Wolfsangel c-1 Read online

Lieaibolmmai found himself flat on his face concealed in the dark of the cave entrance, digging in his furs for his little knife. There was a squelching noise like a man walking through a swamp, and he saw the monster put its back paws through the chest of the Noaidi in the bird mask.

  The gigantic creature was hideous. Its black wolf’s head with eyes of shining emerald sat on a body that was a twisted stand-off between man and wolf, though three times the size of the biggest man Lieaibolmmai had ever seen. The creature loped on all fours, its back limbs and front left those of a wolf, while its front right, which it used to tear and smash the Noaidis, to pull them into its crushing jaws, was the arm of a freakishly big human.

  The sorcerers had been taken completely by surprise. Some were slashing at the creature with their knives, some were throwing rocks, a few were shooting arrows from squat bows, but most were scrambling for the boats that would take them off the island.

  Lieaibolmmai cleared his mind. Hadn’t he bound the wolf? He had gone to it in its dreams, called it with his drums, commanded it into the cave and done all the magic as the runes had revealed. He had also heard the girl with the wolf and it was certain they were known and important to each other. And hadn’t the wolf appeared in exactly the form he had seen in his visions? So what was this thing?

  He felt himself pissing where he lay. He had to control himself, to think clearly.

  Then he understood that he had been deceived. Somehow the goddess had tricked him. He had snared a wolf but not the one he was looking for. And yet he had touched its mind, run with it in the wide dark of the mountains, breathed its joy in the kill. He could not understand it.

  Lieaibolmmai was an honest man. He had no delight in the dark magics he had been shown and looked for power only to defend himself rather than for its own sake. He knew what he had to do — to give the girl he had uprooted and the wolfman he had enchanted and damned a chance. He went further into the cave and threw down the ropes.

  ‘The wolf is here,’ he said into the darkness. ‘Stay until it has finished killing. I will do my best to control it. I will-’

  He never finished his sentence. A primordial sense told him that something was behind him, something worse than a neck-break fall. He stepped forward into the darkness.

  At the bottom of the shaft Feileg and Adisla heard Lieaibolmmai crash to the ground beside them and then his scream. He had torn his arm from its socket and couldn’t stifle his agony.

  Then something else dropped softly down the shaft, some sort of creature.

  In the blackness there were retching and coughing noises. The creature hacked, growled and snapped again and again. She heard it snuffle forward, its snout testing the darkness. Adisla was close to collapse. She could concentrate on nothing, think of nothing but the awful scraping sounds coming from the creature’s throat, within which she seemed to hear some words.

  ‘My love,’ it said. ‘I have found you.’

  43

  A Sacrifice

  Vali. That name still described what faced Adisla in the black of the pit.

  How much change must you go through before you are no longer you? How many planks can you replace on a ship before you have to say that you have a new boat?

  Vali’s jaws dripped with the blood of the sorcerers, his mind was full of the scent of their panic, and yet, now that he had found Adisla, a glimpse of who he was came to him, indistinctly, hardly discernible, as a distant shore might appear through haze. This was the girl he had loved since the instant he met her. He fought down his other perceptions — the delicious aroma of anxiety that clung to her, the succulence of her flesh, even her threat. She was not him, and every living thing that was not him now seemed hostile and dangerous.

  ‘No,’ said Adisla. ‘No.’ She could see nothing in the darkness, nothing at all, but that made the creature more terrible — its rasping voice, the heat of its breath.

  ‘I have found you, as I vowed,’ said Vali. ‘Come from this place.’

  Adisla shied back, reaching for Feileg’s hand.

  ‘What are you?’ she said.

  ‘Your love. Vali.’

  The Noaidi was trying to bite back his pain but his suffering escaped him in suppressed groans. Vali felt the attraction of the holy man’s agony, calling him to feed. His skin felt alive, his muscles drawing power from his questing hunger.

  ‘Keep away from me,’ said Adisla. Her body convulsed as she clung to Feileg in the dark. Vali could see them clearly and felt his lips draw back from his teeth, his legs prepare to spring. He willed himself to be still.

  Feileg spoke. ‘It is him. I saw the beginning of this change. It is the prince.’

  Adisla was shaking her head.

  ‘Let me take you from here,’ said the wolf.

  Adisla drew in her breath and backed further away. ‘I will not go.’

  ‘Better that than the damp and dark,’ said Feileg. ‘Go. If it is your turn to die then you will die.’

  ‘I do not fear death, only him.’

  ‘He is as the Norns wish him to be. Now go.’

  Still she did not go. Feileg pushed her forward. Then fear killed all her thoughts, and she did not resist as Vali gathered her up. Her weight was nothing to him and he lifted her to the top of the shaft and then pulled himself up using his human arm. Three Noaidis stood at the mouth of the cave. The sun had risen behind them, turning the rocks inside to burning gold and revealing Vali and his burden to the sorcerers. They let fly with their bows. Vali turned his back to them to shield Adisla. The arrows hit him hard but didn’t even break his skin. Vali put the girl down, turned again and made a stuttering, snarling run towards them. They fell back and scattered. Vali returned to Adisla.

  She tried to summon her strength, not for herself but for him.

  ‘Do you remember what you were?’

  ‘I remember the betony you gave me when I first went out to fight. I remember you at the river, the sun on the water and you racing your brothers from bank to bank. I remember how you kissed me when we last saw each other. I remember you, Adisla, so I remember me.’

  Adisla looked at him. Somewhere in his expression, in the inclination of his head, she could see her Vali. It was him, so how could she be afraid?

  ‘Do you know what you have become?’ said Adisla.

  The creature bowed its head. It stammered, ‘I am a b-better thing.’

  ‘No, Vali, you are not. You must come back to me,’ said Adisla. ‘We must break this curse.’ Feileg was beside her. He had climbed one of the ropes Lieaibolmmai had thrown down the shaft.

  The wolf spoke: ‘It feels like a blessing. I am so strong and the world is so beautiful.’

  ‘We have had only one blessing in life, and one curse,’ said Adisla. ‘Each other. You have found me and I will find you. There are sorcerers who will help you, and we will take them the gifts they ask to save you.’

  To Vali, Adisla’s body sparkled with scents, sang with her fear. And there was another sensation too, something even more persuasive. They would be together for ever if he ate her. They would be the same person. What closer love than that is possible? No! Her connection to him was stronger than hunger. Her love burst over him like cool water on hot iron and made a blade of his will.

  ‘What would you have me do, Adisla?’

  ‘Wait here, on this island.’

  ‘I cannot command myself.’

  ‘Then let us command you. Vali, this is a trap and a refuge. Go within and let us keep you here. We will bring your salvation, I promise.’

  ‘I will starve.’

  ‘Your hunger is worse fulfilled. It will be a noble agony and, I promise, my love, it will end.’

  The great beast craned its head in something like thought.

  Vali saw the flight of the arrow and knew it was going to miss him, so he ignored it. He hadn’t thought where else it might go. It struck Adisla in the leg, spinning her to the ground in a hard fall.

  The bowman died for her, killed not for his ar
row but so that Vali’s hunger could feast on flesh that was not Adisla’s. She was trying to stand, her stricken movements firing all his wolf senses, impelling him to take her.

  He leaped towards her and stood above her, the man he had been struggling to spare her, the wolf he had almost become simmering in resentment at that restraint. No. Yes. No. Yes. Yes.

  The wolfman shoved at Vali’s side, punching and slapping at him, trying to shake his attention from the stricken girl. Slowly the wolf turned its head to him, the black bulk of its body almost featureless against the light of the cave mouth.

  Feileg was shouting at Vali, trying to get through to him. ‘After her there is no way back! After her this, always.’ Blood filled up Vali’s senses. He seemed almost to teeter above Adisla, rocking and keening as he struggled to fight the pull of her distress.

  There was a scream from below. Lieaibolmmai had tried to climb from the shaft but the ruin of his arm made it impossible and he had fallen. The wolf lunged at Adisla. She felt his breath on her face, his teeth brush her neck. But Vali, still there inside the wolf, pulled his animal body back, slammed Feileg to one side and threw himself into the shaft after the sorcerer. He tumbled down, crashing to the floor.

  ‘I am lost,’ said Vali, not in the wolf’s growl but in the voice of his mind, ‘and I will never be found again.’

  Lieaibolmmai scrambled back through the darkness, back away from the thing he had summoned. He knew he had lost to the goddess and his duty was clear. ‘Seal us in!’ he shouted. ‘Seal us in!’

  At the top of the shaft Feileg was heaving at the flat boulder. He couldn’t budge it. Adisla stood, stumbled, stood again and added her weight. A Noaidi ran in to join them. They rolled the stone down the wall until it was level with the shaft.

  Adisla fell to her hands and knees at the edge of the pit. She looked down to see a pair of green eyes reflecting the light of the rising sun. The rumbling voice echoed up the shaft.

  ‘Forget me,’ it said, and Feileg dropped the boulder over the hole.

  44

  For Love

  No drumming, no chanting. The remaining Noaidis were numb, slumped on the bare rock as if still entranced. Already the birds were descending, ravens and crows dropping from the sky, their cracked cries sounding something like delight.

  Noaidis helped Feileg pile more stones over the boulder to ensure that the beast could not escape. Adisla watched helpless, her leg now agony after the initial shock had subsided. When a Noaidi approached her, Feileg snarled at the man, but he had a small bag and made a sign for the wolfman to be calm. Feileg allowed him to draw the arrow and dress the wound. Adisla was beyond screaming as the arrow was withdrawn and sat vacantly on the rock. The Noaidi pushed water to her lips, gave her reindeer meat and flatbread while Feileg returned to pile on more stones.

  Feileg could hear the screams from the shaft. He wondered how long the creature’s resolve to stay in the pit would last. It had food in the shape of the sorcerer. Would that feed its growth? Would it become strong enough to get out? Never mind. They would be long gone by then.

  When they could get no more stones on the pile, Feileg rejoined Adisla and put his arms around her. She returned his embrace but not as warmly as he wanted. She was grateful to him and pleased they were both alive, but she did not love him. He had heard what she had said to Vali and knew she was prepared to die for her prince. Despite herself, tears came into Adisla’s eyes. Feileg stroked her hair. He had vowed to kill Vali because the prince had captured him and taken him from a wolf’s life. But for that moment in the cave, knowing what it was to love someone and to feel that love in his arms, Feileg should have regarded him as his saviour.

  ‘We will free him.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I told you I have many treasures in the hills, and I spoke the truth. I will present them to the witches, put myself at their mercy and ask them to save your prince.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I am a wolf,’ he said, ‘and have had enough of tomorrow and yesterday. I will die or I will not. I will go to the hills or I will not. I will exist or I will not.’

  She thought of Vali looking up at her from the pit. She had seen something of the man in those strange green eyes. She loved and admired him more than ever when she thought of his courage. He had allowed them to seal him in. He, unlike her, had the bravery to die. But then she looked at Feileg, so like him in appearance, so different in personality. In some ways it was as if the gods had answered her prayers, given her a low-born man in Vali’s image — someone she could marry, perhaps could love.

  ‘I will follow you,’ said Adisla.

  ‘There is no need. The witches are not always merciful.’

  ‘More merciful than the fates?’ said Adisla. She looked at him and squeezed his hand.

  ‘There will be great danger,’ he said.

  ‘Feileg, I’ll follow you because you came here for me and you saved me. I see that you are the first among men. I’ll follow you because I want my Vali back, but I’ll follow you for baser reasons too. I have no home to go to. My mother is dead in the most awful way and I can never look on that place again without that memory. If I cannot be with him, I’ll be with you. And if I cannot be with you then my life is over.’

  Feileg now knew that he would have what he so desperately wanted if only the prince died in that hole. All he had to do was fetch bigger and bigger rocks, perhaps even persuade the Noaidis to bring some over by boat, and make sure that thing was sealed in until it starved.

  Adisla had tears on her face as her eyes turned to the great heap of stones over the shaft.

  ‘Come on,’ said Feileg. ‘We will go to the witches.’

  45

  Buried Treasure

  Veles Libor was not in a good mood. His promise to King Hemming that he would find a way to rid him of the prince and make him a little money at the same time had come to nothing. The deception of the escape — played for the benefit of the mob — had been a good one but he hadn’t foreseen the pirate attack. Hemming would fall into a fury if Veles returned without Forkbeard’s gold and would assume he had pocketed it himself. That, thought Veles, would be a problem to dwarf the unenviable difficulties he was already facing.

  He couldn’t believe how quickly they had lost Vali in the fog. They’d scarcely cut him adrift when he disappeared and there had been no sign at all of him since.

  ‘I’d just cut loose from this king if I were you,’ said Bodvar Bjarki. ‘You could disappear east and he’d never hear of you again.’

  ‘Neither would anyone else. A merchant without a prince to protect him is nothing,’ said Veles, ‘and besides, his name is worth ten on every hundred to me.’

  The berserk was ungovernable, he thought. The crew would have been mutinous if they had not been so depleted and weakened by the attack, and the ship was low on provisions. His actions during the battle had made him an object of contempt to the men and he had to endure being called ‘barrel man’, ‘keg creeper’, ‘tun tickler’ and whatever other less than inventive nicknames they could come up with.

  Despite this, Veles now assumed informal command of the vessel, in that he determined its next move. This was not because he had any authority with Bjarki or the hired crew but because he was the only one who seemed to have any idea what they might do.

  They stopped at the little market at Kaupangen, where he managed to sell some of the taken battle gear for a reasonable price and to hire five passably hardy-looking Danes to replace some of the men lost in the battle. He made sure the Danes knew who paid their wages and picked them for their brawn and stupidity. He wanted stupid — it was an essential requirement for the expedition he had in mind. He had lies to tell and didn’t want clever men finding them out. The crew was down to twenty-six — five for him, at least in theory, and nineteen for the berserk. The odds were very far from ideal but they were better than they had been.

  Luckily for Veles, the berserk wanted Vali as much as he did. Bjar
ki had vowed to take the prince to Forkbeard and that was an un-negotiable promise, so for the moment he found Veles useful. Bjarki was a brute but not a fool, and he knew the merchant’s brains would be useful in the hunt. After that, well, who knew who had been killed in the pirate attack?

  Veles looked at the berserk. He was no mind reader but could guess what Bjarki was thinking. The merchant needed to make himself indispensable to him.

  When Veles settled to thinking about a problem then, if there was an answer, he usually found it. At Haithabyr he had heard whispers that Haarik was using Vali’s farm girl to ransom his son. He had not told Vali this because he had very quickly seen that the prince wasn’t in a position to pay for the information, nor to offer any other sort of benefit. However, now he saw a happy meeting of needs between himself and Bodvar Bjarki. The girl had gone north. Haarik had gone north. The prevailing current would take Vali north if he wasn’t shipwrecked on the way. Veles would take his ship up the North Land coast, find Whale People and ask for information about the girl, Haarik and the prince. Find either of the first two and he would find the third, he thought.

  There was another reason to go north. He had heard of an island where the Whale People made sacrifices to their stupid gods. There was a rumour of gold there. Bjarki was convinced it was defended by sorcery but Veles thought otherwise.

  In truth, Veles had very little respect for magic or for any god. He had seen his children playing by the fire with the Whale People’s holy objects, hung embroideries of the Christ god on his walls for decoration, heard people all over the world singing the praises of Wuoton, Odin, Raedie, Svarog, Spenta Mainyu, Jesus and other gods. All seemed the same to him — pictures and carvings beautiful but empty.

  He put more faith in himself, the swords of Hemming and the power of coin than he did in the supernatural. The sorcerer who had made his child’s mask hadn’t been protected by his magic from whoever took it from him; Jesus had been taken to the cross with no angelic defenders, no bolts of fire from the sky smiting his enemies. Veles had actually laughed when the missionary told him the story of the crucifixion. What had the mighty god done to avenge his son? Torn the curtain on the temple. Cross Hemming and you’d suffer more than a ripped wall hanging for your pains.