Fenrir (12 page)

The king said something in Norse.

‘He thinks you are a risk to him alive, Confessor. Doesn’t he know they will come after your bones, your relics? Should I grind them to dust?’

‘No one will seek me,’ said the confessor.

‘Not so. Even dead you are a rallying point, but let’s not run ahead of ourselves.’

‘How long?’ said Sigfrid.

There was another conversation in Norse. Aelis sensed the king didn’t trust the Raven. The king raised his voice.

The Raven shrugged and bent to where the confessor sat on the floor. In the firelight the confessor’s twisted body reminded Aelis of a melted candle stub, the long form bending over it like a shadow it had thrown.

‘Will you work with us, Confessor? Will you use your abilities to help us? It will cost you little.’ He spoke in Latin.

Silence gave the Raven its answer.

‘Do you know how magic works?’ said the creature.

The monk said nothing but Aelis felt a coldness coming from the Raven, a sense of high and desolate places and of something else she couldn’t quite identify. She was tempted to say it was loneliness, though she couldn’t imagine the creature having any tender feelings at all.

The Raven continued: ‘I do. Through shock. Your thoughts are intertwined, like the weft on a loom. If there is magic in you it is a single thread obscured by many others, the illusions of the everyday, of hungers, lusts, the babble of your priests, the senses and smells of the world. Those illusions must be removed. Something that scars or revolts, or throws the thoughts into chaos is required. Something that cuts the duller threads and leaves the scarlet of the truer, magical self shining through. Your hermits do it in their isolation, so that the thoughts fall in on themselves to reveal the magical self beneath. Your Christ did it on his cross, calling down lightning and causing the dead to walk while those next to him only spluttered and died. Not everyone can achieve this, or, rather, exactly what we can achieve is different. Some people can prophesy. Some can see far in distance but not in time, put their mind into a raven’s body and fly with it on the upper airs. Some can slow time and see everything at half its speed, become mighty warriors. Most can just scream.’

The thing walked around the confessor, looking at him as a man might inspect a market-day pig.

‘Believe what lies you like.’ The comparison of Jesus to a magician had incensed the monk and he was unable to stop himself speaking.

‘Tell me, Confessor, when you first saw, when the visions first came to you, your body was struck as it is?’

‘God blessed me twice that day.’

‘Did the vision produce the affliction or did the affliction produce the vision? And when you see, the affliction gets worse, does it not? I ask my question again. Are the visions the cause or the symptom of your frailties?’

‘It is all from God.’

‘From the fates,’ said the creature. ‘Even the gods must follow the skein that is woven for them.’

‘Then your Odin will die and be replaced by a kinder god, isn’t that what your prophecies say?’

‘We will defy the prophecy. In my time on this middle earth the dead god will rule. He will escape the teeth of the wolf and will live to start a battle that will consume the world and stock the halls of the dead with many heroes. I will see him king over all the world. What happens in eternal time I cannot influence. The wolf will take him eventually but not until I am drinking with the slain in Valhalla.’

The confessor, who was a good reader of men’s voices, sensed something behind the Raven’s words. There was the faintest tinge of deceit, like the quiver in a novice’s voice when he asks to be allowed to go into town with a healer when really he is intending to meet some girl in the market square. Had Christ completely let this man go? The confessor could not believe it. He decided to test him on his faith.

‘You control nothing while you worship idols.’

‘Wrong,’ said the creature. ‘I control you. You will prophesy, monk. You will reveal the girl to us. She is the wolf hook, the thing that draws him on. Do you think the wolf gladdens when he thinks of his death in the final battle? No. Only she spurs him forward to his destiny. She is the fates’ instrument. It has been foreseen.’

‘I will do nothing for you.’

‘You will, one way or another.’

Aelis felt cold. The grey light of the predawn was coming into the house, banishing the shadows of the fire. In a short time she would be visible to the thing again. She moved to the furthest corner of the room, like a new and timid slave hoping to escape notice.

Hugin stood up and turned to Sigfrid. There was a conversation in Norse between them and the Raven pointed north.

Sigfrid looked pale. The creature smiled and said to Jehan, ‘The king is of a tender stomach for a warrior. But he must realise there are no easy ways to magic.’ He gestured at his scarred and torn face. ‘And I should know. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Confessor, the people are calling for me. I have a sick child to cure.’ He went out past the monk into the growing light.

The berserkers were sleeping at the feet of the mules, lying on Leshii’s bags, when Aelis came outside.

Leshii had paid them to guard his goods. The merchant had vowed to himself to have the money back off them in some way before he left, particularly as their services hadn’t been necessary beyond some initial scuffling. When the people of the camp discovered the wine had gone and there was no food on the mules, interest quickly waned. You couldn’t eat or drink silk and the only trade anyone was interested in doing was for a square meal, so when Leshii showed them a length of yellow silk, they had gone back to what they had been doing before – starving, complaining and preparing their weapons.

Leshii was tired but he’d been unable to sleep. He felt old and cold in the morning mist. He’d seen the creature leave the house and had recognised him for what he was – a shaman, a magician and very likely a madman. The strange figure made the merchant shiver. Never mind, he told himself, he’d seen more terrifying men. At that instant, though, he couldn’t recall where.

The king came out of the house. He bowed deeply, wondering how he would explain it when the king didn’t realise it. He too hadn’t slept, Leshii could see.

‘On your feet, warriors!’ he shouted.

The berserkers creaked up slowly, shaking the dew from their hair and then wishing they hadn’t as the reality of their hangovers dawned on them.

‘Get the monk up into the woods, to the Raven’s camp.’

‘I’d prefer not to go up there, sir,’ said Fastarr.

‘And I’d prefer you did.’

Aelis went to the merchant. He was red-eyed and yawning.

‘I had to watch all night,’ he said. ‘That should have been your job.’

Aelis gave him a look to tell him that though she was disguised as a slave he shouldn’t make the mistake of treating her like one. He smiled. She wasn’t a slave, for sure; more like a precious possession now.

Ofaeti brought the monk from the house, carrying him over his shoulder. Leshii could see the confessor’s pain and his efforts to hide it.

‘I’m not traipsing all the way up there with him, merchant; lend us a mule,’ said Ofaeti.

‘The one that had the wine will be considerably lighter, practically unburdened,’ said Leshii. ‘Put him on that. I’ll take my animals to a safe place in the woods.’

‘No,’ said Sigfrid. ‘You are to do me a service, merchant, and can accompany these men.’

Leshii forced his face into a smile. ‘As ever for you. I only aim to please, lord,’ he said.

‘Follow the monk. Be with him for the coming day. Do not leave his side and report to me what he says.’

‘Always your servant, great lord.’

Sigfrid looked at Leshii oddly and the merchant thought he might question his familiarity, but the king just said ‘You can leave the bags and the mules you don’t need here.’

‘My lord, I prefer to guard them.’

‘It was an instruction, not a request. The packs will not be stolen from, nor your animals eaten – you have my word. You can have them back if I find your report satisfactory.’

Again Leshii smiled. This place, he was sure, would be the death of him. There was no trade to be had one way or the other, no entertainment and not even any food. The best he could hope to come away with was a case of scurf. The worst, well, that would be not coming away at all. Still, Leshii was a practical man and knew the northerners stood by their oaths. The bags might be safer with the king than at his own side. And at least the Vikings had not mentioned that he had claimed to have known the king since he was a boy.

They went out past the smouldering fires of the camp, through the bands of mist and up the incline for a very long way. Leshii looked behind him as they climbed. The mist sat in the shallow valley of the river like broth in a bowl. And what a broth, a brew of trouble, plague, suspicion and death. They reached the edge of the forest, where already people were chopping logs, and went under the trees. There was a narrow track, just a depression in the grass really, and they followed that. The woods were wet and lovely: the dew sparkled in the pale sun and bluebells flashed like jewels in the web of the low mist. Leshii could not enjoy the morning, though. He was a captive. He glanced at Aelis. What was she? The captive of a captive. Quite a fall for a noblewoman in just one night, he thought.

They were no more than a spring hour into the woods when they came to a clearing. The trees were high here, huge oaks budding into leaf.

‘It’s here,’ said Fastarr.

Leshii could see nothing to indicate a camp. They went into the clearing.

‘Hrafn!’ shouted Fastarr. ‘Hrafn!’

From up in the trees a raven stirred from its nest.

‘Wrong one,’ said Ofaeti. No one laughed.

The bird sat looking at them from a high branch.

‘They’re strange things, those,’ said Ofaeti. ‘They won’t nest together, but as soon as one of them gets a sniff of food they’re cawing their heads off calling for the others to come and join in.’

‘Let’s hope there’s no more like Hrafn around,’ said Fastarr.

‘You should let me gut that corpse-muncher,’ said Ofaeti.

Fastarr smiled. ‘If we ever meet him out of the protection of Sigfrid’s people then I’ll race you to cut his throat.’

‘You shouldn’t say that,’ said Svan. ‘He’s a priest of Odin. He cures people, and he’s worth ten men in battle, I’ve seen it.’

Fastarr grunted, clearly unwilling to debate the subject. ‘Hrafn!’

There was a stirring down in the wood.

‘Oh, on Freyr’s fat cock, it’s her,’ said Ofaeti.

‘Let’s leave the prisoners and get it over with then,’ said Fastarr. ‘I don’t want to be around to watch this.’

‘Are you so soft, Fastarr?’

Leshii looked around. It was Saerda, the hard little man who had delighted in tormenting Aelis.

‘I have killed a score of men,’ said Fastarr, ‘but they have been the honest deaths of sword, axe and spear. This offends me.’

‘You don’t like to see your enemies suffer?’ said Saerda.

‘I like ’em dead and quick,’ said Fastarr, ‘the quicker to return to my ale and my women.’

‘Each to his own,’ said Saerda with a shrug, ‘I can stay with them if you like.’

‘Do as you want,’ said Fastarr. ‘Just the sooner …’

His voice trailed away. Leshii’s mouth fell open. Aelis actually screamed, but no one seemed to notice, they were too busy holding on to their own stomachs. Leshii had encountered a leper on his travels, though he had run from him quick enough. This, though, was another kind of deformity entirely.

A woman had appeared at the edge of the clearing. Her hair was black and disordered, she wore a dirty white shift stained red with blood at the front from two raw wounds at her neck, and she swayed as if almost too weak to stand. It was her eyes, though, that caught Leshii’s attention. She didn’t have any. Her face was marked with cuts, like her brother’s, but much more numerous and severe, and her head was swollen, almost spongy in appearance, like a monstrous oak gall. There was no discernible nose, just a ragged slit for a mouth, and where her eyes should have been were torn and vacant sockets, the shape of them hardly distinguishable.
What had done that to her?
Leshii wondered. Disease? It looked like no disease he had ever seen, though her face was bruised black and red with infection, puffed out unevenly on one side, almost shrunken away on the other. Her, eyes, though, her eyes were truly terrible. He remembered fetching bread from his grandmother to his mother when he had been young. The old woman had given him half a loaf, and on his way home he’d thought he’d just take a nibble, so he’d pinched a little off as he walked. It had been delicious and he couldn’t resist taking another pinch, then another, until the inside of the loaf was nearly hollow. That was how the woman’s eyes appeared, like the inside of that loaf, ruined by tiny degrees.

The woman swayed forward across the clearing and then tripped and fell, groping blindly on her hands and knees, sniffing and feeling her way towards them.