Wolfsangel c-1 Read online

  The god now had the wolf’s head over his face. He peered through the animal’s bloodied lids with cold eyes. The tongue that slithered from between the dead wolf’s teeth was long and lascivious.

  ‘What is your name?’ she asked.

  ‘Names are like clothes, lady. I have many.’

  ‘And which one do you wear tonight?’

  The god smiled. She could see he liked her words. He pulled her to him, pressed his wolf lips to hers and said, ‘My name is Misery, and would you know yet more?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the girl, breathing in his scent, the scent of something beautiful, strange and burned. ‘I would know more.’

  He flicked at her lips with his tongue and whispered, ‘So is yours.’

  The next morning the traveller was gone, along with the fine wolf pelt. Around Saitada’s neck, tied in a strip of leather, was a strange stone. It was a token, the night caller had said, of his affection and protection. It didn’t seem to do her much good.

  The livestock had been slaughtered. The dogs were dead and Saitada was blamed for lying with a stranger while the wolf devoured the pigs. The farmer’s wife wanted to forgive her, to comb her hair and call her daughter again, but the farmer, brave in the wolfless light of day, wanted revenge.

  She was sold with only the clothes she stood up in and the pebble charm the strange fellow had given her to her name. The priests had bought her and told her to make a virtue of her suffering. When they discovered she was pregnant they set to chastise her but found they could not. Something about her, maybe the charm, maybe that eye that seemed to see all their sins, stopped them, and they let her live among them unpunished.

  Then Authun had come.

  So what stopped Authun’s thoughts of murder on the ship? The stone at her neck was no more than a pebble with the head of a wolf scratched on it. Perhaps he had seen the rough little picture — his family sign — and felt some deep-seated fear that this foreign woman was kin. Or perhaps he just felt sorry for her.

  He looked north, up into the white-capped peaks where he would meet Gullveig, witch queen of the mountains, that mind-blown child. She had been no more than ten years old when he’d first faced her the summer before. Authun knew the stories surrounding her. As the old witch queen was dying, she had appeared to Gullveig’s father, a warrior at the court of King Halfdan the Just. She had told him to take his pregnant wife to the Troll Wall to give birth. He knew better than to refuse, surrendered the girl child and gave thanks for the luck the sacrifice would bring the family. Gullveig had been a decade in the dark of the mountain caves, breathing in magic like a fisherman’s children breathe sea salt on the wind.

  Authun looked at the mother cradling her twins. No, he couldn’t kill her. He’d give her to the witches, he thought. The chosen boy would survive the journey from the Wall to his wife without feeding. The girl couldn’t even speak Authun’s language, would never know what had happened to her children. What harm could she do waiting on the witches? It wasn’t as if she was going to escape them: no one could even find their way in and out of their caves without a guide. In this way Authun the Pitiless, burner of the five towns, allowed the privilege of life to a deformed slave that he would not allow to his kinsmen, and in so doing sealed his fate.

  When they came ashore, the summer valley was pleasant and hummed with fertility but Authun could take no pleasure from the scenery. All his life he was a man of the necessary, someone who did what needed to be done and thought no more about it. He was pitiless but as a means to an end. The fouler the fate of his enemies, the more tribute he could exact from others without having to lift a spear. But, as the woman’s strange eye seemed to watch him wherever he went, he could not rid himself of the image of Varrin’s face as he’d faced death and spoken of his wife. He would, he decided, carry the message to the widow as his first priority after he had given the child to his wife.

  There was a river between the coast and the Troll Wall and Authun would have liked to have sailed up it. Single-handed, however, it would be impossible. And anyway the witches had called down enough rocks to make it impassable even with a full crew. So they walked.

  The woman went in front of Authun, where he could see her. Her hair hung loose, as the wimple the priests had made her wear was now in the North Sea. In her tatty fifth-hand nun’s habit and the overlong cloak that had once belonged to Hella she looked like a beggar. The king did too, in his salt-stained cloak and sea furs. Authun carried the Moonsword tied on his back, hidden away. The hills, he knew, were full of trolls and bandits, and he didn’t want to go advertising his wealth.

  They faced no supernatural opponents on their journey from the sea but on the second day saw three riders approaching in the distance. The girl looked for cover, which Authun thought a very reasonable course of action — for a woman. The king himself simply stood where he was. The men dismounted and approached, which Authun took as a sure signal of violent intent.

  When taking on a warrior such as Authun the Wolf the best plan is to stalk him and cut him down in his sleep. Taunting him from afar and then approaching with ‘What have we here?’ is ill-advised. Still Authun, who was in a curiously melancholy mood, would have let the three pass had the first not attempted to shake him by the shoulder. Authun grasped the man’s hand so he couldn’t let go of his intended victim, took a pace back with his left foot to expose the arm and, in one movement, drew the Moonsword from his back and cut the limb in two. Before the bandit could realise what had happened, Authun struck him again, this time hard to the leg. Authun had no intention of killing him; already he was thinking how he might use him. His leg damaged, the man had sought to steady himself but had instinctively put his weight onto the missing hand at Authun’s collar. He fell forward at the king’s feet, bleeding heavily. The remaining two robbers stared in disbelief at the Moonsword. They knew now exactly who they were facing — they had heard so many stories of Authun the Wolf it was almost as if they knew him personally. One thing was clear in their minds. Fighting him was certain death.

  They tried to flee, but Authun, even at thirty-five, was too fast for them. The king had noticed as soon as the men appeared that both were wearing costly byrnies. Thus encumbered, they died before they had run twenty paces.

  He cleaned his sword on the fallen men’s clothes and returned to Saitada and the bleeding bandit. Working quickly, he took out a length of walrus cord from his pouch and tied off the man’s arm to stop the bleeding. The bandit was unconscious, which suited Authun. Saitada looked at the two bodies and then at the king. He found himself explaining.

  ‘If I’d let them go they would have come back when we were sleeping, perhaps in numbers,’ he said, though he knew she couldn’t understand. ‘They’re scavengers. They never paid for those horses. See the byrnies? They’re taken from the bodies of brave fools who came to steal the witches’ treasure, treasure that is only there to draw fools on to death. They use them in their magic then they throw them from the rock.’

  The rock. In the distance they could see it, already huge three days’ march away. It was their destination: the Troll Wall, as tall as a thousand men standing on each other’s shoulders. It was a monstrous overhanging cliff, like something from a dream, an obstacle which blocks all further progress, something symbolic, with a resonance far beyond its daunting physical mass. He looked up at it. It was impossible, he thought, to imagine climbing it, though he had done so before. It was the only way into the witches’ caves that the sisters were willing to reveal to outsiders. The back of the mountain was even more impassable, swathed in permanent ice and perilous loose boulders, and defended by hill tribes under the witches’ thrall.

  So they would have to climb — almost to the top of the Wall and then into it, to the caves. Authun knew, though, that the Wall would not be the greatest impediment to seeing the witch queen. That would be the witches themselves.

  4

  The Troll Wall

  Between the hour of the dog

 
; And the hour of the wolf

  Between waking and sleeping

  Between the light and the dark

  Is the doorway of shadows

  Step on, traveller,

  Do not tarry on that grim threshold.

  Authun read the runes someone had carved into a boulder. He was below the dizzying overhang of the Troll Wall, a cliff so high that the top was invisible in clouds. Human bones and rotting clothing lay about him but it was the inscription that made him shiver. Mundane perils of bandits and falling rocks were bad enough without thinking of what other horrors waited in the dark.

  The Wall would take even the fittest warrior two weeks to climb, even if he found one of the shifting routes around the overhang at the first attempt. But no one was that lucky. It was impossible to reach the caves in one go. Rock slides moved old paths, opened new ones and closed others in a blink. You could climb almost to within touching distance of the top and then have to turn, your way impassable, another route needed. The paths were becoming fewer too, as if the mountain begrudged them and sought to shrug them off. How long would it be before there were none? Would the witches eventually be marooned and left to rot in their caves? Or were there other, hidden entrances that the sisters and their servants used?

  The climb, though, wasn’t the biggest problem. The problem was, as the runes warned, sleep. For that tiny fall between waking and unconsciousness was where the witches were. People came to steal their treasure and died; people came to seek their advice and died. Very few, armed with charms and acceptable tribute, ever came back alive, and of those no one was ever stupid enough to seek a second audience. No one but Authun and his ancestors, who by divine right, it was said, could hold regular counsel with the witches. Even to the wolf king though, the prospect was daunting. This was his second visit, and he hoped he would never have to make a third.

  They would have to wait for a guide, he knew, dangerous as that might be. Authun saw no point in exhausting himself and the woman by attempting the climb unaided. At the base there was the risk of bandits, but better that than the children should fall to their deaths. He made a fire, drank water from a skin, fed bread and salted fish to Saitada and made sure the bandit was just about alive.

  Then he lay down and pretended to sleep for a bit to see what the woman would do. She fed her children and settled down to sleep herself. She was, as he guessed, no idiot. She wasn’t going to kill her only protector in a strange and hostile wilderness or even run away from him. The bandit was too badly injured to attempt anything. Authun wanted to take the precaution of breaking his remaining arm but feared that the shock might kill him. So instead he just tied him with walrus cord to a tree. Then he prepared for sleep properly and waited for the witch to come.

  If it was the witch queen, all well and good. If it was one of the stranger sisters, well… Authun was a warrior so he concentrated on what he would do if the worst came to the worst, not what would become of him. He would try to give her the bandit, then the woman, after that himself. With luck the witch queen would appear in time to save the children.

  But sleep wouldn’t come for him. The night was fine and temperate, and he was warm in his cloak, but little irritations seemed to keep him awake: a cold nose, a pebble in the small of the back, the smell of the moss on the rock, the taste of the rock even. Then he realised he was not awake but neither was he dreaming. Some of his senses seemed heightened — he could taste the cold on the air like iron, smell the difference between the flowers and the grasses; he could smell the tar and the dirt of a puddle. It was as if his hearing was slightly muted, his vision reattuned so that in the bright moon glare he could see new colours — deep metalled blues, sparkling dark greens and seams of gold on the side of the rock. He was where the witches were, he knew, in that place between waking and sleeping. He went to the tree and cut loose the bandit in preparation for what was to come.

  Cries in the dark like a baby wailing. Authun wanted to prepare the woman for the arrival of the witch but they shared no language. She would just have to suffer it. He heard a voice through the rain. Where had the rain come from? He tasted it on his lips — more iron, like the way the hand smells after handling a sword, like blood. Mother in the pen, Mother in the pen.

  It was a child’s voice, high and piping but clearly audible.

  Authun didn’t want to look but knew that he must. If it was the witch queen then she would have to see him. He pulled the semi-conscious bandit to him, ready to throw him to the witch.

  Down along the rock face he could see a young woman bent over as she tried to shield herself from the driving rain. She had something in her arms. It was a baby. Authun turned to Saitada. She was holding both her children close to her.

  The woman staggered out from the cliff face with the baby and laid it on the ground. She took off its swaddling clothes and exposed it naked to the elements. Then she ran off into the night.

  Authun stayed where he was. The witches had all sorts of tricks and he wasn’t about to fall for one so easily.

  He watched as the child died. After a short while it stopped moving and then seemed to disappear. So this was magic. Authun kept his hand on his sword.

  And then the rain stopped and it seemed that it was a lovely summer evening. The same woman who had left the baby appeared but this time dressed in farm girl’s finery, as if she was going to a dance. A man, also in his country best, walked past her, kissed her hand and seemed to tell her not to be late. Authun recognised the story. It was a fairy tale about an unmarried woman who had exposed her child to die rather than face the hardship of raising it. How did the story end? He couldn’t remember.

  The woman smiled and sat on a stool that had appeared from somewhere. She was combing her hair. She finished and got up. Authun recalled that the story told she had gone to check on the pigs before leaving for the dance. She looked into a trough and from within it took something cold and blue. It was a baby, and Authun knew it was dead. The woman held the dead child up and looked at it as it began to move, kicking out its legs as if attempting a jig. And then the rhyme began, a rhyme that seemed to come from inside his head. Mother in the pen, Mother in the pen, Primp and preen to charm the men Take my swaddling clothes and dance in them.

  As the rhyme split its way through his mind all he could see was Varrin’s face, bloated, white and drowned. What had he done? What had he done? The rain came down again, straight and hard in the windless evening.

  Suddenly it was night, pitch black, and the young woman, her face pale with madness, clasping the dead child to her, was at Authun’s side. Even the king screamed, though he didn’t forget to push the wounded bandit towards the witch. It was as if the man’s body was swallowed by the night. The king knew that he wasn’t facing the witch queen. She would have recognised him. It was a patrolling witch mistaking him for another plunderer, or worse it was one of the truly terrible sisters, her mind simmering with magic, some half-demon who leaked delusions and madness to those around her and who could kill them without even noticing they were there.

  ‘Gullveig, Gullveig!’ shouted Authun at the top of his voice. ‘Help us, lady!’

  The Moonsword was out, and he looked around for whatever would come next. The light was so inconstant, one instant flat dark, the next the pale washed-out murk of a rain-soaked dusk. He wanted to find Saitada, to throw her to the witch, but she was not there.

  ‘Authun the Wolf,’ said a child’s voice in his head, ‘mightiest warrior in Midgard, is there no one who can defeat you in arms?’

  ‘Gullveig! Gullveig!’ Authun screamed, trying to make the witch queen hear him. He must not reply, he knew. He must not accept the delusion, enter into it and become consumed by it. I know one who can lay you low, I know one who can prick you so. If you defeat this one I know Then, King Wolf, I will let you go.

  No mortal had ever challenged him and lived. He did what he had sworn not to: he answered the voice. ‘Bring forth your champion!’

  Behind the veil of r
ain there was a shimmering and the shape of a man took form. It seemed to Authun that the witch had underestimated him. His opponent was a man of near forty with long white hair and a straggly beard. He looked careworn and beaten by his years but there was something in his hand that shone with a cold fire. It was a sword, curved, slim and wicked. Even in the dullness of the rain it gleamed. Authun recognised it at the same time he recognised his opponent. It was the Moonsword. His opponent was himself.

  As the realisation hit him something very strange happened. He saw himself with his back to the rock and he saw himself advancing towards the rock. He seemed to be both warriors at the same time, looking out through both men’s eyes. He could see a white figure with a woman and two babies at his back but at the same time he could see the same white figure advancing from the rock and hear the cry of the boys behind him. Authun did not know which warrior he was and in some way he was both.

  More reflective men might have wondered what to do, but Authun, both Authuns, had been brought up to value swift action. The kings closed with each other and began to fight. It was a hopeless struggle, each man guessing the other’s moves, each anticipating blows and ducking beneath them or stepping away so their swords sliced through thin air. All things being equal they could have fought like that for ever. But all things are not equal. What we do and how we react is not the same when we are facing up a slope as when we are facing down. Authun might instinctively know his opposing self might offer three feints and then a strike to the legs, but he couldn’t know by how much the ground had raised one of his attacker’s legs higher than the other, where the disposition of his weight lay — largely on one foot, largely on the other or spread. He could not guess when the rain would blind his eyes or when it would clear from his opponent’s. Also, what you do facing a rock, looking only at blackness, is different to what you do facing a man with a moving background of trees. We are not the same people facing north as we are facing south: humans are a inconstant and contingent race. So the king did strike himself, a glancing blow to his flank.