Wolfsangel c-1 Page 9

  The berserks were hammering at the door of the temple, unable to get in, screaming and jabbering. From a burning hut, one brought a brand, cursing and muttering as he did.

  ‘Tell him to forget that,’ said Vali to Bragi.

  Bragi gave a little start. He was unused to Vali expressing a view on anything. The boy’s manner, thought the bodyguard, was not unlike his father’s.

  ‘Put that down!’ said Bragi. The berserk took no notice and threw the torch up onto the thatch. Luckily, it was high and steep, and the brand tumbled off.

  Bragi looked at Vali and shrugged. Some of the farmers from Eikund came up. They had caught one of the shaven-headed men, and had stripped him naked, booting him towards the temple.

  ‘Tell them to open it!’ said one.

  The man was old and terrified. He just sank to his knees, put his hands together and jabbered.

  ‘Open it, you girl, or I’ll cut your throat.’

  The voice was Hrolleifr’s, a farmer from up on the hill behind Disa. Vali had thought of him as a gentle man. He often helped Disa take things to market and was skilled at carving. Here he was, though, with the same knife that produced tiny ships, little men, even Vali’s own King’s Table pieces, thrust at the side of a man’s neck.

  ‘He can’t open it; they’ll have secured it from the inside,’ said Vali.

  Hrolleifr shrugged and cut the man’s throat. A thick spray of blood pulsed into the air, soaking the farmer, and the man fell forward, kicking and squealing on the floor.

  Hrolleifr turned to the other raiders and shouted, ‘See me in my battle sweat. See how I spread the slaughter dew among the warriors of the enemy.’

  Everyone else laughed and clapped. Vali couldn’t believe that he was boasting about what he had done. The man had been old. It was harder, much harder, to stick a pig. Was this what they amounted to, all those tales of glory? Killing old men who were begging for their lives. Vali wanted this to end, and quickly, the quicker to return to the boats. He needed to get into the temple as fast as possible. The prospect of plunder might prevent further pointless murder.

  The screams were becoming more distant. Everyone on the island who could run had run, and most of the berserks were pursuing them. A brief silence descended over the houses. Vali breathed in. The odour of smoke against the chill of the summer morning was wonderful to him.

  The roof was too high to reach, the doors were impregnable. If they had long enough, it would be possible to dig under the walls. There was a chance though, that he could get in at a window. It was too narrow for any of the bigger men, but he was so much smaller.

  ‘Bragi,’ he said, gesturing with his eyes to the window, ‘make sure no idiot burns it while I’m inside.’ He took off his sword belt and stripped off all three tunics he was wearing as armour.

  Bragi helped him onto his shoulders. Vali could reach the narrow slit of the window but couldn’t gain any proper purchase on it.

  ‘Stand on my head,’ said Bragi, straightening his helmet.

  Vali did so, and managed to get a second hand into the gap and lever himself up.

  He forced one shoulder in, wriggled and pushed, and finally he was through, dropping onto a table directly beneath him.

  There were four windows in the building and their light made it easy to see. At first his impression was just colour — silvers and golds, a large embroidery on the wall to his right, the door with its bar to the left. His eyes adjusted and he saw the men. There were four of them, with shaven heads, two with large candlesticks, one with a weighty silver cross. Only one, a man of his age, thirteen or so, was unarmed. It was then that Vali realised — he had forgotten his weapon.

  The men didn’t charge him, which he thought stupid, because he would open the door if not knocked down. They just stood shouting at him. He recognised some familiar words in their odd language.

  ‘God, redeemer, help.’ The man with the cross thrust it forward, shook it at him, and said something Vali didn’t understand at all.

  ‘ Helsceada, Helsceada, Helsceada. Satan!’

  Then the man said something else he could make out, although the accent was heavy and strange. ‘Flee me!’

  Were they casting a spell on him? Vali didn’t feel like he was being enchanted. There was a renewed clamour at the door and some more snatches of sentences came through.

  ‘Burn, Odin! Blood swan! Inciter!’

  Vali stood up from his crouch. He didn’t get off the table because he wanted to appear tall to emphasise his royal status. There were four men, all of working age, and a reasonable quantity of silver. That wasn’t a bad haul. First, though, he had to subdue them unarmed. All he had was words, and he knew only half of those would be understood.

  ‘I think it’s you who should have fled,’ said Vali. ‘There are wolves and bears outside this door. Shall I feed you to them?’

  He dropped off the table, went to the door and made to open it.

  The men jabbered but didn’t rush him. There was a clang. His seax had been thrown through the window.

  Vali looked at the weapon. He made a gesture of refusal towards it.

  ‘No need for that,’ he said, ‘if you’re sensible. Better a slave than a dead man, I think.’

  One of the men spoke. Vali understood some of the words.

  ‘Inroad from the sea. The hand of — ’ and there was that word again ‘- Satan in this.’

  ‘Just a good ship and the blessing of the gods,’ said Vali.

  ‘One god,’ said the man. ‘Christ Jesus.’ He pointed to the embroidery.

  Vali looked at it. It was a strange but beautiful representation of Odin suspended from a tree, a spear piercing his side. It was a depiction, he felt, of the god’s quest for wisdom at the well of Mimir, where he had given up his eye for knowledge. But if these men were Odin’s, where was their fury and their fight? He couldn’t imagine walking into a place holy to the berserks and coming away alive.

  ‘He is on our side, not yours,’ said Vali. ‘Lay down your weapons and submit. I offer you my protection. On oath.’

  The one word seemed to get through. ‘Protection.’

  The men looked at each other. Then they put down the heavy silver and sank to their knees, pressing their hands together and muttering. The banging at the door became even louder. He walked up to the men in front of him.

  One of them held a strange oblong object, like a slab of leather. Vali went to take it from him but the man held on. Vali wondered what it was that he should cling to it more dearly than silver. He went to the table, where there was another of these slabs. He picked it up and looked at it. It was paler on three sides than it was on the fourth. The pale edges seemed to be pressed together in layers. He went to put it back down but, as he did so, it fell open. Inside were lots of papers, like he’d seen Veles Libor carrying. The squiggly writing was all over them, along with some beautiful pictures. Then Vali saw it — these slaves could teach him to write. They valued these papers so they must be able to read them.

  ‘Lord!’

  There was a face at the window.

  ‘Bragi!’

  ‘Yes, lord.’

  ‘How did you get up there?’

  ‘A ladder, lord.’

  Vali laughed. ‘You could’ve saved your head, if we’d thought to look. I’m going to open the doors. Make sure no one, and I mean no one, harms the slaves I’ve taken. They’re my property. Can you make those Odin-blind idiots understand? ’

  ‘I can try, lord.’

  ‘Three knocks when you’re ready.’

  Vali knew the challenge he would face once the doors were open and so, making gestures of calm, he picked up his seax and took the old man with the slab of leather by the arm. He was the least useful as a slave and the most at risk.

  After a short time he heard the three knocks and removed the bar.

  Light flooded the church as the doors opened. Two berserks rushed past him carrying spears and burning brands.

  ‘No!’ s
aid Vali, but it was too late. Two of the slaves were stabbed and fell; one other — the young man of Vali’s age — ran for it, dragging the old man with him.

  ‘No killing!’ shouted Vali. Luckily the men fell into the hands of Bragi and the farmers and were merely smashed to the floor with pommel blows.

  ‘Silver!’ shouted Vali, and that was enough: the rest of the men poured into the church.

  Vali didn’t know what to do to save his captives. Acting on instinct, he pushed them both up the hill at sword point, back towards the longship. It occurred to him to let them go but he was fascinated to learn how to write and saw it as a key to developing and maintaining his kingdom, when he came to rule it. Also Vali had met very few foreigners before and was interested to talk to them. These men, he thought, might have something interesting to teach him.

  As they got back to the top of the hill, he picked up his shield and looked down. Now the church and the little huts were all on fire. Livestock was being rounded up and driven towards them. The men with Vali began to weep. Vali looked at them properly for the first time. They were clearly slaves, he thought, as their rough clothes and shaven heads denoted. Even slaves develop a bond with a place though. Again he noticed how enchanting the island looked: the sparkle of the sun on the ocean, the thick line of smoke stretching out over the sea to the mainland beyond like an enchanted causeway, the fires themselves. In the face of such beauty, it was difficult to remember that it was a scene of destruction.

  He pressed on to the ships and, when he got to them, was the first back apart from five or six guards.

  ‘Good plunder?’ asked one as he arrived.

  Vali just gestured to the slaves with his seax.

  The guard nodded. ‘One of them’s a bit old, but the other one’ll be worth a bit at Kaupangen.’

  He was talking about the big southern market. Vali had heard of it but never visited it. These captives weren’t going there; he had plans for them.

  ‘They’re mine,’ he said.

  The guard shrugged. ‘Depending on the split,’ he said.

  ‘They’re mine,’ said Vali. ‘I’m the one who made the effort to save them, the others are more interested in easy kills than taking prisoners.’ The guard shrugged again and sat down on the shore.

  ‘See what the berserks say,’ he said.

  It was nightfall before everyone returned. Vali sat by the fire and watched as herds of sheep and cows were driven to the ships. There were no slaves. Vali could hardly believe how wasteful the raid had been. All the loot from the church was piled up, along with flagons of wine that didn’t remain untouched for long. Some men even came with bales of hay they had stolen, more than would be needed to feed the animals on the short journey back. Vali was thankful that there were pebbles on the beach at home, otherwise he felt sure they’d be returning with a full haul of those too.

  The berserks had taken no prisoners, though they had a quantity of coin and some silver plates, along with about ten slaughtered geese.

  A change came over these men with the end of the day. They were no longer the baying animals he had seen get off the boat. Instead, they seemed listless, weak even, hardly talking, just crouching by the fires and staring into the flames through red and angry eyes.

  ‘Lord.’

  ‘Yes?’

  It was Bragi’s hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Did you not hear me? We are to put out to sea. This island is linked to the mainland by a causeway that is open at low tide. We should leave. The burning buildings may have drawn attention to us and we risk counter-attack if we stay here.’

  ‘Why burn them then?’ said Vali.

  ‘What?’

  ‘If the fires give away our position then why light them? Surely it would’ve been better to plunder the place in secrecy.’

  ‘The berserks will have their fires,’ said Bragi.

  The animals were loaded onto the ships, thrown in, roped in, hauled in, until the vessels were perilously low in the water. Some of the bigger creatures couldn’t be fitted in and were slaughtered at the beach and tied behind the ships. They would be dragged back, as long as the ropes didn’t break.

  Vali waited with his slaves to take his place in the drakkar.

  The helmsman was counting.

  ‘No room for those two,’ he said.

  Vali looked at him. ‘You’ll make room. I want them for my slaves.’

  ‘Lord, it would mean offloading valuable animals. The boy is sickly and the man’s old and not much good for work.’

  Vali could, he supposed, just let them go. The raiders would be long gone before they could help any pursuers. Still, he reminded himself of who he was. He’d spent so long at Adisla’s hearth among farm children that he sometimes forgot.

  ‘Princes need different work to common men.’

  ‘Lord, I-’

  There was a scream and the old man fell to the ground.

  In the firelight Vali saw the gleam of a knife and the red eyes of Bodvar Bjarki, the scarred berserk who had attacked him. Then there was a sudden movement and the boy cried out and fell too.

  ‘Debate over, prince,’ said the berserk. He could hardly stand. He seemed torpid and sluggish but had still stabbed both men in an instant.

  For the first time in Vali’s life he felt genuinely angry, violent even, and as that emotion touched him he felt a chill go through him. This wasn’t the sort of rage that explodes in fury but an insidious, crawling thing, as present and real as the smell of smoke across a summer meadow. Vali was frightened by the intensity of the feeling. He would, he thought, have his revenge. It came to him not as an intention but as a fact, as real and unavoidable as the engulfing night, the endless stars and the cold dark sea. It was the first time in his life he could remember feeling hatred, and the sensation was almost intoxicating.

  The raiders were around him, their faces expectant. Vali, though, would not give them what they were asking for — a demand for compensation, a challenge to a duel. Instead he smiled at the berserk and said, ‘I will not forget you.’

  Bodvar Bjarki just grunted, huddled into his cloak and made his way onto the ship.

  Vali bent to the old man. Dead. Then he went to the boy. He was breathing but Vali could see he was dreadfully pale and close to death. He held him in his arms to give him comfort. The boy looked up. Vali had expected to see blame or hatred. Instead, he saw something else. Understanding, sympathy, pity even. He found it chilling.

  The boy looked at Vali and said a word he recognised: ‘God.’

  Well, he doesn’t seem to have done you much good, does he? thought Vali, but he said nothing. In a few moments the boy had stopped breathing.

  Vali climbed aboard a knarr. He had no intention of spending the journey home with the berserks.

  He took an oar without a word, listening to the men around him swapping stories of the raid. Farmer Hrolleifr told how he had faced the enemy’s leader and cut him to the floor. He omitted to say that the man was naked, kneeling and begging for his life at the time. Others told tales of taking on two or three enemies at once, leaving out inconvenient facts such as that their opponents had been unarmed. The most remarkable thing about the stories of the returning warriors was that they seemed to believe them themselves.

  He looked over to the drakkar as the ships pulled away from the beach. The one West Man the berserks had saved had been hanged, sacrificed to Odin in thanks for their safe return. As Vali watched the man dangling from the mast, his legs kicking as if in a useless attempt to run away, he made up his mind that he would never seek that god’s help. His followers, he thought, dishonoured him.

  ‘I hate you, Odin,’ he said, ‘and I will oppose you in all your works.’

  For some reason that made him feel better and he bent his back to the oar, losing himself in the rhythm of the rowing, thought banished by effort.

  9

  Varieties of Darkness

  Some grow in light and others in darkness. Feileg — the boy the w
itches had taken — was not raised on the sunlit coast but on the mountaintops with the wild men and the wolves.

  The witch queen sensed that the boy she had taken needed to be prepared in a different sort of magic to the one she practised. Her magic was known by the ordinary people as Seid. It was a wholly female art — a magic of the mind. Gullveig had blurred the division between past and future, she had travelled entranced as the shadow of a hare or a wolf to enter the nightmare of a dozing king, but the arts of physical magic were unknown to her. Her trances and meditations would leave her weak for days afterwards, near to death even, and the toll on her was enormous. Her limbs were wasted and her body emaciated. She seemed no more than a rune herself, an arrangement of lines rather than a human figure. As the years went by, the change that other girls knew did not come to her. It would never come. The witch queen accepted the cost of her knowledge was that she would remain in a child’s body her whole life — small, weak and undeveloped. The werewolf could not follow that path. Odin, she knew, would come as a warrior, dispensing death at the end of his spear. Her protector couldn’t be weak, so Gullveig could only do part of what was needed.

  To create her werewolf, his body would need to be strengthened and conditioned by the berserks, the ulfhednar who lived as wolves and fought as wolves, gaining unnatural strength and ferocity from their training and their magic. The witch spoke to a berserker chieftain in a dream and the man took the baby, along with a payment of medicines, from a boy servant at the bottom of the Troll Wall.

  Until Feileg was seven he lived on the lower slopes of the mountains with a small berserker clan, who cared for him, fed him, taught him trance dances and beat him. On his seventh birthday the berserk chieftain who had taken him from the Wall woke him before dawn and led him back up into the mountains. It was early winter and the going was hard. The berserk took him over the snow fields, waiting for him when he fell, driving him on when he tired, shouting when he tried to use his little spear as a staff, warning him not to abuse something on which his life could depend.