Fenrir (62 page)

The animal, uncomplaining from Ladoga to Paris and halfway back again, suddenly decided it had had enough, launching a good kick, not into the Viking but into Leshii’s leg. Leshii hit the floor like a discarded coat and Skakki’s hack sliced the air.

Ofaeti didn’t even bother to weigh the spear in his hand. He threw it half the length of the ship. It caught Skakki above the temple, sending him spinning to the deck. Then Ofaeti had an axe from one of the fallen men. A mob of crewmen were still occupied pinning down the Raven, a tricky task without killing him or injuring him beyond use as a slave. Three slavers lay dead on the boards or drowning overboard, then it was four as Ofaeti smashed the axe down into the skull of the writhing man he had maimed with his kick. The rest were free to face Ofaeti. But whereas before they had found it amusing to watch their chieftain chase the merchant and four of their kinsmen bait the unarmed fat man, there were no smiles on their faces now.

‘Come on, brothers,’ said Ofaeti. ‘Four of your men lie dead who faced me unarmed. Who would like to try me now I have this skull-biter in my hand? Or will you cut your losses and join me? You know my fame! I am renowned for my fighting skill wherever warriors gather to talk.’ He tapped the axe on his palm.

A squat man with a big blond beard spoke: ‘Much would I like to join a warrior like you. Skakki was a harsh chief and I do not mourn his loss. And I think you would be a better leader, as it is clear you are a mighty man. But the Valkyries are swooping for our kinsmen now. And though I think it likely they will soon swoop for me, our dead must be avenged.’

The man was doing his best to use fine words, Leshii noted, as the Norsemen did when they thought death might be close.

‘No kinsmen of mine,’ said a voice.

‘Nor mine, neither.’

Four warriors came to Ofaeti’s side and stood to face their fellows.

‘You are six,’ said Ofaeti, ‘and we are five. So it looks as though the weaving of my fate may not yet be done.’

‘We are thirteen,’ said the warrior, ‘when my fellows have slit your man’s throat.’

‘Too late for that,’ said one of the warriors on top of the Raven.

‘Why?’

‘He’s already dead.’

Ofaeti pursed his lips and nodded. ‘One of my kinsmen is dead, four of yours. Will the gods worry about the numbers?’

‘It is some sort of recompense and enough, I think, for honour,’ said the blond Viking. ‘We will place ourselves under your command, fat warrior.’

Leshii went to the body of the Raven. It was losing heat already and there was no pulse. He spoke to him: ‘So, your destiny was not as great as you thought. Still, my friend, I am sorry you have gone. You offered me friendship, not in word but in deed, and for that I am grateful.’

Leshii looked out to sea.
Now for Haithabu
, he thought, with a hundred dihrams and a fine stash of swords. He made the lightning-bolt sign and looked up at the sky. ‘Good fortune at last,’ he said. Then he remembered his dedication as he’d thrown the necklace into the sea. ‘And thanks to Loki too,’ he said. ‘You are a generous god indeed.’

Jehan lay still. His limbs had an ice in them that was nothing to do with the winter. His bones had twisted, turned and set, and were no more use to him than the icicles hanging from the rigging. He had gone beyond shivering, felt drowsy and could hardly keep his eyes open. He knew that he could change things, knew that all he had to do was take off the stone at his neck and the wolf would come out inside him – the wolf would find a way. But he would not remove it. Death, and Jehan was sure he was dying, was preferable to the alternative.

He said psalms in his head, but they were nothing more than a jumble of words. He felt the world fading. Any sort of movement was beyond him now, even the rocking that had blighted him since he was a child.

Her face came to him. The Virgin in the fields, Aelis in the fields. ‘Do not seek me,’ she had told him. And yet he had. He had tracked her down, lain with her and been happy, the worst sin of all – luxuriating in his offence to God.

Jehan chose death, not as a way out but to welcome in the punishment the Almighty had in store for him. He had eaten of unclean meat, he had fornicated and laughed in the face of God. He deserved to suffer eternally.

Men were on the ship
. People were moving things, the sea chests, weapons. Two stood over him.

‘This is the monk?’

‘A cripple,
khagan
.’

Jehan felt a hand touch his face.

‘Let me see him. Is he alive?’

‘Who knows?’

Jehan hoped the men would not help him. He needed to die. He was an abomination. If he could have moved, he would have attacked the men and made them kill him. But he couldn’t move, couldn’t give any sign of life. Jehan felt a hand at his chest checking for breathing. It rested on the Wolfstone, felt its shape through his tunic and pulled the cloth aside.

‘What is that?’

‘It’s just a pebble,
khagan
, the man is as poor as a Pecheneg. No jewels here.’

‘Let me see.’

Jehan felt someone else take the stone.

‘Not a fit ornament for a king,
khagan
.’

‘This is the necessary stone.’

‘
Khagan?
’

‘There is a prophecy. Great fortune was promised to me if I found this stone. This will fetter a god.’ The voice was urgent, talking to no one in particular.

‘I’m glad to hear it, sir.’

‘This is safety,’ said Helgi. ‘This is the end of our enemies.’

Jehan felt a quick tension in the thong at his neck. There was a
snick
and it disappeared.

‘You’re going to wear that thing, lord?’

‘It is a gift of the god. This is a blight to witches, a fetter to trolls and wolves. We are blessed, greatly blessed. I will wear it until we are back at the hall. There is one who needs it more than me.’

Jehan felt that a terrible burden had been lifted from him, a heaviness removed from his head. Was this the certainty of death coming to him? The lightness of the soul freeing itself from the shackles of the mortal body?

‘We need to get back to the lady.’

‘What of the monk, lord?’

‘The fates have shown the death they require for him,’ said Helgi. ‘Take off his furs and leave him to the cold.’

Jehan felt rough hands stripping him, the cold biting at his body, the deck burning his naked skin. Then he heard the men climb off the ship, the sound of a horse breathing, its tack chinking and clinking and finally moving away.

So what now? The cold gripped him so hard. Jehan saw himself as if through a sheet of ice, heard himself speaking to Aelis and she replying.

I will be myself again
.

But I will never be me. You are an enemy of the gods
.

I will be myself again
.

You are a killer, a slayer of your own kin
.

His head turned. It felt full of ice shards. He was a killer, had killed, would always kill, he knew. He had to try to die.

This time
, he said,
I will die for you
.

You will be my death. Last time you made it impossible for me to live. This time you will kill me
.

No!

He closed his eyes and prayed for the cold to take him. But it didn’t. The hunger did.

Aelis lay alone by the fire in Helgi’s great hall. She had been put on a feather mattress and was beginning to feel properly warm for the first time since she had left the forest. At first the heat had been painful on her toes and fingers, but eventually they regained a delicious suppleness. As the cold melted from her blood the pliability felt new, as though her limbs had never been so free before. She stretched out her hands, relieved she had finally arrived somewhere she might find her former self again. Her intuition about Helgi was that he sought to protect her. The runes did not tell her he was her friend, or even that he was well disposed towards her, but she had the strong feeling that her safety was his first concern and was too happy that she had found refuge to wonder why.

She kept expecting Jehan to be brought in. The cold had been so intense that her thinking had slowed and she had become lost in her magical self, in the singing and the chiming of the runes. Now, as warmth returned, she began to wonder where the confessor was.

The hall was a large bare space in the Viking style, benches lining the walls with bedding stacked in one corner of the room. People were at the doorway, craning in to see her. She saw a priestess, smeared in white clay, her hair wild and woven with ribbons and trinkets; children were there and a couple of stern warriors, their faces tense and fearful. She sensed their disquiet like tuneless and dissonant music.

The faces parted and Helgi came in. He was a tall man with wide shoulders and long fair hair. He wore a rich tunic of blue wool laced high at the neck and baggy trousers in the eastern fashion.

Helgi squatted down by the mattress and Aelis looked into his eyes. All her life she had been able to sense people’s intentions, their underlying motivations – not as words or sentences but as colours and music – but with Helgi she felt nothing. There was no wider resonance to his spirit, and he seemed almost dead to her. The glow of life that was in the people at the doorway, the candlelight that seemed to burn within them, the light she could see shining from the nooks in the wall in the garden of her mind, was absent in him. In the boat she had sensed his overwhelming concern that she should live, his care so strong that it blotted out every other signature of his mind. But now, nothing.

‘You are the Magician, the Prophet,’ she said.

‘So men call me.’

‘Do you know who I am?’

‘Aelis of Paris. I have sought you a long time, lady.’

‘Well, now I have come to you. Can you help me? Can you help Confessor Jehan?’

Helgi guessed she was talking about the monk on the boat.

‘The man you travelled with?’

‘Yes.’

‘We have cared for him,’ he said; ‘now let us care for you.’

‘I am not myself,’ said Aelis. ‘There is a magic inside me, and I cannot shake it.’

‘I can help you,’ said Helgi, ‘but you need to let me. The things inside you are powerful and will not leave you easily. Can you be their mistress for a second? If I try to vanquish them, can you give me the space of a breath to act?’

Aelis felt the runes stirring, shapes that were more than shapes – that were colours, sounds, perfumes and textures too – whirling through her head.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘but I can try.’

‘Try. But first sleep. You have come a long way and suffered many things.’ He clapped his hands and a man came in. ‘Get hot wine for the lady and some food. Do I need to give instruction in the smallest details of hospitality?’

‘I will see to it,
khagan
.’

Aelis felt the warrior’s fear like a blast of cold air.

Wine was brought and heated in a pot over the fire. Aelis drank in its sweet aroma. She was given roast goat’s meat and flat bread, which tasted wonderful to her. The wine made her feel sleepy, and when the food was finished she lay back on the mattress.

Aelis drifted off to sleep and she dreamed. She was back in the forests of her youth, chasing hawkmoths that fluttered around her in the wet dawn. The moths sang and chimed with an odd music as she tried to catch them, some sounding high and melodious, some like the wind on the sea. She was lost to rapture in the morning light but then felt something uncomfortable at her neck. She looked down. It was the stone, the Wolfstone. She tried to take it off, but her hands wouldn’t do her bidding. It was ridiculous that she couldn’t do such a simple thing as remove a pendant from about her neck. She looked at the pebble and knew she had seen it before. It was a fragment like her, a shattered piece of a bigger thing. She knew its name – Gjöll in the language of the Norsemen – Scream. She looked around her. The woods had grown dark and the moths were all gone.

Helgi stepped back from her bed. ‘Watch her,’ he said, ‘and do not let her take that pendant from around her neck.’

‘What have I in my hand, my cold friend?’

To the Raven it seemed as if he was alone on the open deck. He couldn’t tell where the voice was coming from. He stood up. The sky was clear and dark, the still ocean its perfect reflection, and it seemed as though the ship floated on a bubble of stars.

‘I do not know.’

‘It is your death.’

The slavers’ captive with the moon-glow skin was standing at his side. No one else was on the ship.
Had they all been killed?
The man put out his fist and opened it. Inside was a tooth. Hugin recognised it as the tooth of a wolf.