Fenrir (66 page)

When the gods saw that the wolf was fully bound, they took a fetter and lashed it to a rock called Scream
. Why were those words so deep in her mind, why did she recall them instead of a prayer or a psalm?

‘The ladder,’ said Helgi.

Aelis put her hands to her neck to remove the pendant but she found she still could not. Her fingers wouldn’t do her bidding and she could not make them remove the thong.

‘Good proof,’ said Helgi. ‘Lady, it is time. Go into the mine.’

Aelis looked at the northern barbarian, his ridiculous kaftan, his ballooning trousers. She was of the line of Robert the Strong, more noble by far than he. So she would not struggle, would not weep. Instead she smiled at him. ‘When you war with gods, first be sure your grave is dug, barbarian. Your men who sweated to make this hole will sweat over their spades for you before long, I think.’ She spat at him, and from somewhere words came back to her: ‘
I dag deyr thú
.’

‘This will be my death day?’ said Helgi. ‘Perhaps, and perhaps not. Horse will kill me. Foreseen. Have no horse, so I am a safe man.’

‘The gods do not like to hear such talk,’ said Aelis. ‘They may take that as a challenge.’

Helgi understood little of what she said but grasped its sentiment well enough. He pursed his lips. ‘Fine woman, you,’ he said. ‘Sorry to do this. It is the only way.’

Aelis turned away from him to show that he was beneath her notice. Then she went to the ladder and climbed down. It was drawn up and the baskets were lowered after her. She looked up. There was a square of grey light. Helgi looked down at her.

‘Tunnels are warm lower down,’ said Helgi. ‘You live, I promise. Here to live, not die.’

From down the river a wolf was howling.

‘And you will die very soon,’ said Aelis. ‘My promise holds equally true.’

Helgi turned to his warriors. ‘Who am I?’

‘Helgi the Prophet!’ they shouted as one.

‘What is Helgi’s destiny?’

‘To be killed by his horse!’

‘How many horses does Helgi own?’

‘None?’

‘Then who can oppose him?’

‘No man!’

‘Who can oppose him?’

‘No man!’

From down on the river past the town came the sound of a great crash and then men shouting. Leshii looked around. Helgi’s men had found his friends.

‘Who can oppose him?’ Helgi had his sword in the air, waving it above his head.

‘No man!’

The
druzhina
cheered and howled, banging on their shields.

Leshii came up behind the
khagan
. He slipped the knife from his waistband, the silk cutter he had used on Aelis’s hair, and drove it hard into Helgi’s back.

‘I am your mule,
khagan
, so men call me,’ he said, ‘though in reality I am a just a little man, unconsidered by kings and heroes.’

Helgi’s hand went to his back and clawed at the knife, but it would not come out.

‘Sváva,’ said Helgi. He tried to say something more but couldn’t. He took a pace, stumbled and fell into the shaft.

Then the
druzhina
cut Leshii down.

Ofaeti and Hugin sat by the brazier with the guards.

‘This is a curious vessel,’ said Ofaeti, ‘a ship with no oarsmen but a deal of blood here frozen on the boards.’

Hugin stared into the mist. The riverbanks were no more than shadows, but on the one furthest from the boat was another shadow – not a rock, he was sure. He sniffed hard. There was a smell to it. Wolf.

‘There’s something out there,’ he said. ‘A wolf.’

‘Where?’

The Raven pointed. A howl came from the bank, eerily flat in the heavy air.

‘Our friend the wolf?’

‘I think so,’ said Hugin.

‘Then we are in good luck to have found him so soon. We can kill him and go home.’

There was movement on the ice – black shapes, fog spectres. But not spectres, men. Twenty paces from the ship the
druzhina
emerged. They were terrifying-looking warriors – gigantic in their furs, their breath steaming about them as if they were creatures of the mist. They faced the ship in a line, silently staring at the men by the brazier. The Raven’s sword was free from its scabbard and the two guards soon lay dead.

‘Too late to worry about what’s out there, I think,’ said Ofaeti, glancing down at the corpses. He looked at the fog; it was still reducing vision to less than the throw of a stone. He could run, he thought, lose himself in the murk. Maybe. But he would probably be cut down before he got away. Unlike the Raven, he wasn’t quick on his feet. Besides, he hadn’t been raised that way. Running was not for Thiörek, called Ofaeti, son of Thetmar of the berserker line of Thetleif. He vaulted into the ship and drew his sword.

The Raven gave him a questioning look.

‘Go if you need to,’ said Ofaeti, ‘but tell my tale. Say how the brave fatty faced the many at Aldeigjuborg and made a few widows before he died.’

‘Run. We’ll make the shore before they do.
You
are to tell
my
tale.’

‘And miss this glory? Find another skald to sing your songs, crow balls.’ Ofaeti grinned and raised his shield. The warriors advanced at the walk. They had cords tied about the soles of their boots and had a good grip on the snow that lay on the river’s ice.

‘They’re coming. Go on.’ The Raven held out his hand across the rail of the ship. Ofaeti took it. ‘Tell my tale,’ he said. Hugin nodded and was gone, a scrap of black fading to grey in the fog.

Ofaeti addressed the
druzhina
: ‘Now, my ice maidens, which one of you wants to face me in single combat here in the boat? What say you send forward your best man, and if I kill him you send me on my way with a pat on the back?’

Ofaeti forced his grip to relax on his sword. His mind went back to the victory they had won on the boat after the merchant had sacrificed the necklace.

The warriors kept coming, their pace increasing. ‘Come on then! But I warn you – you are many and I am one but I have Loki’s luck!’

The
druzhina
broke into a charge and Ofaeti prepared himself to die.

The shaft had been cut down into a tunnel which was propped up with pillars of stone and baked brick and extended away from Aelis, ahead and behind. In the shaft she could stand and see, while the day lasted. To gain any shelter from rain or cold she would have to crawl into the darkness.

Aelis struck at her flint. The momentary flash revealed little. It was as if the tunnel ahead of her ate the light, sucking it down into two black pits. She struck again, got some tinder going and lit the little lamp that had been provided for her.

Aelis sat for a while. Her hands went again to the pendant at her neck but she could not remove it, couldn’t make her fingers lift it or undo the knot. She looked up at the sky. The greyness was losing its glow. Soon it would be night. Rational thought seemed to evade her.
How to get out?
She just couldn’t force her terrified mind to concentrate.

Slowly, some sort of calm returned. Being scared was not going to get her out of the pit. Helgi had called it a mine, and if it was a mine then there would be wood or something she could drive into the wall of the shaft to climb out. Yes, it would be easy to climb up the inside of the shaft if only she could find some wood. She put the flint and tinder away in its pouch, which she tucked inside her tunic. She couldn’t afford to lose that.

There was a thump and something hit her hard across the face, knocking the lamp to the floor. She put out her hand and felt something.
An arm!
She could just make it out in the guttering flame of the lamp. Aelis drove herself back against the wall to get away from the dead man. She heard screams and shouts from above, some in Norse, some in Roman.

‘Witch!’

‘She bewitched the merchant!’

‘Kill her!’

‘He’s dead, Helgi is dead!’

‘Troll-witch, houserider!’

There was a dead body in front of her. It was him, Helgi. There was no time for horror or elation;, she had to save herself. She forced herself to crawl forwards. Protruding from the dead prince’s back was the handle of a knife. She pulled it out, kneeling on the body’s blood-wet furs. It came free. She looked at it and knew who had killed the
khagan
.

Aelis picked up the lamp and scrambled into the tunnel. She crawled, putting the lamp in front of her. But the tunnel quickly became very low and she was panicking. As she moved the lamp forward, she drove it into a rock. Its clay bulb burst. All she had was the oil on the wick. When that was gone she would be in darkness. She had gone no more than a body length when the flame guttered and died. Now she felt her way with her hands. The passage dropped steeply but she went on, scraping her knees and crying out when her head hit the low roof.

Men were coming down the ladder. Again the word she had heard so many times in Norse she needed no magic to translate it: ‘Witch!’

Aelis put her hand to the floor in front of her and felt nothing. The ground had disappeared. She turned around and dangled her legs into the void. They touched nothing, not even when she stretched them forward.

‘Get a torch!’ The voice was one of the
khagan
’s wider army because it spoke in rough Greek.

So many voices now, she wondered the shaft could contain them all. She could hear five men at least behind her and other more distant voices, shouting and angry.

What to do?
It wouldn’t be long before her mind was made up for her. She felt for a ladder going down, a foothold, anything. There was nothing. A fluttering yellow light came from behind her. Her pursuers had their torch. They were coming, crawling down the tunnel. Something flashed in the dark. A spear tip.

‘Witch!’

The man thrust with his spear but he wasn’t near enough. He crawled forward and pulled back his arms to strike again.

She searched for something to pray to. God? He had gone from her life. The runes? Never. They had robbed her of herself. She could think of nothing to help her at all.

‘Die, witch,’ said the man.

Then a name came to her, a name at once familiar and strange, from the life she had lived before. Not a magical creation at all; now more a memory, like a bright flash of childhood alive for a second in the adult mind.

‘Vali, help me!’ she whispered and jumped into the darkness.

Hugin followed the riverbank back into town. He would need to go in there alone. No matter; he had done that before. As he drew near to Ladoga’s walls he could hear voices – screaming and shouting – women, children. What had happened? A name was on their lips: ‘Helgi!’

He ran towards the shouting. When the voices were almost on top of him, he looked to his left and saw a large wooden tower looming above him from the fog. The gatehouse. He knew that entering the town was almost certain death. Helgi had clearly ordered him killed, along with his companions. He crossed the river on the ice. Women, children and old men were pushing in through the gate. Some were crying, others seemed panic-stricken.

Hugin grabbed a woman who was trying to encourage a young child to move faster. ‘What’s happened?’ he said.

‘You are the sorcerer they are looking for you. Get away from me!’

He drew his sword to show a thumb’s width of steel.

‘What has happened?’

‘You should know, troll-witch. Our Helgi is dead. Our protector is dead.’

‘How?’

‘He put her in the earth and she struck at him. The Frankish witch cast a glamour on a man who Helgi had well rewarded. Our prince is dead. Dead, and we must look to our defences.’

Hugin turned away from the gate and ran back along the stream of people. The woman screamed after him that an enemy was among them, but the confusion was too great, the fog too thick. He was just a shape in the mist.

He was running up a hill now. Men’s voices shouting, ‘Witch, witch, kill the witch!’ Hugin knew there was no time for reason, debate or argument. These men had found Aelis and were going to kill her.

Black shadows in front of him. Another four paces and they were men –
druzhina
with spears, not looking at him but peering down at their feet. He charged, beheading one with a left-to-right diagonal swipe and kicking the man next to him in the small of the back, hoping to put him out of the fight for long enough to deal with his two comrades. Hugin took off the hand of a
druzhina
who was trying to draw his sword and booted him into the man behind him, sending both warriors sprawling. He then killed the uninjured man with a blow to the head. The sword jammed in the skull. Hugin let it go. The handless man was in shock, staring at his bloody stump. Hugin drew his knife and gutted him then turned to face the
druzhina
he had kicked at the start of the attack. The man wasn’t there.