of our men in the underworld. The underworld in here.’ He tapped his head. ‘She killed him. Like that.’ He snatched with his hand at the air, as if crushing a fly. ‘But we saw that the spirit was making powerful magic, magic that she began years ago, before she even knew she was beginning it. Now we seek to turn that magic against her. So we looked for you.’

  ‘Why me?’