Fenrir

19

Leshii was hungry now and frozen. It was that moment in the predawn when the night seems coldest, perhaps because you know the warmth of day is so close.

The lady had refused him even part of her cloak, preferring instead to use it to cover the senseless monks. He did point out that the big monk wasn’t going to notice if he was warm or not, and that it was better a man who was awake should take it, but the lady gave him a look that was not likely to warm him up. Still, he couldn’t complain too much because she suffered herself. Underneath the mail coat, which she showed no signs of removing, all she had on was Sigfrid’s light trousers and silk shirt. Not much for a chilly night.

As a man of lands of the Rus, he was used to the cold, but he was used to being adequately dressed too. The night had been chilly when the air was still, but there was now a breeze in the trees, blowing the cold of the river across their camp, if you could call it a camp. There was no question of having a fire, nor any flint or steel to start one with. Anyway, fires invite curiosity, the last thing they wanted.

The lady, against his better judgement, had released the mule and horse to forage in the wood. He thought they might as well kill one and eat it as lose it to whoever found it. The animals didn’t run off, though; they even came back after they’d been to the river to drink. The river. There was another problem. The spring rains had been heavy, and it was deep and fast-flowing. The ford could be crossed by a skilled rider or by five or six people, all linking arms against the flow, thought Leshii. An old man, a girl and two injured monks? Never. Still, he thought, he might just about make it alone if he could take the mule.

What do with the lady? He could disarm her as she slept and tie her up. But he couldn’t transport her bound and gagged all the way to Ladoga. An obvious captive was an incitement to robbery — bandits would try to ransom her themselves. And he couldn’t trick her into going willingly.

He lay down and tried to sleep, his mind churning over his problems. The horse had wandered around behind him, he thought. He could hear it snorting in the trees. Then he came to himself. No, both animals were there, next to the lady, untied but content.

It was another horse. He stood.

‘Lady, lady.’

Aelis was on her feet with the shield up and the sword in her hand.

Leshii could see nothing. He heard Aelis say a word under her breath in her native Roman. His command of that language was poor but it was a word any trader would know: ‘horse’. She was staring into the trees. She said the word again and there was a voice, almost in reply.

‘Stay there. Stay there. Hold it. Hold. Ahhh!’

There was a crash in the dark, the sound of someone falling. Aelis held up the sword. It gave Leshii no confidence at all. She looked exactly what she was — a fine lady dressed up as a warrior. She held the blade upright, the handle high at the side of her ear as if the weapon was a fan and the shield had its face to the ground, her entire chest and head exposed.

Movement in the trees, something coming at them fast, far too quick to be a man. A riderless horse. As it drew level with the lady, it slowed and went to join the other animals. Leshii watched in wonder as it did so. It was the strangest behaviour he had ever seen from a horse. One second it seemed in a terrible sweat; the next it was rubbing into the other beasts as if they’d shared the same field all their lives.

He didn’t have time to think about that. He saw a blink of white in the dark and a slower movement, left to right. He had the impression of something creeping, almost crablike.

‘That’s a Viking horse,’ said Aelis.

‘How do you know?’

‘The saddle, see. They’re so badly made, they-’

He never knew what she was going to say. He saw a face through the trees and, with his merchant’s ability to remember names, immediately knew who it was.

‘Saerda, friend, have you taken a fall?’

The man came forward, snarling like a dog who’d had a bone snatched from him.

‘You, lady, owe me weregild,’ he said. ‘You killed a king. What’s the rate for that? More dinars than Paris can hold, I think.’

‘She doesn’t speak your language,’ said Leshii, ‘but nothing is beyond negotiation. Work with us to return her to her city and she will see you’re rewarded.’

He guessed what Saerda had done — watched from afar until the trouble was over and then approached them when there was less chance of others taking his prize.

‘I know the reward the Franks would give me,’ said Saerda. ‘Rollo is my king now. He doesn’t want the people to kneel and call him a god. He’s content just to see them kneel. He’ll pay a good price for this girl and then he’ll either marry or ransom her. She can come back with me.’

‘Tell him if he takes a step closer I’ll kill him,’ said Aelis.

‘The lady invites you to sit a while with us and talk things through,’ said Leshii.

‘Yes, it looks like it,’ said Saerda, ‘very much indeed. Do you want to fight, lady, is that what you want?’

He moved towards her across the glade. Aelis thrust forward the sword but her arm was straight and stiff, her body taut, like she was reaching with a pole for clothes drying high on a hedge. Saerda moved more fluidly. He put his sword up to hers and tapped it a couple of times. His arm was a whip, fast and accurate. Twice she thought he would shake the sword from her hand just with the force of his blow against it.

He withdrew slightly and she instinctively poked the sword after him. He had been waiting for that, Leshii could see. Saerda caught her blade with his in an enveloping motion. He whirled it round and round in four quick circles before a sudden jerk of his arm sent it singing into the trees. He feinted a blow at her head, and Aelis took the bait, raising her shield to her face. There were two smart smacks on the shield but Saerda’s sword had gone nowhere near it; he’d driven it straight down through the toe of Aelis’s boot. Late and clumsily, Aelis brought the shield to the grass between them. Saerda’s mouth fell open like a gargoyle’s as he saw the two black-feathered arrows protruding from it. He turned to look behind him, and Aelis hammered into him, sending him sprawling. A noise, no more than twenty paces away, a war cry, thought Leshii, a strangled croak of aggression.

‘No!’ Aelis’s eyes were wide with terror. She retreated a couple of steps, dropped the shield and then turned and fled through the trees, Sigfrid’s big boot still pinned to the floor by Saerda’s sword.

Saerda got to his feet and retrieved his weapon but went no further. Just visible through the shadows, twenty paces away, Leshii could see a terrible, lean, naked figure drawing a bow. It was the Raven. How could he aim in the dark? Leshii thought of the shield, stuck with arrows. It had been rare luck that Aelis had moved it in front of her face at the right moment. Leshii picked up a heavy stick and hurled it. He hit the bowman square on the arm, causing him to loose an arrow into the dirt.

‘Oh dear,’ said Leshii to himself as Hugin turned and lowered the bow. The merchant ran. Leshii couldn’t see where he was going — the moon through the trees robbed the forest floor of all perspective, every shadow containing the possibility of an ankle-breaking depression, a root or stone. He fell and fell again. Then he rose and tripped once more. He was flat exhausted and could not run any further.

He sat up. The grim figure was coming towards him through the bars of moonlight, his cruel sword drawn. In a frozen instant of terror, Leshii saw his opponent, the thin limbs, the muscles wound onto his bones like creepers around a tree, the face eaten by the self-inflicted torture of the birds to who knew what purpose, that cold weapon, death made steel, which seemed to shimmer and flash in the moonlight.

The Raven was still twenty paces from him when Leshii fainted to the ground.